Chardonnay, Hooray!

So now you see me walking down the street
I’ve got this typical style of hair
and this typical style of clothes and you see me and you smile
but what you don’t realize is that I’m 12 years ahead of you
where everything you own is retro now
I see you, man, and I’m laughing at your sense of cool ’cause
I’m ahead of the curve…

“Ahead of the Curve” by Jim’s Big Ego

Yeah, yeah, I know – chardonnay is so late 20th century! Well, sorry, but a good wine is a good wine, no matter what the fashionistas tell you. I for one have been a chardonnay fan since before the rage and will continue to be no matter what the latest thing may be. And summertime, my friends, is one of my favorite seasons for hanging out on the deck and sipping a little of this tasty elixir.

I’ve got quite a few of these white beauties on my favorites list, but I’ve got two that are my particular standbys. One is a wonderful affordable wine from Australia, McWilliam’s Hanwood Estate Chardonnay. The other is also nicely affordable, especially when on sale: Gallo Sonoma Reserve Chardonnay. I used to have an aversion to California wines – going with Australian or Pacific Northwest wines pretty steadily – but then my buddy Ken turned me on to Gallo Sonoma, and I jettisoned my anti-California prejudice immediately. Both of these wines make use of malolactic fermentation, adding a buttery taste and mouth feel. Both are pleasantly complex and are perfect either on their own or with food.

So stay ahead of the curve and enjoy a great chardonnay today!

Summertime Veggies

OK, so you want to save some money and reap the tasty benefits of a vegetable garden. What should you be planting now, in late spring/early summer?

It’s too late to start your own tomatoes and peppers, although you still have time to put out transplants. If you can, get your transplants from someone who actually grew the transplants – a local greenhouse or farm stand would be a good choice. Sure, you can get transplants at one of the big-box stores, but those plants have been hopped up on fertilizer and subjected to very stressful conditions. You’ll almost certainly get healthier, stronger plants from a local grower.

For seeds sown straight in the garden, you can’t beat three old standbys: beans, squash, and cukes. You’ve got two choices for each of these: vining types or bush types. Vines require sturdy supports and usually a good deal of space, although if you’re inventive you can actually save some space by growing these guys vertically. For bush types, stay away from sowing in rows, which wastes a lot of space and which will require more work from you later in the season. Instead, try sowing your beans in blocks and your squash and cukes in hills.

A block of beans can be anywhere from about a foot square to maybe as large as a yard square; I’d recommend keeping to 2-feet square or smaller, though, so you can easily reach your arm into the middle of the block. Plant the seeds about 2 inches apart in each direction. When the bean plants reach full-size, their leaves will shade the soil below, discouraging weed growth and helping to keep the soil evenly moist.

A “hill” of squash or cukes is just a 3-foot square area in which you grow two or three plants. In the middle of the square, sow a few seeds about three inches apart in a ring. If more than two or three plants sprout, thin to two or three plants. When the plants mature, the leaves of the plants shade the ground, once again discouraging weeds and keeping the soil evenly moist.

A couple other veggies to start now include heat-tolerant varieties of lettuce and radish. For lettuce, the easiest kinds to grow are leaf and bibb types, which I recommend sowing in blocks. As for radish, in addition to the little salad radishes everyone’s already familiar with, you might also want to try “summer” radishes such as Chinese radish and Japanese daikon. Both are great for adding to stir-fries and even soup (or for making your own kimchi). If you just want to stick with the little salad radishes, try sowing them in a ring in your squash and cucumber hills. The radishes mature before the squash and cuke plants get big, and some folks think the radishes repel pests that can plague squash and cukes.

There are several other veggies that are good for sowing right now, but this is good for a start. More later!

More on Gardening and the Economy

This is definitely a hot topic these days: People are flocking to vegetable gardening in numbers we haven’t seen since the back-to-nature days of the 1970s. The reason? Prices on food – and just about everything else – are going up, up, and up. Just take a look at yesterday’s New York Times to find an article entitled “Banking On Gardening”:

Seed companies and garden shops say that not since the rampant inflation of the 1970s has there been such an uptick in interest in growing food at home. Space in community gardens across the country has been sold out for several months. In Austin, Tex., some of the gardens have a three-year waiting list.

The article goes on to say that at the W. Atlee Burpee Company sales of vegetable and herb seeds rose 40 percent over last year. And although such sales have been on the rise for several years, this is double the growth rate of recent years. George Ball, Burpee’s owner, attributes this to two consequences of the current economy:

“Food prices have spiked because of fuel prices and they redounded to the benefit of the garden,” Mr. Ball said. “People are driving less, taking fewer vacations, so there is more time to garden.”

More time and less money lead to more gardening? Makes sense (and cents) to me.

Get Out There and Plant Some Seeds!

In most of North America right now, it’s really too late to get your tender and half-hardy annuals started indoors, but it’s the perfect time to sow some seed “in place”. Cosmos, marigolds, nasturtiums, zinnias, and more can be planted outside now, in the ground where you want your plants to grow. I got most of mine sown about a week ago, but I plan to sow some sunflowers and maybe some more zinnias today.

