Homegrown Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs E-Book

Jim W. Wilson

• Herausgeber: Creative Homeowner
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Serie: Gardening
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 328

Beschreibung

Starting with the basics and the author's secrets of successful, time-efficient food gardening learned over a lifetime of gardening, this book is the complete vegetable gardening system for busy people who want to grow fresh produce to save money and ensure their food is safe.

Leseprobe

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the certified Master Gardeners of the USA and Canada, and especially to my Missouri Master Gardener, Janie Mandel, who has kept me from being overwhelmed by digital technology. —J.W.

Acknowledgments

Much of the material on these pages began as a syllabus I wrote for a course on Advanced Master Gardening and as a manual for coordinators of community gardens. During the process of turning it into this book, I learned as much as I contributed. I want to thank the editors and graphics specialists at Creative Homeowner for their masterly pruning of wordy passages and their elegant application of Walter Chandoha’s images. —J.W.

Health & Safety First

ALL PROJECTS AND PROCEDURES in this book have been reviewed for safety; still it is not possible to overstate the importance of working carefully. What follows are reminders for plant care and project safety. Always use common sense.

■ Always consider nontoxic and least toxic methods of addressing unwanted plants, plant pests, and plant diseases before resorting to toxic methods. Follow package application and safety instructions carefully.

■ Always substitute rock phosphate and gypsum for bonemeal when amending soil. Authorities suggest that there’s a hazard in using bovine-based products such as bonemeal, blood meal, and cow manure because they could harbor the virus that causes mad cow disease in cattle and humans.

■ Always read labels on chemicals, solvents, and other products; provide ventilation; heed warnings.

■ Always wear eye protection when using chemicals, sawing wood, pruning trees and shrubs, using power tools, and striking metal onto metal or concrete.

■ Always wear a hard hat when working in situations with potential for injury from falling tree limbs.

■ Always wear appropriate gloves in situations in which your hands could be injured by rough surfaces, sharp edges, thorns, or poisonous plants.

■ Always wear a disposable face mask or a special filtering respirator when creating sawdust or working with gardening dusts and powders.

■ Always protect yourself against ticks, which can carry Lyme disease. Wear light-colored, long-sleeved shirts and pants. Inspect yourself for ticks after gardening.

■ Always determine locations of underground utility lines before you dig, and avoid them by a safe distance. Buried lines may be for gas, electricity, communications, or water. Contact local utility companies, which will help you map their lines.

■ Always read and heed tool manufacturer instructions.

■ Always ensure that the electrical setup is safe; be sure that no circuit is overloaded and that all power tools and electrical outlets are properly grounded and protected by a ground-fault circuit interrupter (GFCI). Do not use power tools in wet locations.

■ Always keep your hands and other body parts away from the business ends of blades, cutters, and bits.

■ Never use herbicides, pesticides, or toxic chemicals unless you have determined with certainty that they were developed for the specific problem you hope to remedy.

■ Never allow bystanders to approach work areas where they might by injured by workers or work-site hazards.

■ Never work with power tools when you are tired or under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

■ Never carry sharp or pointed tools, such as knives or saws, in your pocket.

Foreword

Fat August is the season of plenty. Braids of onions hang to dry in the attic, pickles swim in tubs of brine, jars of canned tomatoes cool by the stove. There is joy in this abundance, joy in the faces of friends who crowd around our kitchen table for dinner, joy in watching them empty one platter after another.

We make no claim to total self-sufficiency. We are no strangers to the supermarket. We have jobs and medical coverage, the burdens and benefits of modern life. But every year we plant a vegetable garden, and we are the better for it.

It’s more than economics. Yes, we usually end up with more homegrown food than we can consume on our own, though there are fewer calories in daikon than in doughnuts. And there are the grocery dollars saved.

Only a couple of us will ever become real farmers. But to raise something edible from seed is to bring forth sustenance from the earth. Raise your own sweet corn or a few potatoes, and you get a sense of where food comes from, a fresh respect for those who feed us. Serve those same vegetables, and you will be eating well indeed, for greatness in the kitchen begins in the garden.

