To (I imagine) no one's surprise, November's painting is yet another van Gogh, entitled "Landscape with Four Trees, November 1885." I didn't actually want to use another van Gogh, but it's surprisingly difficult to find a public domain November-specific painting, and the very few others I found were all depressing and dreary - just as November weather often is dreary. But I promise: no more van Gogh's for a while.

Meanwhile, if I have any readers in the Southern Hemisphere: I hope you are enjoying a delightful spring, as we northerners prepare for winter! It would seem very odd to me to have my seasons 'turned around'. That would take considerable getting used to.

ContainerSeeds.com will open around December 1 - at least that's how the schedule looks at present. We now have a refrigerator dedicated to seed storage. The new fridge has a 4.3 cubic foot capacity: it will hold a whole lot of seeds. We've also added wall-shelves and rolling plastic 'drawer units' to my home office, which is now very convenient - a good workplace.

Fall clean-up is all finished, thankfully. We gave up on getting it done ourselves, finally, and hired it done. Now I'll start spring gardening season with everything in good shape. Hurray!

We're still harvesting chard, parsley, and leaf celery from the in-ground garden, and mesclun from a salad bowl (!) on the deck. Indoors (in front of our large bay window, and with fluorescent lights supplementing the natural sunshine) the mini-tomatoes are doing nicely in their permanent pots and have many little green tomatoes already. The mini eggplants and peppers are also growing nicely, and so is the leaf celery. My cilantro is ready to start cutting, so it's time to start another batch. Even the rosemary plant - which always sulks when I bring it indoors in autumn - has perked up and is looking good again.

What is it? What sort of container do you need?
'Mesclun' is the French name and 'misticanza' is the Italian name. In English, there is no one-word name for it, although I think the best description would be 'a mixture of baby salad greens'. I usually see the French word used to describe this delicious mix, probably for the sake of brevity. Mesclun is very well-suited to container growing, in fact, many (probably most) market farmers who grow mesclun mix for sale, grow it in containers. Mesclun will be ready to start harvesting about 30 days from seed-sowing: a fast crop indeed. Mixtures of seeds are sold specifically for growing as baby salad greens.

But what actually is it? This varies, but it always includes several types of lettuce. In fact, some mesclun mixes are composed solely of lettuce. More often other plants are included with brassicas (cabbage-family plants, such as mizuna) being the most frequent other component. Other plants, such as arugala, certain herbs, beets (for the young greens) or other greens, are sometimes included. But I think these are best grown separately and added to the mixture after harvesting, as the fast-growing lettuces and brassicas will outgrow the slower plants.

Mesclun is picked when the plants are only about 3-4" high and, therefore, it is very quickly grown and does not need a deep container. In fact, many people grow it in ordinary plastic flats that are about 20" x 10" and only 3" deep. (These would be, of course, flats with drainage holes.) You can grow it in almost any other container too: the idea is to have a large surface area but relatively low depth to minimize the amount of growing medium you'll need. The picture shows mesclun currently growing on our deck - you can see that it's in a plastic bowl (in which we punched holes for drainage). For another container idea: white vinyl house guttering is for sale this week at one of the local do-it-yourself stores: $4.05 for ten feet. This is 5" deep, and I think it will be just about the perfect container for growing mesclun (assuming that its shape is such that it will sit flat on the ground). We'll buy two 10-foot pieces, with 8 end caps, and cut each piece in half. That will give me four 5-foot pieces of white vinyl guttering for mesclun mix (or lettuce or strawberries). If your floor, or ground, area is limited, you could probably hang the lengths of guttering from poles, giving you a tiered hanging garden that greatly multiplies your growing area.

How do I grow it?

