This Week in the Taste Garden

Welcome back to our Taste Garden. In this week’s edition, we’re sharing our “M to R” posts featuring mason bees, one of our local nurseries, a spontaneous road trip to Portland, Chris’s paver project, a favorite quote, and the spectaular ‘Rozanne” geranium. Enjoy! -Kimberly & Chris

Mason bees are a fairly new addition to our garden, but they’ve been a hit! Up until recently, I had no idea they are the superstars of the pollinator world, with one single orchard mason bee doing the work of approximately 100 honeybees.

Last year we participated in a mason bee rental program, and this year we decided to purchase our own supplies and bees. I ordered a kit from Crown Bees (a fabulous local company from Woodinville) that came with a rustic “Cabin Bee House,” natural reeds, mud mix, and mason bee cocoons.

The bees and all the supplies arrived in the mail a few days later, and we got to work. Chris hung the new house on our west fence wall, so the bees could get the morning sun they need to slowly wake up each day. We stocked the house with the reeds, and then finally unpacked the cocoons and gently placed the tray inside the top hatchery drawers. 

A fully formed adult bee lives inside each cocoon, and it was just days later that the first bees started emerging from the small holes at the top of their house. What a remarkable sight!

They’re absolutely incredible, and best of all, they’re gentle and rarely sting. We love walking outside each day, watching the bees fly about from blossom to blossom, and then checking their house to see how many of the tubes they’ve filled.

And boy are these bees ever productive! Our fruit trees and berry bushes are in the best shape ever; the bees have clearly done their job, and we’ll be enjoying the fruits of their labor soon.

As tunnel-nesting solitary bees, the female spends her time searching for pollen and nectar (visiting around 1800 flowers each day) and prepping the tubes for her offspring. She builds a wall at the back of each reed with local clay (we bought a mud box and clay mix from Crown Bees), drops off the pollen and nectar from her trips about the garden, deposits an egg, and then seals it off with more mud. The female repeats this process multiple times before finally capping off the end of the tube with more mud when it’s full (thus the name – mason bee).

The mason bee’s life cycle is short, and soon we’ll be gathering up the reeds to store the cocoons in a safe location until fall, when we’ll harvest them, keep them in a cool place, and finally release them back into their bee house next spring.

 We can’t wait  – full circle!

Walking through a nursery ranks pretty high on my list of “fill me up” moments, and I have several favorite nurseries. For this first “nursery” post, we wanted to feature one of the best – straight from our hometown of Snohomish, WA – McAuliffe’s Valley Nursery.

McAuliffe’s is a family-owned farm to retail nursery that has been operating since 1999. The location couldn’t be more beautiful, set in the bucolic Snohomish Valley, on one of my all-time favorite rural lanes – Springhetti Road – which winds past a slew of family farms and agricultural businesses. The historic downtown Snohomish district is nearby, and I can’t think of a better day out than popping into town for a quick bite and then heading to the nursery. 

McAuliffe’s has an outstanding selection of edibles, and I’m always impressed with their fruit tree and berry collections. We’ve bought grapes, blueberries, marionberries, loganberries, and a wide selection of vegetables and herbs here.  Their flower displays, set in front of a restored historic dairy barn that doubles as a gift shop, are stunning as well. I love to hunt through the tables to see what’s new and am always assured of finding at least one plant that needs a home in my garden.

And they’re masters of display, creating artfully arranged and colorful plant combinations that wow. Garden art is scattered throughout the property as well, and I love wandering about, peeking into corners, spotting unique finds at every turn.  In fact, the entire nursery is an inspiration in garden design.

Supporting local businesses is a priority for us – and it’s pretty easy to do when we have a top notch one like McAuliffe’s just down the road. If you’re ever in the Snohomish area, check them out!

Road trip. Two of the most exciting words in the English language!  By nature, we’re both drawn to spontaneity, and it doesn’t take much for one of us to convince the other to get up and go.

Last week we started playing around with the idea of growing hops. Chris does a lot of his own brewing, and it’s something he’s been considering for a while. After a little research, we learned that the ideal time for planting rhizomes had passed, but that it wasn’t too late for transplanting sprouted hops plants.

We started calling around and hit dead end after dead end. Most of our local nurseries were out of stock or didn’t have the varieties we were looking for.

