Make Container Gardening Your New Thing and Unleash Your Gardening Potential.

For us gardening purists, there is only one way to garden. At least their was. You dug up a patch of lawn and planted stuff in rows. Then some forward thinking person, probably with terrible soil and /or back issues, thought there had to be a better way. So they made a tall box and filled it with better soil, planted some rows of stuff and relished in just how easy it was to garden that way. But that wasn’t good enough. An engineer named Mel thought traditional row gardening was a waste of valuable growing space. He went on to utilize every square foot of his raised beds and set the standard for easy to achieve, high-yield gardening. Today, the world of gardening continues to evolve.

Along the way, a small part of gardening that many of us were already doing got overlooked: containers. Maybe we had an herb or two, a patio tomato, or some cute miniature pepper plant but that was it. Never anything serious. Well I am here to tell you different. Container gardening may just be the next big thing. Why? With the rise in urban gardening and homesteading, containers are a great way to make up for a lack of space. City and condo dwellers have been doing that for a long time. There are several reasons why you should jump into container gardening or consider adding containers to your existing setup. So instead of looking down on those who choose to grow stuff in pots, I say add it to your arsenal.

Containers are a Great Beginning

If you are a budding novice gardener, or on your first gardening baby step, containers are a great way to get started. You can start slowly with just a few pots and easy to grow stuff and then add to it as you get more proficient. And should gardening suddenly not be the thing for you, then you won’t have the regret of all the time and money spent on raised beds. And you won’t have the added labor of trying to turn garden back to lawn.

I recommend starting with something easy, like lettuce or another fast-sprouting leafy vegetable. They are easy to grow and can handle a variety of conditions and it will help you gain proficiency and confidence as a gardener. Then as you get bolder, you can move on to tomatoes, peppers, even potatoes.

Containers Eliminate a lot of Problems

When you plan a garden or where to put a raised bed, you need to consider what you will be growing and how much direct sun it likes. Lettuce bolts easy in the heat, so having partial shade will help counter that and result in bigger leaves, but then what about the others that want that full sun? Now stuff is getting complicated…..not with containers though. Put them wherever you want and move them when you need to. Right now my patio lettuce is doing great in full sun. Once we get into July though, I will move it to a spot that gets a lot of afternoon shade. I can’t move my raised beds.

If water conservation is important to you, containers use far less water than even raised beds. Water your containers directly with a can or a wand and you avoid all that wasted water that just leaches into the water table. Some types of containers such as thin walled plastic ones, can dry out a little faster, so be aware of what you are growing in. The thicker the better. And a saucer to catch the excess helps as well especially with clay pots. The same rules apply to fertilizing containers. You need a lot less so you will save money there as well.

You can get creative in your watering methods if you are imaginative and handy.

Weeding, even in raised beds is tough. No one likes doing it. In containers it’s a lot easier. Your not weeding the empty space in between rows, and if you want, put your pots on a higher surface to make it even easier. I have six pots and a planter so I just run through them quick. I pull a lot less weeds from my containers than from my beds. You don’t have to worry about tilling containers in the spring. You can either work the soil around with a trowel, or dump it out into a larger container such as a wheelbarrow, mix and re-fill.

Containers make it economically feasible to use a higher quality soil. If you want to use a high end  garden soil it can get costly to buy enough to fill your raised beds, or till into your garden in a quantity enough to make a difference.  Not so with containers. You will need a significantly lesser quantity of soil, so you can spend that savings on quality. Ideally you want something high in organic matter, maybe a little perlite and some peat. Even using this, it’s best to mix in a handful of native soil. What you want are those beneficial microbes that sterilized bagged soils won’t have.

Container Gardening for Kids

Growing stuff in containers is a great way to introduce your kids to growing their own food. How many of us grew stuff in cups or small pots as a project in school? We did beans. A decent sized pot, some soil, and a seed or two is all you need. You can’t tell me they won’t anxiously be checking every day to see if the seed sprouted, or measuring how much taller their pepper plant is today than yesterday. Children learn to care for things, it teaches responsibility and patience and is a great way to teach them a little biology and love of nature along the way. Your children get to see where food comes from, to a lesser extent.

