Labor
Day! Funny how we spend a holiday
that celebrates the worker by trying
to do nothing. So, in the full spirit
of the day, try spending the entire
weekend enjoying your garden. If you
do feel the urge to get out, visit the
Dahlia Festival in Canby, the Oregon
Garden, the Portland Classical Chinese
Garden or visit the display gardens at
the Oregon State Fair. Soak up the
sun, ponder the fun times of the past
couple of months and start planning
for next year’s garden.
Also,
make your plans now for the Le Tour de
Plants. This 9 day, self-guided tour
of local garden centers features
events, seminars, and plant specials
that will get you excited about
gardening in the fall! Check out
www.OAN.org for details and
directions.
This
week we featured...
Farmington Tomato Festival
Tons and tons of tomatoes! That is
what you will find at
Farmington Gardens (503-649-4568)
4th annual tomato
festival. Stop by the nursery between
11-3 on Saturday and taste over 60
varieties of tomatoes. Also featured
during the day; cooking
demonstrations, tomato talks where you
can learn how to grow healthy and
productive tomatoes at home, food from
the Century High dance team and plant
specials around the nursery. It is a
free event and fun for the whole
family.
Cooking Tomatoes
While we are on the subject of
tomatoes, we had Chef Dan Brophy of
the
Oregon Culinary Institute show us
a recipe using cherry tomatoes for a
quick taste of summer. The tomatoes
are at their tasty peak right now.
Chef Dan mentioned that we can buy the
shape of a tomato, but capturing the
taste is only possible this time of
year. If you would like to try this
recipe,
check out this link. Dan will be
giving cooking demonstrations at the 4th
annual Farmington Gardens Tomato
Festival today (Saturday 9/22/2006).
Lloyd's Landscape
It is great when a community can come
together to help out someone in need.
Such is the case in Tualatin. Lloyd
Ziemer lost his home last Thanksgiving
in a terrible fire. Within 3 days his
neighbors got together and set in
motion a plan to build him a new
home. Neighbor Randy Glanz and
members of the Tualatin Valley Fire
District formed a group of volunteers
and within 110 days they had Lloyd
back in his new home. Another part of
the project was provided by
Al’s Garden Center
(503-981-1245). Mark Bigej from Al’s
approached vendors and fellow
employees and with a little help from
neighbors, helped get a new landscape
planted for Lloyd. Some of the issues
they dealt with were the same as those
of the average homeowner: Sun
exposure, soil conditions and a steep
slope! In the end, this is a great
story about how people can help one
another!
Gartner's
Labor Day Grilling
The best part of a big holiday weekend
is the food. We all look forward to
that unique ‘taste of summer’ that we
get when we fire up the grill. To get
another grilling idea on what to
prepare we dropped by to visit Jerry
Yost from
Gartner’s Meats (503-252-7801).
Jerry pulled out a flat-iron griller.
This is a great piece of meat. We
heard how easy it is to grill. Jerry
put it on the grill and turned it
every 5-7 minutes. In 20 minutes it
was done. What made this taste so
good was the marinade. Gartner’s
makes their own special sauce that
just knocked our socks off. If you
get a chance, stop by and see them at
7450 N.E. Killingsworth and make a
huge impression at your next
barbeque.
Allan Armitage
The northwest is a Mecca for
gardeners. It is also a Mecca for
garden publishers.
Timber Press (1-800-327-5680)
is one of the best! They brought one
of the best authors, Allan Armitage to
town to speak recently and we got a
chance to chat with him as well.
Allan is known as the king of
perennials and has written many books
that are used as text books by some
colleges. We met him at the
Children’s Garden at Emmanuel Hospital
to chat about his new book ‘Armitage’s
Native Plants’. This king of
perennials told us how he is a ‘mix’
type of person. He told us that he
loves roses, but detests rose
gardens. He sees a garden as a mix of
the best plants for the garden owner.
The same holds true for natives. Even
though he has written a book on
natives he sees them as a piece of the
garden puzzle. He is a delightful man
and a great gardener. If you get a
chance, pick up a copy of one of his
books and enjoy some late summer
reading.