Pots Full of Produce : Landscaping With Edible Plants Borrows From French Concept of Kitchen Garden
Southern Californians, whether they’ve been aware of it or not, have been converting their gardens into potagers. They’re potting up lots of culinary herbs, tucking a few vegetables in with their perennials, finding room for dwarf fruit trees and adding more annuals for cut flowers for their tables. The French would approve. They’d say we’ve come to our senses.
The French concept of the potager , or kitchen garden, is unabashedly sensual. Its goal is heightening the pleasures of the table; its objective: immediate gratification. This is a garden dedicated to enhancing tonight’s meal with some delectable edible harvested at the peak of perfection. It is not a garden designed to create masses of produce to freeze, can, pickle, dry or otherwise preserve.
For this reason it requires little room. Nice as it might be, you don’t need an acre in Provence to have a potager. A small square in a sunny courtyard will suffice, as Kathryn Hillyard of Newport Beach has proved.
Hillyard describes her home as a three-sided box surrounding an interior courtyard. That courtyard is mostly paved brick but at its center is a raised bed, approximately 4 1/2-by 6 1/2-feet. It is planted with a lime tree and topiary rosemaries and thymes, which are periodically supplemented with seasonal color.
Last fall Brad Allen of Fleur Jardin, the Newport Beach landscape maintenance firm that provides Hillyard’s garden with annual bedding plants, suggested planting gourmet lettuces instead of the usual flowers. He alternated two fancy lettuces--red-edged ‘Lollo Rossa’ and apple-green ‘Oakleaf’--with a burgundy-hued loose leaf radicchio and a pale green curly endive in tidy rows and backed it up with a final tier of Swiss chard.
The effect was pretty.
“From afar it just looked like an attractive mixture of foliage,” Hillyard says. “It’s only when you got up close that you realized it was also something you could eat.”
The harvest was plentiful. “Whenever we wanted a salad or a piece of lettuce for a sandwich, we just went out and picked it, and the garden produced more Swiss chard than our family of four could eat.”
And the upkeep was pleasurable. “It’s much more rewarding to work in the yard when the payoff is eating the results. It makes gardening an adventure.
“We’re definitely going to do it again this fall,” Hillyard says.
Is your back yard all paved patio? That doesn’t rule out a potager. There are few herbs or vegetables that can’t be grown in pots, and many are easier to manage that way. In fact, even a window box is enough to support a substantial crop of greens and a few herbs.
So if you’d like your garden to begin supporting your table in the potager manner, here are some things you can plant right now:
HERBS
Fall is an excellent time to plant all the classic perennial herbs--rosemary, thyme, sage, etc.--whether in pots or in the ground, according to Cristin Fusano, assistant manager at Roger’s Gardens in Newport Beach.
The rosemary she’d recommend for most gardens is ‘Tuscan Blue.’ Its upright form looks as handsome in pots as it does in the landscaping, Fusano says.
If you’re putting the rosemary in a pot, why not plant a bay tree in another as a companion? “It’s very ornamental and looks so Italian,” Fusano says.
Thymus vulgaris, common culinary thyme, is still the best for cooking, she says. If you’ve room for another, she suggests, lemon thyme (T. citriodorus).
Golden (Icterina), purple (Purpurascens) and variegated (Tricolor) sages can all be used in cooking just like common sage (Salvia officinalis), Fusano says, but they have the added advantage of providing foliage variation in your potager.
French tarragon can be planted now, too, she says; just don’t expect it to do much else than develop a root system until next spring when it will finally leaf out. Because of its draping growth habit, tarragon looks especially pretty planted close to the edges of pots with something more upright--curly parsley, perhaps--planted at the center.
Lavender can be considered a culinary herb, too. For instance, Fusano uses the blossoms in an herb butter--”wonderful with salmon”--and in breads and cookies--”lavender-blossom biscotti is fabulous.” Though not quite as fragrant as English lavender, French and sweet lavenders (L. dentata and L. heterophylla) look good year-round, she says, and have a looser growth habit, making them better choices for containers.
Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) is another perennial herb more people should grow, Fusano suggests. “If you love lemon, you should have this in your garden.” In addition to making a great tea, lemon balm makes a great paste for flavoring fish, she says.
“Substitute it for basil in pesto, omitting the Parmesan cheese.”
GREENS
Mesclun, sheared delight: The culinary-attuned French have found a way to grow their salad greens premixed. The method is called mesclun (French for mix ). It is accomplished by mixing and broadcasting seeds from a variety of greens. The mixture usually includes some cool tasting greens such as loose-leaf lettuces and mache and some hot, peppery ones such as cress and mustard. Quick-growing annuals such as arugula, cilantro, dill and chervil are often included, too, along with small edible flowers like Johnny-jump-ups.
When the mixed bouquet emerges and the leaves are only a few inches high, the French shear off the baby greens with scissors for an epicurean salad. The mesclun will grow back for several more “cut and come again” harvests.
If you would like to try growing a mesclun, try selecting a variety of different lettuce seeds or buy a premixed mesclun packet such as Shepherd’s Garden Seeds “California Mesclun Mix Set,” which contains nine different lettuces, two mustard greens, arugula and curly cress.
Since lettuces have shallow root systems naturally and the plants are not allowed to mature, they make an excellent container crop. Any container at least 12 inches deep with good drainage would be suitable, suggests Kate Stadem, horticultural adviser at Shepherd’s.
