Employee Spotlight: Randall Barnes

Hi, Everyone. I’m Randall Barnes, the bedding department manager at Orchard and I have been working here since April 2003.

What is your favorite part about working at Orchard?

I’m very fortunate to work and live in the same community. One of my favorite parts of working at Orchard is that each day I learn many new things; all I’ve learned has inspired me to do research with vegetables and herbs in order to develop recipes. I love experimenting in the kitchen to see the many different ways one can cook a single vegetable and pair with wine. Another favorite part of my job here at Orchard is that none of my work clothes require any dry cleaning!

What are some of your favorite memories in your time working here?

Some of my favorite memories at Orchard are the morning discussions I have with the people in my department. We share our experiences growing and cooking vegetables and then coming together at the table and enjoying a true “garden to table” meal. It has become a seasonal tradition.

What are some upcoming projects you are excited about?

A few projects I am excited about include helping to develop informational parts of our social media, continuing to design and build display structures, and developing informational cooking demo classes that will include cooking, along with discussions about growing the plants used.

What is your favorite season?

My favorite season is fall. At work, the transition from summer to fall is a fun one, with our Fall Fest running the whole month of October. Plus, it is my favorite time of year to travel and experience other culture’s celebrations of the harvest of food and wine. My favorite places to visit are Italy, Spain, France and Cornwall, England. My aunt and uncle live in Cornwall, and while I visit we go to the Farmer’s Harvest Dinner and celebrate what fields have given us. If you travel to the southern hemisphere you can experience a second spring in the same year. Western Australia is amazing with all of their wild flowers, and in the southwest is a region called Margaret River that is like the Napa Valley of Australia. The harvest season there is worth the trip alone. Last fall I went to Mexico City and Puebla. Experiencing the celebration of The Day of the Dead and doing research on peppers were just a couple of fun things I did while visiting.

What is your favorite flower to work with?

My favorite flower is the rose. I have a rose garden of about sixty rose plants that I designed to remind me of an amazing rose garden outside of Paris I visited many years ago and will never forget. The antique rose collection was phenomenal and since I’m a history buff, it had an enormous influence on me that lasts even to this day. 

Randall's Rose Garden

What is your favorite vegetable to grow and cook with and why?

Wow, that’s a very hard question for me to answer. I’ll have to break it down between the warm and cool seasons. My favorite warm season vegetable is the tomato. I do so much with them all year. I make sauces, dehydrate them, can them, and love to make a fresh classic brusccheta or Caprese salad with different colored tomatoes. No matter their form, I always enjoy the amazing flavors.  For the cool season, there is a tie between kale and Brussels sprouts. My favorite way to cook kale is by making a pesto with different types of kale. It is easy to freeze that way. The difference in flavors is amazing and it’s so easy to make a comforting pasta dish on cold night. I love roasting Brussels sprouts whole to a dark crispy texture with a soft center. I do favor the cool season vegetables because they are so nutrient packed. I’ll freeze enough kale pesto to have for several months.

What is something that people might not know about you?

People may not know that vegetables aren’t all I know about. During high school, I had a small landscape maintenance business and worked at my local nursery on the weekends. Then I attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, graduating with a degree in Ornamental Horticulture with a concentration in Landscape Design. After that I attended Cornell University and received a Masters in Landscape Architecture. I was fortunate to have summer jobs during college at the Smithsonian Institution Office of Horticulture in Washington D.C. and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The motto “learn by doing” from Cal Poly has followed me to this day. An education is something that no one can ever take away from you and I love sharing my knowledge with customers and co-workers.

Why You Should Remove Fall Leaves From Your Yard

Fall is at our fingertips and there’s no way to escape the leaves. So, do you really need to spend your Saturday removing those beautiful leaves from your lawn and garden? The answer is most likely yes!

If your lawn has 10-20% leaf coverage, it might be okay, but excessive leaves on your lawn going into winter is bad for several reasons. First, the leaves will smother the grass, and if not removed, can inhibit growth in the spring, or even worse, cause sections of the lawn to die off. Second, damage from critters (voles, mice, etc.) can be more extensive in the spring if leaves are left untended. Finally, leaves carry fungal spores and bacteria from plant diseases like blight and peach leaf curl. The best way to minimize these diseases from reoccurring year after year, is to remove the fallen leaves from infected plants.

There are three main ways to remove the leaves:

1. Rake (or blow) the leaves into a pile, let your kids or neighbors jump in the pile a few times and then compost! (Diseased leaves should not go in your compost pile; put them in your green waste bin.)

