| Plant | Friend | Foe |
| Asparagus | Basil, nasturtium, parsley, tomato | garlic, onion |
| Bean, Bush | Beet, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, celeriac,celery, chard, corn, cucumber, eggplant, leek, marigold, parsnip, pea, potato, radish, rosemary, strawberry, sunflower | basil, fennel, kholrabi, onion family |
| Bean, pole | Carrot, cauliflower, chard, corn, cucumber, eggplant, marigold, pea, potato, rosemary, strawberry | basil, beet, cabbage, fennel, kohlrabi, onion family, radish, sunflower |
| Beet | Bush bean, cabbage family, corn, leek, lettuce, lima bean, onion, radish | Mustard Greens, pole bean |
| Broccoli | Beet, bush bean, carrot, celery, chard cucumber, dill, kale, lettuce, mint, nasturtium, onion family, oregano, potato, resemary, sage, spinach, tomato | Lima, pole and snap beans, strawberry |
| Brussels Sprout | Beet, bush bean, carrot, cucumber, lettuce, nasturtium, onion family, pea, potato, radish, spinach, tomato | Knhlrabi, pole bean, strawberry |
| Cantalope | Corn | potato |
| Carrot | Bean, brussels sprouts, cabbage, chive, leaf lettuce, leek, onion, pea, pepper, red radish, rosemary, sage tomato | Celery, dill, parsnip |
| Cauliflower | Beet, bush bean, carrot, celery, cucumber dill, kale, lettuce, mint, nasturtium, onion family, potato, rosemary, sage, spinach, tomato | Pole bean, strawberry |
| Celery | Bush bean, cabbage family (especially cauliflower) leek, parsley, pea, tomato | Carrot, parsnip |
| Corn | Beet, bush bean, cabbage, cantalope, cucumber, morning glory, parsley, pumpkin, squash | tomato |
| Cucumber | Bush bean, cabbage family, corn, dill eggplant, letttuce, nasturtium, pea, radish, sunflower, tomato | potato, sage |
| eggplant | Bush bean, pea, pepper, potato | none |
| kale | Beet, bush bean, cabbage, celery, cucumber, lettuce, nasturtium, onion, potato, spinach, tomato | |
| kohlrabi | Beet, bush bean, celery, cucumber, lettuce, nasturtium, onion, potato, tomato | Pole bean, strawberry |
| leek | Beet, bush bean, carrot, celeriac, celery, onion, parsley, tomato | bean, pea |
| lettuce | Especially good friends are carrot, garlic, onion family, radish | none |
| lima bean | Beet, radish | none |
| Onion Family | Beet, cabbage family, carrot, kohlrabi, leek, early lettuce, parsnip, pepper, spinach, strawberry, tomato, turnip | asparagus, bean, pea, sage |
| Parsley | Asparagus, corn, tomato | none |
| Parsnip | Bush bean, garlic, onion, pea, pepper, potato, radish | caraway, carrot, celery |
| pea | Bean, carrot, celery, chicory, corn, cucumber, eggplant, parsley, radish, spinach, strawberry, sweet pepper, turnip | Onion family |
| pepper | Carrot, eggplant, onion, parsnip, pea, tomato | fennel, kohlrabi |
| potato | Bush bean, cabbage family, corn, eggplant as a trap crop, marigold, parsnip, pea | cucumber, pumpkin, raspberry, rutabaga, squash family, sun-flower, fomaot, turnip |
| pumpkin | Corn, eggplant, nasturtium, radish | potato |
| radish | Bean, beet, cabbag e family, carrot, chervil, corn, cucumber, leaf lettuce, melon, nasturtium,, parsnip, pea, spinach, squash family, sweet potato, tomato | hyssop |
| rutabaga | Nasturtium, onion family, pea | potato |
| spinach | Cabbage family, celery, legumes, lettuce, onion, pea, radish, strawberry | potato |
| squash | Celeriac, celery, corn, dill, melon, nasturtium, onion, radish | potato |
| strawberry | Bean, borage, lettuce, onion, pea, spinach | cabbage family |
| tomato | Asparagus, basil, bee balm, bush bean, cabbage family, carrot, celery, chive, cucumber, garlic, head lettuce, marigold, mint, nasturtium, onion, parsley, pepper, pot marigold | dill, fennel, pole bean, potato |
| turnip | Onion family, pea | potato |
| Information from "The Vegetable Grdener's Bible" by Edward C. Smith | ||
| Mr. Smith advises you to use this information as a starting point. Keep track of your own experiences. | ||
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Companion Plants
Sources for supplies and information in Houston:
Texas Cooperative Extension Service –
Harris County Cooperative Extension
3033 Bear Creek Dr.
Houston, Texas 77084
281-855-5600
http://harris-tx.tamu.edu/
Excellent source of information on the internet and information on free classes.
Urban Harvest-
http://www.urbanharvest.org/
Excellent source of information on the internet and information on classes.
“Year Round Vegetables, Fruits and Flowers for Metro Houston” great book.
Anyone who wants to look up anything in the book is welcome to come and look at mine. Just give me a call.
Southwest Fertilizer-
http://www.southwestfertilizer.us/
5828 Bissonnet
Houston, TX 77081
(713) 666-1744
Camp Logan Cement Works-
713-869-3385
Skip@camplogancement.com
1212 Asbury Street
Houston, Texas 77007
Arcola Feed-
6215 FM 521
Arcola Texas 77583
http://www.arcolafeed.com/
1-888-546-0516
Owned by Jay and Tara Jurica, they carry hay by the bale and by the round.
Tara says to call in for availability and price before coming out. The price of hay rises and falls just like the stock market. They also have a selection of seeds.
Living Earth Technologies-
16138 Highway 6
Iowa Colony , TX 77583
Tel.: 281-431-3400 Directions: 1.3 miles west of 288 on Hwy 6
Operation Hours: Mon-Fri: 7:00-5:30- Sat: 7:00-12:00
Great place to get a yard or two of mulch, soil or garden mix.
Note: As of this date (June 2011) you can order 4 cubic yards of garden soil to be delivered for just under $120.00. Every additional cubic yard would be about $25.00 more.
http://www.livingearth.net/
http://www.seedsavers.org
An organization of people dedicated to collecting, preserving and making available Heirloom seeds, often with a note of their origins and/or stories.
http://www.victoryseeds.com Fun for history buffs and memorabilia.
Has a great catalogue with Victory Garden seeds, Louis and Clark seeds, biblical seed selections etc…
Home Made Grow Box
Step by step directions with pictures on how to make
your own grow box.
If you plan to plant in containers…
this is definitely the way to go!
Amazing results!
Written by Sharon
If you have questions or just want to talk gardening, don’t hesitate… call or e-mail me … I love to talk about gardens and plants. Let me know what is going on in your garden. Have a great day!!
Texas Cooperative Extension Service –
Harris County Cooperative Extension
3033 Bear Creek Dr.
Houston, Texas 77084
281-855-5600
http://harris-tx.tamu.edu/
Excellent source of information on the internet and information on free classes.
Urban Harvest-
http://www.urbanharvest.org/
Excellent source of information on the internet and information on classes.
“Year Round Vegetables, Fruits and Flowers for Metro Houston” great book.
