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SHOW ARCHIVE

Episode 178 • August 21, 2010

VIDEO ARCHIVE

Well, the big announcement was made. GardenPalooza: The Tour is happening! GardenPalooza has been a great spring kick-off event for the past 8 years. Local gardeners have been marking the start of their growing season with the wonderful original GardenPalooza event.

Now we kick off a fall event. This new ‘palooza’ will be a tour. Over 20 nurseries have signed up and will be offering specials, classes, giveaways and other cool stuff. Mark your calendar for Sept. 9-12 and check out the GardenPalooza website for more details.

Another event that is happening in the next week is the ‘Grilling in the Garden’ at French Prairie Gardens (503-633-8445). This event is happening on Thursday, August 26th at 6pm. For $30 you can enjoy a great meal made from the French Prairie Gardens fresh sustainable produce and meats. You can also enjoy Oregon wines and beers while you watch the sunset. It is just one of the many events coming up as the summer winds down. You can get a full listing of events on the Garden Time Events Calendar.

And finally one more thing, Little Baja (503-236-8834) told us this week that they would like to say thank you to all the great Garden Time viewers that have visited their 2 locations. They are offering 30% off all their inventory to viewers of the show. All you need to do to get your discount is to mention Garden Time when you buy! New containers would be great for all those new plants you will be buying during the GardenPalooza event!

This week we featured...

Easy Pesto

One of the great tastes from the summer garden is fresh basil. You can add it to salads, dressings and other culinary delights, but one of the best ways to enjoy it is to make a pesto from it. Joelle from Smith Berry Barn (503-628-2172) joined us to show us how easy it is to make a delicious pesto that you can add to many dishes from the kitchen. First she gathered about 4 cups of fresh basil leaves and a handful of parsley, and then blended them together with about 4 cloves of garlic. Then we added pine nuts, parmesan cheese, and some olive oil and blended again. You can use it fresh or you can freeze it for later. Joelle uses a flexible Teflon muffin tin to freeze single servings. If you want to try this yourself you can find the recipe on the Smith Berry Barn website.

Patio Misters

The hot days of summer are coming again and the heat can really sap your energy, robbing you of enjoying your garden or patio. We found a couple of neat systems that can cool you down quick! Michelle from the Greenhouse Catalog (800-825-1925) demonstrated some patio misters that produce a fine spray that can cool the temperature by 30 degrees or more. She also had a portable pump mister that is perfect for hiking, picnicking or any other outdoor adventure!

Terra Nova Summer Perennials

The late summer garden can look pretty beat-up with all the heat and lack of water. Still there are those plants that seem to thrive in those conditions, or at least look like they thrive! To find some varieties that do well we stopped by the display/test gardens at Terra Nova Nurseries. Terra Nova has become a leader in introducing new varieties to the marketplace and they field test every variety to make sure that they will perform in your garden as well. Dan Heims is one of the owners and a true ‘plant geek’. He loves plants! He was like a proud papa as he gave us a tour around the gardens (though he gave credit to his staff at Terra Nova for developing these beauties!). We first started with the Coreopsis ‘Pineapple Pie’. This is part of the ‘Pie’ series of new plants and it is a prolific bloomer in their garden. It is even self-cleaning, which means it deadheads itself, and that means it keeps blooming without you removing the old blooms. Next was the Tradescantia ‘Lucky Charm’ with its bright yellow foliage and contrasting light purple blooms. That looked great next to the deep lush burgundy of the Heuchera ‘Paris’. Moving through the garden we saw many other plants but stopped at the Jacob’s Ladder (Polemonium) ‘Snow and Sapphires’. This one surprised us because of its variegated leaves in the full sun. Variegation generally means that a plant is susceptible to getting sunburn in the full sun. This one was doing great and even smelled great, with a slight grape scent, a wonderful surprise. Next we stopped by 3 of the newest Echinacea’s in the garden. Echinacea are the hot plant the past few years and these 3 are some of the best. We saw ‘Mama Mia’, ‘Firebird’ and ‘Hot Lava’. Their bright reddish colors looked cool next to the soft purple of the Agastache ‘Summer Sky’. Another great blue/purple plant is the new Nepeta ‘Blue Dragon’. We finished the tour near one of Dan’s favorite hydrangeas, ‘Limelight’. This one was huge and in full bloom, quite a sight! If you think that the late summer garden can be boring, think again. There are tons of perennials that will spice up your garden and bring fresh color to your yard.

Kym’s Water Wise Garden

Last summer we became intrigued by Kym Pokorny and her blog on the Oregonian’s Home and Garden website. She had been documenting her conversion of a ‘hell’ strip, a parking strip between the sidewalk and the street, into a water wise garden full of drought tolerant plants. It was incredible! Other than some supplemental watering in the first year, she had a ‘water wise’ and beautiful addition to her home. This year we decided to stop by and check in on another project. She is building another Water Wise parking strip on the other side of her home. This space is huge and it appears to be quite a chore, but Kym is tackling it in small chunks, which is what she recommends for everyone. She told William that she started with the soil. She didn’t dig out the whole lawn, she simply turned it over. The grass will decompose and it will become food for the new plants. Next she worked in some ‘quarter 10’ gravel. Not the ‘quarter minus’, but the ‘quarter 10. This is a better gravel and will help your soil drain quickly. Kym is currently searching for some new plants for the strip. She is looking for drought tolerant native plants. She acknowledged that most native plant lists are loaded with shady woodland varieties, but she has found many that love the sun too and she is slowly starting to fill those in.

Kym is very responsible with her water usage in the garden. She uses drip for all her containers and soaker hoses in most of her beds. She also keeps the ‘thirstiest’ of her plants near her house so she can water them easily and without a lot of work. The big key that she shared with us was ‘right plant, right place’. This is important; by planting the right plants together you can easily meet the needs and the plants will thrive. Kym got a lot of her tips from the Regional Water Providers Consortium (503-823-7528) website. You can go there and learn a lot about saving water in your home and your garden. If you want to follow Kym on her great gardening adventures you can check out her blog on the Oregon Live website or in the weekly Homes and Gardens section of the Oregonian.

Xeripave

Effective use of water is not limited to your garden. Storm water runoff is a real problem for home owners and municipalities as well. We found a new product that might help both with the ‘run-off’ problem. Ron Putz from Xeripave (877-694-0141) showed us their new product which is a permeable aggregate paver. They take local aggregates (small stones) and coat them with an inert polymer which protects the stones and actually keeps them shiny, which adds to the luster and rich color of the natural stone. The treated stones are then bound together with another polymer to create uniform pavers that can be easily installed. We found out how easy at an installation in Damascus , where they are being used for a public walkway. Steve Gaschler told us about how the city is looking into using these pavers to help them control run-off and keep it out of their storm water and sewer systems. The best part was a demonstration they had that showed the water from a hose just running through it! This will allow the ground to reabsorb the rain and let it slowly percolate back into the soil. We were then joined by Dave Short from S-2 Contractors who is doing the installation. He told us how easy it was to install these pavers. The only thing that was different from a ‘normal’ paver installation was the preparation of the base rock under the material. It just takes an extra inch of drain rock instead of crushed aggregate to allow the water to flow though and into the soil. Check out their website for more information and how you can get this for your own home.

 
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