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

The hottest fruit for Minnesota is the cold-hardy kiwi (Actinidia kolomikta). While the plants are related to the ones that produce the brown, fuzzy fruits you see in grocery stores, hardy kiwi fruits are more grape-sized, nonfuzzy, noticeably sweeter, and eaten whole.

Kiwis require at least one male plant to pollinate a female plant or plants. At this year’s Plant Sale, we’ll finally have both males and females, after selling the male plant, Arctic Beauty, as an ornamental for several years. The female variety is called Red Beauty. (Both are in 1 gallon pots for $10.00, F026 and F027.)

The fruits ripen August through October. Once established, one female vine can produce 15-20 pounds of fruit. It’s high in vitamin C, and can be dried like raisins.

As an added ornamental benefit, the leaves of the male plant are variegated green, white and pink. The female plant’s leaves have a reddish cast. The vines need a support to grow on as they twist and climb upward to 12′.

Keeping the base of the plant shaded is recommended because the plants like consistent moisture, plus it keeps down weeds and decreases suckering (when more shoots come up from the roots).

A recent article on The Heavy Table local food site included a lot of good background on the fruit and how to grow the plants, including these tips: “Only one male vine produces enough pollen for six female plants. A few considerations before planting: The growing site should be sloped, shaded from afternoon sun, have well-drained soil, and organic matter.”

If you’re interested in growing hardy kiwis for fruit, I recommend reading up on growing and pruning tips on the following websites:

University of Minnesota Fruit Production website

Growing Taste: A Home Food-Gardening Resource

(All photos from the Wikimedia Commons)

The Saint Paul Audubon Society has a short new booklet available, listing native plants that are excellent host plants for native insects. The list is particularly meant for the middle third of Minnesota.

Why should you care about helping out the bugs? Because that’s what native birds want to eat, so if you want to have birds in your yard, you need to encourage insects, too.

As the SPAS website puts it, “As birds and other wildlife are increasingly displaced by human activities, native plant gardens become important mini-refuges. Native plants attract native insects, the food source for 96 percent of songbird nestlings.

“Some native plants are better than others at attracting insects. The Audubon Society booklet spotlights 51 native trees, shrubs, vines, flowering plants and grasses that provide the most benefit to birds and others in central Minnesota.”

The Plant Sale will have 28 of the 51 listed plants available, from chokecherries and hazelnuts to leadplant and little bluestem. SPAS volunteers will be putting an extra sign above any plant that’s included in the brochure.

We’ll have copies of the brochure at the Plant Sale (check the Master Gardener’s desk or the Info Desk under the central stairway), or you can read it ahead of time on the SPAS website.

Carol, Nancy and I took a day trip to two of our growers south of the cities on Friday. Our main reason was to get photos of the plants they’re growing for us.

Believe it or not, we sell some plants that cannot be seen anywhere on the World Wide Web, particularly some of the ones from North Star Seed and Nursery in Faribault. North Star’s Art Boe is a retired horticulture professor who started the nursery as a way to have fun in retirement (!). He continues to create new plant varieties, but isn’t always likely to market them with photos.

Feather Reed Grass — Calmagrostis ‘Art’s Golden’ G026

This variegated grass, similar in habit to the well-known Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grass, is always popular at the sale because of its attractive yellow and green color.

Art also has several kinds of Million Bells at our sale. Here are two of them that were already in bloom:

Million Bells — Calibrachoa ‘Cream with Yellow Veins’ A336

Million Bells — Calibrachoa ‘Purple Velvet’ A338

And this year, he’s growing this unusual Echeveria for us:

Echeveria, Giant — Echeveria ‘Silver Spoons’ U053

On the way back from Faribault, we stopped at Green Earth Growers in Prior Lake. This was a good chance to get photos of some of the herbs we sell, which are sometimes too common to find pictures of: mint, oregano, sage, parsley.

As we add more and more of our plants to the website, it’s important to have photos of them that we have permission to use. And the best way to do that is taking them ourselves — or getting them from our customers! Send us your photos with the plant’s name and variety to photos@friendsschoolplantsale.com.

But we also got a look at a few of the new plants they’re growing for us:

Goldalia Dahlia — Dahlia ‘Goldalia Scarlet’ A151

Lobelia, Compact — Lobelia ‘Heat Blue’ A298 (also in a hanging basket, A568)

Only a few weeks are left until May 7. Visiting greenhouses is a great way to get psyched up for the sale!

