Thursday, June 24, 2010
Link: How Does Your Garden Grow?
Posted by Susan Ellis on Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 5:31 PM
Beware Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle. The book, which chronicles Kingsolver and her family eating extremely locally for one year, can make you want to try crazy things, like raise your own turkeys or plant a vegetable garden when you already are juggling the bounty of a full-share CSA.
Of the latter, I'm referring to coworker Pam Denney, who broke ground on her raised-bed garden this spring. She's writing about the garden and related fare, from bugs to Crocs, in her charming new blog Pam Plants a Garden. You'll definitely want to bookmark it.
The first fruits of Pam's labor are cucumbers.
That's one cute cuke!
She also planted several types of tomatoes, herbs, beans, eggplant, peppers, okra, tomatillos, and melons.
Pam gave me a few plants she grew from seed for my container garden. My yard doesn't really have enough sun to support such efforts and yet I persist. Of the three tomato plants, two died. The third is thriving and has bloomed but no fruit yet. Two of the basil plants she gave me died as well, but the remaining three are doing well.
I also picked up a few plants at the recent Grow Memphis sale.
The melon and squash plants are growing like crazy, but there's no output. One pepper plant clearly wants to shake off its mortal coil. The other looks pretty good but hasn't bloomed.
The okra plant I got did yield a solitary okra and then all the leaves fell off.
I wasn't sure when to pick the okra (clearly for the world's tiniest batch of gumbo), so I left it on the plant until it dried up. A garden-savvy coworker suggested I get the seeds to plant next year. I did that, but now have no idea where I put the seeds. Please stop me before I garden again.
Do you have a particularly brag-worthy vegetable garden? E-mail me details and photos, and I'll post them at Hungry Memphis.
Comments (6)
Showing 1-6 of 6
The okra thing is too funny. The same thing is happening to me with my jalapeņo plant. I've had to ONE jalapeno growing for about a month and a half and I never knew when to pick it because it's tiny and just stopped growing. Anyway, this past week it turned red...which can't be good. Now I have a red tiny jalapeno on my pant and leaves are turning yellow and falling off. I'm glad I'm not alone!
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you need sun to grow vegetables, folks. Trying to have a garden in half-shade or more is an exercise in botanical futility.
I dunno. The plants can be pretty, even if they don't produce. I have a few bean plants growing that liven up my flower boxes, but some rascally critter stole my artichoke spouts.
I have seven, no eight, tomato plants, some asparagus, green onions, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (at scarborough fair), mint, and basil. Six of my tomatoes are in a raised bed, one in a pot, and one in a flowerbed by the door.
The six in the raised bed were looking horrible and I couldn't figure out why. All the leaves were curling up into these balls and knots that looked like arthritic hands. Finally I tested the soil and discovered that it had no nitrogren, so I've been peeing on it every night and the plants look much happier now. Actually, I've been mixing urea in the watering can and soaking the soil around the roots about once a week. Pee will work, too, but you have to be careful not to pee on the plants as that will cause them to gross out and die.
If the leaves are turning yellow and falling off, they're starving for nutrients. However, too much nitrogen will produce all plant and no fruit. Tomatoes and okra need full sun, the hotter the better. I had one okra plant last year that produced probably 150 pods. I was throwing them away because I couldn't eat them all. I pickled six or eight jars and made gallons of gumbo.
My problem now is birds. I lost four of my first five ripe tomatoes to birds. As soon as they turn a little red, the birds come in an peck holes in them. I think they're thirsty because of the heat.
My herbs are growing lush and rampant. I have enough basil to supply a kitchen at an Italian restaurant.
Been growing hot peppers in containers for many years now, this looks to be a good batch.
I also tried the upside down planter arrangement for the first time, with some grape tomatoes and Thai birdseye peppers... jury's still out on the tomatoes.
For the stunted jalepeno, I'd want to know how much sand you mixed in the soil, and whether you used epsom salts
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