Solanum pyracanthum (AKA Porcupine Tomato)

I know that there are other gardeners who like out-of-the-ordinary plants as much as I do, but I admit that this prickly monster is a stretch. At last year’s sale I bought eight tiny Firethorn plants and thoroughly enjoyed having them in my garden. Every child who saw them was enchanted and every grown-up had to ask what the heck they were. I was surprised at how well Firethorn mingled with other plants and at what a lovely orange mist they created with the sun shining through them. Firethorn looks especially nice with orange Zinnias and Nasturtiums, and with purple Sea Holly.

Yikes! Wicked, scary, and bizarre. Half-inch decorative orange thorns line the orange veins on both tops and undersides of the long, deeply lobed blue-green leaves. More thorns on the orange fuzzy stems. Star-shaped 1” lavender flowers in summer are just the plant’s futile attempt to look cute. Fiercely beautiful in combination with orange flowers and copper foliage.

48″ wide and 36” tall sun

I was making spring rolls the other night and thought, wow, I could actually purchase all of the produce necessary for spring rolls this year from the Friends School Plant sale and grow it in my backyard! To decide that you are going to make spring rolls and then gather all of the fresh ingredients from your back yard is such an amazing feeling. Though I have never tried growing ALL of the fresh ingredients for spring rolls in my backyard before, I’m going to try it this year. Join me in my experiment!

Here’s the shopping list of plants you are going to need or should consider:

Garlic Chives - Some people say this is optional, but it enhances the flavor of spring rolls so much, that I would say it is a definite yes in a spring roll. Great for other Asian style dishes also. If you don’t like the garlicky bite you will get from it, than skip it.
Vietnamese Coridander - A must herb for some people in spring rolls.
Garlic - Important for the dipping sauce.
Mint - choose Spearmint or Peppermint - This is a must herb for most people in spring rolls.
Red Shiso - This is a must herb for most people in spring rolls, though I spent years of my life refusing to have it in my spring rolls. Only as I have gotten older do I know appreciate the taste and love it in my rolls. Don’t be like me and wait years to find out what a great herb you are missing out on. This might be a more advanced herb in terms of taste, but it is definitely worth trying it.
Cucumbers - Burpless, Tasty Jade (new this year) - Any cucumber will do, but I would recommend a burpless variety. It works better for spring rolls. Tasty Jade is a burpless variety.
Lettuce -Bibb, red leaf (Red Sails), green leaf (Grand Rapids) - Any of these varieties should be great though I have not grown any of these varieties before.
Mesclun - When you want to mix it up a little bit and try something other than the lettuce.
Thai Dragon - or a pepper of some type is needed for the sauce if you like it spicy.

With all of the produce grown in the yard, you’ll only need to get noodles, rice paper and the meat/protein of your choice at the supermarket.

I will post the spring roll recipe with instructions as the summer progresses when the produce is ready for picking! Or if you have to know now, I will be at the Brandy Tang booth at the plant sale. Stop by and I’ll tell you want to do for spring rolls.

While visiting one of the local greenhouses that supply the Friends School Plant Sale, Henry found a plant he had never seen before. But when he showed it to the head grower, she said, “Oh, those are Song’s plants.”

Luckily for Henry, Song is the only Hmong employee at the greenhouse who speaks English.

She called the plant “cook with chicken, makes body strong.” She said in white Hmong the name translates to “duck foot.” It looks a little like celery and has a pleasant taste and aroma. It’s is used in dishes such as spicy wedding chicken and a chicken stew made for women who have just given birth.

Song said it’s a perennial, but only likely to survive our winters with heroic protection. She got it from her sister in California.

Knowing that the Friends School Plant Sale was in the midst of expanding our offering of herbs and vegetables from Asian and other world cooking traditions, Henry tried to find out more.

But he found that there’s very little info about Hmong plants available, including at libraries. He visited the Hmong ABC bookstore on University Avenue, where a helpful young man assured it was indeed “cook with chicken, makes body strong,” but he knew no more about it than that. He said to ask an elder, saying, “Any elder would know.”

