HoustonVegetableGarden.com

Last week I transplanted the tomatoes to 4-6 inch pots and planted the broccoli plants in the garden.  I planted several of the broccoli plants near the neighbors fence to the west to see if half a day of sun is enough.  The tomatoes will get to soak up some outside sun for the next couple of days; but then coldish weather returns and looks like it will stay for a while.  I want to plant the tomatoes outside under frost cloth as soon as possible, but I would like temperatures to be in the 60s during the day.

Continuing to harvest lettuce, arugula, greens and fennel.  Next week the beets and carrots will finally be ready.  The cold weather really slowed their growth this year.  The sugar snap peas are growing nicely, but are a long way from producing food.

The big freeze is past and hopefully will not repeat.  Now it is time to plan for the spring Houston vegetable garden.  I planted tomato seed under the grow lamp indoors on January 13.  They are coming up now.  One new variety this year, Early Girl, and the line up from last year:  Marglobe, Floramerica, Merced and Celebrity.  All of these are determinate tomatoes, which I believe are best for growing in Houston gardens. I still have 2-3 seed of Merced left–unfortunately this good variety for Houston gardens is no longer available.  I saw a seed catalogue that recommended Danson Tomato 435 as a replacement, but I have not tried it.  I planted some Sweet Chelsea to give to my brother and I may plant one myself.  I am leaving early this year for Montana and Sweet Chelsea just takes over the place.

I also planted some Packman broccoli under the lamp.  I normally raise broccoli in the fall but will try in the late winter/spring this year, because I am not going to plant corn since I won’t be here to pick it.  I also planted some super sugar snaps under the lamp to supplement the poor stand I got from direct planting.  The weather the last half of December was just too cold for good germination.

A few days have now gone by so that I can assess the situation in my Houston vegetable garden.  I recorded the following low temperatures:

Friday:  27
Saturday:  24.5
Sunday 28

The Friday low was about the same as Hobby, but the Saturday and Sunday (and Monday) temperatures were 3 or 4 degress higher.  This pattern is typical.  When the wind is blowing strongly, my temps are about the same as the airport, but when conditions are still, the TMC area (and probably most of area the inside 610) temperatures are significantly higher. I think this follows from what I learned years ago in ChE 353–convection will equalize the temperatures, but we get conduction warming and less radiation in the areas around big buildings.

The vegetables basically had no freeze damage.  A couple of fronds on the fennel are bend over, but the plants are going to be ok.  Some tips on the mustard and lettuce are “burned” a little.  I could see no real difference between what was covered and uncovered.  The young lettuce I covered with bubble wrap was perhaps helped a bit because it could hold the ground warmth.  Otherwise I think the temperature was the same on both sides of the covering, again following ChE 353. 

The Mexican lime tree status is still undetermined.  I wrapped it with freeze cloth and put a light under it.  It will lose most of its leaves but I am hopeful that the stems are mostly ok. 

Bottom line:  Covering is good for protecting against frost but not so good in protecting against a freeze unless the plants are very small and therefore close to the ground.

Global warming, where are you?  It has been the coolest winter for the Houston vegetable garden all season and now it is on the verge of being the coldest as well.  Here in the Medical Center area, the outlook is for lows of about 25.  Most winter vegetables and citrus can survive this temperature, but it would be wise to take some precautions.  The low 20s are really the boundary between cold and very cold, or survival and freeze death.  If things aren’t bad enough, we have the annual Urban Harvest fruit tree sale this Saturday at Rice Stadium.  We are scrambling!

It has been so long since I have dealt with a hard freeze, I have forgotten the level of cold hardiness of the various vegetables.  Some quick research, including even Bob Randall’s book, has not helped very much.  Here are my thoughts and plan:

Lettuce:  The leaves will get burnt and ruined; the plant will probably survive.  Pick all the leaves and cover the plants if you can.
Fennel:  I started raising it after last big freeze–no experience.  Plan to havest a couple of young plants and hope for the best.
Carrots:  Should be ok
Beets: Likewise do nothing
Cilantro/Parsley/Chervil:  do nothing
Sugar snaps:  Will cover with frost cloth, but probably ok uncovered.  Plants are very small still.
Mustard/Collard Greens:  will pick and may cover.  Collards should be ok; not sure about Osaka Purple Mustard
Onions:  no problem
Arugula:  not sure; will cover some with pots and leave others uncovered as an experiment since I have too much anyway
Turnips:  think they would be ok but they are ready to pick.  Will leave one or two as a test.
Bok Choi: no experience but I have a lot of it.  All of it needs to be picked anyhow.  Will pick and give away.  Leave one for a test.

Citrus:  Most should be ok, but I will wrap the bud union on all and throw a blanket over a small satsuma planted last year.  The Mexican lime is in real trouble.  I had it in a pot but got tired of fooling with it and planted it outside.  It grew like a weed last year and got nipped by the early December storm.  I put frost cloth over it, wrapped the base with a blanket and put a light bulb near the base.  I doubt that it will be enough, but maybe it will not be killed it to the roots.

Stay tuned for a report next week after thawing!

The freeze wiped out the beans, basil and pepper but everything else came through fine in my Houston vegetable garden.  Even though I planted the beans in early October, I got a full crop from them.  Turnips, greens and bok choi are ready for the table.  Beets and carrots are coming along but are not mature yet.  Plenty of lettuce and arugula.  Time to plant onions and sugar snap peas this week.  This year I am planting “super” sugar snaps–they are supposed to me more immune to mildew.  Mildew always kills my plants but usually not until they are about through producing anyhow.