Winsome Orchids will once again be part of the Friends School Plant Sale. Last year they were located in the Rare Plants booth, but this year will be located under the central stairway, across from the Info Desk.

Because they’ll be in their own area, you will need to pay them directly for any of their plants you purchase, rather than paying at the same time as your plants from the the Plant Sale.

They will have several varieties of orchids for the home (not for the outdoors) available at the sale this year. According to Jim Bull of Winsome Orchids, “My number one key to being successful with orchids in the home is to match the type of orchid to the light conditions available.”

Choices include:

Phalaenopsis, the Moth Orchid, is the easiest orchid to grow in the home. This can bloom up to 8 months per year and will grow in a bright north location, a medium bright office, and all the way through an east or
south-facing window. Prices $25-35

Paphiopedilum

Paphiopedilum, the Lady Slipper Orchid, is a relative to our state flower, but is a tropical variety that needs to grow indoors. This is a low-light orchid that can grow in a north window or is very well suited for the lower light of an office. The varieties that we will offer are the mottled leaf ones that bloom twice a year with flowers lasting 3-4 months per blooming. Very easy to grow and very rewarding with lot of bloom time. Price $20

Cattleya, the queen of the orchids, loves to grow in a very bright southern or western facing window. We will have the compact varieties available, which bloom twice per year and the flowers typically last 4-6 weeks per blooming. Many of the varieties are very fragrant. Price $25

Oncidium

Oncidium/Intergenerics offer a wide variety of colors, shapes, and sizes. Another orchid that likes high light of a southern or western exposure, the intergenerics will bloom 2-4 times per year with the flowers lasting 4-6
weeks per blooming. A few of the types are fragrant, including Oncidium ‘Sharry Baby’, which has blooms that smell like chocolate. Prices $25-35

Dendrobium

Dendrobium, the Cane Orchid, is the bloom used in Hawaii for leis. This is another one that needs high light from southern to western windows. Dendrobiums will bloom twice per year and the flowers typically last 3-5
months per blooming, with old growths reblooming along with new growths, so lots of bloom spikes are possible on mature plants. Prices $20-$30

You can check out photos and cultural information for these orchids before the sale at www.winsomeorchids.com

Do you love to veggie garden, but find an overabundance of food at harvest times? Or do you have some extra garden space and are not sure what to do with it? Do you want to try to grow some new veggies, but don’t know if you will like them? Well, I have a solution for you! Be a hero and Plant a Row!

Plant a Row for the Hungry is a public service program that encourages gardeners to plant an extra row of produce each year and donate the surplus to local food banks, soup kitchens or service organization to help feed the hungry. According to the very nice lady who answered the phone at The Emergency Foodshelf Network, an organization that helps to supply our local foodshelves, those in need will often focus on buying staples because fresh produce is more expensive than staples. She said that any local food shelf would be thrilled to receive a fresh produce donation.

The Plant a Row for the Hungry movement was started in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1995 by Jeff Lowenfels, a garden writer, who asked his readers to plant a row of vegetables for Beans Cafe, a local soup kitchen. The program was so successful that it was introduced nationwide. Since then, American gardeners have donated over 14 million pounds of produce to local organizations.

Other organizations, in conjunction with the front yard gardening trend, have joined the movement also. Churches are digging up sections of their lawns and planting gardens in an effort to support members in need and to stock up their own foodshelf pantries, with any extras going to local organizations. Churches have found an added benefit of the garden being an excellent teaching tool for their youth groups.

Businesses are allowing sections of their lawns to be dug up so that employees can garden during their lunch hour. Some businesses are even supplying the seeds, basic tools and some compost as a morale booster and a way of encouraging employees to get or stay active.

With the diversity of the local population, don’t just plant the regular stuff; this is your opportunity to plant all of the neat varieties you were always curious about planting, but didn’t quite know what to do with.

Some vegetables that would be fun to try:

Bitter Melon — bitter fruit used for stir-fries, soups and medicinal teas
Swiss Chard — dark green leaves with brightly colored stems to enliven your garden and at $2 for a four-pack, a great deal! Plant two for yourself and two for your “row.”
Mustard Greens — dark green nutritious leaves, and another great deal like the Swiss Chard.