Henry went to the Hmong library and cultural center where the librarian introduced him to a roomful of elders. They all agreed the plant was “cook with…,” and Henry learned it is not actually one plant at all, but several that are combined and cooked together with chicken. He also found out that Hmong writing cannot be sounded out using American phonetics.

The plant Henry had first seen is called: ko taw qos liab.The newly released Cooking from the Heart: The Hmong Kitchen in America calls this koj liab. “Liab” is pronounced like the name “Leah,” and it means red. The Hmong have one word for red and it covers all the reddish hues including pink and purple. The plant has purple stems.

Ko taw qos liab

A second herb that Song said fit into the same “common” name was chuaj rog (tshuaj rog in the Hmong cookbook). Henry couldn’t figure out how to write it phonetically. The first word is pronounced choo (not like a train but with the oo from hook), while the second starts with a “t” sound but does not rhyme with dog. This name means “fat medicine” in English (because it’s used to improve appetite). It comes in three different colors, green, red and white.

chuaj rog

In addition to the plants from Song, we also found out about a few of the other herbs that are part of the Cook with Chicken, Makes Body Strong medley, and will have them at the sale:

ntiv — also called sweet fern (not the same as the North American native sweetfern).

licorice flag, Acorus gramineus, whose Hmong name is pawj qaib (pronounced pakai)

All of these plants can be found in the Herbs at H036. We assume they would like full sun for best growth. Their heights are a bit unknown to us.

(According to Cooking from the Heart, another herb that is traditionally used as part of Cook with Chicken, Makes Body Strong is one of our local “weeds,” the common day flower. We won’t have that at the sale, but you may have it growing in your yard!)

Ribes rubrum ‘Red Lake’

Currants are prized for their fruit, which makes wonderful sauce and jam (and wine). However, the plant itself is pretty spectacular in spring!

The descriptions I’ve seen of the plant all say the green-yellow flowers are “insignificant,” but check out this photo of the flowers in the garden of Carol, one of our long-time volunteers. They cascade down the stems in a way that stopped me in my tracks.

The flowers are then followed by fruits in attractive clusters by midsummer. Red Lake is a vigorous plant that breaks dormancy early. Its dark red fruits will ripen earlier with additional moisture. For the most fruit production, remove any stems that are more than four years old.

Here’s what Red Lake fruit looks like (photo from the Missouri Botanical Garden):

4′ tall, sun.

Find it in Fruit, F016 in a 1 gallon pot, $11

Bad news!

We just received word that the Permibus will not be able to make it to the Friends School Plant Sale. Here’s what Delyla, Program Coordinator for the Skills for a New Millennium Tour, had to say:

We have been desperately trying to make up for the unexpected loss of our business sponsorship. Unfortunately, we have been unable to fundraise enough to launch our summer tour so we cannot attend the Friends Plant sale. We were very much looking forward to being there, it looks like a great event.

Thank you for inviting us and I hope we can work together another year.

We’re very disappointed as well, and hope we can make this happen in the future!

We’ve been selling Blue Poppies (Meconopsis betonicifolia) for years now. However, we’ve heard that they are difficult to grow. It’s not that they die from our cold winters — no. It’s that it’s too hot here in the summer.

Despite this difficulty, several Plant Sale shoppers have sent us photos of their blooming Blue Poppies. What we’ve learned from this is that, like some hydrangeas, they are only truly-blue in more acidic soil than you naturally find in the Twin Cities. Gardeners near the shores of Lake Superior have an easier time with the plants, both because of their moderate summer temperatures and their more acidic soil.

Here are some of the photos we’ve received.

Maggie in Minneapolis wrote to us this spring,

I bought 4 of the small plants. I have 3 different zones in my yard. I live on a northwest corner lot in Mpls and have a neighbor’s privacy fence on the south side. After reading up on the poppies I decided to place them in the shaded section of my yard that runs zone 4a/3. Normally I still have snow there, this year being an exception. The space receives a little early moring sun, no daytime sun, and about 3 hours of afternoon/evening sun.

Of the 4 I planted, one received too much sun (almost all day) and I moved it but I don’t think that one will make it. The other three did great and bloomed. One as you can see from the picture bloomed 3 times. I did not expect to see growth this early in the season but the plant that did the best has already come up about (2″) out of the ground. The other 3 have not made an appearance. I’m excited to see what happens this year. I do plan on buying a few more to add to the bed, if available.