Fill the container with 75% potting soil and 25% perlite thoroughly mixed, she suggests, and broadcast the seeds on top. Top with a light layer of soil and keep the seeds moist until germination. You won’t have to wait long. Some seeds will sprout within 48 hours, Stadem says.
For Southern California gardeners, Stadem suggests germinating lettuces in light shade. (Lettuce seeds will not germinate in temperatures much above 80 degrees.) Once the weather gets cooler, you can move the container into full sun.
Expect a minimum of three harvests from the mesclun, says Stadem, more if there is a cool spring. Lettuce bolts--produces seed--and turns bitter when the weather warms.
If you don’t want to germinate your own seed, an alternate method of creating a mesclun would be buying gourmet lettuces in six packs from nurseries and shearing off your first harvest immediately after planting. Also, at least one nursery--Heard’s Country Gardens in Westminster--plans to offer a mesclun mix in six packs.
One leaf at a time: If your garden is more formal, you might prefer growing lettuces in traditional rows the way Hillyard did in her courtyard. By pulling off outer leaves only and allowing the plant to continue to grow from the inside out, the decorative appearance of your rows won’t change and you’ll have several months of harvest. (Hillyard’s lettuce patch produced constant greens last year from September until late February.)
Nurseries offered a good selection of gourmet greens last year, and, since they sold well, are likely to offer even more varieties this year. Following a few to look for:
Lollo Rossa. A decorative loose leaf lettuce with crimson-bordered leaves. “Very ruffled,” comments Warren Gnas at Amling’s Nursery in Newport Beach. “It looks like a doily on a plate.
Red and green Oakleaf lettuces . Buttery-textured loose-leaf lettuces with notched leaves that look like their namesake.
Rossa di Verona . A loose-leaf radicchio. “Much easier to harvest than the grocery-store type which form heads,” Gnas says. “Not as bitter either.”
Merveille Des Quatre Saisons . A limestone lettuce that produces large, highly ornamental leaves, and is slow to bolt. “My personal favorite,” says Stadem at Shepherd’s.
Rouge D’Hiver . An heirloom romaine with large, crisp, red leaves.
Big greens: Larger greens such as Swiss chard, spinach, sorrel and kale have deeper root systems than lettuces and are usually planted in the ground. However, they can be planted in five-gallon containers at least 18-inches deep, Stadem says. Kale is particularly handsome this way, she says. “It’s quite astounding in pots.”
If planting from seeds, thin to 12 inches apart, she suggests. If from plants, use no more than three per pot.
VEGETABLES
Peas, an early spring crop in most of the country, are planted in the fall in Southern California. Though their vine-like growth necessitates some kind of support, this doesn’t rule out growing peas in containers if you wish.
Gnas at Amling’s Nursery, for instance, has planted shelling peas in five-gallon containers at the nursery. (Edible pod peas such as sugar snap and snow peas would work equally well.) In each container he’s placed an eight-foot stake with strings radiating from it to the lip of the pot. When the pea seedlings emerge, says Gnas, they’ll find the strings, climb them and fill out the string in an inverted cone shape.
“When it fills out, I think it will be quite ornamental,” Gnas says. “One on either side of a garden path would look almost as formal as topiary.”
If you want to try something a little bolder, plant Brussels sprouts. One plant in a five-gallon container would be an interesting accent plant on a patio, Gnas says. “The nice thing about Brussels sprouts is the sprouts grow right against the side of the stems, so you can snap them off at whatever size you want without changing the basic structure of the plant,” he says. “And home-grown ones are incredibly sweet compared to the ones you buy in the store.”
EDIBLE FLOWERS
If you want to carry the theme further, plant seasonal annuals that can grace your salads as well as your garden. Johnny-jump-ups (Viola tricolor), violets (V. odorata) , nasturtiums (Tropaeolum spp.), and calendula (C. officinalis) are all edible and suitable for planting now. English primroses, less well-known as an edible, are another possibility, Gnas says. “The flowers taste like Earl Grey tea,” he claims. The ‘Julian’ variety are particularly charming as edibles, he says, because of their diminutive size (one-quarter the size of regular varieties).
“Plant it all now,” advises Gnas, “and in a few months you can sit in your garden and graze.”
SEED SOURCES
* Shepherd’s Garden Seeds 6116 Highway 9, Felton, Calif. 95018 (408) 335-6918
* Redwood City Seed Co., P.O. Box 361, Redwood City, Calif. 94064 (415) 325-7333
* Nichols Garden Nursery, 1190 North Pacific Highway Albany, Oreg. (503) 928-9280
* The Cook’s Garden, P.O. Box 535 Londberry, Vt. 05148 (802) 824-3400
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For additional information:
“The Harrowsmith Salad Garden,” by Turid Forsyth and Merilyn Simonds Mohr (Camden House, $19.95). Keep in mind that the suggested planting times in this book are aimed at a colder climate than Orange County’s; for “early spring” substitute “late fall.”
“Little Herb Gardens,” by Georgeanne Brennan and Mimi Luebbermann (Chronicle Books, $12.95)
“Potager: Fresh Garden Cooking in the French Style,” by Georgeanne Brennan (Chronicle Books, $18.95). Contains gardening information as well as recipes.
“Planning and Planting a Potager,” lecture by Cristin Fusano, horticulturist, at Roger’s Gardens, offered at 10 a.m. today and Nov. 20, 2301 San Joaquin Hills Road, Corona del Mar.
