Picking up thread: Beginning Gardening - What exactly to plant.
(Thread part 2)
(Thread part 2)
For Part 1: preparing a bed, here:
Gonna go in order of time-to-first harvest. Lettuce is fast.
Warm season lettuce: Nevada and Tropicana
Warm season lettuce: Nevada and Tropicana
Brassica (cabbage family): Joi Choi (Pac Choi). Also works in cold waegher too.
A little longer. Space Spinach. Even linger, but lasts forever if you harvest select leaves carefully: Perpetual Swiss Chard.
Roquette Arugula is fast, but depending where you live, may bolt. There is another kind of arugula, Sylvetta Arugula, that does just fine in summer. Makes a big bush. Small leaves, so is for flavor, not bulk. But can make a lettuce salad fun. Lasts forever even in summer.
Beets are a longer term deal, but the greens can be harvested quick. My. favorite for summer is Cylindera beet. Also can pack close to get maximum production for limited space.
Oh. And I need to say something here. Spinach, Swiss chard and beets are all Chenopod family. I've noticed that things I plant after growing a Chenopod there do really well. Not as strong as with nitrogen fixing legumes (beans, peas), but close. Noticable. Can bank on it
Even longer term (50-60 days) is squash. Multipik or Pattypan are favorites. I kinda got sick of zucchini. A few squash plants go a long way. And there is a truck too.
Trick.
Plant squash in a little bit surrounded by a little moat with a wall. In the way plant radish, or Diakon radish. These act as a trap crop for pests. If you have squash leaves touching radish, the boreres go to the radish. Radish will bolt (who cares?) But Diakon might give a crop
"Bit" = "hill or mound"; "way" = "wall'.
A few squash plants go a long way. They do take up space. (Luffa story coming up in a bit.)
Next in time to harvest is bush beans. My favorite is Provider Bush Brean. That has never failed to deliver. And keeps making string beans for several weeks. You can stagger in another planting every 20 days and guarantee beans all summer long. Is super easy.
That's about 2 months out.
Carrots are a long tem commitment and you gotta have rely good soil. (That's a good litmus test. Can you grow good carrots? if yes then you've got a great garden.)
Tomatoes and peppers can be fussy. You have to start them indoors usually. And protect from cutwoms. (So have a little cardboard collar around the plant.)
Personally, I struggled with to store. Out yard had Septoria fungus disease entrenched. I only found Juliet tomatoes could work.
Peppers could work. Peppers work great in containers as long as you water them regularly every day. There are two tricks with peppers.
Pepper trick 1. Peppers like to be frotted. When young, gently toussel the young pepper plants. Makes their stems tough. It's also kinda fun.
Pepper trick #2: "Peppers like to hold hands". I dunno why, but put your container pepper plants close together so they touch and they will do really well.
Tomato trick 1: Transplant them deep. Really deep. Pluck off all the side leaves and put them into a super-deep hole so that only the top few leaves poke out. Tomatoes can grow roots from stems. So burying them deep they get a kick-ass root system this way. Really good.
Tomato trick #2. Plant basil in between tomato plants. Prevents romato hornworm. Plus now you are only one cooked pasta away from yummyt meal.
Basil, determinate tomato (many cherry tomatoes are determinate, and peppers are great for containers. Also peppermint. You don't wanrt that getting loose in your garden. Goes every where.
Most bang for your buck in garden? Parsnip. But that's a winter crop.
#2 sweet potato.
Also #3 okra.
Let's talk okra first.
#2 sweet potato.
Also #3 okra.
Let's talk okra first.
Okra has an exponential function growth. Super slow, then Bam! Takes off! And you gotta harvest those buds at least every three days.
Okra by itself kinda slimy. But, put one into a soup, and it thickens it and just melds all the flavors together. It makes soups hearty.
Only 3-4 plants are needed to keep a typical family loaded in okra.
Now we're gonna talk about sweet potatoes. That can be one of the biggest bangs for your buck. But. You gotta have a long hot growing season.
And once you start growing them, you won't go back. Basically what you grow will totally kick ass flavor-wise over the sweet potatoes you get in the store. You won't go back. You will spoil your friends and family.
My favorite varieties are Bush Porto Rico and Vardaman. Bush Porto Rice puts sweet potato tubers randomly in the garden bed while Vardaman clusters them like dinosaur eggs.
