Oh, my goodness, can it be that time of year again? I'm afraid so, everybody! I've got almost a dozen flats of planted seeds, the very first pepper plants are poking up their shy cotyledons, and pretty soon I'll be planting my flat on onion seeds as well! (I usually end up planting some sets but my goal is to be able to rely on seeds entirely one of these years... given that it's March, this won't be the year either, but a girl can dream!)
Seed shopping might be the most fun part of gardening. I know very few people who would put up a determined resistance to that assertion. I mean, sure, eating what you planted is fun too, but that fun is spread across the growing season and interspersed with a ton of hard work; but seed shopping? looking at dozens of pretty pictures, reading dozens of cute and interesting descriptions, drawing garden layout sheets with your favorite pens on your favorite graph paper? That wins. Hands down.
Now if you've been blessed with several hundred square feet of garden space, as I have, your criteria for inclusion in the garden may be very broad. I can choose plants based on what I know does well around here, what I know my family likes to eat, what I want to do a better job of canning or fermenting, and what I know will help us get through the winter with minimal spending.
But what if you don't have several hundred square feet of garden to play with? What if you have a 20x20 patch in your back yard, or three big chest coolers full of potting soil on the porch? In those cases, prioritizing your garden can make a huge difference in your yield and your benefit from growing vegetables, and I have some considerations to help you be able to do just that.
Seems pretty obvious, right? And yet... and yet occasionally you'll get suckered into buying seeds of fragrant lavender or garbanzo beans, even though you know that the former has an abysmal germination rate and the latter needs a minimum of 120 hot days to maturity and you've only got about 110 warm days. The last three years the squash vine borers have killed every pumpkin vine you've planted, but maybe this year will be different. You have planted broccoli every year, and every year it starts flowering before you get around to eating any of it.
In all of these cases you might be better off considering a new tactic. Odds are you can grow lavender, but maybe buying a potted plant (even a very small one) is a better way to go. If you've got unlimited garden space you might risk the row of garbanzos, with the understanding that they're mainly functioning as a nitrogen fixing legume; if they don't give you any mature beans at least they'll have added some fertility--but if space is at a premium, a different dried bean or green beans will be a much better bet. Squash vine borers can't penetrate the tough stems of butternut squash and its close allies, so if you're having this problem consistently, it might be time to substitute.
These are fairly standard practices for limited space but they bear mentioning in case you're stuck in a gardening rut. Peas don't have to asphyxiate the carrots in the next row, but they will if you let them; watermelons have a pretty low yield per square foot unless you trellis them or choose a bush variety; and those empty rows where the radishes were in the spring will be begging for a fall root crop (may I recommend turnips? Just a thought).
Vining bean varieties cause trouble in sweet corn (harvest time becomes much more complex when vines are bridging between the rows at knee and waist and head height simultaneously), but peas don't pose any problems at all; they'll grow up the corn stalks, probably stop before waist height, and be dead and starting to disintegrate before you try to harvest. I always plant vining beans in the Mandan Bride flour corn (though overplanting of beans is a possibility--emerald waves of green would be an understatement for what happened in 2017...). While I'm at it I practice the Three Sisters, interspersing hills of squash around the edges of this cornfield of ours. They spread all around the edges, helping deter racoons by way of their big, spiky leaves, and *not* taking over an extra quarter acre of the garden.
When people think about growing their own vegetables, one of the first ideas that springs to mind is tomatoes, and for good reason: a perfectly ripe tomato right off the vine is an ambrosia worthy of any god, and the grocery store tomatoes can never match it. Ever. Even if you only have space for one tomato plant, I highly recommend that you grow one. If you don't think you like tomatoes, grow some yourself. Worst case scenario, it turns out you actually don't like tomatoes, and then your neighbors will love you. I didn't like tomatoes growing up, but then I discovered caprese salad with homemade mozz… dang, I miss having a milk cow.
Irrelevant, Hannah... pull yourself together...
Anyway: The next vegetable that often comes to mind is zucchini, and that, too, makes a lot of sense. they're generally overpriced at the grocery store at a couple of bucks a pound, and they're super easy and fast to grow (though if there are 3 roadside stands on your street selling them for $.25/each, your garden space might be better served by a different plant). But what's next on the list? Especially when it comes to winter vegetables, carrots and cabbage are usually at the front of your mind. Both are fairly easy to grow and have good yield; what could be wrong with that?
