What It's Like to Manage a Winery Culinary Garden

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Welcome to the very first 2024 Garden Study Interview! Here’s the basics of how we do these:

• You don’t have to be an expert, just enthusiastic

• I make a document with some basic questions and send them off to future interviewees, so if you have ideas for questions to include in future Q&As, put them in the comments

• The goal is to include all types of gardening (container, flower, patio, community, desert, mountain, vegetable you name it) and zones; please be patient, I promise we’ll get to all of them

• The comments are what really make this space shine, so please do so with abandon (and go back and check out new comments on older posts. You can find all previous issues editions here.)

And as always, if you know someone who’d like Garden Study, please forward this their way — but make sure to guide them to the specific way to *opt-in* to Garden Study emails, which you can find here.

And if you’d like to volunteer for a future Garden Study interview, here’s where you sign up (it might take years to get through them all, but I’m committed). Now, here’s Fiona talking about what to do when the parsley bolts, battling powdery mildew, and how to deal with garden down time.

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Name and Pronouns:

Fiona Bond, she/her

Where do you garden?

I manage and tend a culinary garden that provides specialty produce and cut flowers for Niner Wine Estates in Paso Robles, CA. [AHP note: Also stunning on Instagram] We are in zone 8b, in the central coast wine region, 30mins inland from the Pacific ocean. We get very big temperature swings throughout the year in summer that can go from 50º at night to over 100º during the day. We get light frost from October to May.

The weather here is great for wine grapes, but not conducive for other main crops. We have an advantage that we are so diversified and don’t have to answer to the needs of the market. I manage a little less than of an acre alongside two other gals, 8 laying hens, two beehives, an owl box and two cats. We do appx 250+ cultivars from seed/tuber/corm plus 22 fruit trees, all tended by hand, year-round. We also hold workshops, make products, sell seedlings, make bouquets and do a lot of guest-interaction/education with the winery crowd. 

Can you describe your gardening philosophy? How do you approach it, how do you think of gardening in your mind, what makes it feel valuable to you?

My gardening philosophy has really evolved over the last 15 years; from starting off with a very production oriented mindset to now a far more holistic, soil-first, full-sensory approach. I make beauty a priority now, whereas when I was first starting, I really focused on how much food I could crank out of a space (lol capitalism). My gardening style definitely tracks with my personal and political development; *pleasure-forward* is my current ethos… there are way more flowers than ever before! Just because! I still retain the aim to use as much as possible from the garden, and I’ve learned a ton about food preservation, fermenting, body-product manufacturing, etc as a way to use everything that comes out of a space….all of those ancillary skills that I imagine every gardener must come by at some point in their journey. 

In terms of ‘style,’ my practices are no-till, sort of biodynamic, 100% organic, with soil-health always at the fore. If the bugs, birds and bees are happy then I’ve done my job, everything else is a bonus. We never till or turn the soil: when we terminate a crop, we cut it to soil level and let the soil process those root systems. Feed your worms! We amend beds with 2-3” of compost on top, maybe some organic fertilizer + worm castings and then aim to plant the next crop into the bed the same day, dodging any of the remaining roots. We are lucky to have a robust composting program here, we constantly have a pile going with the garden greenwaste, the greenwaste from the restaurant and the chicken coop bedding. This is a great book for learning more about the no-till philosophy. And this one, it’s the OG soil bible. 

My personal gardening mascot — and they are all over the garden — is a spent sunflower stalk. If you’ve ever tried to pull a sunflower root-ball out of the soil after it’s done blooming in the summer, it’s the size of a basketball! After a winter remaining in the soil, all of the critters and fungi have broken it down and it’s this gorgeous gnarled husk. There is so much organic matter you’ve kept in — and invited into! — the soil by leaving it there to break down. It’s by far one of my favorite things about the way I garden now; leaving these thank-yous/offerings to the soil gods every time we say goodbye to a crop. As I’ve added more years to this practice I’ve become way less self-conscious about my woo-woo inclinations - reciprocity in practice is real and it’s important  and practical and sweet and tender and and and now I'm crying a little. Deep bows  to Robin Wall-Kimmerer for everything but noting here the language around reciprocity. Noticing where and how the earth loves me back has changed my life. 

