HoustonVegetableGarden.com

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.

When we returned home we found that the tomatoes kept producing in spite of the hot weather.  I did not expect the small, late tomatoes to turn out but we got about a dozen more of the large tomatoes.  The Sweet Chelsea continued to produce as expected.  Hunkering down for the 100 degree weather now.  Not much action until fall.

This year I ran a test on the best varieties of slicer tomatoes for the Houston vegetable garden.  In the past I have had variable success with some recommended varieties, but they were planted in different areas of the garden so direct comparisons were difficult.  Conditions such as available sunlight can change considerably over a small area in an urban garden.  This year I planted 4 determinate varieties right together:  Homestead, Merced, Celebrity and Floramerica.  It was the best year I have ever had for tomatoes, probably because of the cool, relatively dry spring.  I can’t say I found much to choose from among these varieties.  All produced about 15 nice size tomatoes.  All ripened all the way through and were delicious.  I have trouble in other years with the top part of the tomato being white and pithy.

Merced was the first to turn pink, in early May.  All were planted outside from large pots around March 1.  Homestead and Celebrity followed about a week later and Floramerica was the latest.  I pick when they first turn pink on the bottom and let them ripen inside. Unfortunately, the mockingbirds beat me to several, so I bought some netting at Southwest Fertilizer and solved that problem.  For best quality you must let them fully ripen and not get impatient.  Never refrigerate tomatoes unless they are becoming over ripe.  All of the tomatoes were picked by June 1.  As determines, they quit setting fruit in late April.  My experience is that later setting tomatoes on indeterminate slicer varieties never turn out very good.  Thus, in Houston, as opposed to New Jersey, determinates are the best bet.

This year I tried the new triple sweet corn in my Houston vegetable garden.  Triple sweet comes in three varieties: Serendipity (bi-color), Honey Select (yellow) and Avalon (white).   I ordered from Park Seed.  The three are about the same in everything except color.  I planted Serendipity directly in the ground on March 1.  Germination was slow because these varieties need 65+ degree soil temperature.  Only about 1/2 of the seed came up; but I planted two seed per spot so the stand was ok.  I planted Honey Select in a celled flat under the grow light and every seed came up.  I transplanted to the garden when the shoot first showed out of the soil.  Even though it was planted several days later it was ahead of the Serendipity.  I planted the Avalon in flats also about a week later.  The result was 3 varieties maturing over about 3 weeks.  All were area planted on about 1 foot spacings.  I also hand pollinated to ensure that leaves did not block out the silks.

The ears are on the small side (6-8″) but the quality and yield are outstanding.  We made a mistake and overcooking the first batch.  Store corn usually takes 8-10 minutes of boiling, but these varieties should be cooked no more than 5 minutes.  These varieties have more of a “corny” flavor than the super sweet and sugar enhanced varieties, a characteristic that I like.

I picked my first tomato today, a smallish Merced.  As a reader observed, the Sweet Chelsea tomato takes over the garden, but it is loaded with fruit.  I have been pruning the ends of some of the wilder stalks.  Next year I plan to do some early pruning on it. It would grow best in a tall cage maybe 3′ in diameter with the side branches trimmed to force it to grow up instead of out.  I think the determinate varieties have stopped setting fruit.  Night time temperatures in the 70s are not conducive to setting fruit.

The first bean crop from my Houston vegetable garden was picked today, about 62 days from when I planted the seed.  Beans are advertised to be ready in fewer days than that, but it was quite cool when I planted them on March 1 and germination was slow, but good.  The plants for very healthy and loaded with beans.  We picked almost 3 pounds from a garden space of 28 square feet;  a lot of food from a very small piece of land.  Derby beans so outperform all the other varieties I have tried that I no longer experiment.  I had beets planted in the location is the winter garden. 

The earlier corn is tasseling and silking.  I have been doing some hand pollination.  One disadvantage of area planting (which I use for everything) is that leaves of the corn can shield the silks.

Onions have all been harvested and are on shelves in the garage.  I had good luck keeping them for some time last year.  I continue to pick leeks and still have quite a few left.  Also, a lot of collards, but everyone is tired of greens.  The fennel that I cut off at ground line has put out nice new shoots and will be ready in a couple of weeks.