Keeping Furry Pests Away

Growing things in containers can put them out of the feeding range of may smaller pests. Bigger pots ensure that further still. I had my lettuce ravaged last year, along with my spinach. If I wasn’t such a fan of Watership Down, I might have taken steps. Since I switched to pots and moved them to the deck, nothing has bothered the rather abundant lettuce crop I have growing. Not even the deer.

Are there downsides? Sure. Containers can dry out fast, or drain poorly. Large plants will need large pots and that can get heavy. High winds can knock stuff over. But the good outweighs the bad as long as you use quality pots, know the peculiarities of what you are growing, and manage your risks. Enjoy and explore the possibilities of this option. It can expand your gardening possibilities.

If you don’t try, you never learn.

 

Cold Spring: Gardening in Cold Weather

The official first day of spring was Wednesday, March 20th. By the weather we have been having, you would think it was yesterday. The cold, dreariness of winter slogged on. Sure the snows melted, and the ground thawed. But until recently, that’s about all we can say has happened. April was drier and colder than usual, leading to a bleak, cold and wet start to May. We have had a few days of promising temperatures so far. But this time  they seem like aberrations, rather than the gradual warming trend we see going into May.

May is usually that month where upstate New York gardeners are feeling confident about the danger of frost being behind us, and we wait patiently for a few weeks for our soil to get warm enough so that our seeds will sprout and our transplanted seedlings thrive. Not so much this year. The weather has been terrible. While we had a good day here or there, nighttime temperatures have been dipping into the low forties, and occasionally high 30’s. In fact as I write this, it’s expected to dip to 42 degrees tonight.

I had a ton of seedlings ready to go. I had pots with lettuce loitering around inside waiting to go out (the dog kept eyeballing them, she has a taste for romaine…). I had a transplanted fig and several raspberry plants that needed to get put in the ground as well. Only the weather was stopping me. I wasn’t too concerned about sowing seeds at this point. All of my slower growing plants, like peppers, tomatoes, kale and brussel sprouts were putting on size, and I had to transplant them from starting cells to 3″ pots.

So on a nice day last week, I decided to start the hardening off process. If you have never done this, it’s the process of giving plants started indoors time to acclimate to being outside.  Plants started under grow lights in stable temperature will burn up, die back or otherwise wilt when exposed to the harsh temperature fluctuations and glaring sunlight of the great outdoors.

So my plan was to put them outside during the day on nice days giving them a chance to adapt. After a few days of this, I made the decision that they were ready. My arrogance and impatience would prove costly. But I forged on anyway. The first cold night outside, I dug a pit in one of my raised beds, dropped a storm window over it for a cover, and housed my plants in the improvised cold frame. This is where it started to go bad. The first few days they were in the frame, it was clear and really sunny, but temps were barely in the 40’s. I wasn’t concerned because I had been monitoring the bed temperature and it was staying around 50. But I failed to consider the effect of the sunshine through the glass. Almost everything in the cold frame got scorched being under clear glass. Not fatal, but decidedly ugly.  Thankfully, they have strong roots.

Last weekend was sunny and warm. I took advantage of that to get all of my raised beds tilled, and with a few days of decent weather on the horizon I decided to plant my potatoes, all of my transplants, and sow the remaining beds. I mean it was 60 degrees, almost mid-May. Safe space right? So I removed my wretched looking transplants from, the improvised cold frame and got them into the ground. I figured this would give them a measure of protection. WRONG AGAIN.

The temperature snapped back down. We barely made it into the 50’s here during the day, and back into the low 40’s most nights. At this point I think the transplants were hardened off enough that they just accepted the suffering. Poor little things. They are ugly looking for sure, with their  scalded leaves and withered appearance, but they are gamely hanging on. As you can see below the next few days things seem to be picking up.

I am hoping that being planted in good soil, some warm sun, and decent average temperatures will snap them out of their sunburnt funk. A shot of organic garden fertilizer will help too. I will give the a few weeks to snap out of it. If they don’t I need to consider replacement options. On the plus side, my potato seedlings are already showing above ground., and I saw some bean sprouts this morning. My brussell sprout transplants appear to be indestructible. Not a mark on them. And above all else, my lettuce which has lived outside in pots for weeks now is loving life. In fact it’s doing so well, I started two more pots of romaine.