Anyone who wants to look up anything in the book is welcome to come and look at mine. Just give me a call.
Southwest Fertilizer-
http://www.southwestfertilizer.us/
5828 Bissonnet
Houston, TX 77081
(713) 666-1744
Camp Logan Cement Works-
713-869-3385
Skip@camplogancement.com
1212 Asbury Street
Houston, Texas 77007
Arcola Feed-
6215 FM 521
Arcola Texas 77583
http://www.arcolafeed.com/
1-888-546-0516
Owned by Jay and Tara Jurica, they carry hay by the bale and by the round.
Tara says to call in for availability and price before coming out. The price of hay rises and falls just like the stock market. They also have a selection of seeds.
Living Earth Technologies-
16138 Highway 6
Iowa Colony , TX 77583
Tel.: 281-431-3400 Directions: 1.3 miles west of 288 on Hwy 6
Operation Hours: Mon-Fri: 7:00-5:30- Sat: 7:00-12:00
Great place to get a yard or two of mulch, soil or garden mix.
Note: As of this date (June 2011) you can order 4 cubic yards of garden soil to be delivered for just under $120.00. Every additional cubic yard would be about $25.00 more.
http://www.livingearth.net/
http://www.seedsavers.org
An organization of people dedicated to collecting, preserving and making available Heirloom seeds, often with a note of their origins and/or stories.
http://www.victoryseeds.com Fun for history buffs and memorabilia.
Has a great catalogue with Victory Garden seeds, Louis and Clark seeds, biblical seed selections etc…
Home Made Grow Box
Step by step directions with pictures on how to make
your own grow box.
 |
| http://www.josho.com/gardening.htm |
this is definitely the way to go!
Amazing results!
Written by Sharon
If you have questions or just want to talk gardening, don’t hesitate… call or e-mail me … I love to talk about gardens and plants. Let me know what is going on in your garden. Have a great day!!
The Home Garden in Houston - Class Notes
The Home Garden in Houston:
Henry Ford – Time Magazine June 13 1932
“No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between a man and a plot of land.”
Victory Gardens started in US, Canada and Australia during WW1.
1. Reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort.
2. But indirectly, the gardens were a morale booster. People felt empowered by their contribution and then rewarded with the produce grown.
These gardens produced up to 40% of all the vegetable produce consumed annually!
We do not need the Victory Garden because we are at war, but if we want to live Green…
5 great reasons to have a vegetable garden:
1- Garden produce is cheaper than produce purchased at the store. For me, the vegetables are nearly free. My garden is established so there is little expense to maintaining it. There are some initial costs to starting a vegetable garden but if done properly, they will be a onetime expense.
2- Gardening is easy. With the right gardening techniques, there will be little weeding or maintenance, giving you more time to just walk out in the yard enjoy the excitement of developing veggies.
3- Locally grown makes a better world and city. By growing our own veggies/fruits we are reducing the drain on our planet: chemicals (production, release in our environment, and consumption of) transportation and storage. Gardening also grows good friends and neighbors. I have gardening friends that we exchange fruits and vegetables, plants, ideas and encouragement. A good many of my plants in my flower gardens are off shoots from my friends gardens and I was able to share quite a bit with them. It makes my flower garden all the more rich because I look at those ferns – they are from Becky, I see those bulbs – they are from Jenny, the roses are from our great Uncle Serrul etc… The vegetable garden is the same… I have a bumper crop of squash which I share with my friend who has a bumper crop of tomatoes to share with me. I share my citrus with everyone I come in contact with – the family that owns the Shipley Doughnut Shop, the EZ tag attendant, the homeless man on the street, the man at the Kroger gas station, all the students at my work, my husband’s customers, neighbors, etc… That is just fun!!
4- Diets high in Fresh Produce are healthier. Now unless anyone has been living under a rock I do not need to go into the research of the importance of fresh fruits and vegetables in our diets. It has been all over the news.
Whether we are trying to lose weight, avoid disease, gain more energy, feel better, have a more beautiful complexion etc… etc… the answers seem to come back to – eat more vegetables. The latest article I found was just last Tuesday in the Chronicle, section one. “Multivitamins fail to prevent disease, study of women finds: Researcher advises getting nutrients from vitamin-rich food.” This was the largest study ever of multivitamin use in older women, 8 years and 161,808 participants that found that the vitamins had no effect on cancer or heart disease. These results mirror similar test results for men. The study co-author was also quick to note that the research does not mean that multivitamins are useless. The study was observational, not the most exact science (but the most practical available for this type of study) and did not address the other possible benefits of taking multivitamins. This particular study appears in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
5- Home grown veggies taste better and are better for you.
Flavor deteriorates after harvest- Studies show that, for instance, green beans loose 60% of the vitamin C within 10 days of being picked. Packaged, precut veggies typically have 1/3 to 1/5 the Vitamin C of fresh produce. Also, after picking, sugars convert to starch within hours or weeks depending on the produce. Fresh is definitely better!
Some foods do not transport well or are highly perishable so they are not found very often on store shelves and when they are they are very expensive. Figs, fresh berries, fresh herbs, and apricots are just a few things like this. Figs for instance, if you find them in the store, they are either expensive or rotten. Did you know that figs have more calcium than milk, twice the potassium of bananas, and four times the fiber of tomatoes? If you want good figs, you will have to grow them yourself.
I have been growing fruits and vegetables in my back yard for over 20 years. I can no longer walk into a store and buy things like collard greens, cilantro, parsley, mint, bay leaves, rosemary, green onions, squash, green beans, oranges, grapefruits, pears, lemons or limes. The stores produce is so much more expensive than free and the produce does not even compare in quality or availability to the stuff I grow in my yard.
Pesticide Residues in Produce:
a- Reportedly, artichokes are so expensive because they need to be sprayed so many times during the growing season. Apples have the most kinds of pesticides. Pesticide levels are often high on leafy greens because they have a large surface area.
b- Apples, grapes, strawberries and peaches have especially high levels of residues.
A daughter of an apple farmer told me once that she and her family never eat an apple before pealing it because they have to spray so many chemicals on them while they are growing. Apples have the most kinds of pesticides.
c- According to a 1999 study, the most toxic residues (by a factor of 10) are found in domestic peaches and winter squash. There are very high levels of toxicity also in apples, canned and frozen green beans, Chilean peaches, domestic and Chilean pears, spinach, Chilean grapes, Argentinean and South African pears, celery, domestic grapes, lettuce, Mexican tomatoes, and carrots.
d- The least pesticides are found in sweet potatoes, cauliflower, onions, corn, green onions, and avocados. Bananas, broccoli, orange juice, milk, canned and frozen corn are all virtually free of toxic residues.
I wish I could say that by washing your produce well you will avoid all the chemicals on your food. A good many of the poisons are in the produce as well as on the skins and many chemicals are by function, systemic.
53 pesticides classified by the EPA as cancer causing are registered for use on major crops, and 112 other pesticides that the EPA classified as potential cancer agents, are in use. Over a life time, if the chemical residues remaining in commercial tomatoes and tomato products such as catsup and tomato paste were at the legal limit, they would cause one cancer case in every thousand consumers. If you eat many tomatoes, your odds worsen. With this in mind… we may not eat tomatoes every day but we do eat vegetables treated with pesticides everyday. Even just cutting the amount of chemical laden veggies in our diet by half would perhaps be of great health benefit.