Sowing indoors weeks before your frost-free date gets things off to a quick start, of course, but some annuals actually do better when planted outdoors where they’re to grow. For example, double-flowered zinnias will be set back in their growth if transplanted and may revert back to being single-flowered. And nasturtiums also resent transplanting. Although cleome can supposedly be started either indoors or out, I’ve had luck with them only when sown in place. Ditto for portulacas.

Here’s a list of a few annuals that do well when sown straight in the garden:

• Calendula (pot marigold) – likes cool weather
• Centaurea (bachelor’s buttons, cornflower) – very easy from seed sown outside
• Cleome (spider flower) – give them lots of room
• Cosmos – one of the easiest flowers to grow from seed
• Gomphrena (globe amaranth) – very easy
• Helianthus (sunflower) – from the small showy types to the 12′ giants
• Portulaca (moss rose) – grows well in dry soil in a sunny spot
• Tagetes (marigold) – the small French varieties are my favorites
• Tithonia (Mexican sunflower) – tall and bushy, and a favorite of butterflies
• Tropaeleolum majus (nasturtium) – requires darkness to germinate, so don’t surface-sow
• Xeranthemum (immortelle) – easily grown in any sunny spot
• Zinnia – susceptible to mildew, so sow resistant varieties if mildew is a problem in your area

A Glass of Wine a Day Keeps the Dentist Away?

We’ve all heard that when drunk in moderation, red wine can benefit health. And, in fact, it’s recently been reported that red wine consumption may slow aging and prolong life. But did you know that drinking red or white wine may benefit your dental health?

Although the research was published nearly a year ago in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, it was complete news to me. Apparently, the antimicrobial effects of wine can keep in check certain Strep bacteria that are involved in tooth decay. So raise a glass to your teeth and gums!

Bottle of Red, Bottle of White

This afternoon I was thinking about the online wine resources I used to love back in the ’90s, the ones I featured on the original LJ’s Place. So I did a quick Google search and found that not only do these resources still exist, but they’ve blossomed into mega-resources.

First up is JancisRobinson.com. Jancis Mary Robinson is a world-renowned wine critic and journalist, and one of her goal’s in life is to inform you and me about the pleasures of wine. If you’re new to wine, be sure to take a look at the For Beginners section of her site.

Next, I was happy to see that Robin Garr’s old site has morphed into the very nifty Wine Lovers Discussion Groups. A blog, forums, FAQs, videos, podcasts – you name it, and it’s here! If you’re at all interested in wine, you’ve got to check out the Learn About Wine section of this site.

For me, it was so nice to visit these old friends again! I hope you enjoy visiting them, too.

Scent of Roses in the Air

It’s the end of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, and the scent of roses is filling the air.

Look to the blowing Rose about us–”Lo,
Laughing,” she says, “into the world I blow…”

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The wild roses started blooming down my way last weekend. And today a wonderful scent is wafting from my garden: one of the buds on the Abraham Darby has begun opening for real. (And once I figure out how to get the image uploader here to like me, I’ll show you.)

Abraham Darby is a David Austin rose. These “English roses” are crosses between various old garden roses and modern roses. The result is the repeat blooming of modern roses combined with the wonderful fragrance and form of old roses. And some of these are among the healthiest roses you’ll ever find, too. Although Abraham Darby is susceptible to blackspot, a fungal disease that is a problem in my area, some of the newer Austin roses are incredibly resistent to blackspot. I’ve had my eye on The Mayflower for some time now: lovely pink blooms with strong old rose fragrance on plants that are said to be completely resistant to blackspot, powdery mildew, and rust. If anyone out there has had experience with The Mayflower, I’d love to hear what you have to say about it.

Keep Gardening Costs to a Minimum

Just this morning I was thinking about how vegetable gardening is probably going to see a big boom now that food prices are soaring. So I was pleased this evening to stumble across “Recession Proof Gardening” at This Garden Is Illegal. I especially like the tip about buying easy-to-clone annuals such as petunias and coleus:

1. Get a big, leggy plant.
2. Make several cuttings and root them.
3. Plant out the rooted cuttings.

And that’s only one of several great suggestions for keeping your gardening costs low.

BTW, even if you start your petunias and coleus from seed yourself, that tip about making cuttings can be put to good use. And don’t limit yourself to ornamentals. Tomato plants can also be multiplied in this way. Pinch out the suckers and root them – one plant has now become two or more. Sure, it will take a little longer for those new plants to get to fruiting size, but you’ll have the fruits of the original plant in the meantime.

Addendum: Not all annuals can be propagated from cuttings. As I mentioned in my reply to Barb, this works only with soft-stemmed plants. And I forgot to mention that there are some perennials that you can propagate in this way, too. I’ve had very good luck with various kinds of sedum, for example.

Welcome to LJ’s Place

Here it is, my little place in the blogosphere. Way way back in the mid ’90s, I used to have a website called LJ’s Place by the Sea. The site had sections on raising plants from seed, growing roses, and enjoying good but inexpensive wine. The site was continually being updated with additions to existing pages and was always “under construction”.

Little did I know back then that what I really wanted was a blog. Of course, blogs didn’t exist back then, so who can blame me? Anyway, blogs do exist now, and this one will be my place of desultory musings on seeds, roses, wine, and probably a couple other things that strike my fancy.

I’m hoping I’ll enjoy this little place. And if you enjoy it, too, so much the better!