San Francisco Garden Show – Edible Gardens

Yesterday my Aunt Char, cousin Jenny, and I attended the San Francisco Garden Show at the San Mateo Event Center. We sat in on several lectures, spent time in the Market Place (bought some amazing Rescue tape), marveled over the Bonsai exhibit, and drooled over the exhibition gardens.

Our first lecture was Edible Landscaping by Rosalind Creasy (www.rosalindcreasy.com). She showed slides of her front yard vegetable garden (she claims if you add flowers and box hedges, the neighbors barely notice you are growing vegetables in the front yard, instead of the back)! From the slides we saw, I believe it. To follow up, we visited the Edible Garden pavilion, which was full of creative ideas for growing vegetable gardens that are pretty, and work in small places.

We also learned how to transplant our Cymbidium and Phalaenopsis orchids from Debra Atwood of Napa Valley Orchids; and about soil composition from Jeff Lowenfels, author of Teaming with Microbes. We enjoyed the cooking demonstration (and samples) provided by Jeffrey Stoat, chef at Alexander’s Steakhouse in San Francisco (http://www.alexanderssteakhouse.com/san_francisco.html). He and his team prepared Oshitashi Salad (Dungeness crab, radish, and pickled carrots), and skirt steak rolls with cilantro salad. Delicious.

Replacing flower beds with vegetable beds.

Mixing herbs and flowers in a single bed. Notice the
wooden utensils used to label the plants.

Enjoying the garden show.

A small lettuce bed growing on top of a hay bale. Hay bale
gardening is an innovative way to garden. The tubes
in the background are potato towers, described on the
Sunset web site.

We had a great time together, and left feeling enriched with new ideas and possibilities. I loved the emphasis on growing edible gardens that are beautiful, economical, and tasty!