Houston Vegetable Garden – Growing vegetables gardens in Houston

The tomatoes are busy setting fruit in my Houston vegetable garden.  This year I planted all the tomatoes together so I could do a good test on varieties of slicer tomatoes.  Previously,  I have followed the general recommendation of scattering them around the garden.  While good for disease control it limits comparison because of the variability of sunlight and some differences in the soil.  I planted Homestead, Merced, Floramerica and Celebrity as well as the cherry/plum tomato Sweet Chelsea (far left in the picture). 

 Sweet Chelsea is indeterminate to put it mildly and quickly takes over half the garden.  The others are determinate, which I generally think are best for growing tomatoes in Houston.  Homestead is a heirloom variety that we used to raise commercially when I was a kid growing up in Lavaca County.  So far all are doing well, but I think Homestead is moving to the front in terms of production and Celebrity is lagging behind.  Merced was the first to set fruit and has the largest tomatoes.  I plant to measure production of each variety and do a taste test.

 In the background you can see the corn I started indoors in now tasseling.  On the left you can the parsley going to seed.  I am letting practically everything (arugula, cilantro, bok choi, mustard and lettuce) go to seed.  The flowers are good to have to attract beneficial insects and I plan to save the seeds.  I planted a couple of the Osaka Purple Mustard seed and they seem to have come up true.  Of course, hybrid seed will no come true and is hard to know what will and will not.  The butterfly iris in the foreground has been beautiful this spring.

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.

Tomorrow is February 1 and time to start thinking of the spring Houston vegetable garden.  I transplanted my tomatoes to large pots today and will set them in the garden later in February with frost cloth around them.

Every lettuce seed I planted in the flat seems to have come up twice.  I have set out about 15 plants and reluctantly tossed the rest.

Sugar snaps are growing well.   The beets and carrots are being picked.  I may be pushed to find spots to plant the beans, corn and tomatoes.  Speaking of corn I ordered some triple sweet varieties to plant.  Two varieties–Honey Select and Serendipity–are now recommended by the Extension Service.  Park Seed offers a 3-fer package of those two plus Revelation, a very early maturing variety.  So I will try their three-fer deal.  I have not any extra sugar types before but other gardeners have told me that they are difficult here, but I thought I would find out for myself.

Seems rather a cold day to be thinking of tomatoes for the Houston spring vegetable garden, but it is time to start the seed indoors.  In posts from last year I described the method so I won’t repeat.  This year I planted 2 of my remaining Merced seed.  Merced is (or was) a great tomato for here but no one sells the seed any more.  I also planted Sweet Chelsea, Floramerica, Celebrity and Homestead.  I have not tried Floramerica before but it is recommended for the area.  I gave up on Champion after last year.  It is recommended here by various experts but I have never had good luck with it.  Homestead is an old variety that we raised commercially when I was a kid so it has been around for a while.  I have not planted it in many years–will be interesting.  I normally plant Sun Gold, but found that I had run out of seed.

The seed will probably come up in 3 or 4 days and be ready to transplant to 4″ pots in a couple of weeks.  I will then put them in gallon pots before ultimately planting them in the garden in mid February.  In the old days on the farm we started the seed in “hot beds” and transplanted to “cold frames” before finally planting them in the field.  We raised about an acre.  It was hard manual labor but at least the work was in a pleasant time of the year.  The market collapsed in the early 1950s when mechanized planting in the Rio Grande Valley started.

I also threw is a few lettuce seed to get a late crop.  The lettuce planted in October is now in full production.  The mustard greens are about finished, but it has been a great crop.  I really like the Osaka purple; beautiful plant and a nice milder flavor.  I will let it flower out and save the seed, but I am not sure if the seeds will come back true or not.  The collards planted later are now producing well–may be sick of greens by the time the winter is over.  Parsley and cilantro are everywhere from reseeding.  Next year I will try to find some chervil seed.  Chervil is from the same family and has a mild licorice flavor.

I planted my remained turnip seed to get a second crop.  The Royal Crown turnip seems to be an improvement over the regular purple top.  The turnips stayed sweet even when they got quite large. 

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!