While you will not be able to grow everything yourself, you will learn to appreciate farmers’ markets and other local sources. You will find yourself seeking and celebrating the new, the unfamiliar, the delicious. For from a few small seeds, champion vegetables and vegetable champions are born.

Roger B. Swain

Host, PBS-TV’s “The Victory Garden”

Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE

Why Grow Your Own?

■ What is Responsible Gardening?

■ Getting Started

■ The Science of Gardening, Enhanced by Experience

CHAPTER TWO

Where and How Does Your Garden Grow?

■ Selecting a Site

■ What to Grow and How Much

■ Growing from Seeds and Seedlings

CHAPTER THREE

Understanding Your Soil

■ Soil Structure and Texture

■ Life Beneath Your Feet: Microbiota & Macrobiota

■ Soil Conditioners

■ Mulches

■ Fertilizers and Plant Nutrients

■ Organic Fertilizers

■ Mineral Fertilizers

■ Green Manures

■ Tonics

■ Common Soil Problems and How to Fix Them

CHAPTER FOUR

All the Tools You Need

■ Preparing Your First Garden

CHAPTER FIVE

The Three “E”s: Ease, Economy & Enjoyment

■ Make Gardening Easy

■ Make It Economical

■ Make Gardening Enjoyable

CHAPTER SIX

Selected Vegetables

■ Best Methods for Starting Each Kind

■ Vegetables

CHAPTER SEVEN

Selected Fruits

■ Selecting Fruits

■ Fruits

CHAPTER EIGHT

Selected Herbs

■ Learning About Herbs

■ What Size Herb Garden?

■ Herbs

CHAPTER NINE

Advances in Organic Food Gardening

■ What is No-Till Gardening?

■ How to Manage a No-Till Food Garden

■ Organic Products for Fighting Pests and Diseases

CHAPTER TEN

Modern Victory Gardens

■ How Can We Help?

■ Community Gardens

Zone Maps

Glossary

Resources

Index

Photo Credits

Metric Equivalents

Introduction

Back in 2007, few Americans could have been persuaded to plant a food garden or to enlarge an existing vegetable patch. Then the economy began to unravel. Today, many families are looking for ways to reduce costs and to eat healthier, fresher, better-tasting food.

Food gardens, which for several decades took a backseat to ornamental landscapes, have begun to sound like a good idea to many folks with a sunny yard. This resurgence of interest in—and need for— homegrown food was what convinced my friend and colleague Walter Chandoha and me to come out of blissful retirement to create this book. Our goal is to help aspiring gardeners avoid the disappointment or downright failure that often comes with the first attempts at cultivating produce. We also hope to convince families who are already growing food crops to grow more, both for themselves and for the needy in their communities.

Through the advice and recommendations offered in Homegrown Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs, we aim to hold the hand of the new gardener through that first year, when the learning curve is so steep that a novice can feel overwhelmed. Both Walter and I have mentored many a young gardener and have designed this book to be our surrogate. Most of all, we want to assure families that when the going gets tough, a big food garden can be like a friend indeed. It won’t attempt to entertain you, but it will enlighten you and—eventually—repay all the time and attention you have invested in it with a bounty of delicious gifts.

KEY TOEssential Stats

THE ICONS SHOWN BELOW were designed to assist readers in understanding basic planting, growing, and harvesting information for the vegetables, fruits, and herbs listed in Chapters 6–8.

  Grow from seedling or vegetative division

  Grow from direct seeding

  Plant in spring

  Plant in summer

  Plant in autumn

  Annual

  Perennial

  Biennual

  Heat tolerant

  Tolerates light shade

  Requires frequent watering

  Benefits from supplementary feeding

  Grows well in containers

  Bears fruit in 1–3 years

  Cold-hardy cultivars

  Needs both male and female plants

  Attractive landscape plant

  Outstanding nutritional content

  Grow from potted plants or bulbs

Ripe gooseberries gleam like jewels in the afternoon sun.

Golden and ruby beets are just two of the varieties now available to home gardeners.

Kikuza pumpkins, a rare Japanese heirloom variety, have orange flesh and a sweet yet spicy flavor.

Why Grow Your Own?

