Elvin Bishop Stays Tuned to the Seasons

Elvin Bishop loves to garden. And though perhaps best known for his gold-record Rhythm-and-Blues classics like "I Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” he's been cultivating a medley of flowers, vegetables, herbs, berries and fruits around his Marin County, California home.

Besides the art of the Blues, Bishop has mastered something few San Francisco Bay Area gardeners even attempt—the art of year-round food production. His floral kitchen garden even continues to produce through winters which, though moderate in temperature, can reach a low of 15° F and drop over 40 inches of rain. Working this flourishing half-acre has become a grounding note in Bishop's life, a steady rhythm anchoring life’s more unpredictable melodies.

A plain passive-solar greenhouse furnishes ornamental and edible transplants year-round; in summer, it shelters crops of trellised Japanese cucumber, melons and ‘Naga Imo’ (Diascorea sp., a Japanese root-crop in the yam family). In winter, it protects bok choy, various Chinese mustard greens, lettuces, diakon and mizuna from frost and battering rains.

Bishop's interest in Asian vegetables was initiated by his marriage 14 years ago to Cara Wada, whose Japanese-American heritage and traditional cooking style brought more far-eastern vegetables into her husband's diet, then into his garden. “Cara's family made me aware of different tasty Asian vegetables. I figure if it tastes good, then it’s worth growing. Besides, it’s nice to have vegetables to give away to the family.”

Many Asian vegetables are members of the cabbage or crucifer family (Brassica sp.) and thrive in moderate weather. In the Marin-County "Mediterranean" climate, winter gardening makes good sense; plenty of winter rain keeps things moist and, after temperatures drop, the cold keeps most pests (including the aphids and root maggots which can thwart summer plantings, but not, unfortunately, slugs and snails) at bay.

The secret to a garden which can be harvested from mid-winter through the following spring is timing, and Bishop’s sense of the rhythm of the seasons is finely tuned. His brief recipe for cultivating Brassicas : choose seed for early-, mid- and late-season crops to spread the harvest. Seed everything on June 1st in six-pacs, using sterile potting mix. In two to three weeks, transplant deeply into four-inch pots. Set out into the garden at the beginning of July. Shade for several days if the weather is hot. Water till the rains begin. Weed as needed and harvest when ready.

In addition to its other rewards, Bishop's garden offers an abundance of produce; each year he personally puts up about 300 jars of beans, corn, pickled beets, dill pickles, applesauce, apple juice, peaches, plums, pears, tomatoes and various jams, including kiwi.

Elvin Bishop may sing the blues for a living, but in his garden, life is sweet.

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Bracken Ferns for Potassium

It's late summer and I'm pulling out what feels like a "grove" of bracken ferns (Pteridium aquilinum). They seem to have spread faster than in any prior year. Then I remember how I once turned this "pest" onto fertility.

bracken fern hovers protects my tiny pond as with a graceful open palm. Sheep ranchers hate this plant because if eaten by sheep they get sick and can die. The fern also spreads to replace good forage. Bracken ferns are at least last 55 million years old and is found everywhere outside of Antarctica. Bracken fern is also one of the most common plants around the world in part due to human disruption of farms, the edges of the forest and meadows.

Use of brackens in a garden is very uncommon. Some harvest the young “fiddle heads” in the early spring before the leaves become poisonous. But the green, lacy fronds of the spring are good for vegetable gardens. The fresh foliage is very high in potassium so high that during World War II the plant was used to help make soap.

As is traditional in some gardens in England, I once gathered the fronds in the spring until early-summer, when they’re full of vigor and potash. A wide and deep trench was spread open in the earth. The fronds fill the trench nearly half full. The soil is mounded over the freshly-cut foliage. I place dried-sliced potato “eyes” on top of the warming-spring soil, and a mulch of crisp rice straw like thin blanket. The searching roots of the potatoes wandered through the upper soil and soon find the extra phosphorus and thrive. These potatoes are more likely to be free of disease. A time-honored style of gardening has slipped “over the pond” from the former ruler of our colony. This uncomplicated act of gardening joins two countries, two continents with a simple act of nurturing.

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Random, Natural Plantings

Nature conceals the pattern of the placement of plants. Each hopeful seedling, each successful mature tree; grows in a haphazard pattern. If we want a truly natural look garden and feel to our constructed garden, we must avoid human constructs. Even attempts at gentle chaos often reveal a noticeable intent. True randomness means letting go.

