January:
Lettuce Start a Garden (January 2012)
Here it is a new year and a new
day. Have you ever thought about growing
a garden? Gardening seems like a big
endeavor and you don’t have the time or energy to invest? Let’s start small with something you could
eat every day. Let’s start with lettuce. Lettuce is easy to grow in a garden bed but
it also does just as well in pots.
You can mail order the seeds or
find them in the local Hardware and garden stores. Make sure that the varieties that you choose
are ones that you will like. There is a
big difference between the varieties.
Lettuce grows well in the cool/cold temperatures of winter, turning
bitter and dying off when the weather warms up. Lettuce seeds can be planted
from October through March. There are
three different types that grow well here: looseleaf, butterhead, and
romaine.
Looseleaf lettuce is the beautiful
spring mix you see in the produce section at the grocery store. It is expensive because it is relatively
difficult for machines to pick, ship, and store. Compare the nutrition though to crispheads
and you see 6 times the Vitamin A, 3 times the Vitamin C and 3 times the calcium! Looseleaf is easy to grow and harvest.
Butterhead lettuce consists of
green leaves wrapped loosely around a center.
Like looseleaf lettuce it is tender and cannot withstand the machinery
needed to harvest and handle head lettuce.
Butterhead lettuce has 4 times the iron, 3 times the Vitamin A, 50% more
protein and 50% more potassium than crisphead lettuce. Impressive stats I’d say!
Romaine lettuce is the heartiest of
the three lettuces mentioned hear. First
grown by the Romans, (hence the name), it soon became a gourmet treat in
France. Romaine is easy to grow and it
is a decent source of the phytochemicals lutein and zeaxanthin, known for
cataract and macular degeneration prevention.
These lettuces come in all
different colors (greens, reds and purples) and shapes, sweet or bitter,
delicate or durable. If you grow a
variety, your salads could consist of a beautiful array of tastes, colors and
textures. As the plants grow, pick the
bigger, lower leaves – just enough for a few days of eating - wash by gently
agitating it in cold water, sending it through the salad spinner and wrapping
in a clean dish towel. Keep the lettuce
in the lower portion of the refrigerator.
It comes out crisp, delicious and depending on what you plant, very
colorful.
Lettuce is generally ready to start
picking about 5 – 6 weeks after planting.
A rich, composted soil, kept moist works best and the plants only need
protection if the temps drop into the teens.
Lettuce is easy to grow and looks
beautiful enough to showcase in your front yard. You will be enjoying salads for months, right
out of your pots.
Leaf Lettuce:
Lettuce likes a well drained (raised bed), moist bed in full sun. Broadcast the seeds over the loosened soil and pat down to make good contact with the soil. Water in gently. Pictured below is Forellenschluss Leaf Lettuce.
Picture above is Red Velvet Leaf Lettuce.
You can start cutting the leaves off the plants in as little as 5 weeks. Generally, I get the scissors and cut the lower leaves off the plants taking only about 1/2 the leaves at any given time. The lettuce will continue to grow and provide you with great salads until it gets too hot outside and it goes bitter. You will probably be eating crisp, tasty salads well into April.
These are not lettuce plants (to the right) you say.
That is true, they are Detroit Red Beets, but the little
beet plants that I pulled out of the garden to give the other
beets room to grow made a really great addition to our
salads for a few weeks. These little beets have been
thinned out and are now ready to grow to their 2"-3" size.
My grandmother used to make canned pickled beets when I was little. They were so beautiful and bright red in their jars.
In fact, they were my favorite food for many, many years and
they are still on the top of my list today. When they are harvested and canned, I will come back with pictures and the incredibly easy recipe.
Spinach (to the left) is not a lettuce either but I included them here because they are so great in the salads too.
