Edible garden tour focuses on sustainable practices
For the third year, the Bainbridge Island Watershed Council co-sponsored a fall garden tour that focused on sustainable practices and gardening with a purpose. Despite the rainy day on Sept 20, there were only two empty seats on the three Kitsap Transit buses that transported participants to the three backyard-scale edible gardens featured this year.
The other tour co-sponsors were the Natural Landscapes Project and Sustainable Bainbridge. After the tour, participants were invited to Manzanita Creek Farm for a feast of delicious locally grown food.
The tour is an educational event more than a stroll through beautiful gardens, and at each garden, the owners shared their strategies for composting and soil preparation, choosing varieties, dealing with pests, irrigating, and other practical issues.
Garden hosts included Chuck and Judy Estin, who have a year-round permaculture garden and a vegetable plot that they share with neighbors; Kathy and Jim Morse, who grow berries and fruit alongside raised beds filled with vegetables; and Tom and Wendy Tyner, who arrange their vegetables in closely spaced rows behind their house and include fruit trees and blueberry bushes in the rest of their landscaping. All of the gardens incorporate organic methods, but each has unique features.
The Estin garden is a backyard application of permaculture principles that Chuck promotes with the Bainbridge Permaculture Guild and through his business, Bios Design. Their quarter-acre lot was virtually all filled with weeds growing in sandy gravel when they moved there in 1985. For more than 20 years, they have landscaped with organically grown (mostly) edibles. More permaculture features, including additional plantings, have been integrated in the past few years. This small home garden features more than 100 different edible perennial plant varieties with 30 fruit trees, including conventional and less common examples of what grows in our climate. Perennials are integrated with annual veggies in raised beds with different height plants each occupying different niches. Hardy winter vegetables have been planted for fall and winter harvest. Heat-loving annuals (tomatoes, peppers, squash, corn, etc.) grow in the nearby neighborhood garden, where there is more sun. Chuck and Judy also share home wine-making in their basement with neighbors – with grapes from Eastern Washington as well as local fruit. They don’t have a compost pile—their chickens take care of all of the leftovers.
Kathy Morse is a master gardener and master composter for the Washington State University’s Extension Service, and she often teaches classes on composting and organic vegetable gardening. Her home garden, now scaled down for a household of just her and her husband, features several kinds of composting, including the Japanese bokashi method. She also composts manure from a rabbit, the lone holdover from her daughter’s 4-H project. Around their vegetable garden and orchard, Kathy and Steve built an unobtrusive but electrified fence that keeps out raccoons and deer. Kathy fills large raised beds with a wide variety of vegetables, including sweet potatoes. Marion berries cascade out from a curved rebar trellis she made, and different trellis systems support raspberries and table grapes. The orchard includes apple and pear trees. Kathy’s garden also includes flowers, which she uses to provide scent and color for the soap and other products she sells at the Bainbridge Island farmers market.
Tom Tyner, a lawyer who writes the Latte Guy column for the Bainbridge Review, uses his garden like a lot of people use a gym membership—as a restorative antidote to a long day in an office. Because it’s too dark to head out to the garden after work in the late fall and winter, he grows mostly summer vegetables and transitions to cover crops in the winter. After experimenting with different systems over the years, he now grows corn, peas, potatoes, lettuce, spinach, squash, and other vegetables in closely spaced furrows. He plants in the low spots, which stay moist, and walks on the high spots when it’s time to harvest. The dense plantings help shade out weeds. Mixed in with the perennial beds around their house, Tom and Wendy also grow cherries, blueberries, apples and plums.
The farm dinner at Manzanita Creek Farm was organized by Jade Castillo. She and her husband own the farm, and she runs Soiree Catering Company.
We'll be planning our next Garden Tour sooner than you know it! Know a great garden you'd recommend we include in our tour? Want to help with planning? Visit our contact page or email us at info@biwatershedcouncil.org.
For the third year, the Bainbridge Island Watershed Council co-sponsored a fall garden tour that focused on sustainable practices and gardening with a purpose. Despite the rainy day on Sept 20, there were only two empty seats on the three Kitsap Transit buses that transported participants to the three backyard-scale edible gardens featured this year.
The other tour co-sponsors were the Natural Landscapes Project and Sustainable Bainbridge. After the tour, participants were invited to Manzanita Creek Farm for a feast of delicious locally grown food.
The tour is an educational event more than a stroll through beautiful gardens, and at each garden, the owners shared their strategies for composting and soil preparation, choosing varieties, dealing with pests, irrigating, and other practical issues.
Garden hosts included Chuck and Judy Estin, who have a year-round permaculture garden and a vegetable plot that they share with neighbors; Kathy and Jim Morse, who grow berries and fruit alongside raised beds filled with vegetables; and Tom and Wendy Tyner, who arrange their vegetables in closely spaced rows behind their house and include fruit trees and blueberry bushes in the rest of their landscaping. All of the gardens incorporate organic methods, but each has unique features.
The Estin garden is a backyard application of permaculture principles that Chuck promotes with the Bainbridge Permaculture Guild and through his business, Bios Design. Their quarter-acre lot was virtually all filled with weeds growing in sandy gravel when they moved there in 1985. For more than 20 years, they have landscaped with organically grown (mostly) edibles. More permaculture features, including additional plantings, have been integrated in the past few years. This small home garden features more than 100 different edible perennial plant varieties with 30 fruit trees, including conventional and less common examples of what grows in our climate. Perennials are integrated with annual veggies in raised beds with different height plants each occupying different niches. Hardy winter vegetables have been planted for fall and winter harvest. Heat-loving annuals (tomatoes, peppers, squash, corn, etc.) grow in the nearby neighborhood garden, where there is more sun. Chuck and Judy also share home wine-making in their basement with neighbors – with grapes from Eastern Washington as well as local fruit. They don’t have a compost pile—their chickens take care of all of the leftovers.
Kathy Morse is a master gardener and master composter for the Washington State University’s Extension Service, and she often teaches classes on composting and organic vegetable gardening. Her home garden, now scaled down for a household of just her and her husband, features several kinds of composting, including the Japanese bokashi method. She also composts manure from a rabbit, the lone holdover from her daughter’s 4-H project. Around their vegetable garden and orchard, Kathy and Steve built an unobtrusive but electrified fence that keeps out raccoons and deer. Kathy fills large raised beds with a wide variety of vegetables, including sweet potatoes. Marion berries cascade out from a curved rebar trellis she made, and different trellis systems support raspberries and table grapes. The orchard includes apple and pear trees. Kathy’s garden also includes flowers, which she uses to provide scent and color for the soap and other products she sells at the Bainbridge Island farmers market.
Tom Tyner, a lawyer who writes the Latte Guy column for the Bainbridge Review, uses his garden like a lot of people use a gym membership—as a restorative antidote to a long day in an office. Because it’s too dark to head out to the garden after work in the late fall and winter, he grows mostly summer vegetables and transitions to cover crops in the winter. After experimenting with different systems over the years, he now grows corn, peas, potatoes, lettuce, spinach, squash, and other vegetables in closely spaced furrows. He plants in the low spots, which stay moist, and walks on the high spots when it’s time to harvest. The dense plantings help shade out weeds. Mixed in with the perennial beds around their house, Tom and Wendy also grow cherries, blueberries, apples and plums.
The farm dinner at Manzanita Creek Farm was organized by Jade Castillo. She and her husband own the farm, and she runs Soiree Catering Company.
We'll be planning our next Garden Tour sooner than you know it! Know a great garden you'd recommend we include in our tour? Want to help with planning? Visit our contact page or email us at info@biwatershedcouncil.org.
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