And yet, according to the National Institutes of Health we would be best getting, 4 to 6 servings of vegetables and 4-6 servings of fruit a day. So how can we improve our odds of good health? We hope for increased health by consuming lots of fruits and vegetables and then suffer the effects of increased toxicity of those very foods in our bodies.
What a quandary!! To grow all of our fruit and vegetable needs would take some effort, although it can be done. I think that, for most of you, the focus is on having a garden that will produce some really good tasting vegetables, not take too much time and effort, be something to have fun with and get satisfaction from. I am with you on that.
But think about it. If you grow tomatoes, summer squash, green onions and a few herbs this summer and Winter squash, lettuce, collards and bush beans and cilantro this winter, you would increase your healthy consumption and decrease your overall pesticide exposure. Your little family garden has just tipped the scales in your favor! You have also gained a little more self reliance for your family and passed it on to your children as well.
Getting Started:
6 things that you as a new gardener will need:
1- Site: You will need a site that hopefully you will be able to keep your garden going in for several years. If you do not, then container gardening, planting temporary raised beds, starting a community garden, renting garden space, working with a friend at her place are all options that may work for you.
The site should be at least 6 feet from the foundation of your house because most houses have very toxic pesticides in the soil to prevent termites and older houses often have lead paint in the soil. A place that gets sun all day, summer and winter, would be best but a minimum of 6 hours could work. Some leafy greens and herbs will grow well enough in bright shade.
2- Soil and compost: Soil is nice but compost is a must. You could grow the most fantastic garden in compost alone, but compost continually breaks down, feeding the plants and the organisms in the compost that feed the plants. A solid mulch bed would have to be replaced about every 2 to 3 years.
Soil is what we have in our back yards so why not just use that? Good point and some people will use the soil in their yard to garden with and that is all they use. But soil itself is just dead minerals, with limited nutrients available to the plants. You would need a lot of chemical controls, fertilizers, have to weed and water a lot and you would experience less productivity. Most people, I suspect, that say that they tried and failed, or thought it was too much work etc… probably went the chemical route without a thought of improving the soil and letting nature feed and nurture the garden.
There is a natural soil food web that can exist in your garden providing the best possible growing medium for your plants. To facilitate this natural food web is a lot easier and cheaper than trying to figure out everything that your plants need and what exactly is attacking your plants so you can purchase the appropriate poisons to control the situation.
Earth worms!
Worms are the organic farmer and gardener's best friend. "Through their feeding and burrowing activities, worms can affect the decomposition of organic litter, modify soil microbial communities, and alter the structure and porosity of the soil, thereby profoundly influencing the availability of nitrogen in the soil".2
By converting organic matter such as kitchen waste, lawn clippings, newspaper, cardboard, dried leaves and animal manure into castings, worms dramatically reduce the amount of time needed to break down organic waste and return nutrients to the soil from months and years to a matter of days.
Earthworms are the work horse of the garden mulching machine. Make your worms happy and you will have a good growing medium.
There are also some very long organisms known as VAM. They attach themselves to roots and then funnel nutrients from the surrounding soil to the roots in return for carbon the plant takes from carbon dioxide in the air. Root rots and pest nematodes do not easily attack plants that have these beneficial fungi.
The whole point is that a soil regularly provided with diverse decomposing plant materials will have a strong food web providing strong nutrition for plants without pest rots and nematodes. This can only be done if there is plenty of organic matter for them to eat and you don’t kill them with chemicals.
Compost is an excellent way to add organic matter to the soil. Probably the best way for us, backyard gardeners, is to layer organic matter directly on top of the soil.
a. It keeps the summer soil cool and damp.
b. Helps earthworms
c. keep the soil surface from crusting.
d. Prevents weeds and water loss. (less weeding and less watering)
e. Provides habitats for a number of beneficial insects and through gradual breakdown of the mulch, adding humus in large quantities.
f. Provides possibly the easiest, cheapest way to add organic matter to the soil.
Mulch (as it decomposes) turns into compost: I purchase a few bales of hay from the Feed Store and lay it out in the garden on top of a layer of about 8 sheets of newspaper. I do this in the spring. Our kitchen waste collects in a container in the kitchen for a few days and then I take it out to the garden, dig a hole about 12 - 18” deep and burry it. Kitchen scraps are ounce for ounce considerably better than commercial fertilizer. My garden dirt is so loose that weeds just about volunteer to get up and leave when I pull them! Hay is an excellent mulch for several reasons. When compared by weight with cow manure, grass hay contains more than twice the nitrogen, nearly four times the phosphorous, over four times the potash and sulfur, and somewhat lower amounts of trace minerals. It produces much more biological activity than does manure and involves less loss of nitrogen. Therefore it builds humus faster. Hay is relatively cheap, comes in compact loads and is clean and easy to use. Sometimes you can get old hay for free if it has been out in the field and is no longer useful for feeding livestock. Alfalfa has twice the nitrogen content of grass hay and may have fewer chemicals, but is more expensive because it is shipped a long way. Coastal Bahia hay doesn’t seem to cause weeds but it is often treated with long lasting herbicides. If you use hay on tomatoes or relatives of the tomato be sure the hay is either organic or at least 6 months old.
The hay can be spread in a loose layer about 4 -6 inches thick.
You can use mulched tree leaves but only use your neighbors. You want yours to stay in the grass, under the trees to feed the next season’s growth. If your neighbors are putting theirs in bags and leaving them for the trash man…. Ask for their bagged up leaves, leave them in a corner of the back yard in the bags until spring and then empty the composted leaves on to the garden. Leaves are a good source of trace minerals and have a little potash and nitrogen, but don’t begin to compare with hay as a soil builder. Hay and leaves added to a heavy clay soil over a year or two will do wonders to loosen up the heavy soil and make it more garden friendly. Added to sandy soil, which I don’t think is a problem out here, would help water and nutrient retention in the soil. So… here is the trick question-
if your soil is too clay like, what do you add? Mulch.
if your soil is too sandy, what do you add? Mulch.
This is rocket science.
"That's what organic gardening always comes back to: feeding the soil and the rest takes care of itself"1
3- Equipment:
Bed- The garden bed itself can be a raised bed. This gives you, the gardener, control of the moisture and more control of the weeds. It is also nice to sit on the edge of the garden and reach in to prune, pick or weed. Reading up on different ways to build a raised garden bed I found that the best way overall may to be to build a boarder out of 8x8x8 solid concrete blocks. The advantages are it is a very long lasting frame that holds soil very well, is non-toxic to food and roots, provides habitat for toads and beneficials, poses no problems for landfills, provides excellent seating for gardening chores or visiting, and is very easily weeded. The disadvantages are that it is very heavy to build and some people may not like the color.
Things to consider when choosing a retaining wall for your garden:
a. The difficulty of using it in bed construction.
b. How well it will hold in the soil.
c. Usefulness as a place to sit while gardening.
d. The degree to which they may contaminate food or clothing.
e. How long it will last.
f. Cost.
g. Appearance.
