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Spring 1999

by Henrik Nordström

Since March 29, I have been in my native country Finland, establishing a demo garden and hosting a weekly garden show on Finnish Public TV. I welcomed this opportunity for two reasons: on the one hand I wanted to apply many of the gardening techniques I'd learned in Seattle during the past 15 years to my native country, and the other hand I was looking forward to the challenge of dealing with annoying events like frost well into May. And a challenge indeed it has been. Normally, the snow and frost is gone from southern Finland by the middle of March. Not so this year. I arrived here with my daughter Linnea a few days before Easter to find our garden site, and old meadow of about 1/2 acre which has laid fallow for the past seven years, covered with two feet of snow. And we were supposed to shoot the first show exactly one week later. The broadcast schedule had been set 6 months earlier, so I had to start preparing the site right away. I started shoveling snow from the meadow, almost falling asleep at my shovel from jet lag exhaustion. My brother suggested lighting some bonfires to melt the snow, but the heat they created seemed to go every other way except into the snow they were supposed to melt. So back it was to shoveling. After one full week, we had managed to clear an area of about 2000 square feet. We shot the first show in the cleared area, pretending to dig ditches and take soil samples, even though the ground was still frozen in many places and digging through it felt like breaking through bedrock. The chilly weather continued for two weeks, and on our second shooting day a week later it snowed as we were planting fruit trees in holes which I had managed to prepare beforehand by digging through the frozen top 2 inches of ground and keeping the holes from refreezing by piling hot manure on top of them right up till the filming moment.

By the third week in April, the weather finally took a turn for the better and we had one whole week of frost-free nights. I sowed seeds in pots in our newly erected greenhouse, and the seeds even germinated beautifully. Then by early May, we got another arctic blast with daytime highs only the 30s and nighttime lows in the 20s. Every evening, I carried containers of hot water into the greenhouse to keep the inside air temperature above freezing. The cold weather continued until mid-May, and I got tired of carrying hot water every night. So I learned from some locals to burn candles in the greenhouse at night, and amazingly they kept my tomato seedlings from freezing, even on the night of May 12th when the outside temperature dropped to about 20 degrees. The local storeowner smiled at me every evening when I showed up to buy more candles.

I did get a lot of work done in spite of the weather. We erected a wildlife fence around the whole site, since the forest is full of moose, deer, hare, badgers and lots of other creatures. We planted more fruit trees the second week of May when all the snow and frozen ground had finally thawed, we dug a garden pond and had the volunteer fire department fill it with water while we were filming a show, we put in large perennial beds in two concentric circles around the pond and planted well over 100 different perennials, and finally on May 14th we broke ground for the vegetable garden, turned and tilled the soil and planted potatoes. The ground was just saturated with quackgrass roots. And I used to think that Picardo was bad.

The locals are all being very polite to me about our project, but I'm pretty sure that they are hissing behind my back. I think their major concern is that quackgrass will prevail. I keep assuring them that I know my enemy and can deal with it.

It is now May 17th, and we have made 5 out of 10 scheduled TV shows. The last show for this spring will air June 24th, and by that time I will have to be able to present a thriving, beautiful garden. Then there will be a one month break in production, and by the middle of July we will be back showing off our wonderful harvest. And on top of everything, I promised today to provide fresh organic produce to the local farmer's market by the end of July. So I think my gardening in Seattle will take second priority this year. Fortunately, I planted my potatoes at Picardo in late March, mulched them heavily and expect them to take care of themselves until I'll be back harvesting them in September. Happy gardening to all of you, my friends, and wish me luck.

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Summer 1999 - Further Adventures Under the Midnight Sun

by Henrik Nordström

This is part 2 of the story of my demo garden project in my native country Finland. After one of the snowiest winters and chilliest springs on record, with killing frosts into mid-May, the heat arrived on June 8th. All of a sudden, we had daytime temperatures in the 80s, even touching 90 degrees, and night-time temperatures near 70 degrees. In combination with the long summer days at latitude 60, the garden really took off. I was amazed to see how well the vegetable garden was doing, even though I had no compost available to amend the soil. My garden site is an old grain field which has been cultivated for at least 240 years, but the last 7 years it has laid fallow. I guess the liberal amounts of chicken manure I used really did the trick. I've never seen broccoli plants as deep green in my life. My tomato plants grew 4 inches each day. Unfortunately, the quack grass and thistles grew at about the same rate. Covering the paths with cardboard and woodchips and the vegetable beds with newspapers and straw did, however, help a lot. I was delighted to see that many of the vegetable varieties I'd brought with me from Seattle actually outperformed the European varieties. Go Territorial Seed Company!

We had no significant rainfall after May 1st, so by mid-June I had to install an irrigation system. Being out in the sticks without any utilities, my only option was to dig a well and install a gas-powered pump. In the evening, I started the pump and pumped water from the well about 300 feet up a gentle slope where I'd installed a holding tank. After filling the tank, I let the water sit in it the next day to warm up, and in the evening I ran the water by gravity from the tank into the garden.

Early July, I returned briefly to Seattle to deal with 3 months of mail and to find my yard in Ballard turned into a jungle. All the rain and overcast weather in May and June had created a rain forest effect. I actually enjoyed spending 2 weeks weeding and pruning in Seattle. It felt like a vacation compared with the demo garden project in Finland. I took out the scythe at Picardo Farm and mowed down all the abandoned plots. Sure felt good. I planted a very late and minimal vegetable garden. Then it was back to work to Finland.