But then we found a source! Portland Nursey. The only catch – it was 205 miles away – and they closed at 7:00.   

Our afternoon conversation went something like this… Do you think? Could we actually make it? Is this crazy? Let’s do it!

When 3:00 hit and our workday officially ended, we were out the door and on the road.

Along the way we tried to reassure each other that we’d be okay if it didn’t work out…that the likelihood of getting through the Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, and Portland rush hours in time was slim. But fortunately, with some lighter than expected traffic, and a great deal of skillful driving on Chris’s part, we actually made it.

We rolled into Portland in just over three hours and hightailed it straight for the hops. It was a cold and windy evening, but the bright green row of plants that greeted us was such a welcome sight – and there were the exact varieties Chris had been hoping for.

We loaded up our cart with six hops plants (five different varieties), took a few minutes to explore the nursery (love it – we will return!) and then were back on the road before they even closed. After a quick dinner on the fly and a detour for ice cream, we were home and in bed by 11:30, with the hops safely tucked against the side of our house.

The next day…well, it was a long one. But so worth it!

When the pandemic hit last spring, we suddenly had a little extra time on our hands as we hunkered down at home. Time for a new project!

I started converting our backyard into an edible garden several years ago, slowly tearing out the grass and replacing it with a variety of containers and mounded beds. While I loved the process, what I didn’t love – at all – was the lack of a cohesive pathway. Instead, I had a makeshift “trail” that alternated between rock hard dirt in the summer and a muddy mess the rest of the year.

One day, as we were sitting outside enjoying the garden, Chris said, “I could build a path.”

And he did.

We ordered tumbled cobblestone pavers from Mutual Materials and when they arrived – two giant pallets, requiring a forklift to lower them to the ground, I wondered, what had we done?

But Chris had a vision, and he brought it to life. It was backbreaking work, digging out the rock-hard clay to make room for the pavers, negotiating tricky bends, and preserving as much planting space as possible – all under a late spring heat wave.

He persevered, and today we have a beautiful, paved path that meanders gently through our garden. Every morning I walk along the pathway, checking each of the plants, full of gratitude for the beauty that surrounds me – and for dry feet.

And when I come back into the kitchen, Chris is usually at his computer, working away.  “I love that path. So much,” I’ll say for the umpteenth time. “Thank you!”

He’ll look up and smile.

Q is a more challenging letter to come up with for a garden post (and don’t get me started about XYZ), but when I thought about the word “Quotes” it fit perfectly.

I bought a journal several years ago and have slowly filled it with quotes…silly quotes, though-provoking quotes, fun quotes, profound quotes – you name it. And this simple line by Audrey Hepburn is one of my favorites.

What’s very special about gardening is that it grounds you in the present and yet inherently assumes a belief in tomorrow. When I’m out there, I’m in the moment – checking out the new growth, marveling at the daily changes – but I’m also excited for what’s to come.

It doesn’t surprise me that the interest in gardening has exploded over the last year, ever since the pandemic started. A garden is a symbol of hope – of believing in tomorrow. And when you see a new seedling pop up, a new blossom appear, or a new flower unfurl – that hope is rewarded, over and over again.

Brilliant violet blue flowers. Gorgeous chartreuse foliage. Low maintenance. A bee magnet. There are so many reasons the ‘Rozanne’ geranium is one of our favorite perennials!

Our plants begin blooming in late May and continue right through the end of summer. We have three in our front yard (part shade) that have bloomed continuously for years, and we’re such fans that we added three more to our back garden (full sun) – two in the front of whiskey barrels and one in the ground.

The name “geranium” can be confusing, but this is not your average annual geranium, rather it’s a perennial hardy geranium (cranesbill family) that faithfully returns year after year. They’re easy to grow (no deadheading required), low maintenance (water about once a week when established), and can thrive in both full sun and partial shade.

An added bonus is that the bees absolutely love these flowers and anything I can do to attract more pollinators to our garden is always a plus. Best of all, they’re simply beautiful, the splash of purple and light green spilling over the containers, filling our beds, and adding an extra burst of color to our garden. 

Up Next…

Thanks for taking the time to read our most recent “A to Z” Taste Garden post! Stay tuned for next week’s post featuring snap peas, transplanting tales, ‘Victoria’ rhubarb, and more.

See you soon! -Kimberly and Chris