Even though I am bearded and wear socks with my sandals, I would make a poor prophet. Nevertheless, I see signs and portents that the lavish lifestyles and unrestrained spending that many once enjoyed are probably a thing of the past. Even when we get to the other side of this current economic crisis, most of us will think twice before buying goods and services we may want but don’t actually need.

The Great Depression had a similar effect on my co-author, Walter Chandoha, and me. During those lean years, both our families worked hard to provide life’s necessities, and that included growing and selling produce of all sorts. Unlike many who were less fortunate, we always had enough to eat year-round, thanks to home-canned fruits and vegetables and cured meats for winter meals. (Home freezers didn’t exist in those days.)

You are probably reading this book because you’re interested in starting a vegetable garden of your own but don’t know where or how to begin. It’s a paradox that in today’s Internet Age, when information about nearly everything is easily available, many adults lack the most basic knowledge about growing food. We aim to change that.

On the pages that follow, you will find practical advice based on many decades of hands-on experience. We’ll give you our tips on preparing your soil, the ideal times to plant in your area, fertilizing, weeding, mulching, nonhazardous pest and disease control, and much more. And in Chapters 6 through 8, you’ll find photographs and detailed descriptions for planting, maintaining, and harvesting the most common vegetables, fruits, and herbs for maximum yield and enjoyment.

What is Responsible Gardening?

Neat rows of salad greens are as pleasing to the eye as they are to the palate.

Throughout this book, you will learn how to grow wholesome, cost-effective food by practicing responsible gardening. By that, we mean using mostly organic fertilizers and following integrated pest management protocols. These involve using pest controls and herbicides that, when used as directed, are nontoxic to humans and do not accumulate in the soil. Some of the pest controls we use would not pass strict “organic” standards, but neither of us has the slightest qualms about eating food from plants sprayed with them. So there you have it, full disclosure. The vast majority of American gardeners follow similar food gardening practices, so we are in good company.

Our methods might turn off a few “wannabe” food gardeners caught up in the current infatuation with all things organic. We don’t ask that you agree with what we plant, how we fertilize our food crops, or how we minimize insect and disease damage. We do ask that you give proper weight to our hard-won experience in food gardening, well over 100 years between the two of us. We, too, appreciate the value of gardening practices and products that have little or no negative environmental impact. But we know that many “organic” recommendations are made primarily for profit, or are based on anecdotal information without scientific research. We also know that many so-called organic pest controls are too expensive for the home gardener. We’ll discuss the latest and best options available in soil amendments, mulches, fertilizers, and pest and disease control throughout the chapters of this book.

Cute, but not garden-friendly.

SMART Gardener

If you are new at growing food crops, start small. You will want a garden that is enjoyable as well as productive. Enlarge your garden as you begin to master the basics of soil and crop management. If weeds continue to best you, cut back on size.

WHAT’S IN IT For You?

ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN GROWING VEGETABLES and small fruit for a number of years can vouch for the deep sense of satisfaction that comes with harvesting and preparing fresh produce from one’s own garden. There is an elemental, almost visceral feeling of “providing” that probably goes back to instincts developed during our hunter-gatherer days.

Those of us who lived through the Great Depression remember that back then, people felt obliged to garden. Even if they had enough money to buy fresh vegetables and fruit, it didn’t feel right to have a good plot of land available and not use it productively. We were still close to the earth.

Many garden book authors write about the joy of gardening. However, there is a great difference between creating a beautiful landscape and the satisfaction you get from providing food for your family. Both flowers and food can bring joy to your life. Still, nothing can match the fulfillment that comes from keeping every square foot of your food garden in production all season long. Or the triumphant feeling when, just after harvesting a huge crop of vegetables and fruit, you visit a supermarket and see what you would have paid for the same amount of produce. Or the humility that will touch you when, just after you have delivered a load of homegrown vegetables to a food pantry, you see a parent taking home some of the vegetables you grew.

Protecting your health. Then there are health concerns to consider. Who knows when the next food recall will occur? Hardly any species of food crop has escaped contamination: tomatoes, spinach, jalapeno peppers, strawberries, melons, and so on. Of course, unless you have a big garden plot and live in a sunny climate, there is no way that you can get by without purchasing some fresh produce, especially during the winter months. So, “you pays your money and you takes your chances,” and hope that your family will be spared from contaminated food. You also make a resolution to buy shipped-in fresh produce only when you can’t grow it or buy it locally.

