HoustonVegetableGarden.com

This blog is about advice on Houston vegetable gardening, but I will add a few thoughts on my experiences in trying to get started with some vegetables and herbs at our Montana home in Flathead County.  I have some sympathy for people moving to Texas and being lost on how to start a garden.  First of all, getting information has been impossible except by word of mouth, a rather slow process.  I suppose the population in the Flathead (<100,000) or all of Montana (<1 million) is not enough to justify publishing a book on the subject.  In Houston we have several books to choose among.

The growing season is short and the weather switches in June from cool, cold to mild and sunny rather abruptly.  Although it is almost always cool at night, it can hit the 90s during the day even in June.  As a result, cool weather crops such as spinach and lettuce often bolt.  The cold weather makes it hard to plant anything tender until late May.  I planted beans in early June but it took them forever to come up because the soil was still cold.  Next time I will sprout them indoors.  Furthermore, we had a heavy snow on June 12.  It hovered at about 33 degrees and did not kill anything.  For the warmer crops the length of the growing season is an issue.  A small tomato crop can be squeezed.  Some people raise corn but no one raises it commercially.

My herbs, many of which I brought from Houston as plants, are doing well.  I also planted beans and squash and tomatoes.  They are doing ok but the plants are rather puny by Houston standards.  Early Girl and Celebrity have a few little tomatoes on them.  It will be close to see if they mature before the first frost hits in September.  Stay tuned.

One of my contributors from Montana calls herself the maniac gardener and I am beginning to see why.

Or is it “black eyed peas”?  I planted black eyes along with the remaining purple hull seed I had left as a cover crop while I am in Montana.  Peas enrich the soil with nitrogen because they are a legume.  They also keep the weeds down.  My daughter has been picking them and shelling and eating them.  They were always her favorite vegetable growing up.  We cook them by sauteing some bacon with onions and then boiling the peas for 1/2 hour or so.  Always include some “snaps”, immature peas that are cooked like green beans.  You will have to raise your own to get snaps because they are never in commercial produce whether shelled or unshellled.

Cowpeas are hard to find in Houston now even though they were a basic staple of the regions for years.  We ate them all summer on the ranch where I grew up.  They are a very nutritious vegetable.  I spent my summer days on the front porch shelling peas with my mother, sister, grandmother and great aunt and uncle.  Shelling peas is a very relaxing and satisfying thing to do.  You can see exactly what you have accomplished.  My Minnesota wife never could understand why I can shell peas so fast, but I had a lot of practice.

It is hard to find peas now.  Central Market carries shelled peas at astronomical prices and Caninos in the Airline Farmers market has them, but sitting around shelling peas seems to by a lost art in these rush-rush days.

Corn ear worms are a annoying pest to the Houston vegetable gardener.  It is not that they eat so much of the corn, they just make it look bad.  Having members of the carrot/parsley in bloom is supposed to attract a wasp that attacks the moths.  I always try to have something blooming in the garden to attract beneficials.  At the time the corn is vulnerable, cilantro is blooming everywhere.  I usually have more problems with ear worms in the fall than in the spring.

This year I also tried an organic remedy recommended by U. Mass.  It involves squirting a small amount of vegetable oil with BT added to it onto the roots of the silks a few days after they appear.  I tried it and so far I have not had any ear worms.

The corn did not fill out the ears very well.  I don’t think the ear worm treatment is responsible, but I guess it could be.  Probably the corn was planted too close together and the leaves interfered with pollination.  Often I hand pollinate, but this year I did not.

The first round of beans is finished.  The Derby beans are blooming again; the Maxibel are dying off.  The next picking will be smaller and of poorer quality but still a picking.

Tomatoes are being picked daily.  As usual Sweet Chelsea and Sun Gold are producing massive amounts.  The slicers produced very good quality this year but a small yield.  Champion made only 3 tomatoes.  Merced was better than Bush Celebrity, but unfortunately no more seed are available for it.

Tomorrow we are off the Montana to start a spring garden there.  I planted black eye and purple hull peas as a cover crop.  Hopefully, some relative will pick some of them, but most people are too busy or too lazy to shell peas these days.

This picture shows the third picking of beans from my Houston vegetable garden. They weigh about 1 .5 pounds. This quantity came from about 25 square feet of garden space. It shows how much food one can raise in a small space. The first two picking were about the same size and about 4-5 days apart. One nice feature of Derby beans is that will likely have a full second blooming and crop.

I picked the first mess of Derby and Maxibel green beans today–right on schedule about 50 days after planting the seed. Derby is producing more heavily as expected. First tomatoes were picked–Sweet Chelsea and Sun Gold. The slicers still have a way to go. Also, the Contessa white onions are ready. Onions are ready when the stem collapses and falls over. These are great, sweet onions and are easy to grow. Just order the plants from Dixondale (see links) in November. I picked up some shallots at Walbash’s while there for something else. Probably not the best time to plant them, but we will see.
Also picked 2 quarts of wild dewberries last Thursday–dewberry cobbler for dessert today–yum! You do not have to go far to find dewberries. Watch for the plants blooming around March 1 and make a note of where they are. I found these on the esplanade of a busy street a few blocks from the medical center. The only hard part was crossing to the median without getting run over. Normally, you have to be careful of copperheads when picking berries, but I doubt any copperhead could have made it there without being run over. Nevertheless, my old instincts kept me on the lookout. Roadside ditches typically are full of dewberries. Most people these days are too lazy to pick them so competition is light. My Kiowa blackberries are blooming and have some green berries. It will be a few weeks before they produce.

