Garden Writers Association new plants and books

That's Josh at our table, passing out media packets for How to Eat a Rose.

 I always come away from a Garden Writers Association conference with new ideas, new friends and renewed connections. It is the best professional organization I belong to, and the best community of sharing authors and plant people. I was there, promoting my How to Eat a Rose book in conjunction with next year's Herb of the Year project as designated by the International Herb Association.

Josh Kirchenbaum, in the Territorial Seed booth, showing off their line of Mighty 'Maters, tomatoes with two varieties grafted onto disease-hardy rootstock. You may remember my earlier posts about these tomatoes I'm trialing this year.

It's a big conference, about 500 people and an impressive trade show. Plant people introduce their new plants for next year, book authors showcase their books, publishers seek out new authors and the garden tool companies offer new garden things to take home. All in all, we writer-types are treated extremely well, with all the companies wanting us to write about their products and plants (which I will be doing in the coming months). I can only hit some of the highlights here, I'm still processing and digesting all I saw and learned.

I like hibiscus of all kinds and this one is exceptional, from Proven Winners. It's called 'Summer Storm' with pink flowers and deep maroon leaves. You'll see it in garden centers and nurseries next spring.

Jenks Farmer was there with some of the largest Crinum bulbs I've ever seen. Look him up online, he's a terrific expert on bulbs. Check him on-line at www.jenksfarmer.com

You many not be able to tell from the photo, below, that's a 20 story atrium in the hotel we were in. The glass-sided elevators gave excellent views of each landing.

Looking down from the elevator, you can see our Garden Writers trade show floor.

There was lots of good food, too. (Somehow I always manage to get food into the gardening conversation, don't I? After all, why garden unless you can eat what you grow?)

That's chicken, cooked under a brick. Yes, really. It flattens the chicken, makes it crisp.

Shrimp Louie; even the deviled eggs were made with truffles. Herbs everywhere!

Angela Treadwell-Palmer & Jim Martin, always dress up the show with their plant introductions and their costumes. Angela is the PR person for Plants Neuveau, a company that has introduced some incredible plants in this and previous years.

Miniature and Fairy Gardens are popular this year. Tools, benches and more from Kathryn Newman of www.miniaturegardenshoppe.com. She even sells tiny fences, stepping stones and more for the Fairy Garden.

Pie Boy at the Blue Sky Cafe, Exit 30 on Illinois I-70.

And like any good trip, we finished it off with pie. The Blue Sky Cafe has been making real pie for half a century. I had banana, which is probably the best banana pie I've had in 30 years.

Don't you wish you had a piece right now?

Come see us at our booth at the National Heirloom Exposition in Santa Rosa, California, Sept. 13-15. I'll be speaking, along with Felder Rushing, Alice Waters and a whole lot of other garden folks. Stop by and say hi!

Food Fears

It's hard to put your mind around the battle going on between organic (and non-organic) farmers, and the big giant, Monsanto. It would seem at first glance, that all are agricultural-based, and would have common interests. There's the rub.

On one side are the folks who grow your food and want to make a reasonable profit for their family farm. On the other, a giant multi-national corporation that is dedicated to creating products for maximum profit, at the expense of whatever gets in their way. You think I'm making this up? Simply do a Google search for, "Monsanto sues farmers" and check this link, too.

The bottom line is this. Monsanto creates genetically modified seed, which they patent and sell to large-scale production farmers, often called, "factory farms." The seed includes a gene that is specific, such as the Round-up Ready® gene that allows the farmer to plant corn seed, and once it emerges, spray the entire field with the herbicide, Round-Up® and all the weeds are killed, while the crop is not. Sounds groovy, right? But here's the problem. The genetically-modified seed with the added gene, can replicate itself. Not only can it replicate, it does so readily. The pollen can drift into nearby fields, onto organic farms, into your backyard. Monsanto has been aggressive in testing nearby fields of farmers who are not using their patented seed. If they find the genes of the genetically-modified seed in a neighboring field, they sue that farmer for patent infringement, even though the farmer never planted Monsanto's seed, and could not have prevented the Monsanto gene from jumping the fence and contaminating his crops. Through no fault of their own, the farmer gets sued for the contamination that came from a Monsanto-planted field. That's like someone comes along and dumps a pile of garbage in your front yard, then sues you because it's on your front lawn!