2. Use the bagging attachment of your mower if you have one.

3. Mulch the leaves with a mower (i.e. chop them into small pieces so they fall into the canopy); this may require more frequent mowing or several passes with the mower to sufficiently mulch the leaves. This option allows nutrients and organic matter from the leaves to benefit the lawn and soil.

So although this may not be your favorite weekend activity, it’s worth it to get those leaves cleaned up, and make the most of the crisp air and beautiful fall colors while you’re at it!

Farmer's Market Soup: Leek, Zucchini and Peas

October is such a beautiful month of transition—you can still enjoy your local farmer's market run without much more than a light jacket, but the cooler nights warrant a warm bowl of soup! This recipe combines fresh vegetables for a delicious, nutritious and simple meal!

Servings: 4-6

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cooking Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves garlic, diced

1 leek, white and light green part only, diced

3 medium sized zucchini, diced

1 cup of peas (fresh or frozen)

3 or 4 small new potatoes, peeled and cut into fourths

4 cups vegetable broth

Salt and pepper to taste

Fresh herbs for garnish (such as mint, basil and/or thyme)

Lemon juice to taste

Directions

Heat the olive oil in a large pot. Sauté garlic and leeks in the olive oil until soft, but not brown. Add zucchini and continue to stir for about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Add vegetable broth and bring to a gentle boil. Turn down heat to simmer and add potatoes. Simmer for 20 minutes or until vegetables are soft. Add peas and cook for an additional few minutes.

Puree soup in a blender to your liking. Some people prefer to leave in some chunks of vegetables.

Taste and season. Before serving, add juice of half a lemon and garnish with fresh basil, mint or other herbs.

This recipe is from the website of Kaiser Permanente: Food for Health, Recipes for Life.

Spring-Blooming Bulbs to Buy and Plant Now

Now that we've had a good rain and the soil temperatures are cooling down, it's a great time to plant spring-blooming bulbs. There are so many beautiful choices to plant this fall, something for every garden. Are deer and gophers a problem in your garden? Try narcissus (daffodils), allium or fritillaria. Lots of shade? Plant ipheon, eranthis, scilla or galanthus (snowdrops). Early blooming narcissus work great under deciduous trees because they bloom before many trees leaf out in the spring. Looking for fragrance? Freesia and hyacinth smell amazing! Are you adding to your cutting garden? Tulips are beautiful cut flowers, and we have over 50 varieties to choose from. (Tulip tip: Our tulips are pre-chilled, so you only need to refrigerate them if you want them to have longer, stronger stems for cut flowers. Parrot tulips and other late season blooming tulips make the best cut flowers.) Don't forget ranunculus and Dutch iris when planting for cut flowers!

Plant flower bulbs this fall, and then plant pansies right over the bulbs. (Tulips and daffodils work nicely with pansies.) The bulbs will bloom as usual in spring and the pansies will give you color this fall. This is a great way to get more color in your garden and you won't have to plant again until it's time to plant summer annuals. This is an easy way to get gardening done for two seasons at once!

Caring for Perennials This Fall

Perennials are some of our most rewarding plants, giving masses of colorful blooms and beautiful foliage. Perennials are typically non-woody plants that last in the garden for more than two years, and usually for many years. Most perennials are herbaceous, dying to the ground in winter, but growing back fresh and beautiful in spring. A few are evergreen or have a modest woody structure.

Some of our favorite perennials:

• Evergreen
• Acanthus
• Day Lilies (some)
• Euphorbia (many)
• Ferns (many)
• Germander
• Penstemon
• Shasta Daisy
• Herbaceous
• Agastache
• Erigeron
• Gaillardia
• Hardy Geranium
• Lamium
• Nepeta
• Rudbeckia
• Salvia (many)
• Semi-Woody
• Autumn Sage
• Lavender
• Leonotus

Evergreen perennials don’t need to be cut to the ground, but to keep them tidy, remove shabby old growth and cut the remainder back to 6-12 inches.

Semi-woody perennials can be pruned hard, usually removing 1/3 to 2/3 of the old growth to keep them compact and fresh. The exception is lavenders, which are best pruned after their first flush of bloom in spring or summer.

