“I never bend over to pick bush beans,” John Page says. He explains that, since most of the beans come at once, particularly in determinate varieties, there’s no sense in courting a backache simply because you hope to get the few beans that will appear after the main picking. “Just pull out the bean plant, take off all the beans while you’re standing up, and throw the plant in the compost.” Have a second planting under way for another harvest. Read the rest of this entry »

“The best solution to tedious harvesting chores,” says a lazy gardener, “is to have lots of kids! Corral them to shell the peas, cut the beans, husk the corn, and skin the beets.” Family bees can be fun.

But, alas, the kids grow up. Lacking a crew of children, plan a social occasion to mesh with the height of raspberry, pea, or bean season. Bill it as a harvesting party, and have a gay time with picking, shelling, and freezing in the same way that folks had with husking bees in times past. It works best with friends who have no garden. Read the rest of this entry »

Your kitchen garden can be as simple as a few herbs in pots outside your back door, or a proper vegetable and herb garden.

The type of garden you choose will depend upon the space you have available, the amount of sun it gets, the time you have to spend in the garden, and to a certain extent, your own taste in food. A small-scale kitchen garden could perhaps consist of a few herbs and some tomatoes, lettuce and carrots. Read the rest of this entry »

Start Transplants in the Garden

Three or four weeks before the planting dates for cabbage, broccoli, head lettuce, and cauliflower, I sprinkle their seeds in short wide rows out in the garden. It’s an easy (and cheap) way to grow a lot of transplants in a very small space.

For my fall garden, I choose the best-looking plants, dig them out of the short wide rows, and put them in another row with more room around them. Read the rest of this entry »

Summer workers in your nitrogen factory

Amount per 1,000 sq. ft. … 10 lbs. Approximate cost/lb. … $1-$2.

Varieties: your favorite green or yellow bush varieties, such as Contender, Eastern Butterwax, etc. Or shell beans such as French Horticultural, or lima beans (seeds are slightly more expensive). In South: plant favorite Southern peas.

Best time to plant: anytime after last spring frost and up to 8 weeks before expected first fall frost. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m using my top green manure rotation scheme in another test plot to see if a typical garden can be nourished by green manure crops alone. So far I’m excited by the results. This may be the garden of the future. Here’s what I do:

In half of the test plot (12 by 24 feet), I grow peas and follow them with snap beans and a final crop of annual ryegrass at the end of the season. We get 75 pounds of shelled peas and more than 125 pounds of beans from these crops before tilling them in. Read the rest of this entry »

Beans have been the most important vegetable crop through the ages. They are the best vegetable source of life-giving protein, and today in many societies, beans are still the staple of life. Beans are also the one protein source you can keep for a long time without processing. And you can get a heavy harvest from a small amount of work.

Our family relied on dry beans when Iwas young. Every Saturday night (if not more often), the heart of our family meal, like the traditional New England Saturday supper, was baked beans. Read the rest of this entry »

Snap beans are the first beans to give me a harvest, about 45 days after they come up. I plant them early and often to get a continuous supply of fresh, tender pods. From early summer to the first fall frost, snap beans are ready to pick in my garden. I plant them every 2 weeks until about 8 weeks before the average first fall frost date. Snap beans are a good succession crop because they are so easy to plant and they sprout quickly in warm soil. When my spinach starts to go to seed in early summer, I till it under and plant a wide row of beans on the same day. A couple of weeks later when some of my early peas are finished, I till them in and plant another row of snap beans. Read the rest of this entry »

Lima beans, horticultural beans, and blackeye peas are my favorite shell beans. I pick them when the beans inside have formed but are still soft and tender. They can grow to the dry stage, but if you let them do that, you’ll miss out on an early harvest and some very good eating.