Here’s a test for planting in a truly random fashion: Take five or more golf balls and throw them up onto the air over the area you want to plant. Where each ball falls is where you plant. The real task is not to move any balls—”oh that one looks so close to that ball”. Untouched balls can mean some very odd combinations—just like the forest or meadow.

We usually buy a plant, look in a book to see how far apart it should be planted, and plant with loving care. The difficulty with the random-balls approach is some patterns require buying more plants than you anticipated. Because several balls are clustered together, the gardener may feel the cost of extra plants is a burden. A forest of meadow has no expense account. Plants sprout, die, and thrive—all at the same time. Thousands of seedlings or plants have died where we see a glorious specimen in nature. Such a pattern is within the natural flow of the random sprouting and growth of all natural things. Rejoice in the spontaneity.

(The manipulated Polaroid print can be found, with others, on my web site www.robertkourik.com)

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Beneficial insects slide down to chow

Each white cocoon looks like a droplet of water at the end of a thin, gossamer strand. In the above photo it’s hard to see the threads that hold each green lacewing egg, Chrysoperla rufilabris, above the colony of orange aphids. The green lacewing has deposited her eggs right above breakfast. The larvae of lacewings look ugly and evil. So, as with many beneficial insect larvae, they are mistaken for a bad bug and squashed or sprayed with an insecticide – chemical or organic. It’s thought that by having each strand holding the cocoon slightly different the hatches larvae will climb down the strand at different rates. This prevents too many reaching the plant at the same time as they will eat each other as well as the aphids. Sad day when the good bugs eat each other!

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Green and Tasty Lavender

I’m pruning back my green, almost chartreuse, lavender [Lavandula virens]. Seen here is a flower of the green lavender with a typical blue lavender color. I’m cutting as far back on wood with some buds still visible. These prunings don’t go to the compost pile. They go to the grill to cook chicken in a way you probably haven’t imagined. As described in my book The Lavender Garden, here is the recipe for a spice/herb you’ll never find at even the farmer’s market:

Chicken "Pressada" with Green Lavender

"Pressada" is the my coined American/Italian term for chicken pressed between two layers of herbs. This adaptation is based on a dish made with thyme which I enjoyed in Italy while traveling south of Naples. The recipe cooks chicken very quickly and infuses an intense lavender flavor throughout the meat as the oils of the lavender “steam” the chicken. The act of cooking Chicken Pressada is more theatrical than any other barbecue method I know, and is a great way to impress your friends. This is a true gardener’s recipe because few non-gardeners could afford to buy the amount of fresh lavender it calls for.

Serves 6 to 8.

Utensils

Barbecue pit or grill.

A medium-sized bag of briquettes.

Fire-starter paper, wooden kindling and matches.

A 10-by-20-inch cast-iron pancake griddle.

A cookie sheet as big or bigger than the griddle.

Five to 10 bricks.

Two pairs of long barbecue tongs.

Cooking oil (olive oil works fine) and a natural-hair pastry brush.

A serving platter with garnish.

Ingredients

6 to 8 boneless and skinless chicken breasts, or other boneless cuts.

A five-gallon bucket loosely filled with lavender foliage and flower-stalks.

Without the grill on, light enough charcoal briquettes to form a layer one or two briquettes thick beneath the entire surface of your griddle. Use newspaper and kindling to start the fire so the petrol taste of lighter fluid is eliminated. After the coals have white edges, put the grill on and the griddle on top of the grill. Make sure the griddle is directly above--less than one-half inch--the hot charcoal.

Harvest the lavender while the coals are heating the griddle. Trim more foliage than flowers, as the leaf adds more flavor. (You can use this as a chance to trim back plants to a more compact form.) Woody stems are not a problem, but younger, more succulent growth will release more fragrance.

Remove the skin from the chicken (if not already deskinned). Rinse chicken parts thoroughly under cold running water and pat dry.

Once the flames are out and the briquettes are glowing white at the edges, rearrange the coals in a layer beneath the griddle. When the griddle becomes nearly orange hot, and a drop of oil dropped on the grill will dance and sizzle, you're ready to begin.

Cooking the Chicken

Quickly coat the griddle with the olive oil. This is to keep the herbs from sticking and to make it easier to clean the griddle. Don't use a brush with plastic bristles as the intensely heated metal will melt the bristles.

