Sunday, 9 August 2015
Long Beach Peninsula Edible Garden Tour
The annual edible garden tour, presented by the Long Beach Grange, is a benefit for local food banks.
Homewood
“A young food forest on about ½ acre, with some big changes underway this season”
Homewood lives up to its name with such a feeling of hominess. The house was designed to have windows on two sides of every room and has an entire wall of books, something I always like to see. Lisa, the owner of this garden, is the organizer of the Edible Tour. She and her late spouse designed and built the house together. She is a fiber artist as well as a food forest gardener, and her creations can be found at the Bay Avenue Gallery. While some of her creations are elegant fashion accessories like her beaded purses, you can see that others are inspired by her kitchen garden.
So what is a food forest? “A food forest is a gardening technique or land management system, which mimics a woodland ecosystem by substituting edible trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals. Fruit and nut trees make up the upper level, while berry shrubs, edible perennials and annuals make up the lower levels.”
Lisa’s garden lives up to the description, with food at all levels of the garden.
Lisa told us that she had at last successfully managed to make a deer-proof fence all around the perimeter of the property. The smaller cages are to protect fruit from the birds; otherwise, there would be none left for Lisa of the special delicacies like blueberries.
I first took the path around the south side of the garden.
The sunny center of the garden on the south side of the house is given to kitchen garden rows.
Lisa made numbered edging for the garden beds and told us that she is planning to do so for other beds, with tree names set into the concrete.
I am sure that earlier in the year there were edible peas, as well. By the almost mid-August date of this tour, the early season crops are done, especially in this hot dry year when the season for most flowers and fruits is earlier than usual.
We walked between the house and garage to see the north side of the garden.
We returned to the deck on the south side of the house and sat with Lisa for awhile as the tour drew to a close.
At five o’clock, the official end of tour time, we departed and saw Lisa taking in the tour sign.
That’s the end of our local garden tour season! There will be one more tour, the Cannon Beach Cottage Tour, in mid-September. Meanwhile, it’s back to focusing on work and my own garden.
I’m interested in how she builds the blueberry cages–did she use PVC for the frame? Maybe you can give me the scoop this weekend. I have to protect my blueberries too, and her method looks easier than just draping the netting over the bush. Less damaging, too.
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I think it is PVC. I don’t have the scoop though. I can give you her email address. It looks like an effective method and she told us it does work.
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