I always mention varieties in my posts because the proper vegetable variety for our Houston climate is important. Of course, good soil, proper drainage, and sufficient sunlight and water are still the most important success factors. A lot of varieties will do at least reasonably well. Choices seem to almost unlimited; Reimer Seed lists 350 varieties of tomatoes for which they stock seed. A number of these are novelty types that I don’t waste my time with, but still! Unfortunately, some of the proven varieties of vegetables for the Houston vegetable garden are being discontinued. Why? Our local seeds sources such as Porter & Son have gone out of business. We now must rely on a diminishing number of national suppliers. These companies sell varieties that work well in most of the country but may not do so well here. They do not bother with the more specialized needs. A good example is Merced tomatoes, the best hybrid tomato that I have ever raised. I used the last of my seed this year and have not been able to find a seed source.

I recently saw an article in the San Antonio Express by the local extension agent about the dilemma of seed not been available any more for recommended varieties of vegetables for Texas gardens. It is an interesting read.

How to choose varieties? Of course, first read my posts! Bob Randall’s book gives his considerable experience.  TAMU Extension Service gives their recommendations and the Chronicle gives recommendation for some more common vegetables. These sources are a good starting point, but around the Houston area we have surprisingly large climate and soil variations. Individual gardens will also vary. The best gardening advice is to experiment and find works best for you.

I pulled the last of the winter vegetables this week; sugar snap peas, beets and carrots. The sugar snaps gave a great yield and are one of the most rewarding vegetables to grow here, especially given the price and quality of supermarket offerings. We really enjoy the Kinbi carrots. They are yellow, rather than orange and are really beautiful when cooked. They are also very sweet.

The spring vegetables are coming along fast with the recent warmer weather. The beans are blooming. Corn is about a knee high and ready for a side dressing of cottonseed meal. The Sweet G-90 plants are more hardy than the Butterfruit bi-color; but that is to be expected because G-90 makes a much larger plant.  All the tomatoes have small tomatoes on them. The Champion plant is rather anemic; I probably planted it in a bad place, a mistake on my part because I wanted to give Champion one last try. It is rated as good by others for the Houston vegetable garden, but I have had poor results.

Cilantro and parsley are blooming and the cilantro especially is very pretty. I have let it go to seed in the blackberry bed. It and the parsley will reseed next fall. It is best to grow each is a small bed with a lot of plants rather than as specimen plants (not practical of course if you are paying dollars per plant at the nursery). Harvest by cutting off 6″ or so sprigs at the ground. It will keep coming back until it bolts to seed.

It is time to plant the warmer summer vegetables; okra, cowpeas, eggplant and melons. I won’t be planting any because I will be in Montana when they produce. No other family member is dedicated enough to come and pick them.

Back from New Zealand.  Everything did fine while I was gone.  The tomatoes are growing like weeds behind the frost cloth.  I will leave it on for another couple of weeks.  Broccoli did not get picked and seeded out.  I needed to pull it anyhow to plant beans.  I ran out of Derby seed and finished with Maxibel.  I planned to pull the mustard greens but cut them back to the stalk instead and planted Butterfruit Bi-Color corn around them.  I can probably get one more picking before the corn is up.  Also planted some Sweet G-90 corn in another area.  I used to grow it exclusively, but have experimented with some other varieties recently.  I have not had very good luck with the supersweet varieties and I really like to more corny types better anyhow.  Also planted 2 gator pepper plant which I started from seed at the same time as the tomatoes.

New Zealanders are avid gardeners and we found a strong emphasis on fresh, locally grown produce.  In fact, we saw hardly any imported produce, except bananas and the like.  I was surprised to see fields of what turned out to be what they called turnips (actually rutabagas or swedes as they are called in the UK) and Swiss chard (which they call silver beets).  They use these crops for winter grazing.  The sheep eat the tops and the cattle are then turned in to eat the turnip roots.  Sweet potatoes (called kumara) are on every menu.

The tomato plants were planted in the garden early this year because we are going to New Zealand for 2 1/2 weeks.  Normally I would wait another week or so, but I think chances are good. 

I plant them inside of cages with row cover wrapped around the cage as shown in the photo.  Clothespins are good for securing the covers to the cages.  The clothespins  and cloth on top are the covers.  I put them on when the temperature drops to the upper 30s or lower.  In case of a harder freeze, putting a water container inside will help keep the temperature up.  I don’t know how low of a temperature this method will sustain, but I think it would get through a mild freeze of several hours.

The picture shows the status of the tomato plants that I planted on January 5.  They will be ready to transplant to 4″ pots next week.  Then in a couple of weeks before I leave for a trip to New Zealand they will be transplanted to 1 gallon containers.  I may go ahead and plant some directly with a frost cloth wrapping.  Wrapping works well for tomatoes and peppers for Houston vegetable gardening.

 The Packman broccoli planted around October 1 is now being harvested.  Fennel planted at the same time is also ready.  Mustard greens continue to produce faster than we can eat them.  They have lasted longer this year by picking the leaves when they are still relatively small.  I have much better luck with Florida Broadleaf Mustard than with the curly varieties.  In addition to the traditional southern way of cooking (and over cooking) them, I use them is soups with lentils and also by lightly stir frying with onion and then steaming for a few minutes.  They are more bitter with the shorter cooking.