Just a note here... I use no pesticides in my gardens and sometimes I will loose some of my veggies to pests. But I have a good soil culture, a host of good bugs that keep the bad ones in check most of the time, and the plants are kept vigorous and healthy so that if munching bugs do come along they won't do that much damage. In these pictures you can notice a few places where a bug has come along and enjoyed the greens but not enough to cause much concern. Leaf lettuce is really easy to grow and can be enjoyed on the table for months. Can't beat that!
Snow
Peas
Snow
Peas: delicious and sweet right off the vine.
Even your children will not be able to resist eating them as they
pick. Great for stir fry cooking. Plant in January as per package directions. They do well even when the temps get into the
20s. They will need a trellis or fence
of some sort to climb on.
February: If you are looking for something to do in your garden this February - other than pick and eat what is already growing out there, you may want to consider starting an herb garden. January and February planting guides are pretty much the same so check the planting chart if you still want to plant, say, lettuce, beets, radishes, etc...
Rosemary pictured above, oregano on the left and parsley on the right. Italian Flat leaf parsley will sometimes reseed itself... but the curly leafed usually will not. Italian Flat leaf is also the more flavorful of the two, more prolific and easier to wash.
A few herbs that like the full sun the most are Rosemary and Basil. Rosemary prefers to remain fairly dry with no irrigation and Basil needs to be watered. Herbs that prefer morning sun and afternoon shade are mint, lemon balm, chives, garlic chives, oregano lovage, and parsley. Having said all this, it is well known that all these herbs grow pretty well no matter what their growing situation is if they get good drainage.
Garlic chives (pictured on the right... the grassy looking plant in the middle) had grown so much in the last two years that what you are seeing in this picture is only about 1/10th of what was there before I dug it up, separated it and gave most of it away to others wanting garlic chives. After about a year of growing, they really take off and grow like crazy! The cilantro plants in the very back of this picture are going to seed. I will leave them until the seeds have dried up and fallen to the ground to re-seed for next year. I also go out and collect some of the seeds and plant them where I choose when the time comes. I bought one packet of cilantro seeds about 10 to 15 years ago and have not bought any since. Nice.Mint plants (Peppermint pictured above left. My neighbor has Spearmint.) are very invasive plants. It either needs to be planted in a pot or given a border in the garden. The black plastic border pictured above is a cheep easy way to contain your mint in the garden. Mint spreads by underground runners and the stems can root if touching the ground. Some of the soil in the above picture has washed away over the years exposing the border. I need to just dig and re-set the border to keep the runners from taking over the rest of the garden. Mint grows most aggressively in the spring, summer and fall.
Over the winter you could hardly even tell there is mint in this garden bed but every February it stages a comeback. This summer the mint will completely cover a cubic yard of garden space.
I bought this mint in a little 4" pot about 20 years ago and planted it in a little bed behind the garage. As the children started growing up and taking up all of my time and I did not go back behind the garage anymore I had forgotten about my little peppermint plants. 5 years ago I lamented to my husband that I wish the peppermint had not died... the garden bed behind the garage was not there anymore and the mint was gone too. He laughed at me and said not to worry that the mint was still there. I could not see any so I really thought it was gone. Then one day I was mowing the lawn back there and... wow!! could I smell my peppermint! I got down on my knees in the grass, dug around a bit, and there it was, happily growing in the lawn on its own for years! I dug up some and created a little bed for it in my front side flower garden. There is lives still.
If anyone wants a start of peppermint, spearmint, garlic chives, rosemary, or oregano just give me a call!
Nutritional Values:
Parsley (1 tablespoon) packs a good 77% of your USDA of Vitamin K, 6% of Vitamin A, and 8% of your vitamin C.
Cilantro (2 tablespoons) has 78% of your USDA of Vitamin K, 27 of Vitamin A, 9% of Vitamin C, and 3% of your Folate. It also packs between 1 - 4% of your USDA of Calcium, Iron, Magnesium,, Phosphorus, Potassium, Zinc, Copper, and Manganese.