First and foremost, both lettuce and the brassicas are cold-weather plants, so it's best to grow mesclun in spring and fall. You might be able to keep it going during the heat of summer if you can provide it with some shade and if you live in a reasonably cool-summer area (I can, for instance, but I'll bet it wouldn't grow in Florida's hot summers). So you can start mesclun in early spring, make several successive plantings, quit for the hottest times, then start again about three weeks before your first anticipated fall frost date. You can then continue successive plantings, if you wish, until really cold weather sets in. Mine is outdoors now (November) and it's been pretty cold here. In fact, I saw a few snowflakes this morning. It could certainly be grown indoors under plant lights too, or in a greenhouse.

Just fill a shallow container (with drainage holes) with growing medium (I use soil-less mix, such as Pro-Mix), and get it thoroughly wet. Then sprinkle your seeds thickly on top of the mist. I don't try for rows or any particular planting pattern: I just sprinkle the seeds all over the top. Lettuce seeds need light to germinate, and the brassicas - always ready to leap into life - won't mind having some light, so don't cover the seeds. Keep evenly moist (perhaps by covering loosely with a plastic bag, or by misting) until the seeds have sprouted, then move the mesclun to somewhere in direct sun, or under grow lights. From then on, water as you would any container plant, and feed with a balanced plant food about twice a week.

Start cutting when leaves are 3" to 4" tall. Don't pull them out: just snip with scissors, and most will probably regrow, giving you at least one additional cutting. The mesclun pictured is ready for harvest: you want to harvest it young for the most delicious salads. Mesclun is really an easy crop to grow, although one requiring just a bit of hand labor (cutting the leaves), and the delicate young leaves don't ship or store very well, which probably explains the insanely high price charged for mesclun in stores. Your home-grown mesclun will be much fresher and better, besides affording a tremendous cost savings.

Our winning tip of the month is from Wendy, who lives in East Yorkshire, England, UK. Thank you, Wendy! She wrote to me after reading last month's "Plant Profile" on snap beans. Wendy wrote:

"I've had great success with planting a tub of pole beans (Trail of Tears, a purple one) and one of sunflowers. Stand them next to each other and the beans grow up the sunflower (guide it over at the start) - very strong even in windy Yorkshire and very pretty. Also I cut and store the sunflower stalks and they make good bean poles the following year."

After receiving Wendy's tip, and just by coincidence, I read the following variation of this idea that was written in 1911 (proving that there's nothing new under the sun, I suppose):

"If you find it difficult to procure good bean poles, spend a few cents for sunflower seed, start them early in the season, and transplant when a foot or more high to the bean hills - or rather where the bean hills are to be - sowing the beans around the sunflowers. This, in one case at least, solved the problem admirably, with apparently no effect on the quality or yield of the beans. All that was necessary was to strip off the lower leaves of the sunflower stalk, that light and air might reach the bean vines."
E. L. D. Seymour, Garden Profits, 1911, quoted in 1001 Old-Time Garden Tips

Wendy's prize will be in the mail tomorrow. (I don't want to reveal what it is, and spoil the surprise, so I won't announce what it is here - it's only a small prize, but something she will find useful, I hope.)

If you submit a tip that I can use in the Newsletters, you may win a prize! A small, but nice, prize will be given each month to the person who submits the best tip (and at least for now, it appears that you won't have much competition). Tips can be about growing, preserving, or cooking your harvest. Send tips to: tips@containerseeds.com.

I'd like to talk just a little bit about beautiful edible container gardens. To me, this is an exciting idea. Maybe you only have a front porch or a front walkway to use for your container garden - and you want it to be pretty. Or maybe you want to express your creativity in this manner, or you would just enjoy having a beautiful container garden, even if it isn't visible to anyone but you. Now, I'm fortunate in having a lot of room on the deck and in the back yard that isn't visible from the street, but I also like to have some decorative containers on our front porch and walk. So I'm interested in this idea on a personal level too. It's also an exciting idea for me because it really wasn't something I had given any serious consideration to until reading Bountiful Container recently. Many people (like me, until recently) probably don't realize that they can have both: containers that are decorative as well as productive. I have a lot of experience in growing edible plants and I'm, therefore, fairly confident about growing plants. But I'm not naturally good at making things *pretty* and I have very little experience in creating decorative container gardens, so maybe we can learn together.