It would be very difficult to approach the nearly self-sufficient lifestyles we knew when we were children. City ordinances may forbid you to raise chickens or rabbits for food, and certainly not a pig, goat, or a milk cow. Some neighborhoods are so restricted by covenants that you may have to seek approval just to start a food garden.

When all is said and done, much will be up to you. Unlike me in my youth, you probably won’t have a network of relatives living on farms to counsel you on what to grow and when to plant it. And they certainly won’t be around to plow your garden plot. But you have access to sources of information that didn’t exist back then: the Extension Service, the Internet, and vastly improved seed and fruit tree catalogs. You have every reason to expect success with your first food garden or in expanding an existing garden to include small fruits and tree fruits. If you are among the fortunate families who lost neither jobs nor a home during these lean times, share your good fortune by planting a garden big enough to produce lots of fresh produce for your local food pantry.

Cukes grow best vertically.

Just a little elbow grease.

Getting Started

Spiritual satisfaction is important, but so is the satisfaction you enjoy from managing a high-performance food garden. Here are a few practices that Walter and I have used with great success over the years:

Soil Tests

Attempting to grow crops without reliable soil testing is like setting out on a long, involved trip without a road map or a GPS device. The Web site of your state’s Extension Service should give you directions for taking and sending in soil samples. Get an early start on sending your samples so that the standard two- to three-week processing time doesn’t delay your planting. Then, submit soil samples every three or four years thereafter. These periodic soil tests will guide you in replacing plant nutrients in the soil that are removed every time you harvest a crop of vegetables. Composting every scrap of garden waste helps, but that cannot keep your soil’s “bank account” of nutrients in balance. In all but a few inherently fertile soils, supplementary plant nutrients (fertilizers) will be needed.

SMART Gardener

Have your soil tested by your state’s Extension Service. The major nutrients in most garden soils are deficient or out of balance, thanks to farming in years past and to heedless inversion of subsoil by contractors.

MULCHES and SOIL AMENDMENTS

THE MAJORITY OF GARDEN SOILS are composed partly or wholly of clay. These heavy soils need to be modified with large amounts of organic soil conditioners to make them workable. Such major soil modification is expensive, but you will pat yourself on the back after just one season of satisfying gardening with soil that is responsive to plant nutrients and open to absorbing water from sprinklers or soaker hoses.

All fertilizers work best in the presence of adequate organic matter in the soil, and compost, mulches, and soil amendments are among the best sources. As organic matter breaks down, it nourishes the beneficial soil organisms that help make nutrients accessible to plant rootlets. Soil conditioners mixed into the soil to spade depth are the major source of organic matter, but mulches applied on top of the soil also contribute a significant amount, mostly through the action of earthworms that tunnel up to the mulch/soil interface, ingest small particles of organic matter, and take them down into lower layers of soil. Earthworms leave a trail of “castings” as they tunnel— nutritious material that they ingest and expel in a form that can easily be taken up by plant root hairs. In Chapter 3, “Understanding Your Soil,” beginning on page 38, we’ll provide an in-depth discussion of soil types, amendments, conditioners, and fertilizers.

Keep weeds away from delicate spring lettuces by using generous amounts of straw mulch.

Save water by switching from a sprinkler to soaker hoses.

Irrigation

Many parts of the country are coping with restrictions on when and where water can be used in landscapes, and how much, if any, can be applied. No one could fault you if you choose to leave your lawn to nature’s whims, and apply the saved water to your food garden. My family endured a long drought in California during the early 1970s. We were down to catching gray water from our washing machine and pouring it around shrubs and food plants to keep them alive.

You can economize on water use for food crops by running soaker hoses down rows. The slow drip of water from the porous rubber hoses minimizes evaporation by placing it in the root zone of plants rather than spraying it into the air. Sprinkler irrigation can evaporate or be blown away from your targeted plants. Even if you are not under restrictions on watering, you should consider drip irrigation to save money and ensure optimum growth of your plants. Drip irrigation does have a shortcoming, however; the water spreads horizontally only about nine inches to either side of the leaky hose or drip emitter. The cone of moist soil widens somewhat as the water gravitates down, but you still need to direct-seed or transplant seedlings close enough to the water source to meet the needs of plants for soil moisture.

