I watched a friend place a seedling in a glass jar with some water and set it on his kitchen counter. It took less than five minutes for the liquid to go from a cold condiment to a crisp, sweet fruit.
I also want to pass along some advice for the would-be gardener. First of all, you have to decide what you want from your garden. Is it going to be an addition to the house or just a filler in the yard? Do you want a population of hummingbirds or a display of color? Tomatoes or bellflowers?
It’s all out there waiting to be found. And found it was. Not only was the tomato able to produce more fruit than I would normally grow ( Delicious tomatoes right out of the container! And summer squash, I found there are many more cultivars of both squash and tomatoes than you could ever grow in your yard… many more! I even have a catalog of them in my greenhouse).
With that said, there are many benefits to this type of gardening. For me, it was pure pleasure to see the squash and tomato plants come up in the spring and continue to produce fruit right through the fall. To me, gardening is a year-round activity.
A practical way to incorporate a garden into your landscaping would be to use some of the many portable greenhouses available. They range in price between $40 and $75, and even less, but they are compact and efficient space savers that take up minimal space.
You can plant salad crops in the fall with starter plants and be harvesting vegetables by the end of the spring. What a great way to get those kids involved in gardening too.
Some of the vegetables I grew this fall were: Lettuces, Red and Green Onions, assorted Peppers, Carrots, Potatoes, matured Garlic, Tomato, Bush Beans, Bush Squash, Buckwheat, Chard, Lettuce, Parsley, Peppers, Red and Green Lettuce, Chard, Mustard, Bush Beans, Bush Squash, Peppers, Radish, Spinach, Zucchini, Herb Planter, Bush Beans, Pole Beans, Carrots, Peas etc.
It’s strange but I feel that I grew a pretty good crop of Peppers this fall. They are always good to eat and they are pretty easy to grow. Too hot for tomatoes? Too cold for beans? Not sure what the weather will be like? No problem – head to the garden center and pick up some snap peas, yellow & red peppers, Lettuce, Kale, Spinach,Swiss Chard, Cauliflower, Eggplant, Okra etc. It’s good to rotate things so that you don’t plant the same vegetables in the same spot year after year. It makes the most sense.
While I was at it, I also grew some squash and cabbage and put a couple rows of beans in the middle of the summer crop. That should produce something in the fall/winter time.
As the late afternoon warmed up, I added some Tomatoes, Cucumbers, squash and lettuce in my car. I’m not sure how or if it will survive the winter but so far it has been wonderful.
Now what do you do with all these zucchini? I’m sure there will be a lot of controls for pest control. Aside from using beneficial plants, I’m sure there are natural remedies you can try.
I Mulch, Water, we straw, etc. I will continue to monitor things and post supplemental growing notes as necessary.
debut of my Watermelon Northern beanest and I planted the Bush Beans, which are bush beans, from my floaties. I live in the country where the winter temperatures don’t go lower than 20 degrees F. for more than a few days. So starting today, I will be able to say that I grew a pretty good crop of Bush Beans, although I do live in a very cold climate. The other benefit about the beans is that they seem to grow bigger in the heat. The beans were large enough for pickles and both the pickles and tomatoes were the size of a child’s fist. I used a dibber to mark the points of the pickles on the wire hanger, and I will be using the dibber to make my pickles bread. This is all made possible by the use of water baths, and shears.
I mulched the green beans because 1) I love green beans, 2) they’re very expensive in the stores, and 3) I mulched the beans because: a) they look good, b) they help to conserve water, and c) I love them.
