First attempt at sweet potatoes, fall roses

One advantage of possibly boring people to tears with tales of my garden and also of celebrating as many events as possible there is that people are likely to give you garden-related gifts when they visit. At a barbecue last June a friend of mine presented me with a very pretty small potted green plant, reminiscent of a morning glory, with a label identifying it to my surprise as a sweet potato (Ipomea batata), with no further information on the cultivar. The label said it would grow into a 40 cm high bushy plant.

I was intrigued, as I had never considered planting sweet potatoes and knew nothing about growing them. Wary as always of slug danger when trying out new plants, I decided to plant it on the roof deck in a large pot, where it quickly developed long trailing vines that willingly climbed the offered trellis.

The instruction card said to harvest the entire plant at once in September or October before frost sets in, so yesterday I did so. Here's what I got:

I'm so excited! I may have harvested too soon, I think, because so many of the tubers are so small. It looks like the kind I have are white-fleshed. The largest one weighs 300 g (about 10 oz.). I'm planning to store some of them over the winter and plant them in the spring. They are such pretty plants that I'm happy to have them on the deck, but will at least try a plant in the garden next year. I'm saving them to eat with my middle son next time he visits, since he and I are the sweet potato lovers in the family.

And to finish this post, here are some photos of the still beautiful roses in our garden. Even in cases where the plants are almost devoid of leaves due to black spot, they continue to produce lovely blooms even in October. Unfortunately, I don't know the names of these beauties, since I inherited them from the previous allotment owners, to whom I am very grateful.

Fairtrade flowers for Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everybody.

Here's my Valentine's bouquet of roses:

This post is about where they came from.

Germans love to buy cut flowers, and Germany is one of the top ten countries in terms of per capita consumption of both cut flowers and plants. Here an interesting link from the Flower Council of Holland showing the consumption of many countries. At the same time, the local production of flowers here has gone way down, as it has in all industrialized countries. These days, cut flowers are mainly imported to Europe from Africa, and to North America from South America. This interesting article shows that over 90% of cut flowers in the U.S. are imported, whereas back in 1970 it was only 3%. In Germany the situation is not quite so drastic. As described in this very interesting brochure published by the German Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (in German), 20% of the cut flowers sold here are still grown here. According to this source, Germans spend an average of 40 Euros per year on cut flowers, with roses and tulips leading the list.

So globalization has hit the flower market hard everywhere. Roses and everything else are available the entire year. And as in many other sectors, sometimes you don't want to look too closely at the conditions under which the roses you buy are grown in places like Columbia or Kenya. After watching a few documentaries on the subject, including descriptions of child labor, low wages, overuse of pesticides with no protection for workers, genetic engineering and monocultures, I had almost decided to stop buying off-season cut flowers. There are several documentaries on the subject on Youtube, including here.

But then I came across an article about a network called Fairtrade whose mission is to inspect flower growing (and other) sites and award them a Fairtrade label if they meet certain requirements, including minimum prices, prohibited use of certain substances, adherence to ILO standards on occupational health and safety, minimum amount of paid vacation for workers, and many other things. Fairtrade certification is only awarded to producers who comply with an entire catalogue of requirements. If they do, they can label their products with this logo:

On the Fairtrade website, you can go to your own country and find businesses that sell Fairtrade products. I discovered that a grocery store chain in Mannheim sells them, and bought some of their roses a few months ago. I was very pleased with them - they were moderately priced, quite lovely, and kept in the vase for over a week. In fact, they came with a guarantee of keeping fresh for at least five days after purchase. I've had worse luck with expensive roses from florists.

So for Valentine's Day I purchased Fairtrade roses for the family. The label attached to the bouquet includes a Fairtrade code number, and on the German Fairtrade website I entered the code and was able to see that my roses came from the Finlay Flower Farm in Kenya, certified by Fairtrade in 2004 and employing 2250 people! If you're interested, Finlay has its own website.