Lima beans need 11 or 12 weeks of frost-free weather

To know the real taste of lima beans, you must eat them fresh from a home garden. There’s no comparison between fresh and store-bought. Succotash, that terrific blend of fresh corn, milk, butter, and limas, isn’t worth a hoot without fresh lima beans. Read the rest of this entry »

Vegetables grown at home and used immediately after gathering have a much better flavour than those bought in the shops. Contrary to popular belief, it is not necessary to have a large garden. Various small vegetables do well in containers on a patio, or in patches in a flowerbed or border. There are several vegetables, too, for the greenhouse, and even for growing in partial shade. It is possible to have an all- round supply: many people especially appreciate fresh produce in the depths of winter.

As an alternative to the traditional method of arranging vegetables in rows, the “deep-bed” system allows you to grow more crops in the space available, because the plants are closer together. The crops are grown in blocks or bands across the I.2m/4ft wide beds, which are separated by 30-45cm/12-18in wide paths, from which you work at all times, except when digging. Initially you should prepare the beds by double-digging (see p36) and adding plenty of manure or garden compost. Repeat the double-digging every3-4 years: in the intervening years, use normal single digging. Rotate crops to get the best from the soil. Read the rest of this entry »

Chives have a milder flavour than onion and a few leaves can be snipped over potatoes or potato salad or added to omelettes to enhance the flavour. Buy a small plant and grow it in a sunny box and it will soon increase in size. In winter it will die back and may perish altogether; if you divide the plant up at the end of summer and pot the small bits individually you will increase your chances of having a survivor. Bring one pot into the kitchen at the beginning of spring to force it into growth for an early supply of leaves.

Sage you will need only infrequently unless you are mad about sage and onion stuffing. It makes an attractive plant, however, if you have the space. There is a purple-leaved variety that is colourful and well flavoured and you may also see a yellow and green one—Salvia officinalis ‘Icterina’—or the variegated white, green and pink form known as ‘Tricolor’, but these are perhaps best grown for decoration rather than flavouring. Sage likes plenty of sun and should be picked over regularly to keep it bushy; replace it when it becomes too gnarled and woody, again from cuttings tucked in beside their mother in the spring. Read the rest of this entry »

In the days when half an acre was regarded as a small garden the idea of growing vegetables in window boxes would have been a huge joke. Today, with our smaller plots and smaller families, the idea is not so laughable. Seedsmen, too, have been working for us to produce dwarfer, tidier plants that can be accommodated in boxes, tubs and other containers. There are, too, the ubiquitous growing bags so that anyone with a fancy for home-grown beans or peppers or tomatoes or other salad crops can easily indulge this. All right, you will hardly have surplusfor freezing but you should be able to enjoy good early pickings. And what a triumph, to be able to serve French beans with a real snap to them, freshly picked from your own window sill. French beans, especially the dwarf varieties that need no staking, are a vegetable particularly suited to container growing. Read the rest of this entry »

Vegetables can be grown in conventional pots, tubs, barrels and troughs, which should be at least 30cm (12in) in diameter and depth, or better, 45-60cm (18-24in) wide and deep. They should be filled with an all-peat potting soil. But perhaps the most convenient way to grow vegetables on a patio, balcony or flat roof is to plant them in growing bags. These are purely utility containers consisting of a plastic bag about 1.2m (4ft) in length and 30cm (12in) wide, filled with potting soil, generally an all-peat type.

Growing bags are used only for one season, for instance, for a crop of tomatoes, or a succession of several shorter-term crops like radishes. Holes are cut in the tops of the bags for planting or sowing.

Most vegetables like plenty of sun, so choose a sunny part of the patio for them. This is especially important with tender kinds like tomatoes, sweet peppers and aubergines, all of which also need sheltered conditions. Read the rest of this entry »

Description: A tropical evergreen tree 5 —8 m high, with a dense, globose crown. The young leaves are bronze-red, later deep green, oblong-oval, 15-20 cm long and tapering to a point. The small solitary flowers rise directly from the trunk and the base of the main branches; they are whitish, yellowish or pink. The fruit is a yellow-green, orange or brown pod up to 30 cm long, containing dark seeds called cocoa beans.

Origin and Distribution: Native to tropical South America but widely cultivated Read the rest of this entry »