Quickly layer up to two inches of lavender prunings on the griddle with the stems all running in one direction. Be sure to cover the griddle thoroughly with the lavender and leave no holes.

Quickly lay the boneless chicken breasts across the top of the lavender, with the lengths of the pieces perpendicular to the lengths of lavender.

Quickly cover the chicken thoroughly with another two inches of lavender foliage. Put the cookie sheet on top of the chicken-and-lavender "sandwich." Stack the bricks evenly on top of the cookie sheet to compress the lavender and chicken together (the “pressada” part).

Because the heat supercharges the volatile oils in the lavender, the steam and oil mixture quickly cooks the chicken. If the griddle was nearly orange-hot, the chicken may only need five to ten minutes per side (it may take fifteen to twenty minutes per side if the charcoal wasn’t hot enough).

After the proper time (which you’ll learn in short order by practicing), remove the bricks and the cookie sheet and use the tongs to turn the entire "sandwich" over as quickly as possible (applause is permitted). The lavender and chicken will usually hold together enough to allow you to turn it as a unified whole. You'll either amaze your friends or have to reassemble the lavender-and-chicken sandwich while eating humble pie. Practice make perfect.

After the proper length of time on the second side, remove the bricks and cookie sheet. Remove the top layer of the lavender, lift the chicken off the bottom layer of foliage and place on a platter.

Remove the lavender and the griddle from the grill. Quickly restoke the coals to a hot temperature and place the chicken breasts on the grill diagonal to the line of the metal . Brown briefly. Turn the chicken to create a brown cross-hatching. Repeat on the other side.

Serve the browned chicken on a rice pilaf or a bed of colorful mesclun salad greens.

While eating, you can add the leftover lavender foliage to the coals to produce a hazy romantic atmosphere infused with a heady smoky-lavender fragrance. Or, use the leftover lavender to grill pork chops, turkey drumsticks, turkey breasts, salmon, hot dogs (don’t waste these on the kids), tuna, or sausages for use during the coming week.

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Good Flowers, Good Bugs

Most gardens need more flowers during the mid- to late-summer because it's the bugs that are also blooming. Why? Because good bugs (properly called insects) use the pollen and nectar of flowers to fuel their relentless pursuit of what we call pests. Bug scientists (entomologists) have discovered plants which seem to attract beneficial bugs. Many of these helpful plants belong to the parsley and sunflower plant families.

The parsley, or carrot, family of plants has a large flat-head of tiny flowers—often white or yellow. The tiny flowers make it easy for small bugs to tank-up. Many culinary herbs belong to the parsley family—anise, dill, parsley, caraway and fennel. Other parsley family attractors of beneficial bugs include: angelica (Angelica spp.) and carrots (Daucus carota)—when left to flower.

The cilantro (Coriandrum sativum) (along with CA poppies) pictured here is a spice in traditional Mexican cookery. The small, accessible nectar-bearing cilantro flowers have been observed by entomologists to attract a large array and high number of good bugs—specifically a beneficial fly called the Tachinid fly which is a parasite of grasshoppers, beetles, sawflies and caterpillars.

The sunflower family, the Composite Family, also has tiny, readily-accessible flower parts. A tremendous number of our ornamental flower garden plants are in this large, floriferous family. Examples include: marigold, dahlias, daisies, Artemesia spp. (wormwood), chamomile, zinnia, asters, cosmos and ornamental thistles. Edible Composites include: burdock, dandelion, chicory, calendula (flowers), sunflowers, lettuce, endive and both the Jerusalem and regular artichoke. Some Composites found by entomologists to attract good bugs are: camphorweed (Heterotheca subaxillaris), coyote bush (Baccharis pilularis), wild lettuce (Lactuca canadensis) and yarrow (Achillea spp.).

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Foggy Tourists

Poor tourists. They read about sunny California and come for their summer vacation traveling the scenic Highway 1 only to find days of fog. Fall and late spring often have much less fog than in the height of summer.

I just returned from two wonderful days on the coast 100 miles north of San Francisco. I got lucky with glorious fog-free weather. What visitors and locals fail to notice along the coastal Highway 1 is the extra 32 to 123 inches of "rain" each year. Although actual summer rain is scarce-to-nonexistent in the Northern California Mediterranean coastal zone where I live, another type of "rain," consisting of droplets of condensed fog, is a frequent occurrence. Moist summer fog condenses on the leaves of plants, mostly tall trees.