Tools- Tools for the garden: Nearly any gardener needs a spade, a short-tined garden fork, a garden rake, a weeding tool and something to get the watering done.
The best spades have forged blades. They come from one tempered steel block, have a solid back rather than indented at the top center.
The best hoes are circle hoes. They come in both short-handled and long-handled varieties and make the task of shallow cultivation quick, effective, and good exercise.
The best trowels are Wilkinson Sword stainless and the Union Razorback.
Pruning shears and larger cutters can be bought with a ratchet mechanism. Definitely worth looking for. It makes cutting jobs so much easier… even possible.
To keep plants off the ground, use metal Tee stakes, galvanized metal pipe, rails, conduit, or rebar, metal cages, metal trellises, and/or metal wire.
If you get a wheel barrow please get a metal construction grade wheelbarrow. Cheaper models will die quickly.
The best hoses are 100% rubber. They will outlast nylon by years, not crimp, be less aggravation and therefore justify their 40% higher cost.
Fan nozzles are best for watering from the hose.
A moisture probe that you can stick in the ground or in a pot to gauge soil moisture can be useful.
4- Plants:
There are different ways to get the plants growing in your garden. Of course we can go to the garden center and buy a seedling in a pot and transplant in into our garden. Some are started as seeds indoors and gradually transplanted out in the garden and some are seeded directly into the garden. No one method is best for all plants.
Tomatoes are, in my experience, hard to start from seeds: although, as I am still learning how to do this I may actually be able to grow mine from seeds eventually. I have recently learned that keeping the emerging seedlings at about 80 F. is best and keep the light source about 2 – 4 inches from the tops of the seedlings. They also require potting soil that is light and porous. This requires quite a set up. Next year I will get some heat source to go under my pots, put the pots in a pan to contain the excess water, suspend a fluorescent shop light just above the dirt, and cover the whole assembly to keep in heat and humidity and see what happens.
Just a note, since I brought up the subject of tomatoes. When planting tomato transplants, a good rule of thumb is to pinch off all the blanches halfway up the plant and plant up to that point. If your plant is 10” high, pinch all the branches off up to 5” and plant so that only 5” of the plant is above the dirt. The trunk under the soil will root quickly and give the plant a really awesome root system.
They need large cages and to be spaced far enough apart that air and sun can filter down into the core areas of the bush. These small tomato cages that look like cones about 3 feet tall are not adequate. A fairly inexpensive cage is made out of 4 foot high hog wire with about 4 inch holes cut about 7 feet long and looped around to form a cylinder. Stake it into the ground with rebar or something similar. Tomatoes produce longer and better if their branches do not hang down without support. Diseases, bugs and funguses are easier to control if the lower branches are cut off.
Other seeds are much easier to start indoors. They generally just require a light potting soil, a good light source, and moisture. As the plants get larger and the weather gets warmer, the seedlings should be brought outside in the part shade… to harden off and get ready for the move to the garden.
Some plants, I find, are better seeded directly into the garden. Beans, collards, corn, cucumber, lettuce, squash, and beets are easy to sprout in the garden. Some things that I usually purchase as plants are tomatoes and peppers. I have started peppers from seeds fairly easily but I don’t usually need lots of them so I just get a few plants of every variety that I want.
You may want to start with some of the easiest things to grow if you are new to gardening. This would be things like squash, peppers, lettuce, onions, collards, green beans and cucumber. (Tomatoes, the most commonly tried crop, is actually one of the most difficult to grow.)
Where you get your starts depends on your time and what varieties you want to grow. Burpee’s Catalogue is a Gardner’s dream. The pictures and descriptions are beautiful but be careful when choosing seeds and plants though because this catalogue caters to every growing zone in the United States. Some of the beautiful vegetables in their catalogue may not do well here and even if they do, they may not be the best choice for our area. Check the Urban Harvest Vegetable Varieties List or the Texas Cooperative Extension Service List and use these as your guide. Hardware stores and garden stores may not come out with the seedlings when they should be ideally planted and, again, they may not have the best varieties for our area. For this reason you may want to check out some of the Houston based garden stores like Buchanan’s , Tea’s Nurseries, or Southwest Fertilizer. These stores will have a larger variety of plants to choose from that grow especially well in our area.
5- Labor: Who will be working in the garden? What kind of project will this be in your family? Is this something that all of you will work on together on a weekend or do you want to have every one interested responsible for certain chores like watering, picking, planning and planting? Gardening for children is lots of fun especially if mom and dad are there working with them. Keep it interesting and upbeat. What bugs did you see in the garden today? What do you think they are eating? Are they good or bad for the plants? What is eating the holes in these leaves? What is starting to bloom? Some of the plants are not doing so well – what can be wrong? Too much water? Not enough sun? Some kind of bug or fungus? Let’s look into it… Let’s be detectives/scientists in our own backyards.
You have some squash ready to pick, how do we want to fix it? Let the kids help picking and preparing the newly picked veggies, tasting along the way. Cherry tomatoes, green beans…. Eat it right in the garden! This can be an adventure!
6- Knowledge: I would not want to try to cook a loaf of bread in a sauce pan on the stove top. If I tried and failed…. Would I back away from cooking and just proclaim that I just cannot cook?!! I don’t have a …. “hot thumb”. No, of course not! I should look up baking of bread and see what I had done wrong. Or maybe call someone that knows how to bake bread and ask them questions.
Obviously there are millions of things to know about gardening but you don’t have to know it all to be successful. You just have to know where to look for answers and maybe find people who are already successful in the garden.
Fortunately there are a lot of people out there who not only know gardening but know Houston area gardening and are excited about sharing their knowledge with us newbies. They are the Master Gardeners. I am sure there are many sources shere you can find these Master Gardeners. I know of two organizations that are helpful. One is Urban Harvest started up by Dr. Bob Randall. He has an excellent, as far as I have seen, unsurpassed book on Houston gardening. “Year Round Vegetables, Fruits and Flowers for Metro Houston”. Buchanan’s Garden store has it for $40.00 or you can order it directly from Urban Harvest. It is worth every penny spent on it.
There is also the Texas Cooperative Extension Service for Harris County. You can call them with any questions and their Master Gardeners will answer you questions for FREE!
Make friends with other people who garden and compare notes. Sometimes we have to learn from our mistakes but that is time consuming and tedious. If you talk gardening with others, you will learn of their mistakes and hopefully avoid them yourself. Books do not usually cover how things are done wrong and what to do about it. Start simple, learn from doing and enjoy the process.
Pest or not a pest and what to do about it.
It has become obvious to the Master Gardeners that the would-be gardener has a lot of biological homework to do if pest control based on poison is to work. Any attempt to kill a pest, runs the danger of killing a beneficial insect that is either biologically related, or that eats the pest for dinner. Pesticides therefore frequently make the problem worse the next year. Go organic and avoid even organic pesticides if possible. It is healthier, easier, and more effective.
The Basic things you need to know about encouraging the good guys are:
1- Diversify by planting many different types of herbs, flowers, and other plants so there will be nectar and pollen, resting places, and breeding areas for the adult forms. Different flower shapes and different colors attract a diversity of beneficials. It has been noted, for instance that white, brown, and off-white colored flowers attract night flying insects. Highly colored flowers attract daytime predators.