Give any or all of the heirloom tomatoes a whirl, because who doesn’t love a fresh, vine-ripened tomato in the summer time? You already know a couple of my favorites: Sungella and Mexico Midget. But why not try Black Krim and Roma as well?

And don’t forget the herbs. Important in cuisine and not typically thought of when thinking about food donations. Some plants to consider from the herb section would be:

Vietnamese Coriander — easy to grow, good producer and versatile in cooking
Culantro — a fun herb that is used in many cultures
Oregano — essential to Italian cooking, leaves can be used fresh or dried
Basil, basil, basil! — What garden and kitchen is complete without basil? With so many to choose from, just pick a couple and try. I always have Thai basil and Sweet Genovese basil in my garden.

If you’re a gardener without much space, you can still join in by container gardening or planting in your front yard.

The Emergency Foodshelf Network lady also gave a couple of tips about donating veggies:

1. Call the foodshelf first to let them know you will be dropping the produce off.
2. Avoid Friday dropoffs, as there are usually no distributions over the weekend and it would most likely sit in the warehouse/office. Therefore, my recommendation would be to harvest over the weekend and drop off on a Monday or Tuesday.

There have been many articles written about these movements and trends over the last few years, but here are a couple of current ones to get you started. If you are interested in more information about container, frontyard or urban gardening, see my next Tomato Talk article coming out next week.

• Plant a Row for the Hungry
  Garden Writers Association article, including Plant a Row (PAR) hotline number.
• Bad Economy Spurs Interest in Gardening
  Times Daily article about Survival Gardens, the modern Victory Garden.

We’ll be posting at least one update or article a day in the next weeks leading up to the Plant Sale. You might also want to join our Facebook group, where other shoppers are asking questions, sharing thoughts and posting photos of their plants.

And then there’s Twitter, for those of you who are interested in that. You don’t even need to have a Twitter account. Just go to Twitter.com and in the search field, enter #plantsale. Everyone who says anything about the Plant Sale is encouraged to use that “tag” in their messages, and so you can find them all.

As the week approaches, that’s the first place we’ll post crop failures and other news.

So, what else did I learn from my glorious tomato experiment (see the previous Tomato Talk article for background information on my year of the tomato)?

Tomatoes and basil go really well together, not only in cooking, but in gardening too! As I was trying to lay out my garden last year to accommodate the wealth of tomatoes, I thought I was going to have to sacrifice some of my herb space, but I remembered something about companion planting and decided to give it a whirl.

Luckily, the herb that I had wanted to plant the most of last year, basil, was a great companion plant, perfect for planting between tomatoes. As the tomatoes grow, they shield the basil plants from the worst of the midday sun while the basil actually provides the tomatoes with a fuller, yummier flavor. Besides the Sweet Genovese and Thai basil that I usually grew, I decided to try a wide variety of basil because I had so much space to fill between the tomatoes.

When planting tomatoes and basil together, you don’t have to add more space between tomatoes - keep the same 18-36 inches as usual. Then, right in the middle of the space between tomato plants, put one basil plant, continuing this pattern all the way down. It’s an easy (and tasty!) way to add some new character to your tomato gardening experience.

Some basil types that I tried last year and recommend include:

Opal basil - beautiful dark leaves, slight peppery taste, makes a wonderful colorful addition to salads

Lemon basil - has citrusy flavors folded into the basil taste. Use in pesto or salads for a yummy flavor

Spicy Globe basil - beautiful plant, small leaves, perfect for French dishes

And don’t forget to include Sweet Genovese basil and Thai basil in the mix also. Thai basil is fantastic for Thai food, Asian stir fries and is essential for Vietnamese pho. For cooking and growing tips on basil and other fun herbs, check out www.TheHerbFiles.com.

This year, I will definitely be trying companion planting with basil again. On my “to try” list for this year are: Serrata, Napoletano and Red Rubin. Of course, Sweet Genovese and Thai basil have a permanent home on the list.

If you have any other basil suggestions, feel free to leave a comment or find me at the Brandy Tang booth at the Garden Fair of the Friends School Sale. All of the basils mentioned in this article are available at the sale.

Other helpful resources: List of Companion Plants - A Wikipedia article on plants that assist in the growth of others, whether attracting beneficial insects, repelling harmful insects, providing nutrients or in some cases simply providing shade or support.