Sound like something out of George Orwell's "1984"? It's worse than that. Big Brother is not only watching you, he is feeding you and if you don't eat what he provides, destroys your means of eating anything else. The courts have upheld Monsanto's claims. Imagine being a little farmer, making a small living of $30,000 or $40,000 a year off your organic farm. Monsanto steps in and sues you for half or three-quarters of a million dollars for infringement - all because their pollen blew across the fence into your field. Do you have that kind of money? Do you have a few hundred lawyers on staff, like Monsanto does? Of course not. Monsanto wins the court battles and you're out of business.

Why does this affect you and why should you care? Because Monsanto's herbicide-ready seed, winds up in your corn flakes. It's in your bread, it's in the coating on your fried chicken and in those soy products you love to eat in place of meat. It's also in the honey you buy and the rice you cook.

Here's a very interesting story about what's happening in this struggle between farmers and the Big Giant bully. It gives an update on how organic farmers are combining resources to try to preserve their rights to grow organic food, without the fear of Monsanto trying to squash their operations. The link I'm guiding you to is Wood Prairie Farm's website, where I buy my seed potatoes each year. They're a nice family with an admirable organic farm in Maine. Their newsletter on the website is worth reading.

What can you do? Buy locally from your farmers market. Avoid buying genetically-modified foods if you can (unfortunately, foods like corn flakes, bread and soy products are not required to tell you if their products contain genetically modified ingredients). Why does it matter? Because there has been virtually no testing to see what happens in our bodies once the genetically-modified organism is ingested. The old adage of, "you are what you eat" comes to mind. Do you really want herbicide-ready genes bouncing around in your body, doing who knows what? I know I don't want that.

Read the comments section of this post and you'll see the fight is going on in New Zealand, too. And it's also being waged in India where Monsanto tried to make a deal with the government to regulate the sale of herbicide-ready rice. Imagine, a country that has grown rice for a thousand years as food, with people saving their own seed from generation to generation, having to buy only approved and over-priced seed from Monsanto or risk sanctions and fines! Fortunately, for now, farmers have been able to stop this from happening with their rice. Here in the U.S., people are more docile and more ready to eat whatever is put before them and organic farmers continued to be sued for "patent infringement" when pollen blows into their fields from somewhere else. 

Summertime, perfect for Salsa and Pie

The ingredients and method are in my Banana Salsa YouTube video.

This feels like a cool refreshing beverage kind of day. Maybe a pitcher of margaritas, or just some fresh mint tea over ice. Speaking of refreshments, how about making a batch of salsa for appetizers tonight? If you already have my Sensational Salsas, from Apple to Zucchini book, then you already have the recipe for my favorite Banana Salsa. But if you don't have the book, click on the link and check out my salsa video, here. And if you go to this link, you'll see that both my Salsas and my Homemade Crackers with Herbs books are on sale right now.

Lori & Tom Hess. Lori weaves pine needle baskets, Tom makes his famous pie plates.

Summer is also pie weather. I've been visiting with Tom and Lori Hess at the Reeds Spring (Missouri) Evening Farmers Market (you can see more photos on the market's FaceBook page). Tom Hess is famous for his incredible pie plates, hand-thrown in his shop. They're deeper than a regular pie plate, made of unglazed clay, and the pie crust actually cooks perfectly on the bottom of the pie.

Fine Cooking magazine (2006) declared Tom's plates as The Perfect Pie Plate.