Another gardener, Keith, picked up two of our $1.50 blue poppies last spring. He planted them on the east side of his house, in the shade of the entryway just south of the planting site. It gets good morning sun, but is shaded from late morning. He has an automatic sprinkling system, so they are watered three mornings per week.

No blooms the first year, but two of them survived the summer and are back this spring. One has a foot-tall stem with a fat bud at the top.

Barbara in Cloquet sent us these photos of her blue poppies from the sale:

She wrote,

I know these aren’t very good pictures, but the plant’s location in my garden is good for growing…. not for photographing! This plant is from last year and is the first one I finally got to grow and it sure grew. It is about 3 feet high and will have multiple blooms. The location was on the north side of the house and in shade, but bright shade. It probably has only minutes of direct sun per day, if at all.

Plant Sale shopper Krista from Stevens Point, Wis., tells us:

I bought 3 of these at the 2008 sale. They didn’t seem to do much where I put them originally so I moved them in the fall. This spring all 3 plants initially looked good but 2 petered out. This one ended up with 3 buds! I was so excited. The first bud never opened for some reason but the second one blossomed today. It is gorgeous! Hopefully bud #3 will open too.

The plant is on the north side of my house with early morning and late day sun.

36″ tall, part shade or shade. Well mulched! Find it in Perennials, P462, $1.50 in a 2.5″ pot.

Here are a couple of helpful links if you’re interested in growing blue poppies:

• www.paghat.com

• The Explorer’s Garden: Rare and Unusual Perennials (on Google Books)

Cymbopogon citratus

Easy to grow, lemon grass can be grown as a container plant in Minnesota year-round. Bring the lemon grass container inside to overwinter when temperatures fall below 40 degrees. Lemon grass will not flower in cooler climates. It can grow to a height of 5 feet with a spread of 3 feet. It likes full sun.

Lemon grass can be used fresh, dried or powdered. As the name indicates, it has a lemony scent and flavor. Use its fresh stalk to add a a touch of citrus to whatever you’re cooking. Cut the stalk into small pieces and use in marinades or drop larger sections of the stem into Asian-style soups, such as tom yum.

Sections of lemongrass stalk or fresh leaves can also be used to make teas. Lemongrass is suppose to aid in digestion, easing stomach issues, including cramps and spasms. Lemongrass also has anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties.

The fresh stalk of lemon grass is very hard, so it is usually added as larger chunks when cooking and discarded before serving. Portions of the stalk can be eaten if minced into small pieces.

Flavor friends include seafood, fish, chicken, pork, beef, basil, chili pepper, ginger, cilantro, coconut milk, tomato, tamarind, kaffir lime leaf, fish sauce, galangal, lemon, honey and garlic.

‘Siam Ruby’ in my garden last summer

Siam Ruby Banana
Musa ‘Siam Ruby’

10,000 years of banana cultivation in Papua, New Guinea produced a sport with the darkest red leaves of any banana yet discovered. Originally selling for more than $1,500, ‘Siam Ruby’ was brought to the U.S. only four years ago and now you can have one.

The foliage is a remarkable dark ruby with lime flecks and streaks, although it starts out chartreuse and develops more and more red as it matures and gets more sun. Please don’t worry about how pale the baby plants look at the sale! Each leaf will develop a surprising new pattern of red and green: some leaves are even half and half!

A banana tree will overwinter as a houseplant in a sunny window or dormant a cool dark basement.

8′ tall, sun

Sweet Tea Foamy Bells
Heucherella ‘Sweet Tea’

Scalloped copper-orange leaves with cinnamon-russet centers and hints of rose grow in dense layers with white flowers on 27” stalks in spring. As soon as we saw a photo of this plant, there was no need for discussion.

28″ wide by 20″ tall, part shade

Golden Zebra Foamy Bells
Heucherella ‘Golden Zebra’

Frilly leaves are rich brick-burgundy with wide chartreuse-yellow edges. Tiny white flowers in spring. You don’t have to give up “bold” because you garden in shade.

18″ tall, shade or part shade

Photos from Terra Nova Nurseries