KID-FRIENDLY VEGGIE RECIPE

BECAUSE SUMMER SQUASH—zucchini, yellow crookneck, and patty pan—is such a prolific producer, we ate a lot of it in our house—“we” meaning my wife, Maria, and I. Our six kids hated it. We could barely get them to eat their “no thank you” portion—a mouthful or two that was a mandatory policy at our dinner table. Even if they didn’t like something, they had to at least try it, whatever it was.

As much as they disliked squash, they loved pizza. What’s the most fragrant part of pizza? Oregano and garlic, and—if it’s made my way—mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. So, I invented Pizza Squash. When they smelled pizza cooking, they were drawn to the kitchen. I told them I was cooking pizza made without dough. They tried it, liked it, and they still liked it, even after I confessed that it was a trick to get them to eat squash. — Walter Chandoha

Pizza Squash

Preheat oven to 400° F. Cut rounds of squash about ½-inch thick. (For larger portions slice the squash lengthwise.) Arrange slices on a cookie sheet; drizzle with olive oil. Turn each slice over so each side is oiled. Salt and pepper to taste. Bake 10-12 minutes until al dente. Remove from oven and top each round with shredded mozzarella, a pinch of grated Parmesan, a sprinkle of oregano, and a tiny bit of garlic powder. Return to oven set on broil until the cheese melts and turns a golden brown.

WEED Control

BACK WHEN I WORKED FOR A GARDEN SEED COMPANY, I was given the job of answering mail from home gardeners. There were often complaints about broadleaf weeds and grass seedlings that sprouted in rows planted with vegetable seeds. It was difficult to convince the letter writers that these weeds and grasses did not come from our vegetable seed packets, but from seeds that had been lying dormant in the soil for many years. Had I been able to talk to the gardener directly, I would have assured them that seed companies are fanatic about removing weed seeds during the milling and cleaning process.

Suffice it to say that you can expect “weedlings” to sprout from dormant seeds and roots that are present in the soil. In a contest for soil moisture and plant nutrients, the weed seedlings will always win over the vegetable seedlings. You should be prepared to pull them out when they are small, or to dig out well rooted, older seedlings with minimum damage to nearby vegetable plants. A dandelion digger is a great tool for digging out weeds, roots and all.

How does a beginner know a vegetable seedling from a “weedling”? It comes with observation and practice. Only a few garden vegetable sprouts resemble grass. Onions and chives are good examples. So, as you study the row of emerging plants, good guys and bad guys, you can begin weeding by grasping the grass seedlings at ground level, pulling them out, and throwing them into the compost bin. Then, survey the remaining seedlings. If germination was strong, the good guys will outnumber the weeds. One by one, pull out the seedlings that look different from the majority, or have a different foliage color or texture. Weeding is a tedious process that can be physically and mentally tiring. But with the aid of a kneeling bench or pad and a music source plugged into your ear, you can switch off the urge to be somewhere else, doing something else. After one season of weeding, you’ll remember the shape, color, and feel of vegetable seedlings you weeded. Not incidentally, remember to take along your dandelion digger every time you kneel or sit down to weed. If a weed seedling won’t come out with a gentle tug, it may be the action end of a piece of perennial weed root or an acorn, hickory, or walnut seedling, all of which require undercutting and prying up before they’ll come out, root and all.

Weeding in a fall garden.

Quick-growing lettuce is interplanted with longer-season cabbage.

After harvesting cool-season vegetables, replant the bed with succession crops such as zucchini.

Interplanting

A few kinds of small, quick-growing vegetables are suitable for growing between larger, longer-season vegetables and small fruit. Foremost among these are leaf lettuce, mustard greens, onion sets, radish, spinach, and Swiss chard. A few kinds of annual herbs can also be wedged in between the hulking plants of large vegetables: cilantro, summer savory, parsley, and dwarf basils such as ‘Spicy Globe’ are good examples. Don’t get carried away and try to interplant vegetables such as beans or cabbage. Their plants are vigorous enough to compete strongly with nearby large vegetables. Interplanting is a good use for excess seedlings you have pried out of rows of direct-seeded vegetables. Seedlings that are “pulled out by the ears” rather than dug out seldom survive transplanting.