The cool thing about visiting with Hess Pottery folks every Sat. night at farmers market, is they are also Pie-aholics. They keep a diary of the best pie places across America! They are always on the lookout for really good, homemade pie places. When I name this place or that I've visited, they've likely been there and have rated it in their pie diary! I'm always trying to add some new roadside pie stops to their list. So it was no great surprise when I mentioned Royers Cafe in Round Top, TX, and Royers pies, that Tom and Lori had been there several times.

That's it, that's just about all there is of Round Top, TX, population 50.

Round Top, TX is a little bit of a place, even smaller than the town where I grew up. You wouldn't think of it as the kind of eating destination that would be nationally known, would you? Nor would you look at Royers Cafe and immediately think, "Wow, I gotta stop there!" But for those of us who are adventurous-eating-travelers, it's exactly the kind of place we look for.

An unimposing place, it may not look famous, but it is. Most anytime you'll have to wait in line, or sit on bales of straw out front until there's a table empty. The lines to get inside to eat, are sometimes substantial and always worth the wait.

The King of Pies, is Bud Royer. He keeps things moving, personally greets every customer and is full of stories about all the famous and not-so-famous customers who've graced his table. And he knows his pies!

On a balmy evening this spring when I'd finished with my responsibilities at the herb festival at nearby Festival Hill, I stopped by Royers Cafe just as they were closing. Kind and genial hosts as they are to everyone who steps over their doorstep, they invited me to sit on the front porch and visit. It's a family place and the entire Royer family keep the place running smoothly. Even after a long, tiring day, they found the time to visit with a pie-hungry traveler.

It's fun to see a family that not only works together, but can laugh and like each other at the end of the day!

CBS Morning  Show conducted a nationwide survey of great cafes. Royers came out in the top 3 or 4 in the nation!

These pies are famous, not just in nearby Austin, or only in Texas, but they have a following across these United States. And what do people come here for? Buttermilk and garlic marinated pan-fried chicken, sandwiches, quail, and pie. Real, homemade, honest-to-goodness pie, the kind that us hard-core pie lovers look for.

These are the real deal, homemade, over-sized, melt in your mouth pies.

Peach on the left, apple, their top seller in the middle, cherry on the right. Mmmmm.

Getting married? You can order a wedding pie. Why not? Cakes are boringly same.

People send thank you notes, signs, photos. This is just one tiny spot on a wall that's completely covered with notes from happy customers. All the walls, and the ceiling, too, are covered.

So if you're wanting something truly summer-ish, watch my YouTube salsa videos and make either my Banana or Peach-Mango Salsa.  Then, dream about Pie. And if you get anywhere within 300 miles of Round Top, TX, plan to have pie (they also serve other food, sandwiches, quail, chicken, you name it) but save room for real pie at Royers.

That pretty well says it all.

A Harsh Summer of Drought and Heat

Our booth at the Reeds Spring Market, late July.

It's hard to write about failure and despair in the garden. As gardeners, we start out as wide-eyed idealists. The season will be perfect, the packets of seed will be everything, and more, they promise. The photos on seed company websites give us waking dreams of perfect tomatoes, robust corn, twining, vining tendrils on skyrocketing vines. Some years our garden is a paradise. This year, it is struggling to stay alive.

Adam, waiting on a customer.

Adam, you may remember him from 3 seasons ago as our summer WWOOFer, came this year to experiment in production growing for farmers market. Because I had agreed to a great deal of lecture travel this season, it was a good fit for me to turn the entire garden over to him. A relief, actually, because he and I garden well together. He shares my passion for growing plants and experimenting. It was to be a summer with him and his girlfriend, Amelia, producing quantities of vegetables and selling them at market.

Beds that aren't watered, look like this. In the foreground is Mioga ginger, sad.

