The National Heirloom Expo in Santa Rosa

I still remember the first time I saw a Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Catalog. My aunt had given it to me along with a gift certificate for a birthday gift when I was in my mid-20s. After all these years, Baker Creek is still my favorite seed company. Every winter I  love to curl up with their colorful catalog and dream of my spring garden.

Last year, I desperately wanted to attend the National Heirloom Expo that Baker Creek sponsors every year in Santa Rosa (about 2 hours from my home), but with a colicky 3-month-old baby, it just wasn't feasible.

This year, we finally made it to the Expo, and it was so much more than I expected. Imagine the State Fair meets Farmer's Market with a dash of Woodstock, plus a series of speakers on various food and gardening issues. It was Kid's Day when we went yesterday, so we got in free for bringing our daughter with us- hooray!

Let's begin at the entrance of the expo. There was a large presence of those supporting food industry transparency and promoting the labeling of GMOs...

Amongst other political ideas (obligatory "legalize pot" dude not pictured)...  I thought this game was pretty funny.

 

Petaluma Pete tinkled the ivory near the entrance, and...

 ... this guy was carving a massive pumpkin right next to him. I'm not sure what that sign means, but whatever!

  It took us forever to choose what to eat for lunch because there were so many excellent local  food vendors present selling their wares. (We did NOT end up splurging on the $14 burger below. It just felt wrong, especially with no side dishes.)

  My daughter loved looking at the long-haired sheep and goats on display-

  - while I was fascinated by this woman using traditional methods to make yarn from the wool.

  There were so many amazing vendors featuring fun gardening themed products! Just a few samples:

 

  

 Have you ever been given free Strauss Family Creamery vanilla bean ice cream? After this, I can say that I have! Best free ice cream I have ever eaten!

  I mentioned there was a dash of Woodstock at the Expo, meaning there were hippies and live music. Instead of rock bands, the stage was dominated by bluegrass bands, and some pretty good ones at that. I love me some bluegrass, and my daughter loved playing with the display squashes and dancing to the music.

  There was one area devoted to a display of biodynamic gardening, including composting, rain barrels, and compost tea-making. I especially appreciated the sheet mulching demo, as we are preparing to convert our ugly half-dead lawn to something more drought-tolerant and (hopefully) attractive:

Finally, the main exhibit area boasted the tallest mountain of squash I have ever seen...

 Watermelon carving and an heirloom watermelon taste testing:

Prize-winning pumpkins weighing over a thousand pounds!

 

 And just hundreds of varieties of heirloom melons, squashes, tomatoes, and more. There were also rare fruits, school garden and composting displays, and more. I found a lot of information that I hope will be useful as I participate in starting our local school garden in the coming year- even better!

 

My only regret was not getting to attend more of the gardening lectures. I would love to have heard more, but my one-year-old can only be patient for so long.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was how many freebies I walked away with when we left the Expo. Besides many samples of free food (all good EXCEPT the beet kvass- not my thing!), I also got a dial seed scatterer, a bottled supplement called Strange Brew, a bag of free compost, a free herbal tea mix, and a bag full of free seeds for kids. The vendors were interesting and unique- selling everything from butterfly water dishes to pickling devices to locally harvested seaweed and locally made tempeh.

I would love to go to the National Heirloom Expo yearly. It was a gardener's dream come true.

2014 Garden So Far...

It has been a bit of a crazy year with the baby, and since she just took her first steps this week, I expect my life is about to get that much crazier! Besides working from home and caring for an almost-one-year-old, I have also been busy with turning an abandoned area of a local elementary school into a school garden. More on that later! But first, here's my own garden this week, looking a bit wild as tomatoes are wont to do in a Sacramento mid-summer!

The biggest breakthrough I had this year was learning to mulch my raised beds with hay instead of straw. See how much stronger and taller the plants on the right are than the others? That's the power of hay, folks! Just keep it thick so it doesn't sprout and you're golden!

Striata di Italia, an heirloom zucchini.

Red Marconi peppers are doing great in pots!

 Trying my hand at Charentais melon in the raised beds this year. So far, no fruit, but many blossoms! 

Same for the butternut squash!

 

I made zucchini pickles using this recipe from the Zuni Cafe. 

The tomato harvest begins, along with many wondrous tomato dishes...

Panzanella

Caprese salad, with basil from the garden too.

I'm grateful for this year's early planting when I read my garden journal from a few years ago and see that this week back then, I still didn't have any ripe tomatoes! I have already dehydrated two bags of sun-dried tomatoes and frozen several bags of diced tomatoes to be used in place of canned tomatoes all year. Bring it on, garden!

June 8th Garden

Here are some shots from the garden as of today. This year my focus was on tomatoes, as you will see, and many of them are doing well.

I do have some pole beans growing up some chicken wire - here's a future bean:

 

And some cucumbers also growing up the chicken wire:

And now for the tomatoes: San Marzanos -  

Green Zebra tomatoes-  

 Black Krims, always excellent producers:

Jaune Flamme tomatoes, looking gorgeous and turning color already (they'll eventually be orange):  

I don't even know what this is is because I lost the label in the transplantation process... but look how huge it is already!

And that's the state of the garden today!

It's February, and I Miss Tomatoes...

...And therefore, I am busy planning my garden for this summer! I already started my tomatoes, peppers and eggplants a few weeks ago, as pictured above. This year, I used peat pellets, two grow lights, a heated mat, and occasionally a fan (which is supposed to strengthen the stems). I have been able to successfully germinate each seed I wanted to try, which is a HUGE improvement over last year when I got maybe 3 total! The grow lights have made a world of difference, since I don't have what you would call a "sunny window" in my house.

So speaking of tomatoes, I'm doing all heirlooms again. Here's what I have growing this year, by color (those I've never grown before marked with an asterisk):

Green:
Aunt Ruby’s German Green*
Green Zebra

Black:
Paul Robeson*
Black Krim
Black Cherry*

Red:
San Marzano
Costoluto*
Riesentraube*

Yellow:
Taxi*

Orange:
Jaune Flamme*

I'm already having visions of Bruschetta and fat BLTs dance through my brain!

Bounty in the Backyard

Here's a glimpse of the bounty in our backyard at the moment:

Our oranges are finally ready to harvest! Yeah! I tried one this morning and it was good! Looking forward to finding some fun uses for all these navel oranges. Ideas?

Fava beans are shooting up like rockets!

Lettuce, kale, and beets are doing well. And calendula is still going strong and giving us lots of sunshine-colored flowers to keep us in good cheer.

This weekend we also planted two kinds of raspberries to add to our blueberries and strawberries! Can't wait to enjoy all of this fresh fruit from the backyard.