 Essentials for fall care of perennials:

• Keep watering. Because the days are shorter and we receive some morning dew, plus an occasional rain, cut back on your watering schedule a little, but continue watering your perennials until the rains come. Even drought tolerant plants need some water to keep them alive. It is important to water deeply and less often to encourage roots to go down where moisture stays longer. Newly planted perennials need special attention to make sure they don’t dry out completely.
• Give your perennial a fall feeding. Use Black Forest compost mulch (3-4 inches on top of the soil), which feeds the perennial and keeps the weeds down, or use a fertilizer marked 0-10-10. We recommend Master Nursery Master Bloom or EB Stone Ultra Bloom Plant Food. Fall feeding increases the amount and size of summer flowers and helps grow strong roots.
• Cut herbaceous perennials back in the late fall as they are going into dormancy and losing their leaves. Compost cuttings or put in the green waste to help keep insect pests from overwintering in the garden.
• Divide perennials. Many perennials, including Shasta Daisies, Day Lilies and Achilleas appreciate being divided every 3-4 years. You can tell they need to be divided if the flowers are smaller than they were a year or two ago, if they have outgrown their location or if they have a bald spot with nothing growing in the middle of the clump. To divide perennials, dig them up, cut the clump in half or smaller and replant (using starter fertilizer) giving them space to grow, or share some with a friend.

The Veggies You Should Plant Now, Part 4

Cabbage

The word cabbage is a derivation of the French word "caboche," a colloquial term for "head." Cabbage itself comes in many forms. The shapes can be flat, conical or round. The head compact or loose, and the leaves curly or plain.

When growing, cabbage likes full sun and ample water. Fertilize before heads begin to form.

One year at the Alaska State Fair, the winning cabbages weighed 85 lbs., 81.4 lbs., and 77 lbs.

Harvesting from the Winter Garden

Harvest when the head is firm and has reached adequate size depending on variety and growing conditions. Leaves should be crisp looking and firmly packed. Cabbage may be refrigerated, tightly wrapped, for a week at most.

Cabbage sliced or cooked, can be one of two things: deliciously crisp with a mild, pleasant flavor or overcooked and unpleasant. Cabbage and other brassicas contain the chemical hydrogen sulphide, which is activated during cooking when the vegetable starts to soften. It eventually disappears, but during the in-between time, cabbage acquires its characteristic rank smell and flavor. So either cook cabbage briefly, or cook it long and slow, preferably with other ingredients so the flavors can mingle.

There are several types of cabbage. Varieties include savoy, spring greens, green, red, and white. Knowing how to cook them correctly is important. For green or white cabbages, place the shredded leaves in a pan with a pat of butter and a couple tablespoons of water to prevent burning. Cover and cook over medium heat until leaves are tender, occasionally shaking the pan or stirring. Red cabbage is cooked quite differently and is commonly sautéed in oil or butter and then braised in the oven for up to 1.5 hours with apples, currants, onions, vinegar, sugar and spices.

Recipe: Bakesale Betty's Coleslaw

Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 small red onion (sliced very thin)

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1/2 green cabbage (core and outer leaves removed; sliced very thin)

1/4 cup chopped parsley

2 jalapeño chiles (cut in half lengthwise; sliced crosswise)

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

For the vinaigrette: Mix the Dijon, red wine vinegar and salt in a small bowl.  Whisk in the olive oil.

For the coleslaw: In a small bowl, cover sliced onions with red wine vinegar, allowing to macerate for 5 minutes. Drain off vinegar, discard and add onions to a medium mixing bowl along with cabbage, parsley, jalapeños, cilantro, salt and enough vinaigrette to moisten. Combine all ingredients and adjust seasoning.

This recipe is from the website of Kaiser Permanente: Food for Health, Recipes for Life.

Pumpkins and Plants, The Perfect Pair

Fall brings so many great items together: scarfs and boots, family and friends, and now— pumpkins and plants! While traditional pumpkin decorations are great, using pumpkins as vases are a fun and beautiful way to showcase your plants and flowers.

For large pumpkins, create a Pumpkin Succulent Bowl!

Cut off the top of your pumpkin; then remove the seeds/guts so you have a clean, hollow pumpkin. Line the inside of your pumpkin with a sheet of plastic and then pour in succulent soil and begin planting your succulents. Add a little water and enjoy!

For medium/small pumpkins, use the pumpkin as a vase for freshly cut flowers!

Turn your pumpkin into a vase by cutting off the top (and saving it to add back on if you’d like), carving out the inside, inserting a small glass or metal vase or cup (to protect the pumpkin from too much moisture which can cause mold), filling the vase/cup with water and placing in your flowers!

Note: Once pumpkins are cut they are more susceptible to mold. Keep them cool, clean and out of the sun to help them last, or, if you prefer, use fake pumpkins and achieve a similar look that you can replicate year after year.