It turns out, economically, a few things. Number one: carrots are cheap at the grocery store. I buy the 5 lb bag of organic carrots for under $5 at Wegmans. Cabbage is even better, generally under $.59/lb. And while you might struggle with pest problems with both these crops in your garden, you won't struggle with pest problems at the grocery store. Take that, cabbage loopers! What now, voles!? Ahem. Anyhow: Sure, you could grow some of your own carrots and then buy some when you run out, but is it possible to get tired of carrots...?
Yes. The correct answer is yes. They're very versatile and fit beautifully into many cuisines, but you can get tired of them. Same goes for cabbage. So why not grow something else in that space--something that's easy to grow, and generally grossly overpriced at the store? This will permit you to have a greater variety of meals without spending extra money just to get away from carrots and cabbage for a day or two. For me, a natural replacement for carrots in the garden is beets! And if you don't think you like beets, please give them a chance, because they can be incredibly delicious, in addition to being healthful and filling. My kids absolutely adore borscht, and were thrilled when I roasted a 5 lb beet alongside a chicken in the oven. (In their defense, it was really, really good.) They are less pest prone than carrots, equally easy to grow, and though they may be a bit less drought tolerant are also more apt to hold their own against weed pressure in my experience. Other options include turnips (great filler vegetable in soups, roasted with other root veggies, or mashed in to stretch potatoes and make them healthier by way of their added fiber). I'd start them late in the summer (perhaps in the row where the radishes were, although they also make a decent cover crop in a random bare spot; thinnings are dearly beloved of chickens). If you aren't growing peppers, do it--banana peppers are easy, fruit consistently and ripen quickly. They're almost foolproof and don't take a lot of space to give you lots of red peppers, which cost a small fortune at the grocery store. Bush green beans are delicious and cost over a dollar a pound at the store; they're easy to grow and add fertility to your soil.
So if you've got a limited garden this year and want to make the most of it, why not broaden your horticultural and culinary horizons and try some new vegetables this year? You'll eat healthier, have a wider variety of foods in your diet, and feel good knowing that you've made the best use of every inch of soil at your disposal.
Seed shopping might be the most fun part of gardening. I know very few people who would put up a determined resistance to that assertion. I mean, sure, eating what you planted is fun too, but that fun is spread across the growing season and interspersed with a ton of hard work; but seed shopping? looking at dozens of pretty pictures, reading dozens of cute and interesting descriptions, drawing garden layout sheets with your favorite pens on your favorite graph paper? That wins. Hands down.
Now if you've been blessed with several hundred square feet of garden space, as I have, your criteria for inclusion in the garden may be very broad. I can choose plants based on what I know does well around here, what I know my family likes to eat, what I want to do a better job of canning or fermenting, and what I know will help us get through the winter with minimal spending.
But what if you don't have several hundred square feet of garden to play with? What if you have a 20x20 patch in your back yard, or three big chest coolers full of potting soil on the porch? In those cases, prioritizing your garden can make a huge difference in your yield and your benefit from growing vegetables, and I have some considerations to help you be able to do just that.
1. Choose plants you can grow successfully
Seems pretty obvious, right? And yet... and yet occasionally you'll get suckered into buying seeds of fragrant lavender or garbanzo beans, even though you know that the former has an abysmal germination rate and the latter needs a minimum of 120 hot days to maturity and you've only got about 110 warm days. The last three years the squash vine borers have killed every pumpkin vine you've planted, but maybe this year will be different. You have planted broccoli every year, and every year it starts flowering before you get around to eating any of it.
In all of these cases you might be better off considering a new tactic. Odds are you can grow lavender, but maybe buying a potted plant (even a very small one) is a better way to go. If you've got unlimited garden space you might risk the row of garbanzos, with the understanding that they're mainly functioning as a nitrogen fixing legume; if they don't give you any mature beans at least they'll have added some fertility--but if space is at a premium, a different dried bean or green beans will be a much better bet. Squash vine borers can't penetrate the tough stems of butternut squash and its close allies, so if you're having this problem consistently, it might be time to substitute.