I want to hear EVERYTHING about what it’s like to maintain a chef’s garden, and I bet readers do too. 

I have worked primarily over the last 15 years as a culinary gardener (growing specifically for a restaurant). In that 15 years, I have worked many jobs in tandem with my husband — he is an incredibly talented chef with a fancy Michelin star background. We met when he was cooking at Manresa restaurant (3***) and I was managing the farm that grew for that restaurant. We both started those jobs as unpaid interns and respectively worked our ways up to management. We’ve collaborated on a handful of professional projects together, plus two small human projects (ages 5 and 9). He is currently the executive chef at the winery restaurant and we collaborate daily on all things edible in the garden. 

Because we have honed our professional and personal relationship in tandem over these years, I think we’ve worked out a lot of the kinks that can hitch up a grower/chef relationship, mainly managing expectations, timing, what is possible within the specific climate we are working in (we’ve lived + worked together in Santa Cruz, Big Sur, Bali and now in an area with a fairly long frost season).

Working a chef’s garden has taught me a ton about rolling schedules: interplanting so that there is always something available to align with a certain dish or flavor profile. Like if the parsley bolts because of a heat spell we’re not in trouble: they can use the immature seed heads or the parsley pollen on the dish and they still get the flavor they’re after. This also introduces the guest to a new experience of that plant, while also giving the bees and the birds forage. Wins all around. There is also a lot of fun stuff we can grow that I would never be able to as a commercial grower — weird heirloom stuff, using every different part of the plant (celery pollen, the teeniest baby radishes, arugula flowers). It wouldn’t make a ton of sense to grow these things commercially — I would never be able to make a profit if I were selling borage flowers at Farmer’s Market, ya know? 

My garden is also a public space on the winery/restaurant property, so I’ve found over the years that it is key location where guests can get the download of the farming philosophy for the whole 300+ acre vineyard (I’m very lucky that this winery practices land stewardship that tracks with my growing approach — they are definitely not all like this!). It’s also an extension of the restaurant and a place where guests can experience the kitchen’s approach to sourcing and product. I think of my job as very much within the hospitality industry, chatting with people, stoking them out, blowing their minds with some weird flower or plant or just creating a space for them to wander around and physically experience the terroir of the region in a way that even non-wine-snobs can grok.

I love planning certain vignettes within the garden that I know people will be excited about - an arch covered in runner beans and trombetto squash for their vacation photo, a row of tomatoes planted with a skirt of mixed basil beneath them (people love to tell me about their caprese salad recipes) or a row of salvias right near the tables so that folks can watch the hummingbirds while they eat — seeing people interact with the space in a way that I had envisioned is incredibly satisfying.  

If a friend was starting with a blank slate of a garden, what three plants would you recommend as steady, reliable workhorses? 

Oh yikes, this is a tough question?? The best plants to go for are the ones you love — that you’ll fight for, read about, google image-search, don a head-lamp at 1am to inspect the earwig situation… I could say celery, but if you hate celery, don’t bother because you’ll be more likely to abandon the project when things get weird! 

The answer will depend on what type of garden you’re aiming for: edible/ornamental/shade/sun? but I suppose my go-to’s would be sunflowers, salvias and tulsi (or nettles if you live dangerously). The bees and hummingbirds will love the sunflowers and salvias, plus they are gorgeous and super low-maintenance. Tulsi and/or nettles because they are lovely medicinal herbs to incorporate into your tea/herb routine — both really sweet ways to nourish yourself from the land you tend. 

What are your garden nemeses, and how have you attempted (or failed) to deal with them?