This entire fiasco has taught me three things. First, I need to stop screwing around and build a few proper cold frames before fall. Second, I am considering black plastic to warm the beds faster, and to keep it on until late may with the transplants. Last, I need to be more patient. Not having a cold frame ready, I should have just made a home for everything in the unheated garage. It would have blunted the worst of the cold.

WELL, LIVE AND LEARN. Another update coming soon as things progress.

Spring relentlessly pushes forth and my green soul longs to keep pace.

Coffee in the Garden: Enjoy it Twice

I love coffee.

Many of us love coffee.

We all love gardening so…………..

I enjoy nothing more on summer mornings than sitting on my deck, sipping a warm cup of coffee, enjoying the quiet sounds and watching the world come alive. I look out over the garden, smell the fragrance, listen to the birds and just enjoy the moment. A lot of coffee gets consumed in my house. I also have a lot of garden beds in need of good compost. So I take advantage of this ready source of nitrogen and add coffee grounds to my compost. In doing so, I get to enjoy the benefits of coffee twice.

How good of a source of nitrogen is it?

Used coffee grounds are an excellent source of nitrogen, and a few other nutrients and minerals. Depending on which scholarly article you read, coffee grounds are somewhere around 3% nitrogen by volume. So on it’s own, coffee grounds would read as 3-0-0 for NPK. They do also contain potassium and phosphorus, but generally less than 1% by volume. 3% isn’t too shabby. Now coffee alone shouldn’t be your only source of nitrogen. But when added to compost bins, it creates another diverse source of nitrogen for you.

Why wait then? Why not just add it straight to the garden beds?

You can add your grounds directly to the garden soil. However, the nitrogen in coffee grounds is not readily available for plant uptake. The grounds have a carbon to nitrogen ratio of about 20:1. If you remember your rule of thumb for compost breakdown, then you want that ratio closer to even. The coffee grounds are an available source of food for beneficial microbes, but that process can rob the soil of it’s existing nitrogen. So you can add them, but you will also need to supplement with additional fertilizer, so whats the point? Eventually when the coffee grounds break down, they will provide nitrogen, but that takes time and could represent a good portion of your growing season. You should not  expect any results right away.

But coffee is acidic……

Adding spent coffee grounds to your soil, or using compost of which they are a part will not make your soil more acidic. Used coffee grounds have a pH of between 6.5 and 6.8. That is slightly acidic, but pretty close to neutral. The brewing process removes most of the acid from the grounds because it is water-soluble. Your coffee ends up being acid and the grounds neutral. So don’t be scared by this urban myth. It’s based on only knowing half the info. This all being true, fresh ground coffee poured around your hydrangeas and watered in, should in theory cause a color change. I have never played around with it, but it sounds like a fun experiment.

Where to get the grounds

Kitchen grounds bucket with some vegetable scraps in it

If you drink coffee, you have grounds. But that alone may not add up to enough to be meaningful. Luckily for us, there are a lot of other coffee drinkers in the world. So there are lots of grounds available. There has been a lot written about making deals with coffee shops, convenience stores and the like for their grounds. They almost always have coffee brewing, and they produce a lot of grounds. But realistically, they don’t want a stinky bucket of used grounds underfoot. So you can ask, but you will need to stay on good terms with them. Try smaller, boutique coffee shops. They generally thrive on being environmentally friendly, and may jump at the chance to help you out.

Friends and neighbors are always a good source too. Especially if they share in the bounty of your harvest. This way you can sell it as they are really helping themselves by helping you. If you are brave you could leave out a bucket, pail or tote with a sign, but who knows what would end up in it. I leave that to your discretion.

I have discovered a gold mine of free used grounds. Work. We plow through coffee at work. Most offices do. Last spring I put out an empty #10 coffee can with a sign on it explaining why I wanted them. It was a hit. I was lugging home two of these containers a week. The cleaning lady even helped me out because in case you don’t know, wet coffee grounds are heavy. So I effectively removed over 10 pounds from the trash for every can of grounds I took home. It didn’t take long to fill a 60 gallon Rubber-made tote.