2. Look at succession planting, vertical growth, and space-saving varieties
These are fairly standard practices for limited space but they bear mentioning in case you're stuck in a gardening rut. Peas don't have to asphyxiate the carrots in the next row, but they will if you let them; watermelons have a pretty low yield per square foot unless you trellis them or choose a bush variety; and those empty rows where the radishes were in the spring will be begging for a fall root crop (may I recommend turnips? Just a thought).
Vining bean varieties cause trouble in sweet corn (harvest time becomes much more complex when vines are bridging between the rows at knee and waist and head height simultaneously), but peas don't pose any problems at all; they'll grow up the corn stalks, probably stop before waist height, and be dead and starting to disintegrate before you try to harvest. I always plant vining beans in the Mandan Bride flour corn (though overplanting of beans is a possibility--emerald waves of green would be an understatement for what happened in 2017...). While I'm at it I practice the Three Sisters, interspersing hills of squash around the edges of this cornfield of ours. They spread all around the edges, helping deter racoons by way of their big, spiky leaves, and *not* taking over an extra quarter acre of the garden.
3. Price vegetables at the grocery store and grow accordingly
When people think about growing their own vegetables, one of the first ideas that springs to mind is tomatoes, and for good reason: a perfectly ripe tomato right off the vine is an ambrosia worthy of any god, and the grocery store tomatoes can never match it. Ever. Even if you only have space for one tomato plant, I highly recommend that you grow one. If you don't think you like tomatoes, grow some yourself. Worst case scenario, it turns out you actually don't like tomatoes, and then your neighbors will love you. I didn't like tomatoes growing up, but then I discovered caprese salad with homemade mozz… dang, I miss having a milk cow.
Irrelevant, Hannah... pull yourself together...
Anyway: The next vegetable that often comes to mind is zucchini, and that, too, makes a lot of sense. they're generally overpriced at the grocery store at a couple of bucks a pound, and they're super easy and fast to grow (though if there are 3 roadside stands on your street selling them for $.25/each, your garden space might be better served by a different plant). But what's next on the list? Especially when it comes to winter vegetables, carrots and cabbage are usually at the front of your mind. Both are fairly easy to grow and have good yield; what could be wrong with that?
It turns out, economically, a few things. Number one: carrots are cheap at the grocery store. I buy the 5 lb bag of organic carrots for under $5 at Wegmans. Cabbage is even better, generally under $.59/lb. And while you might struggle with pest problems with both these crops in your garden, you won't struggle with pest problems at the grocery store. Take that, cabbage loopers! What now, voles!? Ahem. Anyhow: Sure, you could grow some of your own carrots and then buy some when you run out, but is it possible to get tired of carrots...?
Yes. The correct answer is yes. They're very versatile and fit beautifully into many cuisines, but you can get tired of them. Same goes for cabbage. So why not grow something else in that space--something that's easy to grow, and generally grossly overpriced at the store? This will permit you to have a greater variety of meals without spending extra money just to get away from carrots and cabbage for a day or two. For me, a natural replacement for carrots in the garden is beets! And if you don't think you like beets, please give them a chance, because they can be incredibly delicious, in addition to being healthful and filling. My kids absolutely adore borscht, and were thrilled when I roasted a 5 lb beet alongside a chicken in the oven. (In their defense, it was really, really good.) They are less pest prone than carrots, equally easy to grow, and though they may be a bit less drought tolerant are also more apt to hold their own against weed pressure in my experience. Other options include turnips (great filler vegetable in soups, roasted with other root veggies, or mashed in to stretch potatoes and make them healthier by way of their added fiber). I'd start them late in the summer (perhaps in the row where the radishes were, although they also make a decent cover crop in a random bare spot; thinnings are dearly beloved of chickens). If you aren't growing peppers, do it--banana peppers are easy, fruit consistently and ripen quickly. They're almost foolproof and don't take a lot of space to give you lots of red peppers, which cost a small fortune at the grocery store. Bush green beans are delicious and cost over a dollar a pound at the store; they're easy to grow and add fertility to your soil.
So if you've got a limited garden this year and want to make the most of it, why not broaden your horticultural and culinary horizons and try some new vegetables this year? You'll eat healthier, have a wider variety of foods in your diet, and feel good knowing that you've made the best use of every inch of soil at your disposal.
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