Chives (1 tablespoon) has 3% of your USDA of Vitamin A, 3% of Vitamin C, 8% of your vitamin K, and 1% of your Folate.
They all have varring degrees of Vitamins and minerals, are generally strongly anti-inflammatory, and carry little to no Glycemic Load.
(Figures obtained from www.nutritiondata.com)
Lots and lots of choices this month! Check the Planting Dates List but here is a quick rundown: Seeds - cantaloupe cucumber, lettuce, squash, watermelon, spinach and sunflowers.
Plants - chilies and peppers, multiplying onions, tomato, and lemon grass.
March
2012
Garden
Adventures
Lots and lots of choices this month! Check the Planting Dates List but here is a quick rundown:
Seeds - cantaloupe, cucumber, lettuce, squash, watermelon, spinach and sunflowers.
Plants - chilies and peppers, multiplying onions, tomato, and lemon grass.
Watermelons
What fun to eat your own
watermelons from July – September.
Among sweet deserts, Watermelon is tops in health… and fun. One cup has only 51 calories while also
having 25% the RDA for Vit. C, some B vitamins, 5% Vit. A, potassium and
magnesium. Most importantly, along with
Tomatoes and red grape fruit they are the only common source of Lycopene,
thought to be highly preventative against prostate and other cancers.
Plant
now in full sun. The soil should be
loose and have lots of compost worked into it.
Watermelons need lots of room to grow so plant in the garden (space
about 2 feet from side to side) and let the vines crawl into the
lawn. Once the melons start to grow and
develop you should put a little something (cut pieces of foam egg cartons,
newspaper, hay, piece of broken pot, etc…) under the melon to keep the rind off
the damp grass or dirt.
Mini watermelons can be
trellised. Once the melons start
developing,
help support the weight with a sling made of
cut
up nylons or something similar.
Minis
or giants… watermelons are a big hit!
April 2012
Garden
Adventures
Wow
has the weather been great! There is
still time to get those bush snap and pole snap bean, cantaloupe, cucumber,
okra, and squash seeds in the ground.
This
is a good time too, if you like to grow herbs, to get your basil, cumin, and
oregano seeds started in the garden. You
can also plant lemon verbena, lemon grass, garlic chives, mint, rosemary, sage,
and thyme plants now.
Herbs
Planting
an herb garden
is easy and low maintenance. Many herbs
are annuals (they keep growing year after year without dying back). Generally they like full sun to partial shade
in the mid-day and have low water needs.
The annuals are truly the gift that keeps on giving! Herbs pack a powerful nutritional punch
too. Just a little bit goes a long
way. Lemon thyme on carrots, pesto made
from fresh basil on potatoes or pasta, parsley on bean salad, rosemary on
chicken: there is no end to ease and beauty of adding herbs to your life. Think past just seasoning your food though,
which is a given, and imagine fresh herb arrangements in the house, sharing little sprigs tied in ribbon with
family and friends and homemade sachets to softly scent your drawers.
Of the above mentioned herbs to plant now,
only the basil and cumin do not continue to grow all year but will go to seed
providing you the seed for next season’s planting. Even though herbs do not generally need a
lot of water be sure to keep them moist while they are getting established and
water occasionally during drought.
Garden Adventures
Great
for the garden in May is cucumber, eggplant, and pepper plants, okra and
southern pea seeds.
Cucumber! What an awesome vegetable. We are not restricted to the usual fare that
shows up at the grocery store though.