This year I decided I didn’t need that much. So I settled on an alternative. Like many offices, the traditional coffee maker setup is being slowly phased out in favor of Keurigs. No more buckets of grounds. Now I get bags of spent k-cups. I sent out a email to everyone in my general vicinity at work, and told them why I wanted the grounds, and that I had a bin labelled for used k-cups in my cubicle.  All it took was a waste bin from an empty cubicle and a label maker, to be in business. Once a week I get a decent sized bag of k-cups to bring home.

K-cups from work being processed

The down side of this is, that it requires some processing on my end. You just take a knife, run it around the foil rim, peel it back, then once around the inside to loosen the grounds. Give it a tap and out they come. K-cup grounds are a finer grind. So per unit of volume you get more coffee grounds than traditional grounds. The finer grind should also help with the breakdown process, as a finer grind has more surface area. More surface area makes them more chemically reactive.

So consider this resource when you are hunting for things to compost. When organic matter like coffee grounds gets to a landfill, it gets buried and decomposes anaerobically. That means it produces methane. But by composting you help eliminate this source of green house gas. So all you organic gardeners, urban homesteaders and mad scientists need to take advantage of this resource.

Stay green. Help the planet and in turn help yourself.

A parting word of thanks to all you new subscribers. I am touched by the fact that you liked what you read enough to subscribe. I will keep trying to turn out qualify content for all of you.

 

 

Growing Lettuce Indoors: The Basement Lettuce Experiment

My experiment with growing lettuce indoors from seed is progressing nicely. I posted once before about why I decided to do this, so I won’t go through all that again. I am happy with where things are right now. So far it’s been pretty easy.  I feel I should have done this much sooner.

So everything has been transferred to clay pots for a few weeks now. The romaine has started to darken a little and is now starting to show some size. It’s about 5-6 inches tall now. The red butter lettuce is starting to spread out a bit. I have never seen it mature. When I planted it last year, the critters got to it. So I am not sure of the final size, although I must admit I bought it on a whim just to have a little variety and didn’t do much research. I do have one stunted plant. Not sure what’s going on there. I gave it a little tug to check root development and it didn’t seem to develop the roots the others did. It’s still hanging in there, so I won’t get rid of it yet.

I think I am to the point now where they can come out of the basement and up to a sunny location. Outside is not an option for at least another 4 weeks, a little less if I protect it somehow. The trick is to find a spot in the house with enough sun, out of reach of the dog. She has a taste for romaine and pretty much any leafy green.

While we are on the subject of plants being started in my basement, I would like to introduce some new members of the 2019 Garden family, just arrived from Burpee.

On the left of the first photo is a Bristol raspberry, to the right of it, a Violette de Bordeaux fig.   The photo on the right are a variety of heirloom raspberry. A quick word on the fig……It’s supposed to be hardy for my growing zone. It’s a bush, not a tree, that grows 6-10 feet tall, is supposed to be a prolific fruiter after a few years growth, and the fruit is reported to be very sweet. A caution should be sounded here, that Burpee recommends netting to keep the birds off it. Now, look at the little tiny rooted cutting in the 3″ pot Burpee sent me. That cost $20.00. I would have sought out a better option had I known that is what I would get. Here is a fully grown specimen:

I think it may take a little bit to get there. But I want to see how it goes. I may end up planting a few since I have a big open sunny space. Excess fruit can be dehydrated so I don’t worry about overproduction.

Well, that’s it for the update. Greener days are coming. The warmer weather has me aching to be outside. I caution myself with the fact that we were blanketed with snow when I got up on April 1, so conditions are still subject to sudden change here.

If you like what you see here, subscribe. Spring is in the air and new material will start coming faster now that there is so much good green stuff to go see and do. And for those of you who have already, thank you.

Seed Starting Update for 2019

The seeds have arrived. The plans are drawn up. And last week the first stage of the 2019 garden season began. I started seeds! I knew how many plants I wanted this year, so I made my list, and selected things for early starting that I knew needed to be started indoors, or were something I may have had a problem with in the past. My secret weapon this year is heat mats. I should have used them last year, but I thought my basement was warm enough and boy was I wrong.