Succession Planting

Here is where you will see good gardeners shine. They make it a personal challenge to be ready to pop in seeds or plants of a second or third crop as soon as they have harvested the first or second planting. They know that certain cool season vegetables need a month longer to mature than the speedy kinds, so they pay close attention to “days to maturity” for each kind they consider. In areas with a short growing season, they know to leave perhaps one-quarter of their garden open during spring because they realize that some spring crops might not mature quickly enough to allow timely planting of long-season, warmth-loving annuals.

The very best of the planners are like composers of music, but instead of hearing music in their heads, they see seasonal crops following seasonal crops, with none of the “dead air” silence so dreaded by radio and TV broadcasters. On page 22, you will find a few succession tips arranged by hardiness zones.

SMART Gardener

Site your garden where it will receive full sun all or most of the day, and where it will drain quickly after a rain without washing away. Place it well away from trees, keeping in mind that tree roots can spread well beyond the drip from the foliage canopy.

SEEDSPEAK: A Tutorial in Technical Nomenclature

A labor of love... for beans!

THE FOLKS WHO WRITE THE DESCRIPTIVE COPY for seed packets and catalogs often use terms they assume everyone understands. Many beginning gardeners—and even some expert ones—would disagree. While many gardening words sound simple, you really do need to know the meaning behind them. So, stick with me while I give you a short course in “Seedspeak.”

Vegetable nomenclature. Back in the eighteenth century, the Swedish botanist Linnaeus first divided and subdivided the great kingdom of seed-bearing plants, using terms such as order, family, genus, and species. Unfortunately, the seed trade relies on a different set of terms. For example, they use “kind” as a starting point. Beans, peas, and sweet corn are different “kinds” of vegetables. A kind is not the same as a genus or species. That is because so much crossing (both deliberate and accidental) has occurred that a kind might include genetic input from more than one genus or species.

Now, let’s venture onto the slippery slope of varieties and hybrids. Kinds are divided into varieties and hybrids. When a seed breeder develops a new variety, it is named and photographed, and its characteristics are carefully documented. This visual and written information sets the standard for that variety from that point forward. Seed people call this standard the “type” for the variety.

The term “type” represents an average plant within a variety, and a certain amount of variation is to be expected. For example, if you planted a long row of seeds of, say, yellow wax beans and carefully examined each plant that grew from those seeds, you would notice a certain amount of difference in their size, pod length, and shape, and perhaps even a tendency for a few plants to form short runners.

Keeping that variation within a permissible range is a never-ending task for seed people. To do so, every few years the seed breeder is required to select a few very similar plants from a group of yellow wax beans. He or she plants these at a distance from any other varieties of beans. The seeds produced by these select yellow wax bean plants are then saved, and eventually become the new sales inventory for that variety. It can take as long as five years for enough seeds to be collected for this purpose, which is called “increasing.”

Every generation of increase has to be monitored carefully, and “off-type” plants removed and composted. As a young seedsman, that was my job. I was sent out to seed fields where I ran a trained crew that walked down every row of beans or peas, looking for and pulling out any plant that was off-type. Usually, these were flat-podded beans mutating from a round-podded selection, or extremely robust plants that stood out among the uniform, smaller-size bush bean plants. Fields of peas grown for seed had to be monitored for pod shape and size, plant height, and freedom from a primitive mutant we called “rabbit-ear peas.” The occasional rattlesnake slithering through the fields in search of rodents kept the job interesting.

Cross-Pollination. Of course, there was, and still is, some cross-pollination within the seed fields. You will see the term “open-pollinated” used frequently on seed packets and in catalogs. This means that every plant in the field is open for cross-pollination by pollen from surrounding plants. Even though beans tend to be self-pollinated, some crossing does happen, thanks to bees, flies, and wasps carrying pollen from one plant to another. Also, a certain amount of genetic reversion to primitive plants takes place; this is why off-type plants have to be culled out. The result of all this labor is that when you buy and plant a packet of round-podded, white-seeded, bush bean variety, that is what you should expect. The same applies for any other open-pollinated kind of vegetable.