Those cukes can only be planted for two months of the year and they are
not disease resistant. There are Asian
types such as the Suyo Long and the more disease resistant Burpless cucumber
which are reported to have better flavor, better heat resistance and no bitter
taste. These Asian types can be planted
from May 1st to mid August with great success. The harvest lasts 6 to 10 weeks or more so
plant new seeds every 6 weeks for a continuous harvest of cool cukes. Like squash, cucumbers like a deep fertile
soil so dig about a foot deep and 2 feet in diameter, toss in about ¼ cup of
slow release organic fertilizer. Fill
the hole with more dirt and another ¼ cup fertilizer. Do this 2 more times until you have made a
hill. Plant 4 seeds about 1 to ½ “deep
in a square, 8” apart. You will later
take out the weakest of the four plants leaving 3 strongest plants. Provide a trellis for the vines to keep them
off the ground. Cucumber plants like ¼
cup fertilizer once or twice a month and regular watering. 3 plants will make enough cukes for a family
of four and all their friends!
June
2012
Garden
Adventures:
Notes about
Summer Tomatoes in Texas
July 2012
If
you have a garden overflowing with vegetables ripe for the picking, perhaps
you could call a friend or neighbor and share your abundance.
Figs
are coming in fast and furious right now, so if you know anyone with a fig tree
ask them if they are experiencing too much of a good thing, they will likely be
happy to share. Also ripe at this time
are grapes and pears.
If
you really feel like enjoying a little of our homegrown Texas heat you could
set out your tomato plants (provide them a bit of shade), plant southern peas
seeds, burpless/Suyo Cucumber seeds, multiplying onion sets, pole beans and you
can still get some okra seeds in the ground in the first two weeks of this
month.
Keep
cool, eat right and have Fun!
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Garden
Adventures:
Fine
to plant this month - Burpless or Suyo cucumbers, okra, southern
peas,
90 day squash, argula, basil, long asparagus bean, lima/butterpea
beans,
cucuzi/Italian squash, garlic chives,
and tomatillo seeds:
eggplant,
rosemary and sage plants: sweet
potato sets.
Notes about
Summer Tomatoes in Texas
Beginning
gardeners invariably say, “I would love to learn to garden… let’s start with
tomatoes.” That’s like starting
college with advanced physics instead of basket weaving 101. If you are one
of those people, and you know who you are… pay special attention.
So you can plan ahead a bit… summer
tomato transplants can be put in the ground during the first 2 weeks of
July. Sweet Chelsea, Juliet, Dona,
Champion, and Carmello are all excellent choices for our area. I
planted a few Sweet Chelsea one
year and had more sweet, cherry sized tomatoes than I had friends/neighbors/acquaintances
to give them to. The plants grew to be
6 feet tall (I had 8 foot cages). Call
around to different nurseries this month to acquire your tomato plants.
Keep them well watered and protected in
dappled shade. Turn the dirt where you
plan to plant them, work in some organic fertilizer or compost in the first
foot of soil then cover the dirt with black plastic (large black trash bag)
to keep the weeds from getting the party started early. Once planted your tender young sprouts will
probably enjoy full morning
sun with a bit of protective shade in the afternoon. Once
the branches start to hang down, the plant will begin to slow down on
production. So keep the branches up,
up, up. Tomato plants can get very heavy so providing a good tomato cage in
place before they hit a growth spurt is important. Bob Randall at Urban Harvest says that a
cage that can be cut with anything less than bolt cutters will crater under
the weight of your tomato plants in a year or two. Cylinders made of sturdy hog wire fencing
works wonderfully well! (Hog wire
fencing has 4” to 6” holes so that you can reach through the cage with your
hand and pull out a tomato.) Also, the only trimming really
necessary is to cut off the branches near the
ground
and put down mulch (hay, shredded junk mail, etc…) to prevent
water
splashing up fungus and disease from the dirt on to the plants. Once
tomatoes
start to turn pink, you can pick them and set them to fully ripen
on the
window sill (not in the refrigerator).
They taste just a good as the
ones
left on the vine to ripen but the birds will not have gotten to them
first.
Have fun and happy
gardening!
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July 2012
Garden
Adventures
Anyone think it is hot out there? Well you can hang up your garden gloves for
a bit because this is a
great month for reaping what you have previously sowed. Just be sure that in this heat your plants
are well watered and the weeds are kept at bay. A thick layer of mulch may be just the
thing to save your gardens in this hot dry weather. The mulch keeps the beds moist, cooler and
weed free.
