You’re growing cauliflower, and you’re too lazy to tie leaves over the forming head to keep it white? Partially break a few leaves and let them rest on the developing head, for easy blanching.
When harvesting cabbage, cut the head instead of pulling the plant out of the ground. You may get another crop of smaller heads. Read the rest of this entry »
Soak seeds of beets, Swiss chard, and peas for fifteen or twenty minutes before planting. Soak parsley, New Zealand spinach, and celery seed overnight to hasten germination.
Make multiple plantings of lettuce. “I make nine plantings of lettuce each season,” says a Vermont gardener. “Sometimes I scrape snow away to plant the first batch.” He plants only a couple of feet of each variety at a time. “I don’t try to salvage overmature lettuce,” he declares. “I turn it under and plant some more.” 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 »
Amount needed per 1,000 sq. ft. … 10 lbs. Approximate cost/lb. … $1.40-$1.70 Varieties: Little Marvel, Wando, Progress No. 9 Best time to plant: early spring or early fall.
I like garden peas as a green manure crop because I can plant them very early and because they produce so much food for so little work. I call them an
“edible” green manure crop because I don’t till them in until after Jan and I harvest bushels of peas for freezing and eating, and to give to friends and neighbors. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
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 »
Crop rotation will help to prevent a build-up of the serious troubles listed here.
