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The heat is on. The furnace that is the NW summer has been turned back on. This is welcomed by some of your plants but not all of them. Take some time and wander your garden during this heat and look for those plants that are looking a little beat up. Make sure they are taken care of and then think about moving them to another part of the garden this fall when the weather is cooler. They will be happier next year and so will you.
This heat also reminds me that the Garden Time tour to Hawaii is coming up this February. We will be spending a week in the warmth of the tropics while people here will be dealing with cold, rainy, windy conditions. Check out the Garden Time Tours page for more info.
This week we featured...
New Heirloom Roses
Summer is the time for roses to shine. We stopped by Heirloom Roses (503-538-1576) and talked with Ben about the roses and to look at a few of the newest varieties they have on display. Ben had a few varieties that have been bred by Kordes in Germany. The first one was ‘Fiji’ a wonderfully strong hybrid tea rose with pink blooms. Another one was ‘Pink Enchantment’. This one is a very light pink and in the direct sun it almost looks golden in color. The third one we saw was ‘Winter Sun’. This one was an incredibly bright gold with nice large blooms. All three of these are very disease resistant and beautiful. Ben also reminded us that this summer heat can be damaging for your roses. You want to be watering your roses 1-3 inches a week. If you see them starting to wilt, give them a quick drink. If you do that you will be rewarded with tons of blooms through the warm weeks ahead.
If you are thinking about adding any roses to your garden, this next weekend is the one for you. Heirloom is having their annual summer sale. You can pick up a rose at a discounted price since they are clearing out their stock. It is a great time for rose lovers to get a deal. It is also a good time to pick up the new Garden Time rose as well!
Lily Festival
Last year we were introduced to the Lily Festival in Forest Grove. We were really impressed! This year we returned to see some new varieties but we ended up near a wok! Sylvia was there to show us how to fry up lily bulbs! Lily bulbs are edible and have been used in Asian cultures for centuries. She told us that the ones you can cook are the Asian varieties, the oriental ones are fragrant and don’t taste as good. We had a little taste of a raw lily and it was almost like a potato in flavor. To cook them she poured the ‘scales’ (think garlic cloves) into a hot wok with oil. She added pepper and garlic and a mixture of other vegetables including peas, onions, asparagus and mushrooms to the wok as well. Sylvia also told us that these scales are used in soups and other dishes. It is believed that they promote a healthy heart and lungs. They were delicious!
We then moved to the lily fields and talked to Kenn. Kenn Parry is known for the great Christmas trees he grows, but a few years ago he decided to take his hobby, and love of lilies, to the next step, the Lily Flower Fest (503-348-9601). He started to sell them on-line. One year he was left with a lot more lilies than he expected and so he decided to plant them and invite people to come out and enjoy them. Now here we are a few years later and he has a festival. Two of the newest varieties in the field this year were the ‘Saltarello’, a pink and gold colored flower and ‘Zelmira’ a pink and white one. These were both full of blooms and will be blooming for weeks! People can come out and stroll the grounds and look at lovely blooms, or a great view of Mount Hood! While they are there they can also enjoy wine tasting and some great BBQ!
If you are looking for some great blooms and a fun time, plus getting all your lily questions answered, then the festival is the place to be. Can’t make it out, check out their on-line store.
Art in the Garden
The Oregon Garden (503-874-8100) in Silverton is a showcase garden any time of year, but this summer it has so much more to offer. This year they are featuring ‘Art in the Garden’ an event that runs through the end of September. Art in the Garden, presented by Capitol Subaru, features dozens of stunning art installations in the Garden featuring pieces from ten artists, with four of those pieces being built specifically for The Oregon Garden. All pieces are available for sale. We met with one of the artists, Scott Kuszik to talk about his pieces. Scott works with copper and manipulates it by hand to make striking and detailed pieces. These copper pieces are combined with wood and are placed in the garden to compliment and highlight the plants in the garden.
We then met with Kelly who organized the display for the Garden. She was standing in front of some huge colorful metal flowers made by Richard Hays called ‘Flora Gigantus’. These flowers are all along a walkway at the entry to the garden and greeted people who are just entering the garden. The art is not all huge pieces, there are a lot of pieces that are small and tucked away in the garden. It is easy to find them with the map you can get at the visitors center when you enter. The Garden is also offering a group of seminars during the event. These seminars include macro-photography, mosaic garden projects and even chainsaw sculpting (chainsaw provided!) You can sign up for these classes on the Oregon Garden website. This event benefits the Oregon Garden, but also new and developing artists. Every year the garden provides $1,000 to a new artist to help them create something that they might not have the means to accomplish otherwise. The garden is full of great art and is part of your regular admission through this summer.
Another thing that is included in your regular admission is the ‘Pokemon Go’ event on July 30th. The Garden will have over two dozen Pokéspots and two onsite gyms. They will even have Pokéspots in the Fireside Lounge where Pokémon masters can enjoy delicious food and drinks while stocking up on poke balls. You can also take a tram tour and catch Pokémon while touring over 20 of their amazing gardens. They will even be dropping lures at five stops, every half hour.
There are lots of reasons to visit the garden this summer so don’t miss seeing either of these wonderful events.
Smith Berry Tart
There is nothing like baking with fresh ingredients and especially fresh fruit! To get a taste of both we stopped by Smith Berry Barn (503-628-2172) and met up with Joelle in the kitchen. She had a fresh berry/peach tart to share with us. Judy joined her to lend a helping hand but that wasn’t really necessary, this is an easy recipe. First she made a rustic dough. This was a simple dough that you chill when it is done. Then you roll it out on a flat cookie sheet. You don’t need any special baking pan for this recipe. Once you roll it out into a 14-16 inch circle you place it back in the fridge and mix your fruit. For this recipe we peeled and sliced 5 medium sized peaches and added a pint of raspberries to the bowl. Then a sugar and flour mixture went in the bowl along with some lime zest and the juice from ˝ a lime. That was then mixed together. We poured the fruit mixture into the center of the dough and added a couple of small cubes of butter then folded the edges up and over the fruit mixture. The edge of the tart was brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with sugar. This went into the oven for about 40 minutes at 400 degrees. The finished product was WONDERFUL!
If you would like to try this recipe you can find it on the Smith Berry Barn website. If you would like to try some of their great fresh fruits be sure to stop by. Also, you can check their website to see what they are picking fresh from the farm every day!
TOW - Veggie Water for Plants
Our tip for this week is about water and containers! We recently steamed some vegetables for dinner and when we were through we decided to share the leftover water with our thirsty container plants. We let the water cool down and then poured it on our plants. This water contains some of the nutrients from our steamed vegetables and helps keep our container plants happy and healthy.
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