If
you have a garden overflowing with vegetables ripe for the picking, perhaps
you could call a friend or neighbor and share your abundance.
Besides
vegetables, several fruits are mature at this time.
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September:
Garden
Adventures (September
2012)
Summer
Gardens are beginning to wither and play out.
Its time to start thinking about Fall.
Fall gardens are amazingly productive with beautiful spinach, carrots,
lettuces, broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower and onions. The weather is cooler making it easier to
work, the weeds are not such a challenge and the bugs are not so prolific. If you are just beginning to look into
vegetable gardening, this is the perfect season to start.
Prepare
a bed in a sunny, well drained spot.
Plan for some sort of weed barrier around the perimeter. Loosen the soil with your shovel while
adding compost and clear the bed of any weeds or grass. Let the new garden sit for about a week and
you are ready to plant.
September
is time to plant carrot, lettuce, multiplying onion, spinach, and turnip seeds. Carrots need very loose soil at least 8” deep
to grow long and straight.
October 2011
Fall Gardening
Fall Gardening is a beginners
best opportunity to start a garden.
Cooler temperatures, fewer bugs, and fewer weeds make this planting
season a great experience for all.
Plants: Broccoli,
Cabbage, Cauliflower and Kohlrabi.Seeds: Carrots, Swiss
Chard, Collards, Lettuce, Mustard Greens, Onion (multipliers), Parsley, Radish,
Spinach and Turnip.
If you are a beginner and
would like to start out slow, you can turn up the soil about an inch or two
deep in your backyard flower bed and plant Leaf Lettuce seeds according to
package directions.
A fun thing for children is
carrots. The ground needs to be fully
turned and loosened up for at least 8” before planting the carrot seeds. This will ensure beautiful long, straight,
sweet and juicy carrots.
The fall garden is my
favorite with collards, lettuce, carrots, spinach, parsley and spaghetti
squash. Yum!
October 2012
Onions
and Lettuce
Mainstays
in the winter garden are the greens and onions.
Once they start growing, you can harvest them as you need them all
winter long.
Onions: Local
home improvement stores usually carry the onion bulb sets. They have yellow, white, red and even 1015
onion sets. You get about 60 little dry
sprouts in a twist tie for about $2.50.
Plant them 2’ deep and 4” apart in loose, composted, sunny soil and you
will have onions all winter.
Lettuce: Start lettuce from seeds. You can get a packet of one type of loose
leaf lettuce or a variety of types in one packet. Be sure to get the kind of lettuce that you
like; mild or spicy. Not all leaf
lettuce tastes the same.
The
spring mix at the grocery store is generally a collection of mild lettuce leaves.
The
bed needs to be weed free, have loose composted soil and at least 6 hours of
sun/day.
Turn
and flatten your soil, sprinkle the seeds on the surface and cover with a light
sprinkling of soil to cover. Water every
day until they get established.
When
you are ready to start eating your garden salad, just pick enough leaves for
your salad, wash them, wrap them in a T-towel and refrigerate for an hour or
so. The lettuce will be crisp, flavorful
and delicious.
You
may never go back to ice burg lettuce again!
Carrots: So fun to grow and harvest! Sweet with a capital "S". Start them from seed outdoors in your garden from mid October to mid to late November. Dig down at least 6", loosen the soil and add compost. If the little carrot roots hit any chunks of dirt or rock, they will become twisted and ... mutant looking. You can plant them in rows or randomly in your plot. Lay them on top of the loose garden soil and cover them slightly with potting soil and water in. Carrots take a longer time than most veggies to sprout, so be patient. It could be 2 weeks before you see any activity above ground. Keep them moist at all times so the little sprouting seeds do not dry out. You can go out and spend a moment sprinkling them twice every day or if you would prefer, water them in and cover lightly with hay or a cover of some sort to keep the water from evaporating. Then water only every other day. They only need the sun after they sprout. Once you see the little green tops emerging, uncover them and keep the soil moist. From planting to munching is only about 55 days.
