I just loaded Anne Bryant’s April calendar onto my desktop and it makes me smile every time I open up my laptop. When Anne sent me the files for the calendar she told me that she and her husband have a mason bee house in their garden and that when they were spreading compost last week that a “big, fat, sleepy bumble bee crawled out of the dirt”.

I haven’t spotted a bumble bee yet, but when I was stopped at a traffic light the other day I looked out the window and right into the fuzzy face of a honeybee who was resting on my side view mirror. If you’re interested in attracting more pollinators to the garden, check out the Pollinator Partnership. You can download excellent regional guides with lists of pollinator plants and strategies for providing shelter for pollinators (thanks to my friend Mary Ann for turning me on to this resource!).

To put this month’s calendar on your computer’s desktop, all you need to do is choose the size that best fits your monitor and then click on the link below—the file will automatically download to your computer and then you can set it up as your background image:

1024 x 768

1600 x 1200

1920 x 1200

This spring, from April through October, I will be teaching a combined gardening and cooking class with chef Matt Dillon at his restaurant The Corson Building in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood. This is our second year offering the course and it is so much fun. I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to teach people about growing food in such a beautiful setting and the chance to learn from Matt. The course limited to 20 students, and the spots are filling in fast. I’ve included the official description below with all the details, including registration information:

The Corson Building’s Kitchen Garden Series

Chef Matthew Dillon and Master Gardener, Willi Galloway, have joined forces and created a gardening and cooking series inspired by the writings of food lover and gardener, Angelo Pellegrini.

“Without a kitchen garden—that plot of land on which one grows herbs, vegetables, and some fruit—it is not possible to produce decent and savory food for the dinner table.” ~ Angelo Pellegrini, The Food-Lovers Garden

The Kitchen Garden Series is a seven-month long course designed to bring food full circle – from setting a seed into the soil to sitting down to a meal made with vegetables grown and harvested outside the kitchen door.

Each class will begin with wine and a lesson in the garden. Galloway will emphasize organic growing techniques and practical strategies for maximizing production in small, urban spaces. She will also explore the amazing diversity of foods that gardeners have access to (fennel pollen, pea tendrils, garlic scapes), how to harvest crops at different stages of growth, and ways to maximize the flavor and quality of homegrown vegetables. Salad and herb gardening, growing warm season vegetables, succession planting, soil care, and planning a winter garden will all be covered.

Following the gardening lesson, the class will move into the kitchen where a cooking class will be taught. Central to each cooking class will be the idea of thrift—using all the edible parts of a plant and preserving the harvest. In addition to teaching how to cook out of the garden, Dillon will concentrate on pantry and/or larder items (canning, drying, and preserving methods) as well as making products that can enhance seasonal eating. An example being dairy products (yogurt, clarified butter, crème fraîche), if students learn how to make yogurt in April, there will be an abundance of it around when strawberries are in season, thus providing an ideal complement for the berries. Each class will end with a light meal prepared by Matthew Dillon.

The Kitchen Garden Series begins Wednesday, April 26 and meets once a month on Tuesdays (May 24, June 21, July 26, August 23, and September 20, October TBD.) All classes take place at The Corson Building from 6pm to 9pm rain or shine. Class size is limited to 20 students, and attendees should be prepared to get dirty in the garden.

Cost of the series is $700 per person and includes free admission to The Corson Building’s annual Cider Press in October. A deposit of $200 is required to reserve a space with the balance of $500 due at the first class. To register, email info@thecorsonbuilding.com or call (206) 762- 3330.

Willi Galloway is a Portland-based Master Gardener and the creator of DigginFood.com—a website that serves up organic kitchen gardening advice three times each week. She is also the vegetable gardening expert on Greendays, a weekly gardening call-in show on Seattle’s NPR affiliate KUOW 94.9 FM, and writes The Gardener, a weekly gardening column on the Apartment Therapy blog Re-Nest. Galloway has grown food in backyards, in containers on balconies and rooftops, and in community gardens. Currently, she gardens and keeps chickens in her small Southeast Portland yard. Her first book, tentatively titled Grow. Cook. Eat: A Food-Lover’s Guide to Kitchen Gardening will be published in January 2012.

Matthew Dillon is the acclaimed chef/owner of Sitka & Spruce and The Corson Building in Seattle’s industrial Georgetown neighborhood. Dillon holds a Culinary Arts degree from Seattle Central Community College and credits his experience as sous chef at The Herbfarm in Woodinville, Washington under pioneering chef Jerry Traunfeld as life changing. Traunfeld introduced Dillon to the benefits of gardens, foragers, and local purveyors, thus solidifying his belief in the importance of fresh, simple food. Dillon’s vision was apparent at Sitka & Spruce, his tiny Mediterranean inspired restaurant that opened in 2006 and earned him a place among Food & Wine Magazines Best New Chefs of 2007. Dillon’s latest venture, The Corson Building, which opened in June of 2008, is part communal dining restaurant, part larder, part event space, part urban garden and farm – and all about a farm fresh, foraged, local, simple, delicious food experience. Matthew Dillon has been nominated for 2011 James Beard’s Best New Chef in the Pacific Northwest.

