A Week of Bentwood and Horseradish (and Fish Fries)

Display at the front of the room where the speakers lectured.

This was my first visit back to the Michigan Herb Associates since 1997 and it was fun seeing lots of old friends and making new ones. I was pleasantly surprised to find lots of earth showing between the patches of snow, and it only snowed about 2 inches while we were there. I'd expected it to be like upstate New York, with 6 feet of snow on the ground and no bare earth showing for another 2 months. Instead, it was 40-ish degrees each day, down to almost freezing at night, and a spot of sunshine one afternoon.

This is the herb garden at the Toledo Botanic Garden when I spoke to the Maumee Valley Herb Society.

Like most herb conferences, the MHA conference revolves around food. We had cooking demonstrations, a snack table each day of made-from-home herb foods, book sales, silent auctions, vendors and nice meals in the hotel each day. Most herb folks grow herbs because they like to eat, and herb events, no matter how large or small, make food the centerpiece.

One of the food demonstrations was given by Connie, who demonstrated salads, hors d'oeruvres, dips, cheese balls, soups and desserts. Then people lined up to have a taste.

The tablecloth makes these foods look a bit messy, but they were actually beautiful. There's a chicken salad stuffed into the red lily (edible lily) and a raspberry, greens and goat cheese salad in the yellow edible lily.

 It was fun to see Theresa Mieseler from Shady Acres Herb Farm. We served on the Board of Directors for the International Herb Association some years back. Lots of long time friends were there, too, so we got to visit with lots of folks we don't get to see often.

I gave 2 programs, Making Bentwood Trellises and Cutting Edge Plants and both were well received. The MHA folks were a great and generous audience and I always draw energy from such good groups. The bentwood trellis I made in the demonstration was given by my friend, Jon Hoffman (who had been one of my "wounded" Civil War soldiers back in 1997) and was auctioned off to benefit the 4-H Childrens' Garden in East Lansing, where the conference was held. (The Conference was on the campus of Michigan State University, home of the Spartans. We had great fun reading over the signs on campus like, "Enjoy our Spartan Hospitality" which no else seemed to think was funny. Spartan, sparse, it made us laugh).

Connie's great looking food samples had everyone excited.

Horseradish was the featured herb, since it's the Herb of the Year in 2011. Chuck Voigt, who has been the chair of the Herb of the Year committee for the International Herb Association for the past several years, made it his goal to see horseradish recognized. He's a professor at Illinois State Univ. and consults with the horseradish growers in his state. In case you don't know, Illinois is the leader in U.S. horseradish production. You can find more information about this Herb of the Year on the IHA website, as well as on the Herb Society of America's website and on my Herb of the Year blog. We dubbed Chuck, "Mr. Horseradish" some time back and his program, "More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Horseradish" was outstanding.

Dr. Chuck Voigt is the Principal Research Specialist at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Ilinois and a promoter of horseradish. He's been a tireless worker with the Herb of the Year project for many years.

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I helped auction off the bentwood trellis, then I was off to the Maumee Valley Herb Society for 2 programs at the Toledo Botanic Garden. Those folks, too, like herb food, and had a buffet table of cookies, cakes and other tasty desserts.

My hosts, Mark and Georgeann Brown, treated Josh and me to our first-ever, Catholic fish fry. (You may recall, I tried to buy fish in a pub in Madison, WI last spring, but it was Wednesday and no fish was to be had). Well, the tradition in the northlands, is, fish is a Friday food. During Lent, all of the Catholic churches have fish fries on Friday nights.

Our friends took us out for fish fry dinner and we were not disappointed. You pay at the door, told to get in line (get there early, the lines can be long) and folks on the other side of the service window pile your plate with perch and shrimp, along with scalloped potatoes, green beans and coleslaw. You can go back as many times as you want (3 for me, 2 for Josh) and there's desserts to choose from, as well.

The perch is from the Great Lakes and quite tasty. It reminded me of the suckers, a local fish here in the Ozarks, that are the feature of Sucker Day Festivals in the summer.

The herb gardens at the Toledo Botanic Garden are tended by the members of the Maumee Valley Herb Club and even though I couldn't see the plants because of the snow, the bones of the gardens were beautiful. I like to see the architecture without the plants, it makes it easy to see the shapes and forms of a garden.

The blue bench in an otherwise black and white world was a nice addition to the garden. It's a memorial to a long time member of the Maumee Ohio Herb group.

These are espaliered fruit trees along the back fences of the herb garden.

Our trip to Michigan and Ohio were enjoyable and we survived the cold. Wednesday I'm heading to Austin, TX where you may remember I found lots of fun stuff last fall (you can look through previous blog posts to see our adventures). I'm speaking at the Roundtop Festival Institute and you can see the gardens there if you follow this link. The redbuds are in bloom already and spring will have arrived by the time I arrive in a couple of days. They may even have some Catholic Church fish fries, who knows. Happy gardening!

Gazebos & Garden Festivals

Notice the gazebo at the top of this header page? It's history as of today. George and I built it probably 17 years ago. Actually he built it, I just gathered the cedar saplings. Two weddings had been planned there, both rained out. Over time it has rotted away and was only held up by an Asian bittersweet, silver lace vine and antique thornless rose from a mansion south of the Mason-Dixon line. Shown here is some of the destruction, or, progress. That's Paul Battle, our very kind WWOOFer from N. Carolina on the left, and George Hudson, resident builder, on the right. You'll likely not see a picture of George from the front, he manages to hide his face and won't pose for a photo. They're just starting to tear the old structure down.