Both sweet potato types store really long. Like, over winter. So in spring you "slip out" the tubers. This is labor intensive, but you get new plants AND get to eat most of the sweet potato. Here is how it works....
By spring you'll see a few red shoots poking out ends of sweet potato. (Is OK, you'll still get to eat the sweet potato.) Cur off end with shoot. Poke with toothpicks and suspend in jar of water. (Eat middle-rest of sweet potato. Enjoy!)
After a few weeks you'll see roots coming out of cut end, and shoots will get really long. Some shoots will have tiny rootlets poking out. This is good.
From time to time break off shoot and rootlet at potato edge. Put in water and let grow roots. Keep doing this and collecting slips with roots.
After it is way way past frost (sweet potatoes can't even deal with slight bit of cold) bury slips deep in your garden soil. Water a lot. Growth will incredibly slow.
Sweet potatoes have a very exponenrial growth curve. Nothing. nothing. A little. Bam! Most growth in fall.
At some point you'll get a light frost and it will look like someonw took a blowtorch to your crop. Dig everything up. Gently knock any loose soil off. Put on a newspaper and let sit in sun. This cures the sweet potato. Rotate to give good coverage. And put in paper bag.
Sweet potatoes can stay all winter long.
It was my best crop. I used to dig up about 160-210 pounds of sweet potato.
And boy, were they delicious!
It was my best crop. I used to dig up about 160-210 pounds of sweet potato.
And boy, were they delicious!
How did I deal with pests?
I treated it like a constant war. I did battle. Evil weeds. Rodents. Insects. Fungal diseases.
Weeding needs to be done every few days. Or weeds get upper hand. Get a tool you like to cultivate scythe the weeds. Do it often.
I treated it like a constant war. I did battle. Evil weeds. Rodents. Insects. Fungal diseases.
Weeding needs to be done every few days. Or weeds get upper hand. Get a tool you like to cultivate scythe the weeds. Do it often.
Rodents are a pain. Raccoons destroyed corn (neatly, btw). I just didn't bother with corn any more.
For insects, manual plucking. Or I whipped out Sevin or Malathion as appropriate. (I worked for the company that invented Sevin.). I used chenistry. When things for difficult.
For insects, manual plucking. Or I whipped out Sevin or Malathion as appropriate. (I worked for the company that invented Sevin.). I used chenistry. When things for difficult.
When things got difficult.
Biggest mistakes: Malabar spinach. God that tasted horrible. Like fish and spinach . Also, slimy. Yuk!
Also, when you plant new things, you get new pests. Some new bug I never saw before are all my Garbanzo beans. That ended that.
And whatever got into the Brussel sprouts and swarmed out when I touched it still gives me nightmares.
The most hilarious disaster was when I grew luffa. Yes, the bath sponge thing. It's not a deep sea sponge, it's a squash. You let it grow, get fruit (gourds) then get fibrous and then you wash away innards leave skeleton.
But one plant grows really big. Ridiculously big. Like 3000 square feet big (I measured).
I left a note for neighbors taking care of garden when we were out of town.
"Beware of the Luffa" it read.
I left a note for neighbors taking care of garden when we were out of town.
"Beware of the Luffa" it read.
It seemed like once a week I had to keep it from climbing up into an apple tree.
In late fall, I harvested the Luffa a squooshed them out Ina bucket of water. And you know what? There are some incredible emollients in Luffa guts. My hands felt all sexy soft.
Before I sign off, I've got one last favorite plant to recommend. Egyptian walking onion. It's a goofy plant. More like shallot (multiple cloves.) But it grows green oniony foliage (can be chopped and put into a salad like green onion). And puts out a little mini onion bulblet.
Eventually the little bulblet will reach down to ground, root and make a new colony. You can eat bulblet, foliage and clove. But..all are much stronger than regular onion, so go light on use.
The cool thing is that if you ignore it just keeps making more. So just park it in an unused corner and it'll be there when you need it.
So that wraps up two long threads on gardening. I hope it inspires some of y'all to give it a go and if you've got any helpful tricks or favorite varieties (especially for SoCal), please post in replies!
[That's all from me! Good luck!]
[That's all from me! Good luck!]
