Easy Vegetable Gardening

Here's a photo of our garden this week. It is starting to get out of hand with weeding, training, harvesting and bug scouting.

I would prefer a much smaller garden, easier to manage. Like the vegetable garden we have at Blue Moon Gardens. We used the square foot, lasagna garden method.

We have 5 boxes measuring 4 feet by 4 feet. We layered in newspaper, hay, leaves, compost and mulch to create the soil. The box on the left has cucumbers on the trellis, Ethnic Biscayne peppers and in the front right corner, beets.

This is plenty of space to grow veggies for 2 people. You can plant densely, so weeds are not a problem. Here is the harvest of beets I took out of the box. If I had thinned them earlier, I could have gotten twice as much.

I pulled up all the Thumbelina carrots the same day. They were delicious - sweet and crunchy. I planted more basil in there spots to make pesto.

I started harvesting carrots out of my garden a few weeks ago. I planted Sweet Fingerlings. They were disappointing. A nice size, but not sweet. This week I dug some bigger carrots. I don't remember their name; my sign faded. They were nice and sweet, and big enough to grate for salad.
Tomatoes are getting ripe this week. I can report which varieties have the best flavor.

The art of slowing down

Now that the spring rush is over I enjoy taking the time to notice the small, subtle views around me.

The red stems and faint blush on the leaves of Silver Anniversary abelia.

Here's the delicate, yet beautiful flowers on a cleyera shrub.

In spring I love the look of Taxus, true yew, sprouting out its new growth.

It's important to appreciate the rewards of all your work in gardening. Be sure to take the time to see the small details of nature, pick a few flowers to bring inside, and smell the roses. 

Taming the wild tomato

Tomatoes are like other wild, unruly beings we have tried to domesticate – dogs, horses, kids – they need training. And the earlier you get started the better the results.

 We just got the trellis up for our tomatoes this past weekend, and none to soon. They have been in the garden for about 6 weeks and I haven’t had time to get out their and start their training. So I had to be really tough with them. [Picture me here in dominatrix gear. No, scratch that, picture Dana Delany in her outfit in Exit to Eden. Much prettier.]

First I hoisted the plants up onto the fending and tied them up. Then I cut off all the suckers I could find. These are the branches that shoot up above a leaf.

It helps to cut these off when they are very young because they will be the first branches to flower and fruit and you will be loathe to cut them off when they have the only little tomatoes you see.  But I was ruthless. It didn’t matter if these suckers had little green tomatoes already, off they went. If you are a regular reader you will know already I love to cut and prune.

  

Then I cut off all the branches that touched the ground. I read this tip in my Fine Gardening, Vegetable Gardening E-letter. This is a Tauton Press publication; they do good work. Cutting off any foliage that touches the ground helps prevent the spread of foliar disease. Made good sense to me.

It looks like we will actually have a tomato crop this year. In the past couple of years our tomatoes have refused to respond to our tender care and succumbed to leaf-footed bugs, and the heat. With our unusually warm spring, we were able to get our tomato plants in early so they are starting to fruit already. I can’t wait to try the first tangy, ripe tomato. We will have taste tests of all the varieties to determine which we like the best.

Structure for Vegetable gardens

Structure is important for a veggie garden. It helps keep things tidy and lets your fruits grow off the ground, where they are less likely to rot and are more easily harvested. We have tried many types of trellises, fences, baskets and cages; some we made, some we bought.
A few years ago I grew my peas on an expandable willow fence. Cute, but not very practical. A big wind blew it all over once the peas got 3 feet tall.

Here is some nice garden structure at the Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham (actually Independence), Texas. They have a wonderful fence, and this hand-made trellis. Once again, attractive, but not very functional. About all you could hold up on this trellis is sweet peas or a very few scarlet runner beans.

I own quite a few of the galvanized "Tomato cages" sold everywhere. Whoever named them never grew tomatoes. They do not hold up the tomatoes I grow. We use them for our peas. Push the cage as far in the ground as you can, then sow your pea seeds around the inside of the cage. They will grow up through the center quite well. Unfortunately, the deer and the gusty wind we experienced this spring blew them over as well. We now have the cages staked up with 6 -foot bamboo poles.
The most effective structure we have use in our garden is metal fence poles and cattle panels. The panels are like heavy duty fencing. They come in "sheets" 4 to 5 feet tall and 16 feet long. We had ours cut into 8 foot lengths to fit in the back of truck to transport home. We use these pieces of fencing to make trellises for tomatoes, beans and cucumbers. The wire is spaced about 4 inches apart on the cattle panels, so you can get your hand inside it easily to weave the plants as they grow.