2- Inter-crop plants that are attractive to the good guys so that they are near the pest-prone plants. This most effectively mimics the natural order of things.
Two of the very best plants to plant in your garden for this purpose are cilantro and fennel. Other excellent choices are dill and parsley. Any plant that flowers in your yard will attract beneficial bugs to the garden as will any of the herbs.
3- Humidify – Keep the garden moist and the ground under the plants fairly shaded. This will provide a healthy and safe environment for the little good guy predators.
4- Keep blooms year round so that insects will have what they need when their life cycles need it.
5- Keep members of the parsley family and daisy-sunflower family planted in your garden as much as possible. Strangely enough, different insects need different shaped flowers, so you will invite many different types of predators with all the different shaped flowers blooming all year round.
Sometimes it is difficult to know if a bug is one of the good guys or one of the bad guys. Spraying insecticides in the garden is really not a good idea. You would be killing not only the bad guys but also the good insects that monitor the garden and make up the necessary humus in the soil.
For example, there is a big bad – The Stink Bug.
We all know what the adult looks like. But do you know what the adolescents look like? They are small but easily seen bugs with long, bright red, spider looking legs. They actually look pretty amazing! They hang out in groups of about 10 to 20. Stink bugs can devastate a garden. But there is another bug, a good guy, called the Assassin Bug. The Assassin Bug looks just like an adolescent stink bug. Assassin Bugs can just about cover an unsprayed pest-infected garden in the summer. They eat aphids, cabbage loopers, corn earworms, tomato hornworms, some leafhoppers, bean beetles, and squash vine borers. A good way to promote the assassin bugs and thwart the stink bugs is to kill the adolescent stink bugs because they are easy to see and find. How can you tell the difference? Generally, stink bugs will be clustered on the tomato plants. If you see them on something else like green beans, they are probably assassins. You can squish the stink bug adolescents in your garden glove or even try a small hand held vacuum to suck them up and dispose of them.
Planting in the Garden:
When to plant your seeds and seedlings is important to get the most out of your harvest. Thankfully you do not have to be born knowing all the dates for all the different vegetables. The Master Gardeners have made a chart for us to refer to.
Looking at my chart I can see that if I am to start my garden in March I can plant:
Green bean seeds, cantaloupe seeds, chili and pepper plants, cucumber seeds, lettuce seeds and squash seeds. If I want to plant okra seeds, I should wait until April.
What varieties should you plant? Well, thankfully, that is in a chart as well. The charts I use are in the Urban Harvest Book I mentioned earlier and the Extension Service web site.
When planting seeds there is a rule of thumb: Plant the seed 2-3 times as deep as the size of the seed. Small, black pepper sized seeds could be broadcast on the fine dirt and lightly watered in and/or raked lightly over. If you have the seed pkt, it should say on the back how to plant. It is critical to keep the seeds wet until they are about 2-3 inches tall. In the summer, this might mean a shallow watering every morning and night.
Planning and setting up the garden can be a lot of fun.
Consider things like putting the tall and leggy with the short and sprawling.
Pole beans on a trellis with squash plants below.
Tomato plants with onions plants below.
Check out the companion plant chart in this blog.
If you have a garden designed to be narrow enough to reach every part from the side,
you do not waste precious garden space with paths,
you do not need to compact the dirt with walking on it to access the interior,
you do not need to plant in rows,
you do not need to till.
Note: Avoid walking on the soil or digging/working in the soil when it is wet.
If you look at the planting charts, you will notice that we do not just have one or two growing seasons here in Houston. We actually have about 4 growing seasons. Your little backyard garden can be quite productive. Most people think of gardening in the hot summer sun when gardening is talked about most: but some of the easiest gardening, here in Houston is in the spring and fall. We have fewer bugs, fewer weeds and the temperatures are easier to work in.
Henry Ford – Time Magazine June 13 1932
“No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between a man and a plot of land.”
Victory Gardens started in US, Canada and Australia during WW1.
1. Reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort.
2. But indirectly, the gardens were a morale booster. People felt empowered by their contribution and then rewarded with the produce grown.
These gardens produced up to 40% of all the vegetable produce consumed annually!
We do not need the Victory Garden because we are at war, but if we want to live Green…
5 great reasons to have a vegetable garden:
1- Garden produce is cheaper than produce purchased at the store. For me, the vegetables are nearly free. My garden is established so there is little expense to maintaining it. There are some initial costs to starting a vegetable garden but if done properly, they will be a onetime expense.
2- Gardening is easy. With the right gardening techniques, there will be little weeding or maintenance, giving you more time to just walk out in the yard enjoy the excitement of developing veggies.
3- Locally grown makes a better world and city. By growing our own veggies/fruits we are reducing the drain on our planet: chemicals (production, release in our environment, and consumption of) transportation and storage. Gardening also grows good friends and neighbors. I have gardening friends that we exchange fruits and vegetables, plants, ideas and encouragement. A good many of my plants in my flower gardens are off shoots from my friends gardens and I was able to share quite a bit with them. It makes my flower garden all the more rich because I look at those ferns – they are from Becky, I see those bulbs – they are from Jenny, the roses are from our great Uncle Serrul etc… The vegetable garden is the same… I have a bumper crop of squash which I share with my friend who has a bumper crop of tomatoes to share with me. I share my citrus with everyone I come in contact with – the family that owns the Shipley Doughnut Shop, the EZ tag attendant, the homeless man on the street, the man at the Kroger gas station, all the students at my work, my husband’s customers, neighbors, etc… That is just fun!!
4- Diets high in Fresh Produce are healthier. Now unless anyone has been living under a rock I do not need to go into the research of the importance of fresh fruits and vegetables in our diets. It has been all over the news.
Whether we are trying to lose weight, avoid disease, gain more energy, feel better, have a more beautiful complexion etc… etc… the answers seem to come back to – eat more vegetables. The latest article I found was just last Tuesday in the Chronicle, section one. “Multivitamins fail to prevent disease, study of women finds: Researcher advises getting nutrients from vitamin-rich food.” This was the largest study ever of multivitamin use in older women, 8 years and 161,808 participants that found that the vitamins had no effect on cancer or heart disease. These results mirror similar test results for men. The study co-author was also quick to note that the research does not mean that multivitamins are useless. The study was observational, not the most exact science (but the most practical available for this type of study) and did not address the other possible benefits of taking multivitamins. This particular study appears in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
5- Home grown veggies taste better and are better for you.
Flavor deteriorates after harvest- Studies show that, for instance, green beans loose 60% of the vitamin C within 10 days of being picked. Packaged, precut veggies typically have 1/3 to 1/5 the Vitamin C of fresh produce. Also, after picking, sugars convert to starch within hours or weeks depending on the produce. Fresh is definitely better!
Some foods do not transport well or are highly perishable so they are not found very often on store shelves and when they are they are very expensive. Figs, fresh berries, fresh herbs, and apricots are just a few things like this. Figs for instance, if you find them in the store, they are either expensive or rotten. Did you know that figs have more calcium than milk, twice the potassium of bananas, and four times the fiber of tomatoes? If you want good figs, you will have to grow them yourself.