Imposter syndrome!! lol

There is a yearly battle with peach-leaf curl that I haven’t been able to get ahead of. The protocol is to spray a copper fungicide while the trees are dormant — typically in January or February after they’ve dropped their leaves. But with the winters getting milder the trees keep budding out earlier and earlier, shortening the window where I can get the copper onto them (plus I forget, derp). They’ve managed to bounce back each year, but it’s tough to see them struggle. In that same vein, we get a lot of powdery mildew here because of the heat/condensation combo in the summer - especially on the dahlias - so we will do a LAB spray prophylactically starting in June throughout the summer to combat that. 

Regarding pests — the goal is to cultivate a really thriving ecosystem where there are natural predators for most common pests (the ladybugs eat the aphids, the birds eat the caterpillars, the owls eat the gophers and mice, etc), but that doesn’t always happen! Gophers and ground squirrels are the main issue here - and while I can be lax about bugs and birds to some extent, I have a zero-tolerance policy for burrowing rodents.  I do make a point to politely ask them to leave, but after a day or two, I break out the cinch trap. 

We have great fencing around the garden, as well as two winery cats, so for now the rabbits stay away (touch wood), and for the most part I assume that about 15-20% of stuff will get eaten by something other than humans - so that adjusts expectations in a helpful way. I have absolutely noticed that as the soil gets healthier, the plants fend off insect invasions - there is also this amazing podcast talking about how you can augment the sugar levels in your plants to make them invisible (!!!) to pests. I will often combine the LAB spray mentioned above with molasses to up the brix and combat powdery mildew at the same time. The whole No-Till Flowers podcast series is gold, imo. [AHP Note: I have been fully converted to the molasses brix gospel and am trying it this year on dahlias]

.What still intimidates you about gardening and/or your garden? 

My first few years of gardening in California I would sort of become a bit untethered when things slowed down in November/December - when you don’t get super hard frosts or snow where there is a clear end-point it can be hard to know when things stop

It’s easy to want to keep pushing/working/producing when it’s 65º and sunny outside, but when the days are short, nothing is really visibly growing and that can feel a lot like failure. Lots of metaphors here. I still feel that way when winter rolls around, and I feel challenged each year to lean into the slow-down, accept and embrace the dormancy, not take it personally. I’ve managed to find lots of distractions for the slower months (microgreens, dahlia cutting beds, seed cleaning/sorting) so I haven’t cracked the code on *actually* slowing down, but identifying the problem is half of the solution, right? Maybe??

What do you most often think about (or listen to) when you’re out in the garden? 

If I’m honest, a lot of time in the garden is spent thinking about and identifying chores that need to be done; space issues that are emerging, pest damage that needs mitigation, plants that should have been staked two weeks ago, irrigation leaks, planning propagation schedules, all of that fun stuff. 

But almost every morning before anyone gets here, me and the garden cat, Lou, stroll through with a cup of coffee and our to-do list, making notes and chatting to all the plants and creatures. I try to think about how this is what it’s all about; how this practice of tending a small patch of earth connects me to my lineage, and to all people, everywhere, kind of. We all rely on the land entirely, whether or not we choose to acknowledge it… so I try to take time to sit down in between the rows and pet the cat, giving myself a small window of time in the day before I have to start *doing* things. I call this my dopamine dump lol and it’s a lovely way to start the day when I remember to do it. 

For music, lots of low-key stuff - West African music, Alice Coltrane, Mary Lattimore, mellow Led Zeppelin tracks, and then of course juicy sunshine reggae when I’m feeling good and have projects to tackle. 

What are your future dreams for your garden? 

I would love to continue to grow more medicinals and dive into that world of knowledge. I would also love to learn more about the various birds that come our way. Also, being a fairly recent transplant (we moved here in 2019 but I feel like 2020 and 2021 didn’t count as real time?), more community building opportunities are on the horizon, I can feel it! 

Finally, this is your chance to crowdsource freely from the Garden Study community. What do you want to ask? 

We host some general garden workshops here (Summer gardening, Winter gardening, intro to medicinal herbs, dividing dahlias) but I’m curious if you were going to sign up for a workshop at a working farm/culinary garden/winery/restaurant what kinds of classes would you want to see on offer? What kinds of community events would you be motivated to attend? What resources could we offer that folks aren’t finding elsewhere?

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