In the Garden:

This year’s rainfall has brought vibrant colors across the East Bay. If you’re interested in adding some color to both your home garden and your dinner plate, here are some tips for incorporating edible flowers into your garden. Whether you're a seasoned gardener with a green thumb and a sprawling backyard or a novice with a cozy balcony garden, here's your guide to edible flower gardening in the East Bay this April.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska

Why Choose Edible Flowers?

Edible flowers are not just beautiful additions to your garden; they also offer a spectrum of flavors, textures, and culinary possibilities. From salads to desserts, these blooms can elevate dishes with their unique tastes and visual appeal. Growing your own edible flowers ensures freshness and quality, free from pesticides and other chemicals.

Best Edible Flowers to Grow in April

April in the East Bay is an ideal time to sow and nurture a variety of edible blooms. Here are some popular choices:

1. Nasturtiums: These vibrant flowers come in shades of orange, yellow, and red, with a peppery flavor that adds zing to salads and garnishes.

2. Calendula: Known for its medicinal properties, calendula offers bright orange and yellow petals that can be used in soups, stews, and rice dishes.

3. Lavender: Not just aromatic, but also edible! Lavender flowers lend a delicate floral flavor to baked goods and beverages.

4. Borage: With its charming blue star-shaped flowers, borage is a favorite for cocktails, salads, and freezing into ice cubes for drinks.

5. Violas: These dainty flowers come in various colors and have a mild, slightly sweet taste, perfect for decorating cakes or tossing into salads.

Tips for Edible Flower Gardening

• Choose a Sunny Spot: Most edible flowers thrive in full sun, so pick a location in your garden that receives ample sunlight.

• Prepare the Soil: Ensure the soil is well-draining and fertile. Incorporate organic matter like compost to promote healthy growth.

• Start from Seeds or Transplants: Depending on your preference, you can start your garden from seeds or purchase young plants from local nurseries.

• Regular Watering: Keep your flowers well-watered, especially during dry spells. However, avoid overwatering, as this can lead to root rot.

• Harvesting: As flowers bloom, gently pluck them in the morning when they're at their freshest. Rinse them lightly before using them in culinary creations.

Local Events and Resources

To enhance your edible flower gardening experience, consider exploring local events and resources in the East Bay. Many community gardens, nurseries, and botanical centers offer workshops and classes on gardening techniques, including edible flower cultivation. Additionally, connect with fellow gardeners through online forums or local gardening clubs to exchange tips and experiences.

Embrace the Beauty and Flavor of Edible Flowers

In April, as nature awakens and the gardens of the East Bay come to life, seize the opportunity to cultivate your own edible flower haven. Revel in the joy of nurturing these floral gems, and delight in the culinary wonders they bring to your table. Happy gardening!

---

PLANTING JUSTICE EL SOBRANTE FARMER’S MARKET BEGINS APRIL 21ST!

A reminder to come to our first Planting Justice El Sobrante Farmer’s Market at The Good Table on Sunday, April 21st, 12-4p. Sam Lustig of Planting Justice is the point person for the market, and it promises to be fantastic. We’ll be closing the street down in front of our site and having a lovely collection of food vendors and live music each Sunday afternoon.
Click HERE to learn more!

Gardening Tip

Springtime in the East Bay offers the perfect opportunity to immerse yourself in the wonders of edible landscaping. By combining ornamental plants with edible varieties, you can create a visually captivating landscape that also provides an abundant harvest. From native flora to fruitful orchards, diverse vegetable gardens, aromatic herbs, and the beauty of edible flowers, the East Bay's spring landscape becomes a canvas for both aesthetic beauty and culinary exploration. So, roll up your sleeves, dig into the soil, and let the colors of spring inspire you to create a vibrant and fruitful edible oasis right in your own backyard!

Embracing Native Flora:
Springtime brings forth an abundance of native plants that thrive in the East Bay’s Mediterranean climate. Incorporating these native species into your home not only adds aesthetic appeal but also helps support local ecosystems and wildlife. Consider planting California poppies, wild lilac, and California sagebrush, which offer stunning blooms while attracting pollinators to ensure a fruitful garden.

