With some warm days ahead it is time to plant beans, corn and other seed that require warmer temperatures for germination. I started 36 bean plants in the “6-pack” plant containers. They are now transplanted. The ones I planted earlier outside still have not come up and will probably give a poor stand when they do.
The lettuce, turnips and beets all germinated well and are up and going.
The tomatoes are all in and well mulched. I can cover the cages if Jack Frost threatens again.
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.
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.
I pulled out the sugar snaps today. It was a record crop, but mildew had about finished the plants. They were about finished anyhow and were putting too much shade on the corn. I have not found an acceptable way to control mildew on sugar snaps.
We have a threat of frost tonight, but I think we will be ok in the central area. The temperature is still in the 50s at 10 pm and the wind is blowing. I watered well but did not put the frost cloth back on–what a year of weather.
Quite a few little tomatoes. Merced set fruit first but the others are not far behind. Plants look really good. Corn is also doing well. Cilantro, arugula and parsley are all blooming and bringing in beneficial insects. Tomorrow I will mulch the blackberries with newspapers and some hay I brought back from the ranch. Beans did germinate well in spite of the cold spell when I planted them
The wonderful Contessa onions and the leeks are now ready. We had a salad tonight of the onions with avocados and cherry tomatoes–wonderful. The avocado from Costco are great, but they need a few days to ripen.
Time to get rid of the last of the winter vegetables in your Houston vegetable garden and plant the spring crop. Last week I planted the tomatoes from pots into the ground and yesterday put frost cloth around them for the cold weekend. See previous post on how to do this ( http://www.houstonvegetablegarden.com/index.php/2008/02/07/growing-tomatoes-in-houston-cont/) I planted some corn in the garden and some under the grow light. I hope the warm weather last week was sufficient to germinate the triple sweet varieties which require soil temperatures of at least 65. The seed under the light came up almost at once with 100% germination. They need to be put in the garden but I will wait until it warms up a bit tomorrow. Corn develops large roots fast so the starter flat gets overwhelmed rather quickly.
I still have some beets and carrots to pull before I plant the beans. They should go in next week sometime.
Still overwhelmed with lettuce–having been giving it to anyone in sight. Sugar snap peas should be ready this week.
Parsley and cilantro are started to bloom and seed. Their blooms attract beneficial insects as well provide the seed for next years crop. They will reseed indefinitely, but be careful not to over mulch after the seed have fallen.
My corn stand was not very good but the quality of the produce was excellent. I hand pollinated because of the sparse stand. To hand pollinate take the seed like pollen from the tassels and put it on the silk. It helps both with sparse and thick plantings. Last spring I got some poor pollination because the leaves hid the silks in the thick plantings. I will plant sugar snap peas where the corn grew, probably about mid-December.
The Derby green beans are about finished, but production has been excellent. With the corn and beans gone, I now refer to it as a Houston winter vegetable garden, rather than a fall garden. We ate the lone kohl rabi; we used it in a salad much like jimaca. Bob Randall calls it the most under utilized vegetable in Houston. If you close your eys and ignore texture, it tastes like cabbage. We never raised it on our farm growing up, but the neighboring Czechs always planted it. The purple mustard greens are now being harvested and are excellent; perhaps a little milder than traditional mustard greens.
Beets are growing nicely. I plant beets outside, rather than under the grow lamp. Each beet seed will produce about 5 plants; each nodule is an independent seed. Somewhat surprisingly they transplant rather easily. The carrots are a reasonable stand. I just broadcast the seeds. Perhaps I would get better germination by being more careful with the planting.
I also planted some “bright lights” Swiss Chard; it will be a landscape plant, but we will eventually eat it.
All the vegetables started under the grow lamp are now planted in the garden; lettuce, collards and bok choi. They are doing nicely but it will be a while before harvest.
We had some great potatoes from the Bayou City Farmers Market this week also. I may try potatoes again. Previously, they had nematodes or some fungus disease.
I have been away on a long trip to Australia and have been lagging on postings.
When I was in Houston over Labor Day I planted corn (Silver Queen) and Derby green beans. I also broadcast some turnip seed. Corn is a good fall crop. It ripens slower in the cool October/November weather so the it can be picked over a longer period. In the spring it ripens in late May and all of it must be eaten in only a few days. Worms are often worse in the fall, however.
Before I left everything was coming up. Corn needs to be started by early September. Beans can wait until as late as early October. As our winters have become warmer and warmer I have found best results are obtained by planting later than the historical weather based recommendations. Except for Ike, the September has been exceptionally nice; perhaps an omen of a colder winter. In most recent years it has been so hot in September that fall crops just cannot get started.
All of the cooler weather crops can wait until October and some to November. About mid October I will plant mustard greens, broccoli, lettuce, arugula, carrots, beets and fennel. I count on parsley and cilantro to reseed every year. All can be seeded directly in the garden but I often start broccoli, lettuce and fennel indoors under the plant light. (see instructions on Main Panel on right). I may plant some more exotic vegetables such as kohlrabi also. More on those planting in a week or two.
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.