I have been growing fruits and vegetables in my back yard for over 20 years. I can no longer walk into a store and buy things like collard greens, cilantro, parsley, mint, bay leaves, rosemary, green onions, squash, green beans, oranges, grapefruits, pears, lemons or limes. The stores produce is so much more expensive than free and the produce does not even compare in quality or availability to the stuff I grow in my yard.
Pesticide Residues in Produce:
a- Reportedly, artichokes are so expensive because they need to be sprayed so many times during the growing season. Apples have the most kinds of pesticides. Pesticide levels are often high on leafy greens because they have a large surface area.
b- Apples, grapes, strawberries and peaches have especially high levels of residues.
A daughter of an apple farmer told me once that she and her family never eat an apple before pealing it because they have to spray so many chemicals on them while they are growing. Apples have the most kinds of pesticides.
c- According to a 1999 study, the most toxic residues (by a factor of 10) are found in domestic peaches and winter squash. There are very high levels of toxicity also in apples, canned and frozen green beans, Chilean peaches, domestic and Chilean pears, spinach, Chilean grapes, Argentinean and South African pears, celery, domestic grapes, lettuce, Mexican tomatoes, and carrots.
d- The least pesticides are found in sweet potatoes, cauliflower, onions, corn, green onions, and avocados. Bananas, broccoli, orange juice, milk, canned and frozen corn are all virtually free of toxic residues.
I wish I could say that by washing your produce well you will avoid all the chemicals on your food. A good many of the poisons are in the produce as well as on the skins and many chemicals are by function, systemic.
53 pesticides classified by the EPA as cancer causing are registered for use on major crops, and 112 other pesticides that the EPA classified as potential cancer agents, are in use. Over a life time, if the chemical residues remaining in commercial tomatoes and tomato products such as catsup and tomato paste were at the legal limit, they would cause one cancer case in every thousand consumers. If you eat many tomatoes, your odds worsen. With this in mind… we may not eat tomatoes every day but we do eat vegetables treated with pesticides everyday. Even just cutting the amount of chemical laden veggies in our diet by half would perhaps be of great health benefit.
And yet, according to the National Institutes of Health we would be best getting, 4 to 6 servings of vegetables and 4-6 servings of fruit a day. So how can we improve our odds of good health? We hope for increased health by consuming lots of fruits and vegetables and then suffer the effects of increased toxicity of those very foods in our bodies.
What a quandary!! To grow all of our fruit and vegetable needs would take some effort, although it can be done. I think that, for most of you, the focus is on having a garden that will produce some really good tasting vegetables, not take too much time and effort, be something to have fun with and get satisfaction from. I am with you on that.
But think about it. If you grow tomatoes, summer squash, green onions and a few herbs this summer and Winter squash, lettuce, collards and bush beans and cilantro this winter, you would increase your healthy consumption and decrease your overall pesticide exposure. Your little family garden has just tipped the scales in your favor! You have also gained a little more self reliance for your family and passed it on to your children as well.
Getting Started:
6 things that you as a new gardener will need:
1- Site: You will need a site that hopefully you will be able to keep your garden going in for several years. If you do not, then container gardening, planting temporary raised beds, starting a community garden, renting garden space, working with a friend at her place are all options that may work for you.
The site should be at least 6 feet from the foundation of your house because most houses have very toxic pesticides in the soil to prevent termites and older houses often have lead paint in the soil. A place that gets sun all day, summer and winter, would be best but a minimum of 6 hours could work. Some leafy greens and herbs will grow well enough in bright shade.
2- Soil and compost: Soil is nice but compost is a must. You could grow the most fantastic garden in compost alone, but compost continually breaks down, feeding the plants and the organisms in the compost that feed the plants. A solid mulch bed would have to be replaced about every 2 to 3 years.
Soil is what we have in our back yards so why not just use that? Good point and some people will use the soil in their yard to garden with and that is all they use. But soil itself is just dead minerals, with limited nutrients available to the plants. You would need a lot of chemical controls, fertilizers, have to weed and water a lot and you would experience less productivity. Most people, I suspect, that say that they tried and failed, or thought it was too much work etc… probably went the chemical route without a thought of improving the soil and letting nature feed and nurture the garden.
There is a natural soil food web that can exist in your garden providing the best possible growing medium for your plants. To facilitate this natural food web is a lot easier and cheaper than trying to figure out everything that your plants need and what exactly is attacking your plants so you can purchase the appropriate poisons to control the situation.
Earth worms!
Worms are the organic farmer and gardener's best friend. "Through their feeding and burrowing activities, worms can affect the decomposition of organic litter, modify soil microbial communities, and alter the structure and porosity of the soil, thereby profoundly influencing the availability of nitrogen in the soil".2
By converting organic matter such as kitchen waste, lawn clippings, newspaper, cardboard, dried leaves and animal manure into castings, worms dramatically reduce the amount of time needed to break down organic waste and return nutrients to the soil from months and years to a matter of days.
Earthworms are the work horse of the garden mulching machine. Make your worms happy and you will have a good growing medium.
There are also some very long organisms known as VAM. They attach themselves to roots and then funnel nutrients from the surrounding soil to the roots in return for carbon the plant takes from carbon dioxide in the air. Root rots and pest nematodes do not easily attack plants that have these beneficial fungi.
The whole point is that a soil regularly provided with diverse decomposing plant materials will have a strong food web providing strong nutrition for plants without pest rots and nematodes. This can only be done if there is plenty of organic matter for them to eat and you don’t kill them with chemicals.
Compost is an excellent way to add organic matter to the soil. Probably the best way for us, backyard gardeners, is to layer organic matter directly on top of the soil.
a. It keeps the summer soil cool and damp.
b. Helps earthworms
c. keep the soil surface from crusting.
d. Prevents weeds and water loss. (less weeding and less watering)
e. Provides habitats for a number of beneficial insects and through gradual breakdown of the mulch, adding humus in large quantities.
f. Provides possibly the easiest, cheapest way to add organic matter to the soil.
Mulch (as it decomposes) turns into compost: I purchase a few bales of hay from the Feed Store and lay it out in the garden on top of a layer of about 8 sheets of newspaper. I do this in the spring. Our kitchen waste collects in a container in the kitchen for a few days and then I take it out to the garden, dig a hole about 12 - 18” deep and burry it. Kitchen scraps are ounce for ounce considerably better than commercial fertilizer. My garden dirt is so loose that weeds just about volunteer to get up and leave when I pull them! Hay is an excellent mulch for several reasons. When compared by weight with cow manure, grass hay contains more than twice the nitrogen, nearly four times the phosphorous, over four times the potash and sulfur, and somewhat lower amounts of trace minerals. It produces much more biological activity than does manure and involves less loss of nitrogen. Therefore it builds humus faster. Hay is relatively cheap, comes in compact loads and is clean and easy to use. Sometimes you can get old hay for free if it has been out in the field and is no longer useful for feeding livestock. Alfalfa has twice the nitrogen content of grass hay and may have fewer chemicals, but is more expensive because it is shipped a long way. Coastal Bahia hay doesn’t seem to cause weeds but it is often treated with long lasting herbicides. If you use hay on tomatoes or relatives of the tomato be sure the hay is either organic or at least 6 months old.