Fruitful Orchard Delights:
May typically marks the awakening of fruit trees, making it an ideal time to cultivate an orchard within your backyard. The East Bay boasts a favorable climate for a wide variety of fruit trees, such as persimmon, apple, apricot, plum, and lemon. Blossoms fill the air with their sweet fragrance, creating a sensory delight. From the moment delicate buds appear to the joyous occasion of harvesting juicy fruits, an orchard provides an ever-changing visual feast.

Diverse Vegetable Gardens:
Take advantage of the mild temperatures and ample sunlight to grow an array of delicious and nutritious crops. Plant cool-season vegetables like lettuce, spinach, kale, and radishes, which thrive in the region's springtime climate. Additionally, consider companion planting to enhance pollination, deter pests, and improve overall garden health.

Herbs for Flavor and Fragrance:
No edible landscape is complete without an assortment of aromatic herbs. Plant rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano, and mint to infuse your outdoor space with delightful scents. Not only will these herbs enhance the flavors of your dishes, but they are also great at both attracting beneficial insects and repelling undesirable pests, making them an invaluable addition to your backyard.

The Beauty of Edible Flowers:
Incorporating edible flowers like nasturtiums, calendula, and pansies into your landscape adds a pop of color to your garden beds, mixed drinks, and salads. These blooms bring a touch of whimsy and gastronomic delight to your springtime outdoor experience.

A Sensible Connection to Nature:
The convenience of having fresh herbs, fruits, and vegetables at your fingertips can enhance your culinary experiences, promote healthier eating habits, and save money on your grocery bills. But perhaps most importantly, a home garden encourages a deeper connection with nature as you witness the growth and transformation of plants throughout the seasons which can foster a sense of self-sufficiency, leading to a greater appreciation for the Earth's abundant gifts.

Here is some great advice for working on your home garden with kids. Whether they are your own kids, grandkids, or if you just need some great advice for working on your first home garden, this article pulled from 510families.com has you covered!

Tips to start an East Bay garden with kids:

1. Designate some garden real estate for kids, let them own the space. Try to find the sunniest spot, somewhere that gets 6+ hours of sunlight outdoors, or in a south-facing windowsill. Our yard allowed us to reuse an outgrown sandbox as a new raised planter bed. Maybe you have a wagon or busted wheelbarrow.

2. Give kid helpers jobs and goals

   • Weeding: We like to have a contest to see who can get the longest weed with seeds in it. Sure a flower might get picked here or there, but we use those as our countertop bouquets.

   • Digging holes and planting: We use starters or seedlings, which are much easier than seeds and just as fun.

   • Reseeding lawns and sprinkling grass seeds.

   • Fertilizing: Using organic fertilizer is important because we can’t over-fertilize and it’s safer for little ones.

   • Watering: If you give your kids the hose, be prepared to be sprayed every now and then.

   • Composting: Kids can collect meal scraps each day for the compost bins.

   • Gathering earthworms: Collect worms for your outdoor garden or compost. Both my daughters love inspecting all the critters we come across.

   • Mulching: Good for any age — and relaxing, too.

3. Germinate seeds indoors: Our seed germination activities are a functional science experiment to sprout hearty garden seedlings. Pro tip: use cardboard egg cartons for sprouting and transferring seedlings to an outdoor garden (here’s how).

4. Find non-toxic pest control when little hands will be digging in treated yards and gardens. Check out these home remedies. We crush egg shells (with gloves on) around the base of our young plants to keep slugs at bay. Reflecting ribbons and a scarecrow also help to keep the birds and squirrels from eating our blueberries (for now).

5. After everything is planted and weeded, I keep my kids engaged by decorating your garden with DIY gnomes and scarecrows (scarecrows are super easy to make with clothes my kids have outgrown and some sticks).

6. Further reading and resources: Based in Berkeley, the Edible Schoolyard has designed a suite of lessons and activities to teach kids about growing food in the garden.