Seed breeders are incurable optimists. They’re forever convinced that any variety can be made even better by selecting and increasing superior plants. Often, however, Mother Nature produces changes resulting in entirely new varieties—take eggplant, for example. I remember when virtually all eggplant varieties took many weeks to set fruit, and the results were big, clunky, hard-shelled, egg-shaped, and full of seeds that tended to be bitter.

Then a breeder in New Hampshire found an extra-early-fruiting eggplant, increased its seeds, and introduced it to home and commercial growers, who up until then had been unable to grow eggplant successfully. Then, Japanese seed breeders found a plant that produced long, slender, tender-skinned eggplant fruit and introduced the variety ‘Ichiban’. Later, a European seed breeder deduced that the market was ready for a colorful, tender-skinned, pink-purple-white eggplant that would not fall apart when sliced and grilled. It is available as ‘Italian Tricolor’. Now, there might have been some hybridization during the breeding process, but once the new type was established, seeds were produced in open-pollinated fields. Isn’t Mother Nature awesome!

Hybrids

The first commercially available, man-made hybrid vegetables were sweet-corn hybrids introduced during the 1920s. Since that time, many hybrids within several kinds of vegetables have been released. Ironically, these do not include beans or peas because trials have shown that hybrid beans or peas show little superiority over open-pollinated varieties. While plant breeders do introduce new genetic traits to beans or peas by cross-pollinating them, once the trait has been transferred and stabilized, they increase the seeds in open-pollinated fields.

Let’s take hybrid tomatoes as an example. One of the best-known hybrids for many years was ‘Big Boy’. Seed breeders developed and evaluated many “parent” lines. Some were found to be good at forming abundant crops of seeds and were designated “female” parents. Some produced pollen in abundance and were used as “male” parents. Each parent line was maintained by self-pollination, and each was called an “inbred.”

When you cross a female inbred with a male inbred, you get fruits containing hybrid seeds. You also get more than a sum of the parts, because a genetic phenomenon called “hybrid vigor” kicks in and the plants grown from hybrid seeds are far more vigorous than their inbred parents. Plant breeders evaluated many, many experimental crosses before deciding to introduce ‘Big Boy’. (Notice the single quotation marks? That’s how the given names of hybrids or varieties are supposed to be written.)

I knew the breeder of ‘Big Boy’ but we never got around to discussing the parents used to make the hybrid. I can only speculate that one of the parents bore large, smooth, well-shaped, deep-red fruit, while the other contributed good flavor and resistance to several tomato diseases. Back then, the pollen from the female would be removed by hand, both to prevent self-pollination and to allow pollen from the male to be transferred to the female via a camels-hair brush.

Nowadays, some hybrid tomato seeds are produced by using a female that is self-sterile. In other words, it can’t pollinate itself. It can be pollinated by pollen from a different inbred, however.

Whatever means of hybridizing is used, the plants grown from hybrid seeds closely resemble each other, unlike varieties grown from open-pollinated seeds. They also set and ripen fruits within a few days of each other. No doubt that hybrid seeds are more expensive, but they are worth it because of their increased production and resistance to diseases.

Kohlrabi is usually green, but this red variety adds color and crunch when chopped or grated in a salad.

HARDINESS Zones

Hardiness Zones 9–10*

In these areas, which include low elevation gardens in California, winters are comparatively warm and nearly frost-free, and spring seasons are short and often warm. Varieties considered “spring vegetables” elsewhere are planted during the fall season in these two zones. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and cauliflower, all cool-season vegetables that take several weeks to mature, need to be planted in early fall in order to shape up before cold wet winter weather sets in. Warm-season vegetables need to be planted during the spring in order to be harvested before the onset of the intense heat of September and October.

The hot months of fall in these zones are great for maturing fruits of long-season melons and hard-shelled squash that were planted in early summer. The combination of intense heat and dryness during fall months interferes with pollination and can rule out late summer plantings of many kinds of vegetables.