Once they get to be about 2 inches tall, go out in the yard with your scissors and cut away sprouts so that there is at least 2" between each seedling. I have read that if you pull the seedlings out root and all, you may disturb the carrots that you want to keep. Cutting the little sprouts out leaves the other roots undisturbed. You can pull the extras out, I have done that for years, but cutting is supposed to be better. Just a side note - the little sprouts that you have weeded out are great in salads! Don't toss them out.
When you harvest the carrots, hose them off holding on to the green tops and then cut the tops off before refrigerating them. The green portion, if left on the carrot will continue to pull sugar from the carrot long after it has been picked. Trim off the tops and keep them sweet! Your carrots will be so sweet and juicy and will last more than 2 months in the refrigerator.
November
2011
Garden
Adventures
Plant
carrot, beet, and yummy loose leaf lettuce seeds. Loose leaf lettuce is fun and easy. Check out the store for seed packages with
several varieties of lettuce in each package for a beautiful variety in one
planting. Lettuce needs good drainage
and at least 6 hours of sun. You can
even plant them in your flower beds.
They are so pretty!
November
2012
Garden Adventures for November
November
starts the beginning of a great harvest that can last for several months! Those that have planted early last month may
be already picking lettuce and other greens, sweet potatoes, cilantro, parsley
and green beans. If you haven’t planted
yet but would like to, the time is right to plant:
Seeds – bok
choy, cabbage, cilantro, kale, lettuce, mustard greens, onions, spinach,
turnips.
Plants –
cabbage, collards, kale, strawberry, and oregano.
Sets
–
onion bulbs and multiplying onions. Garlic cloves.
If you
do not have a garden but are thinking that a garden would be something fun and
special to have, this is a great time to prepare for a spring garden. Start this month.- Pick a spot that gets at
least 8 hours of sun, has good drainage and is at least 4 feet from your
foundation.
- Define your boarders by
pounding stakes in where you picture the corners to be.
- Purchase some “black plastic
below the soil bed boarders” and install them in as your below the ground
boarder. This little bit of effort
and expense will greatly reduce the weeding later.
- Decide if you want your
garden above ground level or at ground level.
If you want your garden above
ground, choose a boarder like wood 2x4”, 6”, 8”, 10” or 12”x your length or
cement blocks. Construct your boarder.
- Lay down a thick sturdy
plastic inside its perimeters and put something on top of it to keep it
from blowing.
- In one to three months, pick
up the plastic and put down a layer of compost, hay, dried up grass
clippings, - anything that will fortify the soil. Cover it up again.
If you have an above ground
garden this is a good time to fill it with a garden soil mix.
- 2 – 4 weeks before you want
to plant, get out your shovel and turn the dirt for about 1 foot
deep. Break up any clods. Congratulations! Your garden is ready
and waiting.
December:
It looks like everything is either dying or going into dormancy.... well the exciting news is that this is not so. This is a great time to plant your onion sets, beet seeds, snow, English, or snap peas, garlic chives, rosemary, sage and thyme plants, edible Nasturtium flowers, red radish seeds and spinach seeds.
Peas are so much fun to grow for many reasons. We all love the versatile, crisp, sweet, healthy peas that come from the garden. They are beautiful growing on a trellis with their delicate little tendrils reaching and twining in and out of their support, the sweet smelling flowers blooming and the bright green color of the vines seeming to ignore the sharp cold temps of winter. Snap peas are grown for their pods and seed, snow peas are mostly grown for their edible pods, and English peas are grown for the seed.
Snap peas are considered the best over all type in our area because they are such heavy producers. Snow peas and English peas are a little bit better tasting but are not nearly as prolific as the snap peas and a little more difficult to grow. If you plant snap peas in late December or early January you will be eating peas in April, May and probably well into June, depending on the weather.
