Garlic: Break into doves to plant

I can’t imagine spaghetti sauce without garlic, and I can’t imagine my garden without it either. There’s nothing better than fresh garlic from the garden—it’s a must for our pickles.

Buy a few garlic bulbs from a garden store or supermarket and break each one into individual cloves.

Plant each clove 3 or 4 inches from the next one in a wide row. Push them in to their full depth, pointed end up. Plant them as early as you can, like onion sets, and give them two or three side- dressings during the season. Keep the soil loose around them, and don’t let them get dry. Read the rest of this entry »

Early Spanish variety grows well in my garden

You can’t plant peanuts from the stores if they’ve been roasted. To find a seed source, look in the mail order catalogs. If you live in the South, a garden store should have them.

Most peanut varieties need 4 or 5 months of warm growing time. If your season is shorter, try

Early Spanish peanuts. They take less time and bear very well. Read the rest of this entry »

Peas are the ultimate crop for the lazy gardener. Using my wide row method, you can plant them in minutes and come back weeks later to harvest them. There’s no weeding, side-dressing, staking，or hilling. . .there’s just no work at all to growing tasty fresh peas anywhere in any climate.

People in the South often complain to me, “Dick, it’s just too hot down here to grow English peas. They start growing okay when the weather is cool but then it gets hot and the peas don’t produce.” My wide row method solves this problem.

I once brought 2 bushels of fresh-picked peas from my Florida test garden to a class I was giving nearby. I set the peas down in the middle of the crowd and said, “Taste for yourself.” These Florida gardeners sampled the peas and said, “They’re great!” Read the rest of this entry »

Peppers are the prettiest plants in the garden, especially when they’re loaded with dozens of red, green, orange, and yellow peppers.

Peppers are easy to grow, but people have trouble with peppers because they push them too hard. Giving them too much fertilizer is the number one mistake. I have a big stack of letters from people who say, “My plants are tall and dark green, but I don’t have any peppers yet!” This is a sure sign of too much fertilizer.

Peppers don’t need much fertilizer, and what they get should come in small doses. Give them a teaspoon of a complete fertilizer like 5-10-10 at planting time and no more than a teaspoon or two at blossom time.

Each year I grow pepper plants that at first glance seem awfully small, yet when you look closely you discover 15 or 20 peppers on each plant. Read the rest of this entry »