Bountiful Container taught me that a beautiful container arrangement can consist of several containers grouped together (believe it or not, I hadn't thought of that before) and that sometimes it's useful to place your containers so that they are at different levels, and the book discusses various means of creating different levels for containers. It also has 22 "theme gardens" - with lists of included plants, a drawing, and directions on how to arrange the plants. I regard these more as inspiration than as direct recipes to follow - although they could certainly be closely followed, with (I'm sure) excellent results.

I watch a PBS show called P. Allen Smith's Garden Home. Smith is a professional garden designer, and his emphasis is on decorative gardens, of course, but the same principles apply to both edible and decorative gardening, especially when it comes to design. He creates a container on each show, and has a "3-shape rule" that sounds really easy: even I could do this! Here's his recipe:

"Designing containers for your garden is easy to do if you follow my easy 3-shape rule - use a combination of plants that fit into one of these three basic shapes: tall and spiky; round and full; low and cascading. These three basic forms complement one another so well that it doesn't really matter if the plants eventually bloom. This allows you to use plants that have great looking foliage as well as those with colorful flowers." (http://www.pallensmith.com/newsletter/2002/news_101102a.htm)

In this connection, I would also like to mention the series of books by Rosalind Creasy: The Edible Whatever Garden (for Whatever, substitute Flower, Rainbow, Asian, Italian, Mexican, Herb, etc.). Creasy is not primarily a container gardener, but her books are full of gorgeous photographs of beautiful edible gardens. If they don't cause you to fall into a state of complete and utter despair because your garden will never look like that, they may well be inspiring and useful to you. (Remember, Creasy has a staff of paid helpers to work on her gardens, she lives in California where it appears that everything grows beautifully, and she is obviously a very skilled professional garden designer and photographer.) I think it's very good to see what the plants actually look like in growth, and helps you picture what your containers can become.

Summing up, here are just a few things to think about if you want your container garden to be beautiful as well as edible:
1. You can do it.
2. You can group containers - you aren't required to put all the plants in one container.
3. The containers can be at different levels.
4. And remember Smith's "3-shape rule" - use plants that are tall and spiky, round and full, and something that will cascade over the edge. (These aren't necessarily all in the same container either.)
5. And, of course, you can mix non-edible flowers or foliage plants with your edible plants, if you wish.

The recipe choice was very easy this month. (For those in other countries who may not know: Thanksgiving, the last Thursday in November, is a big holiday in the US, and one of the traditional foods for Thanksgiving is pumpkin pie.) The recipe below was adapted from one in Vegetarian Times and it has become my very favorite Thanksgiving dessert - I like it even better than pumpkin pie. This recipe is entitled "Pumpkin Flan" - by the way, flan is called "creme caramel" in the UK, France, and probably other countries as well (Australia? New Zealand?). But in the US, we usually use the Spanish word 'flan' for this creamy and delicious dessert.

Please don't be scared away from it by the caramel: I wasn't brave enough to make caramel until last year and I feel really silly now that I didn't try it years ago. It's not at all difficult. You need to be careful not to taste the melted sugar and not to spill it on yourself - it's sticky and can give a very nasty burn. Other than that, it's really easy. This recipe would be good even without the caramel, but it's much more festive with it. For best texture and flavor, make the flan the day before you will be serving it.

Pumpkin Flan

For the caramel:

• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup water

For the custard:

• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup (unseasoned) pumpkin puree (I use canned pumpkin - it's fine. Just be sure you get 100% pumpkin and not that nasty "pumpkin pie filling".)
• 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1.5 cups evaporated milk (not sweetened condensed milk) or half-and-half, or whole milk, even 2% or skim milk. I use skim-evaporated milk for this recipe.

I hope you have a safe and happy Thanksgiving,
Until next month,
Pat