By mid-July, my broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage were ready to be harvested, less than 2 months after transplanting. The peas were also ready at the same time. Early every Saturday morning, my daughter Linnea and I picked produce from our 2000 square foot vegetable garden and took it to the local farmer's market. Thanks to all the publicity from our TV show, we sold out in about an hour.

The tomatoes, cucumbers and beans are starting to come in now in early August. The corn is not far behind. I am growing several different varieties of wonderful Finnish potatoes. It has been interesting to note that in spite of the late start in spring, most crops are coming in at about the same time as in Seattle. One huge advantage over Seattle, and especially Picardo Farm, is that there are no slugs. After living with slugs in Seattle for 15 years, I routinely look for slugs and slug damage on my plants, only to be unable to find any.

Now I have to wrap up the garden season here before fall arrives, usually by early September. Then it is back to Seattle and the Harvest Banquet. See you all there!

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Fall 1999

by Henrik Nordström

The last week in August was harvest time at my demo garden on Skåldö island in southern Finland. The camera crew from Finnish Public TV showed up one last time to tape our great harvest feast. Thanks to the warmest summer in 50 years, the tomatoes, corn, beans and other hot-weather lovers were ripe and bountiful. My 4 different varieties of yellow Finnish potatoes looked and tasted great.

I had invited all the people who had helped me out in one way or another with the garden project since the beginning in early April, when the ground was still covered with 2 feet of snow. Present were the farmer whose tractor got stuck three times in the wet soil in April and early May while trying his best to plow the old farmfield which was overgrown with birch brush after laying fallow for seven years; the sawmill owner who delivered the 10 foot long 4 x 4 posts (all 46 of them) for the moose fence; the backhoe operator who dug my well in late June when it was becoming apparent that we were experiencing the drought of the century; the wealthy aristocrat couple who had been entertained by stopping by from time to time during the past 5 months to watch my stubborn fight against the elements; the local Harley-Davidson guru with his wife and two blond daughters (ages 7 and 9) who had invited me over for a late dinner several times during the summer as I was bicycling by his house on my way home, often close to midnight. My daughter Linnea had also invited several of her friends from the village.

The menu consisted of vegetable and seafood stir-fry and barbecued corn. Since we had no electricity at the garden, everything had to be cooked on propane. I had not been able to find a wok suitable for propane hookup, but this problem was resolved by the village association's chairman who happily offered the community pancake pan, a huge 16" diameter contraption normally used just once a year to make Viking-size pancakes at the ancient pagan fall celebration. So I lit the propane burner, put some oil in the pan and while the pan was heating, Linnea and I picked the ingredients from the garden as the camera was rolling. I was concerned whether the pan was hot enough, and while expressing this concern on camera I added the ingredients to the pan. Immediately, a huge cloud of the steam rose from the pan which must have been several hundred degrees hot, and the camera crew was about to run for their lives. Fortunately, the camera operator kept rolling, and I must admit that the resulting TV-show which was viewed by almost 10% of the entire population of the country did indeed constitute my public slapstick debut.

On next year's agenda for my Finnish garden project is the construction of a garden house. This is something you see in community gardens all over Europe: garden plots 2000-5000 square foot is size with small garden houses on them, no larger than 300 square feet. Many community gardeners in Europe live in their garden houses the whole growing season. My garden house will be built according to a minimum-impact principle, using only non-toxic and recyclable materials. There will be no utility hookups. Instead, I'll install solar panels, a wind generator, a composting toilet, and a manually operated shower. I hope to break ground next May.

My return to Seattle was somewhat of a culture shock. I had been forewarned by E-mail before my return that emotions were overheating at Picardo Farm. The object of people's rage/affection was supposedly a piece of art which had been installed at the garden. I have to say that from the perspective of my garden in the Finnish countryside, where I lived and worked among very hard-working, honest, handy and down-to-earth people, the Picardo art controversy seemed like a city-folk neurosis, and the locals in Finland sarcastically provided me with helpful tips on making bikinis for the Picardo lady. One on the funniest rumors circulating upon my return to Seattle was that I had supposedly brought the sculpture with me from Finland (in the overhead bin). I personally feel that the new three-story buildings presently being constructed 10 feet from Picardo pose a much greater threat to the quality of gardening. However, I must state here how privileged I am to be able to garden on two continents at the same time and still maintain a sane front. I am eternally grateful to Barbara Donnette, who back in 1991 picked me straight out of the graduating Master Gardener class and appointed me Master Gardener Advisor at Picardo Farm. Barbara Donnette and Nancy Allen were the two super women who ran the entire P-Patch program back then. Both are still active P-Patchers, and seeing them together at this year's Harvest Potluck almost gave the impression that this was still 1991.

People are telling me that this past summer was a miserable one here in Seattle. I guess it was a bit cooler than average, but based on the sweetness of my grapes in my yard in Ballard and the plentiful harvest of tomatoes, cucumbers and corn it must not have been too bad.

A great advantage of living in Seattle is the possibility for winter gardening. I stopped by Interbay P-Patch the other day and was truly impressed by all the lettuces, chard, kale and broccoli which will provide their growers with fresh produce through much of the winter. The plants won't grow much from November through February, but they'll keep fresh in the garden until needed. If severe cold snaps threaten, it is a good idea to build a cloche of PVC pipes and plastic sheeting, or mulch the plants heavily with leaves or straw. Winter broccoli always benefits from a cloche, because excessive rainfall tends to make the centers of the broccoli heads rot. Make sure to open the cloches partially on sunny winter days to avoid excessive heat build-up.