Dirt By Amy Stewart

Blueberry season!

I got into blueberries in a big way recently. One or two shrubs hardly seemed worth the trouble, so I came home with six plants and a commitment to buy more if I could find room for them. I’ve been trying to fill one long border with culinary plants—herbs, fruit, artichokes, kale, anything edible—so blueberries fit with the theme and they were the right height for an empty spot I couldn’t figure out what to do with. Also, blueberries can tolerate a little shade, and the place I’d chosen for them gets morning shade most of the year.

This is a good time to plant blueberries, and they’re available right now at all the nurseries and will be through bareroot planting season, which ends around February when the spring plants start to show up. The shrubs look good all year long, and in the fall, many varieties produce gorgeous red foliage. Just remember to pay attention to their special needs, such as:

Here's Your Chance to Go to Ecuador

If you're in the flower industry and have never been to Latin America, or if you're a flower lover who is quite certain that you will be sick and tired of cold, grey weather by February, listen up.    There's a tour of Ecuador's flower industry coming up in February, and it's worth checking out.

I found Ecuador to be heartbreakingly beautiful.   Really, there is something about this country that will just touch you profoundly.  It is elegant and mysterious and enthralling.

When I was there in 2004, I was surprised to see that Ecuador has no tourism industry built up around its flower farms.  Holland has its legendary bulb fields, its flower auctions that are open to the public, and its floating flower market in the heart of Amersterdam.  But Ecuador has none of that.  The flower farms are off to themselves outside of Quito.  In some ways, I love it that this country is still authentically itself and not hyped up for the tourists.  But if you have an interest in flowers, it would be difficult to find them on your own in Ecuador.    So a tour like this one is helpful.

Remember, this is the country that produces baseball-sized roses on six foot long stems.  What's not to like?  Ah--Ecuador. I wish I was going back myself.  But please, check it out.  I would love to see this sort of thing take off.

Rain Gear

If you’re not a gardener, you might think that gardening is mostly about the plants: what to plant, where to plant it, what to feed it, when to prune it. While it’s true that gardeners are deeply involved with the lives of their plants, let’s not overlook another critical—and often exasperating—aspect of a gardener’s life: the gear.

I won’t even get started on tools with wooden handles that break after a week, rakes whose tines get tangled in whatever you’re raking and fall off, and pruning shears with badly-designed grips that slip out of your hands. No, winter is on the way, and all I care about this time of year are boots and gloves.

If I were a gardening glove, I would not ever want to end up in my garden. I would cower and tremble on the sales rack, hoping against hope that I was the wrong color or the wrong size or too expensive or too cheap to be chosen. And if I did have the misfortune to actually be purchased and brought home, I would hide. Hide in the closet, behind the fertilizer and the pruning shears. Hide among the weeds and hope to get left outside. I’d take any desperate act my little gardening glove brain could conceive of.

The Girls Review Their Press Coverage

Organic Gardening magazine sent a photographer to the house a few months ago to take some pictures of me and the chickens; the results are in the November issue.  As you can see, the hens were thrilled to see themselves in print.

If you're here just for the chicken blogging, check out the Chickens category.

Calling All Garden Clubs, Book Clubs, and Organizers of Rowdy Get-Togethers

If you're part of a group that gets together to swap stories, tell lies, read books, dig in the dirt, or drink good wine or cheap beer, I hope you'll check the Events page and see if I'm coming to your part of the world.  I just got a flurry of requests from garden clubs and conference organizers for these areas:  New York, DC, LA, Chicago, and Texas.  Sometimes, if I have two events in the same town a week or two apart, I'll try to fill in the gaps with other speaking engagements so I can just stay put rather than fly home and back.   It saves on travel costs and makes the whole thing more affordable for everyone.

Go here to find out what's involved with booking a talk.  Maybe I'll see you out there somewhere.

At the Center for Urban Horticulture, Seattle

At the Center for Urban Horticulture, Seattle

Dahlia season at Pike's Market, Seattle

A New Standard for Sustainable Agriculture

If you're in the floral industry, or if you're a "stakeholder" when it comes to sustainability in agriculture of any kind, you'll want to know about a meeting coming up on October 29.  (This meeting is not open to the general public, but to  "companies, organizations, scientists, regulators and others working on sustainable agriculture issues for food, floral, fiber, and biofuel crops."  There's contact info below about who to contact to get an invite.)

The short version is:  The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) sets voluntary standards for all kinds of industries.  Once an ANSI standard exists for a particular industry, it can often become the default for laws, regulations, etc.  So if you're in the cut flower industry, or any other sector of agriculture, and you're concerned about organics and sustainability, you should be paying attention to the new set of ANSI standards for sustainable agriculture under discussion right now. "Sustainable" is one of those words that everyone defines differently, but now there will be an ANSI standard that explains exactly what it means for agriculture.

One subset of the Sustainable Agriculture Practice Standard is devoted to cut flowers and potted plants.  The standards were developed by SCS and are already in use through their VeriFlora eco-label program.

Those in the cut flower and nursery industry know that there are already a hodgepodge of sustainability programs and standards around the world.  Now that the standard that began as VeriFlora is under consideration as an ANSI standard, we're perhaps seeing some progress toward a single standard for the entire industry.

The entire press release follows.  If you're a stakeholder, consider getting in touch about providing input at the upcoming stakeholder meeting.

The Garden Blogger Challenge

During the month of October, GardenRant is participating in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge.  Here's how it works:  teachers choose projects they want funded, bloggers pick projects they want to support, and challenge their readers to  make donations.   GardenRant has chosen a bunch of school garden projects and is encouraging other garden bloggers to join in. The idea is that by having one mega-garden-blogger challenge, garden bloggers can send a big message about how much gardening matters. 

So if you'd like to make a donation, go here to see the GardenRant Global Garden Blogger Challenge and choose the project you'd like to support.  And if you have a garden blog or website (or, for that matter, actual friends in the real world), you can post a link on your own blog to the GardenRant challenge, or e-mail it to your friends.

Spread the word--you dig?