Shortly after moving to my mountain ridge, I noticed that a foggy summer evening produced the sound of steady rain beneath the tallest trees, while the meadow 20 feet away remained dry. I became obsessed with fog drip.

I put a rain gauge beneath a 125-foot tall Douglas fir tree near my garden and another 100 feet away in open grasses. The needles of the Douglas fir have an immense surface area for condensation. The Douglas fir tree averaged up to 2-1/2 times more "rain" year-round than the open field a mere 100 feet away. I discovered over 10 years of records that this single tree can gather one or more inches of water during a single heavy fog—six inches during one very foggy August! That rare six-inch fog drip equaled 163,000 gallons of water for every acre of tree foliage! It is fog drip that helps water the edges of redwood grove just around the corner from my house and allows the redwoods to expand their growth into the adjacent fields, shrubs, and smaller trees. (The trees at the edges of the forest get much more of the fog drip than those inside the grove. The perimeter trees strip most of the fog moisture from the sky.)

Fog drip is so uncommon that it is rarely found even two miles inland from my garden. I learned that microclimates can indeed be very small, special places. A microclimate that never shows up on the evening weather report. Nature sure has extraordinary niches as part of its fabric of life.

Alas, coastal-bound tourists are not impressed at all with fog drip. It rains on their parade— especially if camping in a tent beneath coastal redwoods.

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Go Pher Them

Pocket gophers, with Botta's pocket gopher (Thomomys bottae) being most widespread of the five species found in California, are a gardener’s the greatest fear in the west. [Those who garden east of the Mississippi river are free of these elusive pests.] When the Russians settled just north of Santa Rosa on the coast in 1812, the story goes “we could have made a good living if it weren’t for the land rats”.

These pesky critters are burrowing rodents that get their name from the fur-lined external cheek pouches, or pockets, that they use for carrying, and short fur that doesn't cake in wet soils they dig and tunnel constantly. If they don’t constantly make tunnels their teeth will curl up toward the brain and pierce it.

They spend a lot of time on the surface at night and are the prey of barn owls. Many vineyards, in their futile attempt to appear environmentalists, build barn owl boxes. They don’t know that the great-horned has a territory of up to ¼ of a mile from its nest. The one near my house and next to a vineyard, has this large predation area and keeps out the barn owls. Ever year I hear the great-horned owl gradually find each other for mating with hours of hooting. The vineyard is 100 feet from my house. Not many barn owls near me. Furthermore, the usual diet for a barn owl eats only one gopher each night. Thus, the gardeners in my area have resort to trapping (killing) these “ground rats”.

Unlike moles, gophers “throws” or mounds are crescent- or horseshoe-shaped when viewed from above. [See the left photo.] Mole mounds appear circular and have a plug in the middle is more likely volcano-shaped. Unlike gophers, moles leave a raised ridge to mark their path. Also, moles are carnivores and gophers are vegetarians.

Pocket gophers live in a burrow system that can cover an area of 200 to 2,000 square feet. Feeding burrows are 6 to 12 inches below ground, whereas they nest and food storage chamber that may be as deep as 6 feet. [I’ve dug into food stashes of dozens of gnawed carrots.] Gophers seal the openings to the burrow system with earthen plugs. Short, sloping lateral tunnels connect the main burrow system to the surface and are created during construction of the main tunnel for pushing dirt to the surface.

The University of New Mexico says “… [gophers] may occur in densities of up to 16 to 20 per acre”. Ha! They’ve never been in my garden!

So, trapping is a must. The other photo is a eight-inch long gopher caught in a California box trap. These ingenious traps worked on the fact that gophers maintain their main “highways” six to 12 inches below the surface, not the surface feeding tunnels. If the trap is put in the main run with the metal strip on the top-rear of the box slightly raised and all sides covered with dirt. This allows air to escape but excludes light. Usually the gopher wants to protect its main “highway” when it feels air rushing out. Running toward the open hole, the gopher is in the trap before it knows it because there is no light to give it a clue as to the breach of the tunnel. Gotcha!

Please post a comment - I want to know what you think.

Visit my web site to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books.

NOTE: The comments section at the bottom of the post has disappeared. Click on the "___ Comments" button or the title under the "Blog Archives". Thanks, Robert