Best things to plant in the East Bay during spring

I’ve had the most success with the following in Oakland’s zone 10a (a numeric gardening zone based on the average temperatures across the US). It’s fun to figure out what zone you live in and discover what might grow in your garden.

• Lettuce: the easiest, edible and most rewarding because it grows quickly

• Sunflowers: heat and drought tolerant, durable and wonderful to look at

• Nasturtiums: this vibrant, edible flower can be for beauty or consumption

• Peppers or chilies: thrive in 510 climate (think jalapeños and bell peppers)

• Collard greens

• Mint: can also be a natural deterrent for vermin

• Basil & parsley: with fewer trips to the grocery store, herbs can add great flavor to meals

• Rosemary & lavender: thrive in a pot or in the ground

• Can’t find seeds or plants of what you’re looking for? Oakland mom, Carol, recommends trying a plant or seed exchange with a neighbor. Everyone wins!

Tools suggestions for gardening with kids

• Gloves: while tiny gloves are probably cute, I just let my daughter use my adult gloves, she doesn’t mind that they’re a little baggy. Besides they’re only worn 25% the time.

• Buckets: for collecting weeds, mulching, fertilizing.

• Shovel: My four year old uses a regular gardening hand-held trowel, my one-year old uses a plastic sand shovel.

• Kid scissors: used like gardening shears, but safer.

• Recycled containers for watering: my youngest daughter can stay busy walking water from a large bucket to the plants, with a smaller used yogurt container.

• Books: though libraries are closed, there are a handful of excellent Bay Area specific gardening books. (I included a list of bookstores further down that have new and used local gardening books for social distancing sale.)

Click HERE to read the original article from 510Families.com!

Watch Out!

By Bonnie Hariton (07/20/22)

Photo = Dan Hariton heading out to their Pinole garden

It's one thing to notice that last year's hollyhocks have sprinkled seeds here and there in the backyard. You know what they are even as seedlings and cheer them on. It's another thing to notice that your raised beds - neglected over the winter this time - have been densely re-populated with grasses, spiky weeds, and the indefatigable bindweed. You recognize them all and sigh, realizing how much work it will be to pull them out. It is another thing entirely to notice a plant that you do not recognize, one that gives you a distinctly uneasy feeling.

I encountered the plant in the bed where tomatoes grew last year: a sturdy stem about five feet tall, with small white flowers in an umbrella shape on the top, and ghastly, irregularly shaped, red purple splotches on the smooth stem. I instinctively felt warned and wary. Stop, I told my husband, Dan. We must check this out before we clean up the bed. It was Hemlock. Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum), a deadly,  invasive species that has been spreading around the United States. Online research and a plant identifier app confirmed it. Looks sort of like Queen Anne's lace but not. Looks sort of ferny, carroty, but not. And there were more than one.

We wondered if we could eradicate it without dying. All parts - leaves, stem, roots, seeds, and juices - are dangerous and toxic if eaten, inhaled, or touched. We found help from KateVan Druff.

Dan put on a hazmat suit with a hood, wore thick gloves, a mask, goggles, and washable shoes. I stayed indoors and prayed. The largest hemlock was too firmly rooted to pull out by hand. Dan had to cut the stem and extract the foot-long, white-carrot-like tap root and lateral shoots with a five-foot-long, thirty pound steel pike used (with rope) as a lever. He put the plants in a thick black garbage bag, tied it tightly closed, and disposed of it in the garbage - not in the compost bin. Even dead, hemlock can remain poisonous for years. We inspected more of the surrounding area and had a neighbor's help, with a small bulldozer, to uproot a tenacious bush that had become encumbered with hemlock. Weeks later, we removed some three dozen young seedlings that had sprouted up in the general area. This time we could recognize them from their leaves alone. 

The moral of this story is: know your landscape, trust your instincts, get help. And, as always, Live Long and Garden!

---

Sat. July 30 will be our Community Work + Fun Day @ 5166 Sobrante Ave, 12- 3p. Wear sturdy shoes and clothing and bring work gloves and favorite gardening tools. And please bring a good quality mask so we can all stay safe from COVID and construction dust.