Growing Food in the Shade

A RECENT THREE-HOUR WORKSHOP at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, taught by renowned urban forager Leda Meredith, was a revelation. Among the startling things I learned is that one can actually eat some of the weeds I’ve been battling for years in my East Hampton garden. But “edible” is a subjective term. When I returned to find agepodium podagraria (goutweed) and garlic mustard in full spring resurrection, I immediately tried munching on them, and quickly spit them out.

Meredith, author of the new book Northeast Foraging: 120 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Beach Plums to Wineberries(Timber Press) admits you can’t grow vegetables (except mushrooms) in deep shade, but she provided ideas for making the most of what sun you’ve got in hopes of getting a few tomatoes and cukes: use ‘cheats’ like foil-covered reflectors to increase light, and plant in lightweight containers you can move to follow the sun, though that seems like it could become a full-time job.

Useful rules of thumb: if we eat the seed-bearing part of a plant (e.g. cukes, green beans), it needs more light. If we eat roots or leaves (green leafy vegs, carrots, some herbs), you can get away with less. The most aromatic herbs (basil, oregano, thyme) are Mediterranean in origin and need abundant sunight. The likes of coriander and parsley, not so much.

Meredith, a former professional dancer who now leads foraging expeditions, teaches workshops, and blogs about food preservation, local eating, and foraging, reminded us that you can eat the leaves of beets and carrots, and eat wild edibles like field garlic, ramps (wild leeks), fiddleheads and May apples (I actually have the last two in my East Hampton garden as well).

But most of her presentation focused on things that are not going to supplant Greenmarket produce in my diet: hog peanut, a twining ornamental; wild angelica, hopniss, American spikenard, wild ginger, pink purslane, and even a narrow-leaved hosta (lancifolia), to name a few. “Saute the hosta like spinach,” she told us. You can eat the early chutes of Solomon’s Seal, and the leaves and flowers of violas and pansies, too.

All very interesting, and kudos to Meredith for pioneering the use of these plants as edibles. It’s good to know about things that won’t poison you if disaster strikes, or Whole Foods is closed.

 

 

Shed Dreams

MY SHED IS A VERY VERY VERY FINE SHED…no, not really. At the moment, it’s a stark cedar box, above, with a shed roof — as in shed water, I now realize — but it will be a very fine shed when my son Max gets through with it. In fact, it will no longer be a shed; it will be a guest house/studio with its own deck and maybe even an outdoor shower.

There’s a pair of French doors and a casement window left behind by the previous owner of the house, which we’ll use, and I’ve got a folder of inspiration pics, below, collected from various sources.

Simple things, sheds. For some reason — memories of prehistoric shelters imbedded in our DNA? — their small size makes them very appealing. Though it’s twice the square footage of the tiny house written up recently in The New York Times. My shed will be a very fine palace by comparison.

Fine Homebuilding magazine

Loren Madsen, Remodelista

Gardenista

An ad I’ve misplaced

FineGardening.com

Last Suppers

THE ROLLER COASTER RIDE IS OVER. I’m officially in contract to sell my East Hampton, N.Y. cottage, after a long winter of offers, negotiations, anticipation and disappointments. Closing will be on or before May 15 — five years to the day since I bought the house in 2009. My real estate agent and my neighbors think I’m crazy, but I’m still gardening just as I would if I were staying — raking leaves off the perennial beds, top dressing with compost and mulch, pruning winter storm and deer damage.

Sign on David’s Lane, East Hampton

I want to leave the garden in tip-top shape (with no expectations that the new owner will be as OCD as I am). The house and garden have always been primarily a labor of love for me, though I admit to hoping I might be compensated for those labors in dollars someday. That’s not to be the case (no, I didn’t get my twice-reduced asking price), but I’m not changing the sub-title of this blog. I still believe in old-house real estate as an investment. But sellers have to be prepared to wait for the market to cycle round to a favorable position, and I wasn’t able to wait any longer, with House #2, a 1940s modernist ranch in the same community, bought last year, awaiting further renovation.