Paul hauled away the materials as it was cut up. He'd earlier cut back the rose, bittersweet and other vines so they wouldn't be trampled by the work. An earlier intern, Peter, who came from Hungary a few years back, built the stone floor in the gazebo. It has little hand made ceramic herb labels between the rocks in the concrete. Peter spent days laying the rock and concreting them together as one of his summer's projects.

The gazebo went up soon after I wrote the Making Bentwood Trellises, Gates, Fences & Arbors book. After the book came out there were several magazines here doing stories on bentwood projects and I think the garden appeared in just about every garden magazine in the next few years. The gazebo figured prominently in the photos and we got lots of requests for plans for the gazebo (which wasn't in the book, and still is not). What I always warned people about was, it took lots, lots more materials to build with than most people can find available. It was built out of native cedar (Juniperus virginiana). Speaking of which, with all of our rains the past ten days, the cedar apples are blooming. They appear as big, orange globs of jelly hanging on the cedar trees. Up close you see they have structure and shape, and even slight beauty (click to enlarge the photo). They are the alternate host of the cedar apple rust that affects apple crops, producing spotting and "rust" on the apples.

The Baker Creek Seed Spring Festival was WET. Too bad it had to rain so much, before and during the festival. Even with the rains, several thousand people came anyway. Vendors had wet feet, visitors were soaked, but for the most part, people were in good spirits and buying plants and seed. The line inside the seed store stretched for an hour or more to pay for the seed. Bakerville is experiencing growing pains. It's amazing to see what this young man, Jeremiath Gettle, has accomplished in just 1o years, with help from his community and family. But it is his vision. Starting at age 17, ten years ago, Jere began packaging seed in his bedroom and mailing them out to a small customer base. In that short time his business has grown to be an increasing threat on some of the larger, established seed companies. He has a great dedication to heirloom seed. Watch a video of him describing what he does here. And you can also watch some of the festival here.

Selling only heirloom seed, from plants you can save your own seed from year to year, Jere has grown his business to shipping thousands of seed orders a day. He's built a town square in his front yard to look like an old-time Ozarks town, complete with seed store, apothecary, herb garden, stone oven bakery, restaurant and more. There are several buildings around the new "old" town where musicians play during the festival. A large speaker's building holds a couple of hundred people and lectures go on all day a variety of gardening subjects. This year there were 3 small stages for musicians and so you found music being played everywhere you went.

Large tents housed vendors and many vendors brought their own tents. It's my favorite place to find plants and seed in the springtime and we shopped in spite of the rain. One of my favorite bands played 6 times over the two day event. My friend, Kathryn Compton and her Checkered Past Band (you can download their music or listen on this link) were in the rooms next to us in the motel in Seymour, MO the night before so we were treated to hearing them practice, then hearing the performances the following day, too. Our friends, David & Donna, from Fayetteville, AR came and we had a short but great visit. It was their first time to attend the Festival and we may be able to get them back in good weather for the Fall Festival. Baker Creek's festivals are some of the most diverse gatherings of anywhere I know of in the Ozarks. Our friends, Rich and Becky, from Long Island, NY, by way of Springfield, MO, said they were totally amazed to see such complete diversity in the Ozarks.

I chose not to take pictures of the parking lot with hundreds of cars stuck in the mud, nor the line that stretched a mile and took 45 minutes or longer just to get to the gate to the parking lot. People were wet and miserable, parking volunteers were working hard directing, helping, driving tractors to pull stuck vehicles. Eventually they closed the parking lots completely because the newly built and graveled roads just sunk into the mud. Everyone felt bad for the Baker Creek folks who had worked so hard to put together a wonderful festival and who had to be disappointed at the continuous rains. But in spite of the little inconveniences, it was a great festival and grows bigger every year. I always look forward to going, for the music, the fun, the plants, seeing friends, sometimes speaking and always having a good time.

When the rains let up, Paul and I will get more garden planted. Yesterday we planted about 2 dozen heirloom tomatoes, Paul planted Chinese red noodle beans, my favorite yard long beans from Baker Creek Seed as well as planting several medicinal plants and herbs. Finally, after a mild but seemingly long winter, it's garden time!

The Garden This Week

Even the Gourd People (left) are surprised at the continuing rains. This one's hiding in the malabar vining spinach, which is listed as edible, but has more oxalic acid than its all-green Asian cousin, which is the better tasting. Malabar spinach is from Africa, loves summer heat and thrives in dry conditions and produces leaves to cook all summer long. The two kinds cover an 8 ft. high arbor in the middle of the garden.

On the subject of arbors, Adam built several bentwood trellises out of native cedar, along with this very handsome arbor in mid-summer. It's already covered with Indian snake gourds and morning glories, which the goats have been standing up on their hind legs to nibble on. He has the trellises installed in the garden with beans growing on one, passion vine on another and morning glories on the third.

Here's what the garden looks like this week. We have a bounty of beans - 8 or 10 varieties of climbing beans and several bush types. I'll post photos of some soon as they have quite attractive flowers. The garden is a bit jungly, as the constant rains all season have causes everything to over grow their beds. The photo to the left was taken in early morning with a bit of light fog. And below, right is part of the culinary beds and pathway that leads to the Herb Shop.

Visitors to the garden this week and last have expressed surprise at the extremely sweet stevia plants, and the great numbers of butterflies in the garden. We saw the very first Monarch butterfly today, a harbinger of fall weather to come.

The red and white cucumbers are really producing rapidly, lots of Brandywine tomatoes and the Egyptian malokia is ready to start harvesting for greens.