Edibles were front and center at this year's San Francisco Flower and Garden Show, held annually in late March at the San Mateo Event Center.
In past years, I've had to search for edibles tucked surreptitiously into flower beds or the rare speaker on edible gardening. This year, a separate 6000 sq. ft. tent devoted to edible gardening was featured, several of the display gardens incorporated raised beds or featured edibles, and several seminars each day were devoted to food gardening or composting.
The overall message was to grow something edible wherever you can.
Rosalind Creasy, who recently wrote a new version of her book on edible landscaping, told a packed audience that the hundreds of varieties available are a great reason to grow your own produce, and it will also be the freshest and ripest food you can find. The average fruit or vegetable travels 1500 miles to your plate, she said, and grocery-store tomatoes are tasteless because they are bred for a 14 mph impact to withstand machine picking and sorting as well as shipping.
Creasy passed around a few choice edibles from her garden that are easy to grow but not available at grocery stores: true paprika made from Boldog peppers (good enough to build a meal around), lime leaf for Thai dishes, and minty yerba buena.
Other edibles that are not available unless you grow them include heirloom melons that are so delicious they make your eyes roll back in your head, she said. Cantaloupe is not supposed to be crispy!
In her horticulture classes she was instructed to note which ornamentals had attractive flowers and fruit, Creasy said, but she noticed that edibles have gorgeous fruit and flowers as well, and apple blossoms are as fragrant as any crabapple. Edibles in the landscape have a long history. While visiting 23 countries a few decades ago, Creasy noticed that every country except the U.S. routinely used edible plants in landscaping.
The sign of a healthy garden, she said, is flowers growing between the vegetables. Not only do they beautify the garden, but they also attract pollinators and other beneficial insects. For a front-yard garden, flowers help the neighbors accept what you're doing as a garden or landscape, rather than a farm.
Another promoter of front-yard food gardens, Ivette Soler, noted that most front yards are boring, with a lawn and foundation shrubs, but we can do so much better. The goal is to create beautiful, smart edible gardens we can integrate into our daily lives, she said. Soler is a Los Angeles landscape designer and author of the book Edible Front Yards.
Lettuces are exciting front-of-the-border plants, with speckled, red, and purple leaves, Soler said. She talked about principles of garden design such as contrast and repetition using the varied colors, forms, and textures of edibles.
Gary Gragg of Golden Gate Palms in Point Richmond discussed subtropical fruits you can grow in the Bay Area. Coconut-like coquito nuts, as small as a walnut, come from Chilean wine palms. Jelley palms produce a fruit that tastes like pineapple.
Captions:
- If you have room for a straw bale, just add a bag of compost and plants!
- Rosalind Creasy talked about edible landscaping
- In the cool season, pansies complement colorful chard stems and leaves
- The large Star Apple edible garden featured a palette of edible greens, including basil, red komatsuna, mizuna, red-tinged lettuce, dinosaur kale, and a green-leaf lettuce.
© 2011 Tanya Kucak