PLANTWISE

Planty, Gardeny Things to Do This Weekend

Swan Island Dahlia Festival, seed-saving class, plant your winter veges and score some good sale plants at your local retail nurseries!

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Aug 27, 2010 at 09:55AM 1 Comments

Japanese Bishop Dahlia. Photo courtesy of Swan Island Dahlias.

Looking for fun/interesting plant- and garden-related things to do this weekend? Here are some ideas:

Swan Island Dahlia Fest in Canby, OR
When: Saturday Aug 28, Sunday Aug 29 and Monday August 30 plus next weekend, too: September 4, 5, and 6 (Sat to Mon) – 10 am to 6 pm daily.
Where: here
Admission: Free
All variety of food, fun, clowns – hopefully not scary clowns. You can also order dahlia tubers for next year and go home with buckets of gorgeous cut flowers.
Phone: (800) 410-6540 OR (503) 266-7711

Take a class on seed Saving with Vern Nelson, The Hungry Gardener columnist, and garden consultant. Long-time vegetable gardening expert and cook will explain how to save seed of your favorite crops for next year. He’s a great teacher and most enjoyable speaker.
Where: Portland Nursery, 5050 SE STARK
When: Sunday August 29 at 1:00pm

Plant your fall and winter vegetables, if you haven’t already done so. I’ve been a slacker (working on a book – more on that soon!) so I have some seed-starting to do myself this weekend. There’s time to plant greens still and I might try carrots and beets, too, although it’s getting a bit late. But I’ll be stocking up on vegetable starts from my local nurseries, too – must get that purple-sprouting broccoli in the ground asap!!!

And while you’re out and about, scan nurseries’ sale tables now. This is the time of year when plants that suffered in the recent heat spells are showing up on the 50% off tables. I’ve seen some fantastic plants with minor cosmetic damage on sale tables lately. There are also lots of pots on sale (thanks for that tip, Lauren Hall-Behrens!). In short, it’s a great time to shop at retail plant nurseries, particularly if you’re looking for late summer/fall blooming plants like asters, salvias, and those tall, statuesque perennial lobelias. And within a matter of weeks, it will be an idyllic time to plant, as the fall rains are just around the corner.

Planning ahead: here’s a future weekend event (sign up now, as space is limited and it’s likely to sell out):

Chicken Coop Building Workshop.
When: Saturday, September 25 from 10am-3pm
Details: Learn how to build a secure, happy home for your hens in this hands-on workshop with John Carr of The Garden Coop. Participants will build The Garden Ark mobile chicken coop. At the end of the workshop there will be a drawing and one lucky participant will go home with the coop. All participants will go home with a copy of the plans and the hands-on know how to build a coop.

This workshop is in partnership between “Growing Gardens”: and Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply

The cost of the workshop is $40 and the deadline to sign up and pay is Monday, September 20. Proceeds from the workshop benefit Growing Gardens’ programs. For more information or to sign up contact Rodney Bender at 503-284-8420 or rodney@growing-gardens.org

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Tags: Gardening Events, Flowers, Chickens, Plant Sale

Waterlily Festival, Tour de Coops, Chicken Class and 40% Off Plants!

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Jul 23, 2010 at 08:42AM 0 Comments

A (tiny) bucolic scene from Hughes Water Gardens

There’s a bunch going on in the gardening world, starting tonight.

This weekend, Hughes Water Gardens is holding their 8th Annual Waterlily Festival and Invitational Art Show. The artists’ reception is this evening from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. Stroll through the water gardens, meet the artists, and enjoy music, wine and appetizers. Address: 25289 SW Stafford Rd., Tualatin OR 97062. Events continue on Saturday with talks, tours and sales and information booths devoted to garden restoration, on Sunday with artists’ demonstrations and more events, and into the week that follows.

The Tour de Coops is happening on Saturday July 24th from 11 am to 3 pm. Twenty-five chicken owners around Portland open their yards so you can see their coops and meet their chickens. This benefit event for Growing Gardens consists of a self-guided tour with stops all over East Portland – you can decide where to start and finish. Cost: $15 and there’s a raffle for two stylish chicken coops, as well as gift certificates donated by local nurseries and feed stores.