The hay can be spread in a loose layer about 4 -6 inches thick.
You can use mulched tree leaves but only use your neighbors. You want yours to stay in the grass, under the trees to feed the next season’s growth. If your neighbors are putting theirs in bags and leaving them for the trash man…. Ask for their bagged up leaves, leave them in a corner of the back yard in the bags until spring and then empty the composted leaves on to the garden. Leaves are a good source of trace minerals and have a little potash and nitrogen, but don’t begin to compare with hay as a soil builder. Hay and leaves added to a heavy clay soil over a year or two will do wonders to loosen up the heavy soil and make it more garden friendly. Added to sandy soil, which I don’t think is a problem out here, would help water and nutrient retention in the soil. So… here is the trick question-
if your soil is too clay like, what do you add? Mulch.
if your soil is too sandy, what do you add? Mulch.
This is rocket science.
"That's what organic gardening always comes back to: feeding the soil and the rest takes care of itself"1
3- Equipment:
Bed- The garden bed itself can be a raised bed. This gives you, the gardener, control of the moisture and more control of the weeds. It is also nice to sit on the edge of the garden and reach in to prune, pick or weed. Reading up on different ways to build a raised garden bed I found that the best way overall may to be to build a boarder out of 8x8x8 solid concrete blocks. The advantages are it is a very long lasting frame that holds soil very well, is non-toxic to food and roots, provides habitat for toads and beneficials, poses no problems for landfills, provides excellent seating for gardening chores or visiting, and is very easily weeded. The disadvantages are that it is very heavy to build and some people may not like the color.
Things to consider when choosing a retaining wall for your garden:
a. The difficulty of using it in bed construction.
b. How well it will hold in the soil.
c. Usefulness as a place to sit while gardening.
d. The degree to which they may contaminate food or clothing.
e. How long it will last.
f. Cost.
g. Appearance.
Tools- Tools for the garden: Nearly any gardener needs a spade, a short-tined garden fork, a garden rake, a weeding tool and something to get the watering done.
The best spades have forged blades. They come from one tempered steel block, have a solid back rather than indented at the top center.
The best hoes are circle hoes. They come in both short-handled and long-handled varieties and make the task of shallow cultivation quick, effective, and good exercise.
The best trowels are Wilkinson Sword stainless and the Union Razorback.
Pruning shears and larger cutters can be bought with a ratchet mechanism. Definitely worth looking for. It makes cutting jobs so much easier… even possible.
To keep plants off the ground, use metal Tee stakes, galvanized metal pipe, rails, conduit, or rebar, metal cages, metal trellises, and/or metal wire.
If you get a wheel barrow please get a metal construction grade wheelbarrow. Cheaper models will die quickly.
The best hoses are 100% rubber. They will outlast nylon by years, not crimp, be less aggravation and therefore justify their 40% higher cost.
Fan nozzles are best for watering from the hose.
A moisture probe that you can stick in the ground or in a pot to gauge soil moisture can be useful.
4- Plants:
There are different ways to get the plants growing in your garden. Of course we can go to the garden center and buy a seedling in a pot and transplant in into our garden. Some are started as seeds indoors and gradually transplanted out in the garden and some are seeded directly into the garden. No one method is best for all plants.
Tomatoes are, in my experience, hard to start from seeds: although, as I am still learning how to do this I may actually be able to grow mine from seeds eventually. I have recently learned that keeping the emerging seedlings at about 80 F. is best and keep the light source about 2 – 4 inches from the tops of the seedlings. They also require potting soil that is light and porous. This requires quite a set up. Next year I will get some heat source to go under my pots, put the pots in a pan to contain the excess water, suspend a fluorescent shop light just above the dirt, and cover the whole assembly to keep in heat and humidity and see what happens.
Just a note, since I brought up the subject of tomatoes. When planting tomato transplants, a good rule of thumb is to pinch off all the blanches halfway up the plant and plant up to that point. If your plant is 10” high, pinch all the branches off up to 5” and plant so that only 5” of the plant is above the dirt. The trunk under the soil will root quickly and give the plant a really awesome root system.
They need large cages and to be spaced far enough apart that air and sun can filter down into the core areas of the bush. These small tomato cages that look like cones about 3 feet tall are not adequate. A fairly inexpensive cage is made out of 4 foot high hog wire with about 4 inch holes cut about 7 feet long and looped around to form a cylinder. Stake it into the ground with rebar or something similar. Tomatoes produce longer and better if their branches do not hang down without support. Diseases, bugs and funguses are easier to control if the lower branches are cut off.
Other seeds are much easier to start indoors. They generally just require a light potting soil, a good light source, and moisture. As the plants get larger and the weather gets warmer, the seedlings should be brought outside in the part shade… to harden off and get ready for the move to the garden.
Some plants, I find, are better seeded directly into the garden. Beans, collards, corn, cucumber, lettuce, squash, and beets are easy to sprout in the garden. Some things that I usually purchase as plants are tomatoes and peppers. I have started peppers from seeds fairly easily but I don’t usually need lots of them so I just get a few plants of every variety that I want.
You may want to start with some of the easiest things to grow if you are new to gardening. This would be things like squash, peppers, lettuce, onions, collards, green beans and cucumber. (Tomatoes, the most commonly tried crop, is actually one of the most difficult to grow.)
Where you get your starts depends on your time and what varieties you want to grow. Burpee’s Catalogue is a Gardner’s dream. The pictures and descriptions are beautiful but be careful when choosing seeds and plants though because this catalogue caters to every growing zone in the United States. Some of the beautiful vegetables in their catalogue may not do well here and even if they do, they may not be the best choice for our area. Check the Urban Harvest Vegetable Varieties List or the Texas Cooperative Extension Service List and use these as your guide. Hardware stores and garden stores may not come out with the seedlings when they should be ideally planted and, again, they may not have the best varieties for our area. For this reason you may want to check out some of the Houston based garden stores like Buchanan’s , Tea’s Nurseries, or Southwest Fertilizer. These stores will have a larger variety of plants to choose from that grow especially well in our area.
5- Labor: Who will be working in the garden? What kind of project will this be in your family? Is this something that all of you will work on together on a weekend or do you want to have every one interested responsible for certain chores like watering, picking, planning and planting? Gardening for children is lots of fun especially if mom and dad are there working with them. Keep it interesting and upbeat. What bugs did you see in the garden today? What do you think they are eating? Are they good or bad for the plants? What is eating the holes in these leaves? What is starting to bloom? Some of the plants are not doing so well – what can be wrong? Too much water? Not enough sun? Some kind of bug or fungus? Let’s look into it… Let’s be detectives/scientists in our own backyards.
You have some squash ready to pick, how do we want to fix it? Let the kids help picking and preparing the newly picked veggies, tasting along the way. Cherry tomatoes, green beans…. Eat it right in the garden! This can be an adventure!
6- Knowledge: I would not want to try to cook a loaf of bread in a sauce pan on the stove top. If I tried and failed…. Would I back away from cooking and just proclaim that I just cannot cook?!! I don’t have a …. “hot thumb”. No, of course not! I should look up baking of bread and see what I had done wrong. Or maybe call someone that knows how to bake bread and ask them questions.