Yesterday, for the first time in way too long, I gardened.

I ripped out a pretty hefty chunk of grass and weeds with my trusty 4-tine cultivator. I got dirt in my hair and on my face and under my nails, just like normal, and worked until it was almost too dark to see. It was the best! Photos of the new garden are forthcoming, but in the meantime I thought I’d share glamour shots of some of the cool season vegetables I am going to fill it with.

Who can resist lettuce seedlings in spring? Not me. I picked up three beauties on Saturday at the Seattle Tilth early spring plant sale.

‘Forellenschluss’ is an heirloom romaine and my most favorite of all lettuces. It has a crunchy base and a tender top. I love its pretty speckled leaves and very mild flavor. It grows into quite a large head, so give it some room if you plant it. ‘Breen’ is a new variety for  me. I was captivated by its reddish black leaves. It is apparently quite a petite romaine, which will be nice because I think one head should make a dinner-sized salad for our two person family.

‘Tom Thumb’ is perhaps the world’s cutest lettuce. It forms a palm-sized head of the most tender leaves. It is also a baby slug magnet. I ruthlessly spread Sluggo around it to protect the heads from getting mauled.

‘Romanesco’ broccoli is such a cool plant and I’m excited to grow it again. Last year I got the weeniest heads because I watered inconsistently. And if there is one thing that broccoli and cauliflower hate, it is fluctuating soil moisture. It leads to “buttoning”, which is simply the formation of dreadfully disappointing small heads. This year I vow to keep the soil moist as a wrung out sponge at all times. If you haven’t bought broccoli starts yet, or if you are starting your own indoors, be sure to set them out when they are small (only 2 to 3 leaves). Any bigger and they are also prone to buttoning. I’m also growing ‘Purple Peacock’ broccoli, which is a seriously cool plant. I tried it for the first time last year and it produced ‘Red Russian’ kale-like leaves and purple broccoli side shoots well into summer. Loved it!

‘Walla Walla’ Onions are so delicious and sweet and a must in my garden. I’m also trying the new-to-me  ‘Red Long of Tropea’ and planting ‘Lincoln’ leeks which get super thick, fat shanks (click here for  my instructions on planting onion and leek seedlings).

‘Rainbow Lacinato’. I’m pretty sure I was a brontosaurus in a former life. Nothing else really explains my love for ‘Lacinato’ kale (also known as Dino Kale). So I am extra excited to try ‘Rainbow Lacinato’, which is a cross between ‘Lacinato’ and ‘Redbor’ kales that was developed at Wild Garden Seed. It purportedly has ‘Lacinato’-like leaves with red, purple, and blue green hues. Swoon!

‘Purple Italian’ artichoke. This artichoke gets purple flower buds. When we had a community garden plot, there was a gal who grew tons of these and they were so gorgeous. Sometimes she let them bloom and they looked like big purple thistles, but I’m sure mine will never reach that stage in my garden because I’ll gobble them up while they are still buds.

On Monday evening, The Boat Street Cafe in Seattle is hosting a benefit for the family of Sachie Mikawa, a longtime employee of Boat Street Cafe. Sachie’s mother and sister lost their home on the Northeast Coast of Japan when the tsunami flattened their village. They are now living in a shelter in Sendai. I unfortunately can’t make it up from Portland for the fundraiser, but I’ve donated a 2-hour kitchen garden consultation and there will be artwork, specialty foods, cookbooks, and gift certificates to local restaurants available. Tickets to the event are $25 at the door.  If you can, please go. All the money raised at the event will go directly to help Sachie’s family.

One of my favorite artists, Rigel Stuhmiller is also generously donating donating 100% of the profits from all non-custom items in her Etsy shop to Save the Children’s efforts in Japan. Much of Rigel’s beautiful artwork is inspired by Chino farm, which is run by a 2nd-generation Japanese family. They grow exquisite vegetables for their local community as well as restaurants such as Spago and Chez Panisse. Many Japanese agriculture students that Rigel has gotten to know while working on the Chino farm in San Diego were severely affected by the tsunami. Many of their hometowns have been wiped from the map the tsunami and earthquake, and one prefecture also faces the dire and ongoing nuclear threat.

A generous private donor has pledged to match Rigel’s contribution 100%, and San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project has pledged to match up to $1000. That means that every dollar donated is multiplied by almost 300%. Rigel is actively working to secure more matching donors, to further multiply the power of each donation. You can see more of her artwork and contribute by visiting her Etsy shop and purchasing one of her wonderful block prints.

