In Winter, Try Expanding Your Salad Vocabulary

This is an interesting article....these cold hardy greens can be grown throughout the winter months in the Bay Area.

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A Cook's Garden
In Winter, Try Expanding Your Salad Vocabulary
By Barbara Damrosch

Special to The Washington Post

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Summer's salad days are over, not to mention fall's. We're supposed to welcome root vegetables, stocked away in the cellar, garage or cool pantry, as the season's great gift. And we do. Nothing like a good beet borscht or garlic potato mash. But for true salad lovers, the show must somehow go on.

Our household, reluctant to give up the habit of homegrown produce, relies on an unheated greenhouse for a winter supply of spinach, mache, tatsoi and other greenery. (A large cold frame or two would also serve well.) Yet in the darkness of early winter, the growth of leafy crops slows way down, and our usual definition of salad expands to include something extra hearty and fortifying. At dinnertime I poke through cellar, larder and fridge looking for inspiration close at hand.

Read the full article here

This just in: our Sloat Blvd store!

Our Sloat Blvd store just received:

--- a large shipment of vegetables from three local growers and the first shipment of the year from Annie's Annuals.
--- Quince and fruited kumquats in anticipation of Chinese New Year.
---Several dozen budded lilacs picked to bloom in our mild winters.
---Vines and groundcovers to help with erosion control before the spring rains.

Dormant fruit trees are here!

Dormant fruit trees are now in all our stores!

Look for blueberries, citrus, boysenberries, apples....and more....

Also, there's still a good supply of dormant roses!

Save the Date: our Winter Orchid Festival is February 1-15.

Join us for 2 weeks of orchid seminars, giveaways, demonstrations & specials!!

February 1-15, 2009

Great article: Washing machine irrigates backyard fountain

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Washing machine irrigates backyard fountain
Ron Sullivan, Joe Eaton
Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Standing in her Oakland garden, Andrea Hurd listens to the first house finch of the year declare his territory in the single big tree. She's designed habitat for him and other birds here, but he's not what she's talking about.

"My big push as a designer is to find that sweet spot between art and ecology," she said. "That's when the garden sings. My clients always comment on how the space makes them feel. They might not know why, but that's it."

Hurd's Mariposa Gardening & Design company will have a display garden in the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show in March. The core of her model is assembled and running in her backyard right now.

She's named it a "living fountain." It's a hanging garden of sorts, in galvanized tubs: two tiers of horticultural horsetails, yellow-striped rushes, sweet flag, lobelia and scarlet monkey flower presided over by tall papyrus, nodding imperiously in the breeze.

Read the full article here

January Gardener’s to do list

January Gardener’s to do list
1. Top dress roses and tender plants with Sloat Forest Mulch Plus.
2. Prune roses, shrubs, trees, perennials & ornamental grasses. Treat yourself to an after-holiday gift -- a new pair of Felco or Bahco pruners or new blades for the old ones.
3. Keep up on cleaning winter debris from beds and containers.
4. Stop the weeds! Weeds that begin with winter rains go to seed in March & April. Pull weeds now before they go to seed.
5. Remove plants that aren't thriving to make room for healthier plants. Make the job easier -- gloves are on sale this month for Gardener's Reward Members.
6. Deadhead flowering plants to encourage additional blooms.

Our Plant Pick of the Month for January

The common name of this late-winter or early-spring flowering member of the buttercup family is Lenten rose. Mature helleborus plants can form clumps that are 18” to 24” tall and 24” to 30” wide. Long lasting blooms are available in many colors and appear as single or double forms. Mature plants often have 50 or more flowers per plant. These long-lived ornamental perennials add color to the garden for several months in winter and spring; they are also appreciated for their attractive foliage. Read more....>

Watch your postal mail this week!

Gardener's Reward Members: Keep an eye out for your earned Savings Certificate discount -- awarded based on your purchases in the 2nd half of 2008 and sent via postal mail. For more information on how our Savings Certificates are awarded, click here.

Celebrating the Garden at Saint Isabella School

Roses for 2009: Cinco de Mayo, Legends and Pink Promise

Recently reviewed in the Chronicle ...we carry these lovely roses! Here's what the San Francisco Chronicle had to say about Cinco de Mayo and Legends....

"With 'Cinco de Mayo,' Tom Carruth has won yet another All-America crown (his 10th in 11 years). A floribunda rose, meaning it has sprays of blossoms on each stem, the colors are difficult to describe but range from smoky lavender to rusty red. Since it's a seedling of 'Julia Child,' another All-America from Carruth, you'd hope for fragrance and wouldn't be disappointed. Best yet are the aggressive growth habits of the nicely rounded bushes, which are quick to rebloom. Finally, the plants have agreeable disease resistance."

Although he didn't win an All-America award for hybridizing it, Carruth was responsible for a new hybrid tea that Oprah Winfrey was involved with. Although she originally considered lending her name to it, she decided instead to pay tribute to the women she honored in her Legends weekend. 'Legends' makes a good garden addition if you're a fan of oversize rose blossoms. Rich ruby-red buds slowly mature into blooms that must be seen to be believed. Not only are they huge, their petals are the essence of substance - downright rubbery to the squeeze. Blooms have moderate but definite fragrance, and while plants require a good year in the ground to become established, once they do, they become buxom bloom factories.

More about our roses can be found here.