Spring and Summer Garden of 2008

Food is expensive. The quality of store-bought food is questionable. I want to raise as much of my own as I can. That doesn’t make it free, but it is better and cheaper, especially over time once the initial costs of setting up a garden are paid back in produce.

I have puttered around with vegetable gardening over the years, some years more enthusiastically than others, but high food costs and interest in organic produce have convinced me to grow my own in earnest. I have limited sun, clay soil, and unpredictable rains, so irrigated raised beds are my best bet. This spring I started out small with two, 3′ by 8′ beds, 12″ high, made of 1″ thick rough-cut cypress. I irrigated with soaker hoses which I buried just beneath the surface, but the water just seemed to wick out of the soil and drain into the yard, so I added three targeted sprayers per bed. We have marauding cats, so I covered the beds in plastic tents over PVC hoops. Once the seedlings germinated and the temperatures were consistently temperate, I switched out the plastic for deer netting which kept out cats and birds until the plants were big enough to withstand said creatures.

I have had successes and failures and many learning experiences. We’ll start with

The successes:

Mesclun: Burpee Spicy Mix, Burpee Sweet Mix, Cook’s Garden Salad Fresh Cutting Mix, Cook’s Tangy Mix, and Misticanza

Mesclun did great. Have not had to buy lettuce since early spring. The tender lettuces have faded, but the chicories are heat hardy. Bitter but good once you put a little dressing on them.

Pepper: Burpee Sweet Mix

Coming along fine. I think we will have quite a few peppers if we keep them watered well.

Cucumber: Burpee Picklebush

I staked these up and have had a pretty decent crop, enough for several pints of pickles and some fresh eating. I would like to try a couple different varieties next year, though.

Bush beans: Burpee Tenderpod

A harvest shown here with some mesclun and dill. While these performed well, bush beans take up too much space in my beds. I may have to stick to pole beans in the future.

Nasturtium: Burpee Empress of India (seen below in tomato photo)

Pretty, tasty, and a good pollinator attractant. Grows well.

Basil: Burpee Lemon-Lime Mix, Cook’s Garden Sweet Genovese

Lemon-lime basil pesto is delicious.

Mustard Greens: lost the seed packet (see photo of mesclun–that’s the baby greens in the middle)

We ate these fresh in salads as baby-leaved plants. I like spicy greens in salad and don’t mind the fuzzy leaves. Very vigorous and grows fast.

Tomato: Ferry-Morse Juliet Hybrid, Burpee Early and Often Hybrid

The Juliet is a thick-skinned, low moisture variety that is great for drying and fresh eating. A little tough, but still a good flavor.

Early and Often has a good flavor and is a nice, medium-sized tomato that performs well.

Okra: Ferry-Morse Emerald

Beautiful plant, productive and delicious.

Pole Beans: Kentucky Wonder

Super fast growth, hard to find beans. I now understand why people grow purple pole beans–so you can find them among all those big leaves. A spring crop would have done better. Not many beans among the very thick foliage, although there seemed to be plenty of blossoms. Must be the heat.

Failures:

Broccoli: Burpee Green Goliath

I know– they are way too close together. The broccoli germinated well but progressed slowly. Finally the plants took off, had big healthy leaves but zero florets. Nothing. Guess it is too hot for broccoli. Do I try again in the fall? Still considering it. The cabbage loopers are troublesome and require a lot of hand removal. I have read BtGreen Light Organic BT Worm Killer – Pint #27316 is safe and effective so I may have to give that a try.

Zucchini Squash: Burpee Greyzini

SQUASH BEETLES! Although I harvested a couple of nice zucchini, it wasn’t to last. I learned too late about zucchini’s susceptibility to this pest.

Here you can see the butternut squash eventually succumbed, too.

Butternut Squash: Ferry-Morse Waltham

Early on, it looked hopeful. I harvested a couple of fair-sized squash and watched out for the squash beetles. Butternut are said to be somewhat resistant. (Good thing I didn’t try Hubbard, a favorite of the squash beetle). But eventually the beetles found it and have gone to work. I don’t think I will get any more squash out of this plant. I will try wrapping the vines in aluminum foil next year and see if that helps.

Watermelon: Ferry-Morse Sugar Baby

Not enough water. Planted too late in the season.

Potatoes:

Planted certified seed potatoes in garbage cans but had very poor results. Also planted some in a row with compost mounded on top with almost no potatoes to show for it. I have since read that potato scab (which some of mine suffer from) is sometimes the result of too rich soil (the compost I covered them with)? I will try potatoes again and hope for better results, perhaps with the “set ‘em on the ground and cover ‘em with straw” method.

The Jury Is Still Out:

Cantaloupe: Burpee Ambrosia Hybrid

Started rather late. Probably would have done fine if started earlier and watered more.

Eggplant: Burpee’s Garden Medley

My eggplant is trying so hard to make a go of it but it is being overtaken by my overcrowded tomatoes. I hope we get to see at least one little eggplant.

Carrots: Burpee’s A#1 Hybrid

I always have bad luck with carrots. After watching an episode of The Victory Garden I saw why. They added a veritable seasoning mix of minerals, including something called Tennessee Brown Sugar (which I am unable to research-Google hasn’t heard of it-let me know if you have), and several other mineral-rich organic substances I don’t remember, but it was more effort than I have ever put into a carrot bed. No wonder mine are always slow-growing and bitter.

I am sure there are a few that I missed, oh, yes, Detroit beets (okay), and dill (good with the cukes for pickling), and of course the berries, but I am all posted out for now.

Onward toward the Fall Garden. I’m looking forward to it. How does your garden grow?

Tomato Lady