Snap Peas:
First things first: You need a trellis - 7 foot tall is suggested. There are as many types of trellises as there are people thinking of ways to trellis. If you choose to use 7'6" tee stakes, put these down the middle of a bed in December. If you want a 20' row of pea plants then you could purchase 20' of 3' fencing. Cut the fencing into 2-10' sections. Wire the first 10' section to the stakes about a foot above the ground and the second 10' section about 3' 6" above the top of the first section. The fencing material can extend above the tee stakes at the top. This will give your pea plants lots of room to reach for the sky.These are my snap peas on February 20th... hopefully we will be enjoying them in about a month.
Plant 2 rows of peas, 6 - 18" apart with the trellis down the middle of the two rows: seeds planted 1 - 1.5" deep and spaced about 1 - 3" apart. (If you have a 10' trellis you will be planting 20' of seeds, one 10' row on each side, totaling about 120 vines. Wow! Are we hungry yet?! Snap peas are amazing in Stir Frys, steamed, or fresh off the vine. (I have it on good authority that my friend Larraine will ask her husband to pick sugar snap peas for dinner and he will inevitably come back empty handed... not because there were no peas, but because he eats them as fast as he picks them!) If you pick the peas often, the vines will keep producing heavily until the weather gets too hot.
It may sound like a lot of effort to make these trellises for your pea plants but they will be good for many years to come. You can plant peas on the trellis in December/January, cucumbers and pole beans or limas in March while the peas are still producing and then long beans in May. In December you can move the trellis to another area and start the whole sequence again for another year of great veggies.
December 2012
Citrus
Leaves are falling, the weather is
getting colder. Protecting delicate
plants is probably more on our minds than growing them but the Houston
Vegetable Garden is a cornucopia of nutritional wealth and deliciousness
December through March. The vegetable
harvest these winter months include the greens (collard greens, mustard greens, kale, lettuces, bok choy, and spinach),
carots, beets, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, onions, sweet
potatoes, snow peas, and turnips.
But
that is just the vegetables.
Any one who has citrus trees knows that winter is the season to harvest
all the sweet, juicy, goodness from their trees. We are talking about oranges, tangerines,
pomelos, grapefruit, lemons and kumquats to spotlight a few. Depending on the
fruits growing you will have from 2 to 5 months of fresh fruit from your own
trees for your family and to share!
Citrus trees are extremely low
maintaince and as they mature they provide an overwhelming amount of
fruit. A good resource for information
on varieties to plant, where to purchase your trees and what to look out for is
at UrbanHarvest.org. (Go to Events-Fruit Tree Sales-Fruit Tree
Varieties) The Urban Harvest Annual
Fruit Tree Sale this year is Jan. 19, 2012 on the Houston Community College SW
campus. If you go, go early. They sell out fast!
Most of the citrus trees sold in our
area come from the Rio Grande Valley where, if the tree is grown on a root
stock, will have a non-hardy, but salt tolerant rootstock, not meant for our
area. Trees grown on these rootstocks
will likely freeze and not come back.
Look on the label for “trifoliate”, “flying dragon”, “tf”, or “ Poncirus
trifoliate” root stock before you buy.
Citrus trees are tropical/sub-tropical plants so temperatures that drop
below freezing are a challenge. Plant
your trees on the south side of walls or buildings to protect them from the
cold north winds of winter and be prepared to cover your young trees when the
temperatures drop. Citrus trees need
good drainage and sun to partial shade to do well.
Trees are sold in the Winter and Spring
but do not plant until the weather warms in March. Keep them protected from the cold until
time to plant.
Citrus trees stay green all year long,
need no pruning, weeding, or chemical sprays and very little watering. Discover the bounty of your own back yard
with citrus trees!
Have fun and share the blessings and
wealth of good food.
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