Next post - all about tomato training.

Garden Bounty

We are back to our Sunday ritual of garden work. Get up to watch CBS Sunday Morning, then it is straight out to the garden to work before it gets too hot. Yesterday, Gracie followed me up there (the vegetable garden is about 150 yards from the house). She hung around the entire time we worked.

She doesn't look very happy, does she?
We had our first good harvest of a variety of vegetables. Carrots (disappointingly not sweet), kale, lettuce, turnips, the last of the radishes and a couple of onions.

I forgot to mention peas. My snap peas are still in the flat sno pea stage, my favorite. I love to eat them raw. The deer left enough so we got several batches of nice, small, crunchy ones.
I also picked young pinto beans - the ones that look like green beans. I am afraid there won't be any left by the time they plump up and the shells turn brown. That is the stage when you pick them to shell. Last year the deer ate them all before we got to them.

Here's my harvest laid out on the kitchen counter after washing. This is the part I dislike the most about the whole gardening experience. Well, okay, I don't like weeding when the temperature gets over 90. But the cleaning process is a huge chore. First you have to trim off all the foliage and roots. It takes at least 2 washes to get the dirt, and perhaps insects, off, then to get them fully clean. It can take over an hour. James has an old sink set up at the garden. I need to get it cleaned off. We currently use it as a work bench. Then I can at least get the first, muddy rinse done outside before I bring it all in to the kitchen. At least I have lots of counter space to spread out the bountiful harvest to dry.

Garden Pests

Our garden is coming along beautifully. The radishes are through. I have to admit I left them in the ground to get too big. I really haven't developed a taste for radishes. But everything else is growing like crazy.
However, we are now visited by our most bothersome garden pests. No, not insects, but 4-legged pests.

For the past couple of years, deer have been a huge problem in our garden. They ate all of our Southern peas last year: pintos, Christmas beans, butter beans. This year they are celebrating the early opening of the "All you can eat deer buffet" and have consumed the end of the lettuce and are now after my snap peas. Here's a photo of the nibbled tips of my pea plants. They are pruning the tops of all the other beans and peas out there as well.
We put up a faux fence of twine with bright pink flags on it, but that won't fool them for long. A real fence is in order - I am voting for an electric fence. Easy to install and very effective.






Yesterday afternoon James and I met in the garden - our common after-work get-together during the growing season. He told me feral hogs had gotten into the garden and destroyed the corn. Wild hogs are a huge problem around here. We have been lucky to be outside their preferred range as they can tear up a large area in one night.

After viewing the damage myself I recognized it was not hogs. They would have dug up everything in a huge area. This was the work of armadillos, our worst pest at the nursery. Last year we were relatively successful trapping and relocating armadillos. I think we caught 9 in all. But there are many more in the area. I don't think an electric fence will keep them out.

Hummingbirds

Yesterday as I sat on my front porch I caught the buzz of hummingbird wings. The noise was frantic, sending vibrations through the air. There were at least six hummingbirds fighting over the feeder hanging on the corner of the porch.

It was fascinating to watch them zoom about, chasing each other away from the feeder. They move so quickly it is hard to keep them in sight. While two or three were off in the trees hot in pursuit, another one would sneak up and grab a sip of nectar. It was amusing that they were so territorial about this one feeder; we have two other feeders around the house. We try to hang them out of sight of each other to keep down the fighting.

My photo isn't too clear, but you can just make out the silhouettes of three hummers, one hanging on the back of the feeder.

We make our own sugar water to fill the feeders, and put only about 1 cup in each feeder to keep it fresh. The remainder of the syrup is stored in the refrigerator until needed. I use 1 cup of sugar to 3 cups of water. Stir until sugar is suspended in the water, then cook on high in the microwave for 4 minutes. Take it out of the microwave and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Let cool.