A happy chook at Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply this spring

Buy your tickets today at Concentrates, Inc., Garden Fever!, Livingscape Nursery, Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply, People’s Co-Op, the Urban Farm Store, and Whole Foods Market in Hollywood. And 20% off if you have the 2010 Chinook Book and buy your ticket at one of the above retailers. On Saturday, head for the parking lot at Westminster Presbyterian Church at 1624 NE Hancock to buy your tickets, as well as chickeny books and resources, organic breakfast treats and such.

On the chicken theme, Naomi Montacre of Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply – along with Lisa Ewing of the Avian Medical Center – will be teaching a PCC class – Chickens 201 – from 9 – 11 am at the store. Issues tackled include predators, health and behavioral issues, introducing new birds to the flock, and other chicken challenges. Sign up here. Cost: $29.

Finally, if you’re just dying to go on a mad plant-shopping spree, you might want to stop by Ferguson’s Fragrant Garden Nursery this Saturday July 24. They are closing their Lake Oswego store and in the consolidation process, are putting everything on sale at their St. Paul store, all while throwing their annual Midsummer Night’s Dream Fragrance Festival. Forty percent off is nothing to sniff at. The sale runs all day on Saturday and from 5 pm on, there will be light appetizers and wine and “inspirational music” plus tours and talks on cultivating fragrance in the garden. Directions here.

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Tags: Chickens, Plant Sale

InFARMation at Roots Brewing

tonight – Wed June 9

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Jun 09, 2010 at 09:23AM 2 Comments

A little beer and a lot of learning! This is from January’s cozy InFARMation event.

Interested in the many facets of urban farming? Tonight, June 9, at 6:30, Naomi Montacre from Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply, moderates a panel titled Urban Farming in Portland at Roots Organic Brewing in Southeast Portland. This event, sponsored by Friends of Family Farmers, is free and open to the public, of course.

Show up at 5:30, mill about, have some delicious beer and talk with fellow farming enthusiasts.

These InFARMation events (full schedule here) are fun, fascinating and generate some great discussion on the featured topics. I’ve attended a few and learned a lot. It’s like a swarming beehive in there, with organic beer flowing and passionate people sharing information about what they love most. If you are a frequenter of farmers’ markets, you will surely see some familiar faces.

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Tags: Gardening Events, Chickens, Farmers Markets

Chicken Shirts

- going viral?

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Mar 14, 2010 at 11:52AM 0 Comments

Karen Wolfgang and Isabel LaCourse, co-owners of Independence Gardens, LLC

If there’s anything a sluggish economy does, it’s make people crafty. By crafty, I mean arts-and-craftsy.

Take the Portland Chicken Shirt phenomenon. A couple of years ago, two women running a sustainable edible gardening business started screen printing some goofy chickens onto thrift-store t-shirts as holiday gifts for friends and family. Before long, other people wanted them and their creators realized they were on to a good thing. These shirts are fun, funky and come in great colors. I got one at Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply – and received another as a gift soon afterward! (Fortunately, a different color.) Now they’re making them in toddler and children’s sizes, too.

I was wearing one of mine under several woolly layers at a meeting recently and was talking with some folks about chickens. Before long, I mentioned my lovely chicken shirt, only to discover I was chatting with the shirt’s creator!

Since we in Portland are up to our ears in urban farming movement mud, it only makes sense that we want to show our chicken-love to the world… after all, once you’ve experienced the beady little eyes of your own hen staring at your hand and insistently pecking it because she thinks you have something to eat, long after you’ve opened your hand and shown her that you don’t, you’ll never be the same! And let’s not forget how adorable chickens look when they run… and roost… and sit on their eggs… Chickens are quite possibly the most endearing creatures on Earth. I’m sure that chicken-people are at least as proud of their friendly, charming, slug-eating, egg-producing pets as dog-people. And we all know how much dog-people love their dogs.

As long as chicken-people don’t start looking like their chickens the way dog-people morph into their dogs, I’m cool.

Bella – the perfect dog for a chicken-person! Same size, weight and fluffiness but regrettably, no eggs and she doesn’t usually eat slugs. Of course, chickens don’t retrieve tennis balls.

