It used to be relegated to garnish status, if you could find it at all. Kale’s strong flavor placed it in last place when compared to its more appealing relatives such as cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli. Even the oft-hated Brussels sprouts were more popular. But now, kale is finally getting the accolades it deserves. From kale smoothies to the seared kale I enjoyed at a restaurant recently, its showing up everywhere. With its abundant nutrients and new, milder flavor, kale might be the “trendy veggie” of the decade.
Category: Veggies
Garden Advice: Ten Gardening Myths: Busted!
Should you top a tree to keep it within bounds?- Will a mulch of Ponderosa pine needles acidify the soil?
- Should you always add compost to a planting hole?
- What about encouraging native bees with a bee house?
A lot of what gets passed from gardener to gardener sounds like good advice, but has no benefit—or can even be harmful. Which practices are supported by research? Which should we forget about?
Microclimates Matter
The link promised to tell me when I should start my vegetable garden—when to sow seeds indoors, and when to sow or transplant outdoors. Just type in my zip code, and I’d have information customized for my area, courtesy of the National Gardening Association. I rarely click on ads, but I’ve found the NGA to be helpful in the past. Besides, I was curious. I have 24 years of records telling me when to plant in my area—how would their site measure up?
More Basil, Please
The summer is winding down and my harvest (well, except for the still-green tomatoes) is in full swing. Last month I made my first basil cuttings. Now it’s time for another one. And with any luck (and a late frost), I’ll reap one more before the plants freeze.
How do I get so much basil from just a few plants? It’s not hard—I just have to plan ahead. First, I start the plants early indoors. Second, when I pick the leaves, I make very intentional cuts in specific places. And finally, I don’t let the plants go to seed. Let’s look at each of these points more closely.
Garden Advice: Marigold Myths
It sounds too good to be true. Not only are marigolds pretty, but growing in your vegetable garden will protect your harvest from nematodes, beetles, hornworms, whiteflies, squash bugs, thrips, hornworms, and even rabbits. I know it must be so, because I read it on the internet:
- “French marigolds repel whiteflies and kill bad nematodes. Mexican marigolds are said to offend a host of destructive insects and wild rabbits as well.”
- “Annual Marigolds can be used anywhere to deter Mexican bean beetles, squash bugs, thrips, tomato hornworms, and whiteflies. They are also known to repel harmful root knot nematodes (soil dwelling microscopic white worms) that attack tomatoes, potatoes, roses, and strawberries.”
- “Marigolds also repel pests, including beetles and nematodes.”
Gee, if it’s that easy, why not? Marigolds are easy to start from seed, grow quickly, thrive almost anywhere, and produce tons of sunny yellow and orange blooms all summer long.
Growing Onions
Do you grow onions? They’re not the most popular crop for the home veggie garden, which is a shame because they’re incredibly easy to grow. Sure, you can go to the store and buy a bag for a pittance, but that’s true for most vegetables we grow. And the flavor of home-grown onions isn’t that different from the ones at the market. The primary advantage of growing your own onions is that you know exactly what you sprayed them with—or didn’t.
In general, growing onions is as easy as sticking a few sets into the ground in early spring. You can start them from seed, but they take forever to reach transplant size. That’s why many garden centers and mail order seed companies sell bunches of transplants and onion sets.
Garden Advice: Companion Planting
Do carrots really love tomatoes? Do beans and onions hate one another? The internet (and my bookshelf) is full of anecdotal advice about which crops we should plant together, and which ones we should not.
There’s a well-known book that’s been around for ages called Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening, by Louise Riotte. It offers page after page of “facts” about companion planting. That sounds really helpful, and I was ready to try it all, but unfortunately, when I dug in online, I discovered that there is very little science behind the advice.
What to Grow?
January. The start of a new year. The start of a new garden. As I contemplate my empty veggie beds, I feel like a race car driver waiting at the starting line. “Gentlemen (gentlewomen?), start your engines!”
This year is truly new in another way. We moved last year, and I no longer have a my huge veggie garden. I used to have twelve, 4ˈ x 12ˈ beds, plus four 4ˈ x 4ˈ herb beds, plus a series of 2ˈ wide border beds around the entire area, ideal for pole beans, peas, and perennials (lovage, currants, berries, asparagus). Now I have two, 4ˈ x 10ˈ raised beds. Two. Well, we intended to downsize, right?
A Late Season Garden
I didn’t plant this year’s veggie garden until mid-August. No, I wasn’t procrastinating. I just had to wait for the new boxes to be built, filled with topsoil and compost, and the drip lines put into place. While we moved to our new house in May, the landscaper didn’t start until the end of July—and my veggie boxes turned out to be the last thing they did.
Now I have two 4-foot wide raised planters, each about 10 feet long. (My garden got downsized along with the rest of my life.) I love the “rumble stone” bricks we used—they’re comfy to sit on as I weed and harvest. The boxes are a little over two feet tall (they’re on a slope, so it varies) and we filled them to about 10 inches from the top. I wanted some headroom for adding future amendments and so I can lay clear panels over the edges to create coldframes as needed.
Too Much Zucchini? 3.0
The past two years I’ve posted articles titled “Too Much Zucchini?” and “Too Much Zucchini 2.0.” It’s time for a couple more recipes calling for zucchini, something most gardeners have in abundance at this time of year. As I’ve said before, you may have too many zucchinis, but you can never have too many zucchini recipes!
Mountain Plover 