I’m headed to the Seattle Tilth Early Spring Edible Plant Sale this Saturday, and ‘Walla Walla’ sweet onions and ‘Red Long of Tropea’ onions are on my list. I prefer to grow bulbing onions from seedlings because they bulb up more reliably than “sets” which are just small whole onions. Most gardening books recommend using a stick (sometimes called a dibble) to make an individual hole for each onion seedling. You then drop the onion into the hole and backfill soil around it. I find this incredibly tedious and instead plant my onions in a trench, which streamlines the planting process. Here’s how to do it:

Create a 3- to 4-inch deep V-shaped trench (also called a furrow) using a hoe or a trowel. Lay out the onions side by side against one bank of the furrow. I plant the seedlings only an inch or two apart. This spacing allows me to gradually thin out the onions and eat them at different stages. I thin out every other plant when they reach the scallion stage and again when the bulbs begin to form. I leave the remaining onions in the ground to grow into mature bulbs.

To plant the onions, simply draw the soil from one edge of the furrow over the seedlings roots, burying them and about the bottom 1/3 of the seedling. The seedlings will still be cockeyed at this stage.

Straighten out the seedlings by pushing the soil from the other side of the furrow in towards the middle. You want about two-thirds of each seedling to be above the soil line. This is not brain surgery or a precise science. If a seedling is buried too deeply, simply pull it up. If another needs to be buried deeper just hill a bit more soil around it.

Planting onions in a furrow also makes it easy to water them. Just put a bubbler attachment on the end of the hose and set it in the furrow. You can also water by hand by filling up the furrow repeatedly with water. Or, you can run a soaker hose or drip tape down the length of the furrow. The onions will push themselves up out of the soil as they grow (see top photo). Don’t hill soil up around the bulbs, as this prevents them from forming their papery protective outer layer. Onions, shallots, and leeks can all be planted this way.

Organic gardening is usually narrowly defined as not using synthetic chemicals, but I think the definition should be expanded to include, among other ideas, resourcefulness. Making compost instead of stuffing leaves into bags and setting them out on the curb, using old concrete chunks as pavers, and constructing raised beds with reclaimed bricks all firmly fall into this category. The creative re-imagining of common materials helps reduce our contribution to the waste stream and makes our gardens more interesting. The versatile plant supports pictured in this post are the perfect example of resourcefulness. I spotted them in a lovely kitchen garden in Marin County and was impressed with how the gardener had turned ordinary yard waste and random bits of wood into plant supports that were beautiful and very functional.

The gardener created the teepee-like structures using tree trimmings and the pliable vines of pruned grapes. She wrapped chicken wire around the lower half to protect the small cucumber she had planted inside from her chickens, which range around in the garden as she works—though the wire could also certainly function as a climbing surface for cucumbers, small melons, peas, and beans. Even though I don’t have a crafty bone in my body, I’m planning on trying to recreate these trellises using trimming from the huge and unruly wisteria in our backyard and branches from a tree that needs trimming.

If your garage is anything like mine, it is full of spare bits of wood just waiting to be transformed into these simple structures, which were used to provide a scaffolding for beans and to enclose cherry tomatoes.

Four pieces of wood were simply driven into the ground. To form the cage, the gardener screwed in eyes, zig zagged wire through them, and wrapped chicken wire around the bottom of the frame. I really like this system because it is simple and also unobtrusive.

At the moment I do not start a lot of my own seeds indoors because there just isn’t a great spot to set up a light system in our tiny house. But I began my gardening career starting and tending to thousands of tomato seedlings at a nursery and have started all sorts of seeds over the years. Even though I will be purchasing most of my own starts this year, I thought I’d share four tips for starting seeds indoors successfully.

Choosing what to start. I don’t usually start tomatoes, peppers, or eggplants. Even though these vegetables grow well from seed, I only plant one or two plants of each variety. So it doesn’t make sense for me to purchase an entire pack of seeds for each variety and grow tons of plants that I do not have room for in my garden. Instead, I reserve my limited seed starting space for vegetables that I plan on planting several seedlings of the same variety, such as broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, cucumber and pok choy. For plants that I want to grow from seedlings but don’t have room to start myself, I turn to local plant sales, farmers markets, and specialty nurseries because they often carry a big selection of unusual varieties.

Use seed-starting soil mix. This special seed-starting mix is lightweight, which makes it easy for the little seeds to send their roots down and their leaves up. It costs a bit more than regular potting mix, but I think its worth it.

Water with a spray bottle. It’s important to keep the soil moist as the seeds germinate and I find that spritzing the soil’s surface with water from a spray bottle is the easiest way to do this. Once the seedlings are up and growing, I put water in the tray below the plants. The seedlings wick water up as they need it and this strategy helps prevent mold and damping off—a fungal disease that thrives in wet soil and causes perfectly healthy seedlings to keel over.

Use a fan. I put a small fan next to my seedlings and turn it on low. This helps keep the air circulating—which prevents the dreaded damping off—and makes for sturdier seedlings.

Here are some great varieties to start at home:

‘Purple Peacock’ broccoli

‘Satsuki Midori’ cucumber

‘Forellenschluss’ lettuce

‘Red Choi’ pok choi (also sold as pok choy)

‘Chieftain Savoy’ cabbage