First, you may recall, we had an incredibly chilly, wet, prolonged spring. Each week brought us 4, 6, 8 or more inches of rain. Then, the second week of June, the water was turned off. We've had one, small rain since. Daily temperatures hover between 100 and 105 degrees F. (that's 37.7 degrees Celsius). Add that to constant sunshine, a bit of wind each day, and plants have gone into shock. Most put down few roots, thanks to the constant rainfall, so when the rains quit, they had to struggle to find moisture.

One view of a portion of the garden. It doesn't look parched until you look close.

We water daily, usually 12 hours or more a day, using soaker hoses, lots of mulch, and shade over the tomatoes. With over 100 tomato plants we should be harvesting bushels of tomatoes a week. But tomato blossoms fall off the plant in such heat, not setting fruit - a protective mechanism for the plant as they can't support more tomatoes in a drought. Even with constant watering, the plants struggle. And when plants are weakened for any reason, they are more susceptible to attack from pests.

A native bean variety, Potawatamie limas, seem to do well in spite of the drought.

Cucumber beetles and the viruses they carry, wiped out the entire melon patch in less than 24 hours. Then the cucumbers fell prey to the same problem. Next were the zucchini, attacked by both squash bugs by the millions, then by cucumber beetles, and finally by squash vine borers. Out of 50 plants, we have 2 left. Those have suffered the humiliation of rooting armadillos, which are attracted by the smell of damp soil, from our watering. They dig wherever there are earthworms or grubs, and simply root plants out of their way. Two nights ago, a huge armadillo, about 16 pounds, went right down the row of egg plants, tossing several out of its way.

The heat has curtailed the tomato crops severely.

Josh and Adam have taken turns, with Molly by their side, to sleeping on a cot outside next to the eggplants and 2 remaining zucchinis, standing guard. Molly alerts the guard to the intruder, who wakes up and shoots the armadillo. Or raccoon. Last night was an armadillo. Two nights ago it was 4 raccoons in the pear tree beside the eggplants, eating away at the pears. Between the squirrels and raccoons, we don't get a pear at all this year.

Fennel doesn't seem to mind the heat.

It's so frustrating, not just for the loss of the garden, but at seeing Adam's enthusiasm and excitement at the experiment at production, dashed by things out of any of our control. His goal was to learn how to time his plantings, what he could grow and how much he could make from selling at farmers markets. I'm certain he's learned a lot, but it's a hard lesson to learn in a year rife with problems.

Mexican oregano withstands the harsh conditions of this summer pretty well.

From friends in the greenhouse plant busienss I've heard this has been a very difficult and unprofitable year for plant sellers. Lowes and Home Depot, as well as Wal-Mart, all have enormous left-over shrubs, trees, perennials and even annuals, left in their inventory. All of them are trying desperately to sell off as much as possible. Yesterday when I was in town (Springfield, MO) I passed the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store and saw shelves and shelves of plants out front for sale. Nursery businesses can donate their left over plants to such charities, for a tax write-off and in turn the charity sells or gives away the plants to low-income people.

Swallowtail butterflies seem to do well this year. There are more than I have ever seen.

One worry I have is for the 7 million new gardeners last year and this, who were filled with enthusiasm for learning to garden. Since the drought and heat are widespread, from way out West, to New York City and south into Mexico, those folks will be even more discouraged than us seasoned gardeners. I worry they will be so discouraged they will not try to garden again. I worry, too, that this cycle of cool, wet spring, followed by 3 months of heat and drought, is here to stay. It's what has been predicted for several years by scientists who warn of global warming problems. This year is what we had last summer, only worse. If it continues, our gardening season will have to be early spring, and late fall, under plastic.

Fritilary butterflies are doing well, too.

It's not all doom and gloom. A few things, besides weeds, have managed to continue. But life in the garden is a struggle this year, almost nationwide. The great expectations we felt last spring have dwindled considerably. The reality of one of the harshest garden years in recent history, is daunting.

International Herb conference, Midland, Michigan

Glass sculpture at the Dow Botanic Gardens, Midland, Michigan.