I’m enjoying my last spring at House #1 though not, all things being equal, my last in East Hampton, where they do daffodils really well (not either of my houses, left).

I’m no longer in need of furnishings for two summer rentals (in fact, I now have four sofas), but I’m still attending yard sales on Fridays and Saturdays just for the fun of it. See below for a photo of my latest acquisition, a set of six vintage wrought iron and wood chairs that are surprisingly comfortable. Do I need them? No, not at all. Do they work with the style of my new/old house? No, they don’t. Was I going to pass them up at $40 for the whole set? Of course not.

I’m also busy sketching ideas for a new deck and new configuration of rooms at House #2. Its renovation will be incremental and low-budget, once again, and will provide abundant blog fodder in months to come. In late winter, I took a five-session “Design Your Own Garden” class at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, taught by Jim Russell, who was terrific — he had us all thinking about our gardens in new ways. The T-squares and HB pencils brought me back to my year at architecture school, and I was very happy drawing and erasing away, though I never got as far as spec-ing actual plants, like some of my classmates. I spent almost the entire course on a general landscape concept: organization around three courtyards; as well as  possible designs for a new deck and a system of paths.

Though I’ll be there another few weeks, things have now taken on a wistful “last time” feeling over at House #1. Easter Sunday, a friend came for a late lunch on the back deck. We opened a bottle of Prosecco, as we have done many times before, and lay on the chaise longues looking into the woods, talking and laughing, as we have done many times before. Though I’ve been known to profess non-attachment to any house or apartment (having moved four times in the past eight years), this one is hitting me hard. At least it’s well-documented.

 

Viva Vegas

GRAVEL, ROCKS, PALMS AND TOPIARY, that’s what Las Vegas landscaping is made of. My wasband just got back from a visit there with these images in his pocket, taken in Paradise Palms, a neighborhood of mid-century houses by architects Palmer and Krisel, best known for their Palm Springs developments, that are pretty swell in their own right. (The houses, by the way, are real bargain by East and West Coast standards. One in fairly good condition might go for around $230,000. Others need a complete makeover.)

Something about these freewheeling front yards makes me want to laugh. Is it the anthropomorphic look of the pruned hedges, the casual strewing of boulders, the symmetrical line-up of mini-cacti in gray gravel? It’s so different from what we call a garden here in the East. Scroll down for a look at what can be done under pretty arid circumstances.

Photos: Jeff Greenberg

 

 

 

 

 

Spring is Sprung

A SWITCH has been thrown somewhere — “Garden ON” — and spring is busting out all over. Everyone with a Facebook page has been deliriously posting pictures of daffodils and magnolia blossoms, but indulge me a few, if you will. These, taken about 10 days ago at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, already seem a moment that has passed. Things are farther along now. To me (not being a bee), that’s the chief meaning and purpose of flowers: a reminder of how beautiful, and heartbreakingly ephemeral, it all is. And by “it,” I mean life.

On a lighter note, how funny is this sign, spotted in front of a Flatbush Avenue dive bar? “Spring is the time of plans and projects,” a quote from none other than Tolstoy, with whom I heartily concur — and also $4 drafts!

An odd thing happened with the onset of April, which always feels like real New Year’s to me. Two days ago, I signed a contract of sale on my cottage in East Hampton, the renovation and landscaping of which has been a recurring subject on this five-year-old blog. It was an emotional roller coaster to the end, with yet another near-deal falling through and a decisive buyer stepping up just last week. We’ll close on or before May 15. That is a great relief, of course — the house was officially on the market only six months, but it had begun to feel like forever.

But that’s not the odd thing. The odd thing is, now that the real-estate paralysis has lifted, I feel like blogging again. I have a backlog of drafts and posts to write. Fair warning! Meanwhile, consider the flowers.