I hope that it's all as good as it sounds, and that I can feel good about my roses, even though it remains somewhat absurd to be buying roses in February, when Valentine's Day happens to be. Here's another shot of my roses in the snow on the patio. If you look closely (click to enlarge) you can see that it is actually snowing in the picture.

The Queen of England

After debating a long time about whether or not to purchase an arch and plant a climbing rose at the entrance to my herb garden, I decided against it because of too many other things to do right now, and wait till next year.

BUT today while walking by the local discount drugstore, I saw they had a table of various perennials for sale out on the sidewalk at incredibly cheap prices (€1.50 each for roses, blackberries, clematis, currants, raspberries, and several other varieties) and although I've made a point of buying all my plants and bulbs at quality nurseries up till now, just couldn't resist buying a climbing rose, figuring I had nothing to lose at that price.

So I am now the owner of a so-called "Queen of England" climbing rose. I couldn't wait to get home and research it. Upon perusing online rose forums, it turned out that this and other roses are being or have been sold in the past at many discount grocery and drugstores here, including Aldi, Schlecker, Lidl, and Plus. And there were lots of reports about people buying these cheap discount roses only to be surprised in the spring at finding they'd planted a white ground cover rose rather than the pictured pink climbing rose!

The other discovery I made was that "Queen of England" is not really a recognized name. The correct name is probably "Queen Elizabeth", a famous and well-established rose, but not usually a climbing rose. There does seem to be a climbing version, though.

The package is a little puzzling since there's no indication of country of origin. The information on the package is given in 9 languages. I wonder where thousands of this cultivar were produced for simultaneous sale at hundreds of discount outlets!

So I plan to do what one forum participant recommended: plant the rose in a container and see what comes up before deciding where to put it in the garden.

In the course of trying to find out about this rose, I discovered a truly wonderful website called HelpMeFind.com which offers information on thousands of roses, peonies and clematis. It was here that I found the definitive information on what I've probably purchased.

Inventory in our new garden

First of all, the garden was full of roses, roses, roses. Our predecessor was a rose enthusiast and collected old varieties. But I soon decided to get rid of some of them to make room for a little more lawn and for some other perennials and shrubs I want to have. But some of the roses are indeed beautiful and I'll be trying to learn how to tend them. Here an impression, still blooming late in September (click to enlarge any photo).

Near the patio the garden has a gorgeous stand of zebra grass (Miscanthus zebrinus strictus), which has now formed feathery tassels, something it only does if it feels very happy.

The garden also has remnants of a traditional farmer's garden, bordered by boxwood. My most ambitious first plan is to reinstate and enlarge this by planting a geometrical pattern of low boxwood hedges to enclose flower, herb and vegetable beds. This tradition is still alive in cloister gardens and also in gardens in rural areas of Europe. See links at end of post.





Here are the boxwoods still in the garden. In the background you can see the various compost containers, more on that in another post. Between and behind the boxwoods are many perennials. In the foreground were vegetable beds of wax beans, tomatoes, zucchini, celeriac, peppers, chives, garlic, lovage. Much of this I've already cleared out to plant green manure (lupins) in preparation for enlarging the boxwood enclosure.




One perk of being in a gardening colony is that you're likely to have wonderful gardeners as neighbors. One of my neighbors has gorgeous asters and dahlias right along the border to my garden, and they delight me everyday. The asters especially attract bees and the whole area hums!

Along the borders and in two patches our garden has a wealth of perennials. Since we acquired the garden in the late summer, we won't know exactly what we have until spring. Can't wait. But a few treasures are late bloomers, here are some impressions:













Two other great features of the garden are the row of espalier fruit trees, apples and pears along one border, and the blackberry vines enclosing the perennial bed next to the cottage. Here you see my husband cutting back the blackberries for the winter, and a view of the espalier trees behind my daughter, who is busy planting pillow asters (Aster dumosus).













Here are some links to the kind of geometrical farmer's garden I want to create, albeit on a more modest level.

English knot garden
kitchen garden blog
picture of German Bauerngarten