This week's trip was to Midland, Michigan, to the annual conference of the International Herb Association, or IHA. The IHA is the organization that created the Herb of the Year project in 1994. My Herb of the Year committee that year established connections with the Herb Society of America as well as herb businesses, wholesalers, schools and garden centers across the nation. This year's Herb of the Year is horseradish. Next year, 2012, the Herb of the Year will be the rose. If you'd like to know more of the history of the Herb of the Year project, visit my Herb of the Year blog and also my YouTube channel to see the video: http://youtu.be/S0_bMc-ZbHs

My part of the conference was a program, How to Eat a Rose (also available in brief form, on my YouTube channel), and my "Favorite Recipe in 10 Minutes" which was my banana salsa. The salsa was a hit and I sold some of my Sensational Salsas, from Apple to Zucchini  and How to Eat a Rose books.

Unlike some of my fellow herbies, I wasn't in costume for the Favorite Recipe in 10 Minutes. But look at some of my competition.

There was an hour full of fun and cooking demos, each kept to 10 minutes each and it was a huge success. Organizer Donna Frawley, cracked the whip and kept the conference organized and on track and an army of volunteers made things run smoothly.

Zachery Kidder and his Cabana Soaps.

One of the vendors in the sales area, and new IHA member, was Zachery Kidder with his excellent hand-made soaps. He's a stay-at-home dad while his wife finishes college and he makes good use of his time making organic, healthful soaps. He sells his soaps at local farmers markets as well as through his website. His company is Cabana Soaps, and he was lovingly dubbed "Cabana Boy" by the other vendors. Everyone enjoyed his being there.

My favorite of all the soaps Zachery makes is Tangerine, which has a refreshing fragrance. He also offers special labeling for gift-giving, with your gift recipient's photo on the label. Great idea for weddings, birthdays or the Holidays!

I spent some time at the Dow Botanic Gardens and visited the kids garden, too. I like to check out kids gardens to see if they take kids serious. Some botanic gardens just create a kid-sized theme park with plants, while others create an outdoors classroom with lots of educational activities. I found this garden to have small plots where kids had their own little gardens for the season. Sometime in the spring Dow had hosted a scarecrow contest and the gardens were full, crowds of scarecrows.

It was fun to see kids actually playing and using the garden.

The boy is looking down at a turtle island, a topiary covered with living plants.

Kids love to run through sprinklers, no matter what location it is.

The Trees of Joplin

Buildings gone, neighborhoods flattened, and trees left as mere trunks.

On Sunday we drove the couple of hours over to Joplin to view the damage from the recent tornado. And to see what progress the city is making in the clean-up process.

This is all that's left of Hope High School in Joplin.

The devastation is awful, a big swath of the city about a mile and a half long and half a mile wide, or so, just flattened. I can't even imagine having every article of life in many neighborhoods, mixed together and spat out, with nothing left except what looks like a landfill.

Trees in all directions were mostly without limbs.

The trees were hard-hit, as well. Lots of them are completely gone, but many are still standing, their limbs twisted off, leaving nothing but a tortured trunk.

This tree has sheets of tin roofing and other debris lodged in its limbs.

But if you look close at all of the tree pictures above, you'll see life. Many of the trees, even the ones that are no more than a stick in the air, are leafing out. Yes, they are badly damaged, but there is hope, there is life. The whole town wasn't destroyed, just a major portion, but the much of the town remains. And speaking of parts that are left, parts that show life will go on, we saw this, as well.

Hope High School sign in the school yard.

If you click on the photo, you can see someone's taken the downed trees and using a chainsaw, carved several eagles, the school mascot. How heartening, what a nice gesture of encouragement, to take the destroyed trees and carve out the eagle mascot, showing the school will rise again, rebuild and life will continue. With sadness and loss, forever changed, but they will rebuild and the carvings stand in front of the school for everyone to see that Joplin isn't about to give up.

Eagles in front of Hope High School in Joplin, MO.