Hardiness Zones 6–8*

The frost-free span in these zones ranges from six to eight months, so two or three succession crops are possible. Early spring plantings of leafy vegetables and onions are followed by early summer plantings of warmth-loving beans, eggplant, peppers, okra, southern peas, sweet corn, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. A quick second crop of tomatoes and sweet corn is possible in Zone 8 when the first crop peters out because of heat and humidity. The month of August is the traditional time for planting seeds of fall greens and root crops to follow heat-resistant summer annuals. Thinnings from the crop of greens can be taken during the fall, leaving the main crop to be harvested prior to the onset of very cold weather in January or February. Among the summer crops, okra and sweet potatoes occupy garden space for the longest time. In the Southeast, late crops of sweet corn are occasionally interplanted with pumpkins or the green-and-white striped winter squash called cushaw. These aren’t harvested until around Halloween, too late to be followed with crops of greens or root crops.

Hardiness Zones 3–5*

Zone 3 gardeners, while blessed with relatively cool summers and long summer days, are severely restricted in what and when they can plant. Certain areas within the zone can be visited by light frosts during summer months. Succession planting usually means following a spring-planted crop of greens, root crops, or onion sets with a crop of fall greens direct-seeded in mid-July. Gardeners in Zone 3 have to be ready with floating row covers to protect tender crops from occasional light summer frosts. They make the most of their garden space by spring plantings of cole crops (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and kohlrabi), peas, and rutabaga. Their long summer days favor the development of very large plants despite the relatively cool air. Long-day onions and carrots are mainstay summer vegetables for them.

Gardeners have more leeway in Zones 4 and 5. Their spring seasons are long and cool enough to produce excellent broccoli, cabbage, potatoes, peas, and onions from early spring plantings. A few summer nights may drop into the 40s, but summer frosts are rare. Thus, the classic sequence of quick-maturing, cold-tolerant kinds planted in early spring, followed by warm-weather annuals is possible. Unfortunately, fall frosts can come in September or, at the latest, early October, which means that only the spring-planted kinds will be off the ground in time for direct-seeding fall crops of cold-hardy vegetables in late July or early August. It’s prudent to reserve a row or two for timely planting of fall crops.

It’s possible to plant a second crop of sweet corn in Zone 8, after the first crop succumbs to heat and humidity.

*Please refer to hardiness zone maps on pages 180-181.

The Science of Gardening, Enhanced by Experience

A recycled stepladder is reincarnated as an herb garden.

I wish I had access to the abundance of gardening information on the Internet before I planted my first food garden. It is a marvelous tool, as are all the additional sources of information now available. But I planted my first garden in the late 1940s. At the time, most books on vegetable gardening seemed to be written by English majors who were more skilled at turning a phrase than in the practicalities of gardening. So, I gardened by trial and error, as did Walter, while he was mastering the art of garden photography.

The science of gardening is a different matter. Back then, gardening knowledge was mostly gained through hands-on experience rather than clinical research. Gradually—and still a work in progress—the growth and development processes of plants are becoming better understood. It was not until the advent of Master Gardening courses offered by the County Cooperative Extension Service at state universities that the science of gardening opened to the home gardener. I was privy to it earlier through my education in agronomy, but I am happy to listen and learn when in the presence of the new generation of soil and plant scientists.

SMART Gardener

The tomato thief. While I realize this story has little to do with getting your garden started, it is a precautionary tale you’ll soon appreciate. I had been watching my hybrid ‘Beef-eater’ tomatoes like a hawk. One night, two fruits were only a day or so away from picking. The following morning, these big, once-lovely tomatoes had been twisted off and chewed, but not devoured. Now, a rabbit can’t twist off a tomato, and there were no deer tracks. Both red and gray squirrels are daytime feeders. No other vegetables were eaten, so that ruled out the piggy groundhogs. That left raccoons. That night, I donned gloves, set up a humane trap, and baited it with aromatic, fully ripe cantaloupe. Unfortunately, it seems that I lost this particular raccoon con game. Recently, I turned on the exterior floodlights and saw three yearling coons clinging to my finch feeder, filching expensive seeds. Still, I’m thankful that armadillos have yet to find my garden. I’m grateful for small favors.