I picked the golden grapefruit before the freeze.  They had pretty well changed color and after opening one found that they are ready. These grapefruit have a beautiful dark golden flesh.  Newer versions of golden are often much paler.

The green beans I planted I planted around October 1 (much later than recommended) are now producing very well.  The Contender beans came in about a week before Derby, a plus for late fall plantings.  It will be interesting to see if the Contenders produce multiple waves of crops as Derby does.  Of course, weather may interrupt this experiment because of the late planting. This year I planted beans in my best bed and the crop is much better.  I am not really sure why this bed is best, but it is probably because it gets the most sun.  As the days get shorter and the shadows of building and trees get longer, locations good in the spring may not get enough sun.  Last year I planted them on the most southern bed that starts getting some shade from the house in the fall.  I made a crop but not nearly as much as this year.  Of course, the weather has also been ideal.  It is hard to run gardening experiments because of too many uncontrollable variables.

Lettuce is being picked and the white turnips are ready–the purple tops still have a ways to go.  Beets are just beginning to form bulbs.  We have been eating bok choi and pak choi for a couple of weeks also. (I can’t tell the difference between them; maybe it is just different spelling translations from Chinese)  Mustard greens are also ready to be harvested.  I won’t be buying very much at the Urban Harvest Farmers Market for a while.

My Contessa onion order will be shipped on December 15; the leeks in early January.  I saved plenty of room for them.  Sugar snap peas will be planted in mid December.  I may try to get some “super” sugar snaps.  They are supposed to be more mildew resistant.  I always lose the plants to mildew, but usually they are about through producing anyhow.

Here is a good example of a raised bed design for a Houston vegetable garden from one the blog followers, Dave McKelvey who lives in Pearland. Raised beds are especially important if flat areas such as Pearland where water is prone to stand a while.  The framing is cedar, a good choice but is more prone to rotting than in drier climates.  Notice the walkways between the beds so that it is not necessary to stand on the planting area and compact the soil.  The beds get a lot of sun; lack of sun is the bane of most urban gardens.  Looks like he has a lot of fall tomatoes–will be interested in hearing how they do.  I have not tried them in a number of years because of poor results, but the warmer winters of late may make tomatoes more feasible as a fall crop.

Well almost fully planted.  I planted pak choi (will be interested to see how it differs for bok choi which I also planted), turnips, beets, carrots and green beans directly in the garden.  I started mustard greens, collard greens, some bok choi, fennell, lettuce, arugula, and chervil under the grow light.  All of these have now been transplanted to the garden during these cloudy days and with a forecast of cooler temperatures.  Sugar snaps will be planted in mid December as will onions and leeks.

I am trying a few new varieties:  Yellowstone carrots (I could not find kimbi for a yellow carrot), Red Ace beets and Contender green beans.  I will plant some more lettuce in a couple of weeks and save a lot of room for Contessa onions and leeks.

It is time for the fall Houston vegetable garden.  Tender, long-season plants such as corn and tomatoes should already be well along.  Even when I lived in Houston full time, I generally did not bother with these and concentrated on the cooler weather crops and left these to the spring garden.  Ideally, green beans should be planted in early September, or even late August if you don’t mind watering twice a day.  I have had reasonable luck planting them as late as early October.

For the more traditional fall and winter crops such as turnips, various types of greens, cole family, lettuce, etc, I generally wait until October to plant.  Turnips can certainly be started earlier because they come up so fast.  But, generally I prefer not to battle the heat because there is really no reason to do so.  All of these crops can stand a mild freeze.  It has been a number of years since we have had an early freeze, or for that matter any hard freeze.

I considered planted some seed here in Montana and bring the plants down to get a jump start, but three days in the car is hard on plants even if you try to put them where they can get some light.  With a dog traveling with us this year, it did not seem a very worthwhile effort to try and bring seedlings.

I saved lettuce, arugala and purple mustard seed this spring.  I tested them here and all came up well and true to the variety.

I was back in Houston last week to check on the weeds in the garden.  Mulching with newspapers and putting hay on top worked great.  The only weeds were some nut grass that could probably grow through a thick steel plate.  The tomatoes were wild, especially Sweet Chelsea, but still had a few tomatoes.  I took down the determinate plants but left Sweet Chelsea.  It probably will not produce much in the fall but we will see.  The netting I put over the tomatoes and blackberries was a real mess to get out because everything had grown through it.  Malabar spinach and okra are producing but the rest is dormant.  I thought about planting some corn but decided to wait and put in a later fall garden in early October.

I tried a few things in my little Montana garden in addition to the herbs I always plant.  The climate is difficult because it goes from cold to warm fast and quickly back to cold.  Also the days are very long in the summer.  I tried some Houston winter vegetabes and some spring/early fall crops such as beans.  The beans did well but were slow to get going.  Turnips did the best of all.  The mustard greens and cilantro bolted quickly.  Arugula also bolted but I got a decent amount.  Bok Choi was so-so; produced a little but obviously too warm for it by July.  The Red Sails lettuce was very successful.  I am not sure to what extent the problem is temperature and to what extent the lenght of days.  Some plants are sensitive to day length and seed out when the days reach a certain amount of daylight hours.

In any event, the Montana garden came to an end when the deer knocked down my mesh fence.  I will need to strengthen it next year.  I did not expect them to go at so agressively.  It is the only time they have really been here; I have been discouraging their hanging around the house with a 410 with bird shot!  The tomatoes were doing well before the deer got in.  It is touch and go to get tomatoes to ripen before the weather gets cold.  Most people here use plants from the garden center for just about everything, rather than seed to get a head start.