Recycling Plastic Pots for $$

Fresh Dirt has some applause for Nopalito Native Plant Nursery in Ventura, California, for their policy of offering store credit in return for plastic pots. They offer 5 to 15 cents for each pot customers return to them. I think that’s brilliant. I know there are some nurseries in this area that will allow you to return pots, but I don’t know of any with a similar policy for store credit. If there were, I might actually be motivated to clean up the bazillion pots I have stacked at the side of my house and and trade them in for some shiny new plants!

Win an Orchid a Month

Sloat Garden Center is having a Winter Orchid Festival Sweepstakes that’s too good to miss. Enter here and you could win an orchid a month for a year. Other prizes include garden center gift cards valued at $100 to $25. The only catch is that you must pick up the prizes at one of their 9 bay area locations in Marin County, Danville, or San Francisco, so I’m afraid this is for locals only.

Getting Historical at the UC Botanical Garden

This looks interesting: the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley is hosting a three-part lecture series on garden history. The lectures by horticulturalist Meghan Ray begin on Saturday, Feb. 13 with coverage of Ancient and Medieval Gardens. The series continues with parts 2 and 3 on Feb. 20 and 27. Registration is required. Details here.

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Discovering the Joys of Urban Gardening, Thanks to the Recession

Andrew Sullivan, a writer and blogger at The Atlantic, has been posting readers’ experiences throughout the Recession and has recently started posting updates on some. Today he ran an update from someone who has recently come to discover gardening. “What a rush and how fulfilling. Who knew?!” he writes.

Well, we knew. But nevertheless, welcome to the fold!

Last-of-the-Tomatoes Roasted Tomato Soup

I’ve had five Roma tomatoes sitting in a paper bag on my kitchen counter for a couple months now. When I ripped out my tomato plants, I took the green tomatoes still on the vine and put them in the bag to ripen. Since I don’t like to eat raw tomatoes in any way, shape, or form, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them.

Then a couple weeks ago I had a bowl of roasted tomato soup at a restaurant and liked it so much that I decided to try making it. I used this recipe from Creative Loafing, but used fresh basil instead of bay leaves to season it. I had to add about a pound and a half of store-bought Romas to my home-grown ones, and the recipe calls for a can of crushed roasted tomatoes as well. If I were making this in the summer or fall when I had more home-grown tomatoes, I would probably leave out the canned ones since they wouldn’t be necessary to boost the flavor. If I were making this recipe again, I would also cut down a bit on the amount of red onion—maybe just one small one instead of two.

But all in all, I was pleased with the way the soup turned out and it was definitely easy to make. With some french bread on the side, it makes a great meal for a winter’s night.

Hummingbird Cam

I’ve found a great way to fill those odd moments of the day when the wet weather prevents you from getting out in the garden: a live hummingbird camera. The camera is focused on an Allen’s Hummingbird sitting on a nest somewhere in Orange County, California. I just watched the mother bird do a feeding of one hatchling. I think there is one more egg in the nest that may be ready to hatch (assuming it’s viable) in the next day or so. Take a look, but get comfortable first. It’s mesmerizing.

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Gardening in Small Doses

The Bay Area weather forecast tells me to expect a solid week of storms ahead—lots of much-needed rain and not-at-all-needed wind. Fine. But the garden is looking, well, horrible and I hate to lose an entire week of gardening time. Some of the things I’m itching to do, like pruning the roses and weeding, need to wait for dryer weather. But in the meantime I’m making a list of small tasks in and around the garden, things I can do in brief bits of time in between cloudbursts or under the cover of the carport. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1. Cleaning up and re-potting three geraniums in the back yard.
2. Starting some coleus seeds for the front porch.
3. Starting some marigold seeds in a box by the back steps. (And remembering to cover the box with chicken wire to keep the cat from laying in it.)
4. Finally potting the tete-a-tete daffodil bulbs. (Yikes! This is really late.)
5. Sowing sweet pea seeds (again, oh so late!).
6. Starting a crop of micro-greens to grow in the kitchen.
7. Sharpening and oiling tools.

That’s just for starters. Any of these tasks can be done in 15 minutes or less. Let’s see how many I actually get through this week.

Scenes from a Scion Exchange

The California Rare Fruit Growers really know how to throw a scion exchange. Maybe due to the change in venue from San Francisco to Berkeley or maybe because of the public's increased interest in edible gardening, this year's exchange seemed to draw an even larger crowd. And I doubt anyone was disappointed. As usual, there were tables overflowing with bags of fruit tree cuttings, organized by fruit type and labeled with variety. Around the perimeter of the room there were tables with rootstocks or supplies to purchase and experienced fruit growers to ask all the questions you can think of.

My goal was very simple this year: I just wanted cherry cuttings to graft to my Ranier cherry tree. I went with a list of potential cross-pollinators and came away with three varieties to try--Black Tartian, Black Republican, and Van. For the cost of a $4 donation and another $1 to purchase some more parafilm to do the grafts, I may finally get some cherries!

Bloom Day January 2010

The garden is looking pretty ragged right now, but there are still blooms--or at least blooms in the making, like the hyacinth and chasmanthe buds above. But I really liked the white rose—it looks like a rumpled bed!

CA Rare Fruit Growers’ Scion Exchange Comes to Berkeley

This Saturday (Jan. 16) the Golden Chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers is hosting its annual scion exchange from noon to 3 pm at Malcolm X Elementary School in Berkeley. This is a great opportunity not only to get scions (cuttings for grafting) from an astounding variety of fruit trees, but to see grafting demonstrations and talk to really knowledgeable people about growing fruit trees in this area.  There’s also a silent auction, a raffle, and some tastings. You can also buy some rootstocks there and have a grafting expert do the graft for you. A $4 donation is requested to help cover costs. This is a very cool event that only comes once a year. If you’re into fruit-growing, don’t miss it!