Chicken Shirts are available in children’s sizes S, M, and L and adults’ XS, S, M, L, XL, and 2X, as well as long-sleeve S, M, and L (brown and black only). They have just started producing “Chicken Squirt” onesies and will soon add hoodies. Click here to see colors and styles or to order on-line. Or buy then at Linnton Feed & Seed, Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply, or Wichita Feed & Hardware at 6089 SE Johnson Creek Blvd., Portland (503-775-6767).

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Tags: Chickens, Garden Stuff

The Chicks Are Coming!

local resources for urban chicken farmers

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Feb 03, 2010 at 10:00AM 4 Comments

This lovely poster was designed by local artist Joe Wirtheim and is for sale, along with some others, at the Urban Farm Store

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Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply store, now open for business

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Co-owner Mary helping the new rat terrier rescue dog acclimate to his new surroundings…

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Adorable little pygmy goats and chickens just settling in to their new home at Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply

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The Urban Farm Store’s brand new digs are much bigger. They’re still unpacking…

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Looks like the chickens were some of the first to be moved in at the new location…

Ten years ago, when I first kept chickens, there were few places in Portland to buy supplies. Driving out to Foster Feed on Southeast Foster & 103rd (Tel: 503-777-2967) was something of a pilgrimage from the city — there weren’t many of us with chickens yet then – and I’d often ride out with one of the few other chicken-o-philes I knew so we could pool resources and buy big sacks of grit and oyster shell, feed (there was no organic feed available then) or bedding. We chicken people stuck together.

Now, we have numerous small farm stores in the city limits where urban chickeners can buy their supplies. Baby chicks are available throughout spring and early summer, along with the organic feed, bedding and other supplies needed to keep them healthy and happy. You can even buy some rather spectacular pre-fab coops!

Since we’re in the final countdown to the start of chick season (mid-February), here’s a survey of my favorite places to find chicks and all-things-chickeny in Portland:

Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply store, now open for business

First, the brand-spanking new Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply, located at 2500 SE Tacoma St, Portland OR 97202, right on McLoughlin (Tel: 503-517-8551). This store, run by Naomi, her husband Neil and her mom Mary (just don’t call her “Mother Mary” please!!!), sells chicks, feed, soil amendments, fertilizers, books, seeds and plants. Also, some adorable chicken t-shirts and – my favorite – a beautiful little barn and fenced run where you can meet and greet their little flock of farm animals including miniature goats! Naomi has honed her knowledge of soil and organic amendments and fertilizers after managing for several years at Concentrates, Inc., a feed and fertilizer supply store at 2613 SE 8th (Tel: 503-234-7501). Naomi now teaches classes on all variety of urban farming topics but is particularly helpful with chickens, goats, organic gardening practices and soil issues from organic nutrition to soil tilth.

Co-owner Mary helping the new rat terrier rescue dog acclimate to his new surroundings…

The Urban Farm Store opened last year on SE Morrison and has just recently moved down the street. Now located at 2100 SE Belmont, Portland, OR 97214 (Tel: 503-234-7733), this shop sells chicks, feed, coops, straw bales, organic vegetable starts and fruit trees, seeds, beer and cheese making supplies, and more. Owner Robert Litt is well-schooled (literally and figuratively) in the ways of sustainable agriculture and design and is a superb resource for all things chicken, farm, and agriculture.

Several small plant nurseries also sell chicken supplies and sometimes chicks – and are themselves quite “chickeny,” with hens wandering the aisles while you shop for plants and owners and employees who are avid and knowledgeable keepers of chickens. These include Buffalo Gardens at 728 NE Dekum, Portland OR 97211 (Tel: 503-288-0220); Pistils Nursery (503-288-4889); and Livingscape Nursery at 3926 N. Vancouver Ave between Shaver & Fremont (Tel: 503-248-0104). Check before visiting to make sure they have what you’re looking for, as quantities of various breeds wax and wane throughout the season and supplies can sell out during the busy season.

Have I missed your favorite chicken supply shop or urban farm supply store? Let me hear from you!

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Tags: Chickens, Nurseries