Obviously there are millions of things to know about gardening but you don’t have to know it all to be successful. You just have to know where to look for answers and maybe find people who are already successful in the garden.
Fortunately there are a lot of people out there who not only know gardening but know Houston area gardening and are excited about sharing their knowledge with us newbies. They are the Master Gardeners. I am sure there are many sources shere you can find these Master Gardeners. I know of two organizations that are helpful. One is Urban Harvest started up by Dr. Bob Randall. He has an excellent, as far as I have seen, unsurpassed book on Houston gardening. “Year Round Vegetables, Fruits and Flowers for Metro Houston”. Buchanan’s Garden store has it for $40.00 or you can order it directly from Urban Harvest. It is worth every penny spent on it.
There is also the Texas Cooperative Extension Service for Harris County. You can call them with any questions and their Master Gardeners will answer you questions for FREE!
Make friends with other people who garden and compare notes. Sometimes we have to learn from our mistakes but that is time consuming and tedious. If you talk gardening with others, you will learn of their mistakes and hopefully avoid them yourself. Books do not usually cover how things are done wrong and what to do about it. Start simple, learn from doing and enjoy the process.
Pest or not a pest and what to do about it.
It has become obvious to the Master Gardeners that the would-be gardener has a lot of biological homework to do if pest control based on poison is to work. Any attempt to kill a pest, runs the danger of killing a beneficial insect that is either biologically related, or that eats the pest for dinner. Pesticides therefore frequently make the problem worse the next year. Go organic and avoid even organic pesticides if possible. It is healthier, easier, and more effective.
The Basic things you need to know about encouraging the good guys are:
1- Diversify by planting many different types of herbs, flowers, and other plants so there will be nectar and pollen, resting places, and breeding areas for the adult forms. Different flower shapes and different colors attract a diversity of beneficials. It has been noted, for instance that white, brown, and off-white colored flowers attract night flying insects. Highly colored flowers attract daytime predators.
2- Inter-crop plants that are attractive to the good guys so that they are near the pest-prone plants. This most effectively mimics the natural order of things.
Two of the very best plants to plant in your garden for this purpose are cilantro and fennel. Other excellent choices are dill and parsley. Any plant that flowers in your yard will attract beneficial bugs to the garden as will any of the herbs.
3- Humidify – Keep the garden moist and the ground under the plants fairly shaded. This will provide a healthy and safe environment for the little good guy predators.
4- Keep blooms year round so that insects will have what they need when their life cycles need it.
5- Keep members of the parsley family and daisy-sunflower family planted in your garden as much as possible. Strangely enough, different insects need different shaped flowers, so you will invite many different types of predators with all the different shaped flowers blooming all year round.
Sometimes it is difficult to know if a bug is one of the good guys or one of the bad guys. Spraying insecticides in the garden is really not a good idea. You would be killing not only the bad guys but also the good insects that monitor the garden and make up the necessary humus in the soil.
 |
| Stink Bug |
We all know what the adult looks like. But do you know what the adolescents look like? They are small but easily seen bugs with long, bright red, spider looking legs. They actually look pretty amazing! They hang out in groups of about 10 to 20. Stink bugs can devastate a garden. But there is another bug, a good guy, called the Assassin Bug. The Assassin Bug looks just like an adolescent stink bug. Assassin Bugs can just about cover an unsprayed pest-infected garden in the summer. They eat aphids, cabbage loopers, corn earworms, tomato hornworms, some leafhoppers, bean beetles, and squash vine borers. A good way to promote the assassin bugs and thwart the stink bugs is to kill the adolescent stink bugs because they are easy to see and find. How can you tell the difference? Generally, stink bugs will be clustered on the tomato plants. If you see them on something else like green beans, they are probably assassins. You can squish the stink bug adolescents in your garden glove or even try a small hand held vacuum to suck them up and dispose of them.
Planting in the Garden:
When to plant your seeds and seedlings is important to get the most out of your harvest. Thankfully you do not have to be born knowing all the dates for all the different vegetables. The Master Gardeners have made a chart for us to refer to.
Looking at my chart I can see that if I am to start my garden in March I can plant:
Green bean seeds, cantaloupe seeds, chili and pepper plants, cucumber seeds, lettuce seeds and squash seeds. If I want to plant okra seeds, I should wait until April.
What varieties should you plant? Well, thankfully, that is in a chart as well. The charts I use are in the Urban Harvest Book I mentioned earlier and the Extension Service web site.
When planting seeds there is a rule of thumb: Plant the seed 2-3 times as deep as the size of the seed. Small, black pepper sized seeds could be broadcast on the fine dirt and lightly watered in and/or raked lightly over. If you have the seed pkt, it should say on the back how to plant. It is critical to keep the seeds wet until they are about 2-3 inches tall. In the summer, this might mean a shallow watering every morning and night.
Planning and setting up the garden can be a lot of fun.
Consider things like putting the tall and leggy with the short and sprawling.
Pole beans on a trellis with squash plants below.
Tomato plants with onions plants below.
Check out the companion plant chart in this blog.
If you have a garden designed to be narrow enough to reach every part from the side,
you do not waste precious garden space with paths,
you do not need to compact the dirt with walking on it to access the interior,
you do not need to plant in rows,
you do not need to till.
Note: Avoid walking on the soil or digging/working in the soil when it is wet.
If you look at the planting charts, you will notice that we do not just have one or two growing seasons here in Houston. We actually have about 4 growing seasons. Your little backyard garden can be quite productive. Most people think of gardening in the hot summer sun when gardening is talked about most: but some of the easiest gardening, here in Houston is in the spring and fall. We have fewer bugs, fewer weeds and the temperatures are easier to work in.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Got a Pot or an Acre.... lets see what is going on out in the yard!
Gardening, as it turns out, is a very social endeavor. Without the sharing of information with other like minded people in your area... you are destined to do as I did and stumble around learning from your own mistakes.
I started out when my children were young with a huge backyard garden using the existing soil with some compost from a local mushroom factory to help break up the boulder-sized clods and feed the seedlings. The dirt was so bad that we had to dig little holes in the garden to put in a little potting soil and then plant the seeds. If we had not done that, the little seeds would have fallen down between the clods of dirt never to sprout and see the light of day. Even so, the garden was a success. We had so much squash that even the local food bank was putting a limit on how much we could donate. The point on the learning curve here was that 25 squash plants will make a little bit more squash than any family of five could ever eat.
 |
| Raised beds in my backyard with a permenant trellis for the climbers. |
I have visited many friend's gardens over the years, heard of their experiences and their trouble shooting trials and tasted their veggies. Each one of my friends had something that I had never thought of before going on that turns out to be, in my experience, uniquely amazing.
My goal in setting up this Blog is to provide a place for all of you, my friends, to go to learn, share, encourage and be encouraged, gather new ideas and celebrate successes.
 |
| Carrots grown in a raised bed. |
This blog is not so much about me and my gardens as it is about you and yours. I would love any input you may have: comments, stories, pictures.... This is about you and I can't wait to see what you have going on in your backyard!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)