ARCHIVE

SHOW ARCHIVE

Episode 137 • August 8, 2009

VIDEO ARCHIVE


It is mid-summer and you may think the best days of your garden have passed.  This week we show you how wrong you are.  In this week’s show we check out fragrant plants, delicious fruits and even a tour of some wonderful gardens on the east side of Portland.  But there is even more to offer! 

Meet William and Judy!  That’s right, you can hang out with the dynamic duo at the Al’s Garden Center in Woodburn on Friday the 14th from 4:00-8:00pm.  Al’s is hosting ‘A Summer’s Night Out’ to kick off their first annual Crape Myrtle Festival. You can enjoy cooking demonstrations, register for prize drawings, try local wines, purchase food and enjoy discounts around the store.  It should be a great time for everyone!

This week we featured...

Bauman Peaches

One of the tastiest of the summer fruits is peaches.  They are just coming into season and we stopped by Bauman’s Farm and Garden (503-792-3524) to see what they had available.  Before we got a chance to go to the store Brian took us out to their peach orchard to see how they grow them and to give us home gardeners some tips for success from the 4 generations of Bauman’s that run the farm.  First we met Clyde who has been growing peaches for around 50 years.  Clyde talked to us about pruning and the need to give your peach trees a good haircut in the late fall to mid-winter.  Peaches respond well to this type of pruning and it helps prevent split branches and breakage later in the year.  Then we talked to Brian’s dad, Rick, about spraying.  Peaches do need spraying and not just once.  You will need to spray once the leaves drop in the fall and then again in the late winter.  This will prevent some diseases like ‘peach leaf curl’ among others.  The good news is that there are a bunch of good organic peach sprays that can take care of the problem.  Brian’s son, Austin, even showed us how good those peaches can be fresh off the trees!  Brian then took us to the store and gave us a primer on how to tell if a peach is ripe.  The #1 no-no is to squeeze a peach!  This will bruise it and is still not a good indicator of ripeness.  You always look at the top of the peach where the stem is attached.  If it is green around this area, the peach is not ripe.  If it has a golden or reddish color, the peach is ripe!  Brian recommends that you get a good mix of ripe and nearly ripe peaches.  That way they don’t all ripen at once.  If you are interested in learning how to can peaches, Bauman’s is having a canning class on the 22nd of August at 10am and it is free. Just call the store to register.  While you are there you can pick up some fresh peaches to take home or another tasty treat from the store or bakery.

Twilight Fragrant Plants

These warm summer nights are calling us outside!  Once you are out there you may not see the beauty of your garden, but you can smell it, with evening fragrant plants.  Dani Ferguson from Ferguson’s Fragrant Nursery (503-633-4585) put together a bunch of plants that can add beauty AND fragrance to your garden.  The first plant that Dani showed us was the Kleim’s Hardy Gardenia.  This plant is one that will produce fragrant blooms for months!  This low growing shrub is also very hardy for our area, so you can enjoy it year after year.  The next plant was the very tropical Hardy Gingers ‘Yellow Butterfly’ and ‘Tara’.  These are the most exotic ones in the bunch and that means they are also the most tender, though Dani left some out in the nursery this past winter in containers and they came back in a big way!  Still you will want to protect this one in the winter if you want to keep it.  We then moved to the Oriental Lily.  This is a large group of fragrant lilies that you can find in many different colors.  It is a bulb that is hardy for our area and has few disease problems.  A winner in every garden.  Finally we stopped by the brugsmania or Angels Trumpet.  This one is definitely not hardy for our area without a lot of protection.  Still it is well worth it with the great fragrance and spectacular trumpet shaped blooms.  If you get a chance, stop by either location of Ferguson’s, near St. Paul or their new location in downtown Lake Oswego.  

Smith Summer Jam

Saving the taste of summer is made easy if you capture the flavor in a homemade jam or jelly.  Joelle from Smith Berry Barn (503-628-2172) invited us into her kitchen to show us how quick and easy it is to make a jam from fresh fruit.  All we needed was 3 ingredients, fresh fruit, pectin and a sweetener.  The pectin we used was Pomona Universal Pectin which is great because you can use any type of sweetener (Equal, Splenda, Honey or even Steevia), so it is great for diabetics.  First we crushed the berries and then added the pectin, next we added the calcium mixture (part of the Pomona product) to our sweetener.  After bringing the fruit to a boil we added the calcium/sweetener to the pot and kept stirring.  After a couple of minutes we pulled the mixture off the stove and poured it into out containers (in this case it was sterilized jars).  Joelle went one step further when she added a sprig of lavender to the mix during cooking to add an additional unique flavor.  If you would like to try this at home, you can call Smith Berry Barn, or pick up a packet of Pomona’s Pectin; the instructions are in the box.

Summer Roses

A lot of flowers are looking tired in the garden right now, but there are some flowers that are showing off in spite of the heat.  We stopped by Heirloom Roses (503-538-1576) to see a few roses that are loving the weather.  Louise took us out into the garden to see 3 different roses that are in full bloom.  The first one was ‘Rosa Moschata’ which is rumored to be the famous ‘musk rose’ that Shakespeare referred to in some of his plays.  It is a large rose that smells like cloves when in full bloom.  The other varieties included ‘Good Ol’ Summertime’ and one of our favorites, ‘The Impressionist’.  Louise also gave us some tips for keeping our roses in shape during this time of year.  You should deadhead your roses (cut off the old, dead blooms) to promote new flowers; give them a boost of a balanced fertilizer and lots of water.  If you are looking for more information you can always give them a call, or better yet stop by during the big annual sale this weekend, August 7-9, for a deal on some great roses.

Mt. Hood Medical Center Healing Garden Tour

In the past few years we have toured some of the great healing gardens in the Legacy Health system.  This time we are getting a little ahead of ourselves.  We stopped by McMenamins Edgefield to visit with Teresia Hazen, a Registered Horticultural Therapist with Legacy Health System.  She first told us about the importance of gardens that can bring healing to a person.  She pointed out that the Edgefield gardens are great because they have a great variety of plants and they are designed for 4 seasons of interest.  This is important in our own gardens, and at our hospitals and care facilities.  She has help design many healing gardens in the Legacy System.  Today we talked to her about a fund raising tour of gardens on the east side of Portland, into Gresham and up towards Mt. Hood.  On the 15th of August you can check out up to 17 private gardens in these areas and then at 3pm you can stop by Edgefield to get a tour of their magnificent gardens during a reception that lasts until 5pm and includes light refreshments, a no host bar and raffle drawings.  West Coast Bank is a sponsor of this wonderful event.  If you are interested in seeing these great gardens you can contact the Mount Hood Medical Center Foundation at 503-674-1634 or by e-mail at BHerbert@LHS.org

Drake's Carving Class

If you love stone in the garden you will love the classes they have coming up at Drake's 7 Dees (503-256-2223) on Stark.  Award Winning sculpture DJ Garrity will lead a workshop on Aug. 14-16.  He will be talking about stone in the garden and blending sculpture into new and existing landscapes. There is a fee for the workshop and if you would like more information you can contact Drakes.

 
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