HoustonVegetableGarden.com

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.

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 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.

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.

This weekend (January 6) I planted tomatoes under the grow light (see description).  Tomatoes need to be started early for Houston gardens.  Today on January 9 they are already coming up.  This year I planted Sweet Chelsea, Sungold, Champion, Merced and Celebrity.  Sweet Chelsea is a great plum or large cherry tomato that does exceptionally well here.  It is red on the outside but greenish on the inside.  Sungold is a yellow or orange cherry tomato, although I may be insulting the cherry community as it is quite small.  It is very good for adding a little color to a salad and is very flavorful and very productive.  I tried Champion last year with rather poor results but decided to give it another try because it is recommended for the area.  Merced and Celebrity are hybrid slicers that do well but the flavor is not outstanding.  I planned to plant Carnival instead of one of them but could not find the seed locally and I procrastinated too long to mail order.  Now that Urban Harvest is dropping its seed selling function, I will get organized and order all my seed next year.

Bob Randall characterizes tomatoes as difficult even though we raised them commercially about 100 miles west of here when I was a kid.  The soil in Lavaca County is more suitable than Houston gumbo however.  See a previous post on how we raised tomatoes then.  I do a lot differently now.  For example, I do not spray them with arsenic! 

A busy day getting rid of most of the fall and winter vegetables and continuing to plant for the spring vegetable garden.  The Derby green beans I planted in late February will be blooming a week or so.  I sprouted the Florida Staystweet corn and planted the sprouts at the same time as the beans.  The stand is good and the corn in now about 8 inches tall.  For some reason some of the plants are very strong and a few are very weak.  I have always observed this with corn but do not know why.

All of the original lettuce is bolting and now has added some needed green matter to the compost pile.  The Red Sails lettuce I started indoors in February in now ready.  The beets planted in November are ready for a final harvest.  The ones I planted in December need another week or so.  The arugula is about 4 feet tall and blooming.  I pulled all but one plant, leaving it for the flowers.  Likewise, for the bok choi.  The bok choi was good, but I never got around to eating all of it.  Greens and bok choi are a bit hard to give away.  Most people either don’t like it or don’t know how to prepare it.

Planted some black eyed and purple hull peas; probably a little early, but I expect they will be fine.  Also planted some Genovese Basil seed that we got at the Urban Harvest Gala.

Sugar snap peas have been outstanding.  The plants are about 8 feet tall and covered with peas and white blooms.  They are a must raise veggie for here.  Plant around December 15.  Tomatoes are blooming and the cherry varieties have some little tomatoes.  The plants are a little leggy.  Maybe I left the frost cloth on too long, or it may just be the nature of the plant.  The Sweet Chelsea seem to be related the the bean stalk in Jack and the Bean Stalk.

It’s time for tomato planting.  I planted one batch about January 7 and the rest about a week later.  All were started under the grow lamp.  This year I am planting Sweet Chelsea, Sun Gold, Champion and Merced.  I planted the Sweet Chelsea first because I had seed left from last year.  The plants are large enough to plant outdoors, but it is still too early.  I will transplant them again to 1 gallon pots.  I generally put them in the garden in mid February with frost cloth wrapped around the cage.  If it gets real cold I can put frost cloth over the top or throw a blanket over the whole cage.  The frost cloth works great if the weather is cool.  As well as protecting the plants, it produces a greenhouse effect and the plants grow much faster than without it.

For tomatoes here it is essential to get the plants going early so they are ready to produce when blossom setting conditions are ideal.  Tomatoes will not set fruit if the weather is too hot or too cold.  Conditions at the end of March and into April are ideal for blossom setting.

Sun Gold, a gold cherry tomato, is new for me; however I am familiar with it from the Old Sixth Ward Garden.  I think I raised Champion some years ago, but I can’t remember.  It is a medium sized slicer.  Merced is a good hybrid variety.  It is determinate and produces a lot of large fruit.  Fruit quality is just so-so, however.  I usually plant either Merced or Celebrity.

Now my problem is to harvest all those winter vegetables still in the garden; lettuce, broccoli, collards, beets, spinach and bok choi.

My tomatoes have been unusually good this year.  At least the squirrels and I agree on that much.  I planted (from seed indoors) Merced and Arkansas Traveller for slicers and Sweet Chelsea for a plum variety.  Sweet Chelsea has always given outstanding results.  It is early, flavorful and productive, but be prepared for a vine rivaling Jack and the Beanstalk.  Merced has been good this year but in past years I have had problems with it not ripening well.  The top half stays white and pithy regardless of how long it ripens.  This year the quality has been very good.  The dry spring has probably been good for tomatoes in Houston soil, provided adequate water has been provided by irrigation.  I do not think all of my historical problems with Merced and other slicers has been bugs.  I have aggressively all but eliminated stink bugs by the recommended organic method–squashing them between the thumb and index finger.  I am about ready to give up on Arkansas Traveller, recommendations of others notwithstanding.  The plants are large and healthy but it set very little fruit early.  Even now the plant only have 5 or so smallish tomatoes.  The squirrels got the only two large ones. These late tomatoes will not likely be very good.  Tomatoes ripening at over 90 degrees never seem to be very good to me.

That was the “Now” part.  The “Then” part is how we raised tomatoes commercially on the farm/ranch I grew up on in Lavaca County.  Until the early 1950s tomatoes were an important cash crop to the farmers there.  The sandy land was well suited for tomatoes; much more so than for cotton and corn.  Yoakum still has an annual Tom-Tom Festival.  Probably most do not know that “tom-tom” was for tomatoes, not native American drums. Raising tomatoes involved a lot of hand labor.  The seed were planted in hot beds in January, were transplanted to cold frames and finally to the field.  Transplanting to the cold frame was done using a 12″ wide board with pegs on it.  The length of the board was the width of the cold frame.  It would pressed in the soil to make holes for the transplants.  We knelt on it to plant the tomatoes and make holes for the next group.

We planted about an acre.  Each tomato had to be watered when it was planted.  We pruned them by removing the suckers where the limbs joined the trunk.  I am not sure why we pruned them; it was just the way one did tomatoes.  Probably pruning resulted in earlier maturity.  Early season tomatoes brought the best price and the market typically weakened later in the season.  We picked them when they are reached full size, but showed no pink.  Tomatoes with pink or any deformity were culled at the market.  We ate the vine ripened “cat face” tomatoes ourselves.

Tomatoes were a major money crop, but the market crashed in the early 1950s and the farmers gradually quit raising them.  Large mechanized farms in the Rio Grande Valley using migrant labor made the small Lavaca County farmers uncompetitive.  Today we have come full circle and are trying to get small farmers to raise produce and sell it locally. Many are willing to pay higher prices for quality now.