So this year I ordered some off Amazon. I planted a week ago, and what a difference. I already have seedlings. If you were considerering using them, I would highly recommend it. They don’t cost much and the results I saw speak for themselves. Before I get into what already sprouted, here is what I started:

• Swiss Chard
• Kale
• Jalapeno Peppers
• Ancho Chili Peppers
• Sweet Chili Peppers
• Chinese Giant Bell Peppers
• Intruder Bell Peppers
• Sweet Chocolate Peppers
• Olympian Slicing Cucumbers
• Calabrese Broccoli
• Mango Hybrid Melon
• Cherokee Purple Tomatoes
• Brandy-wine Tomatoes
• Sweet Cherry Tomatoes
• Steakhouse Hybrid Beefsteak Tomatoes
• Green Gem Brussel Sprouts
• Tango Celery

Seems like a lot doesn’t it? But I only planted 3 cells of most of those. I scaled it back based on my notes from last year. There is still an entire group that will be sowed outdoors in May, such as Sweet Corn, squash, beans, basically the easy fast germinating stuff. This year, because I ordered seeds, potatoes and some plants, the order is staggered. The seeds came about 10 days ago. I expect the tubers next, then the plants (raspberries and a fig), and last will be the sweet potato slips.

Right now I have sprouts on the kale, chard, brussel sprouts, tomatoes and cucumbers. So I am looking for a cheap source of small plastic pots to transplant them into. They will develop better i pots then left in the starter cells, even though I use deep cells.

My enthusiasm seems to grow along with them. One thing I did notice is that the heat mats require more frequent watering. Not a lot, but noticeably more than last year. I am okay with that. I tend to it all daily, like an impatient, hovering parent. I expect in another 10-14 days, maybe a little less, I will start seeing peppers. Peppers were a hard spot last year. It took a log time because my basement was so cool. The plants were small when I moved them outside, and were stunted for the season. This year I am hoping for bigger plats, for a bigger yield. .

So I am pleased that things are moving along. The warmer weather makes me impatient to get out there, so having something to do is a nice distraction. The snow is gone, the finches are changing colors, and in the mornings when I leave for work, I can hear birdsong. Now is also when I also start stocking up on supplies such as: fertilizer, copper fungicide for the squash, melons and cucumbers,  Epsom salts and calcium. I mix Epsom salts and calcium and give the beds with the peppers and tomatoes a good shot of that. That helps prevent blossom end rot and a number of other deficiencies they are prone to.  My raised bed soil is deficient in micro nutrients and last year I didn’t use nearly enough. I ended up having to foliar feed to treat symptoms and I would rather stay ahead of this time and have improved plant health in order to see increased yields.

That’s all I have to cover for now. In a few weeks I may update again, if some meaningful change has occurred. Until then, play for warmth.

The Basics of Garden Design

Design can be intimidating. A lot of people try it, a lot of people fail. Many aspirants overlook the simplicity of it and try and get all fancy. In the end,  they often wind up with an unintentional, eclectic mess in the front yard. Mostly because they fail to heed the rules. Rules you say?  Yes, rules. There are rules to designing almost anything. Just because they change over time, doesn’t mean that design using growing things is the exception.

What’s that you say? You don’t like rules? You’re unconventional, a mold breaker, an innovator……you refuse to have your rampant creativity restrained by stuffy old conventions. To that I say “go for it”. Have at it. Please send me pictures. In the end, you will see what I mean. In this case rules are not absolutes. So stop thinking of them like a straight jacket. Think of them more as handrails, or a safety net. That by no means gets you off the hook for designing something so eye-shattering that the local town council deems it a public menace. Guidelines…just guidelines.

You can follow the rules and still be creative and artistic. There are an infinite number of combinations of textures, colors, hardscape elements, specimen plants, and the like that you can incorporate. So think of these rules as the glue that holds all that together. Now you may finish reading this and decide that it’s not for you. You would rather leave it to a professional. That’s generally a safe move and can be much less aggravating. Then you are only responsible for whatever grand vision you tried to get them to translate into a drawing. But for those brave souls who want to try it themselves, or maybe you just want to have a finer appreciation  of how green spaces are intentionally put together, this may be for you.  You will also have a much greater appreciation when you tour horticultural attractions and you can sound super smart when you flippantly comment about how “the conflicting textures of the foundation plantings really anchor the structure to the landscape”.

WELL, YES…

These rules can be broken down into two basic major parts. First, on a larger (think macro) scale are the design principles: balance, focalization, simplicity, rhythm and line,proportion and unity. You consider design principles when looking at the bigger picture, such as a large garden or an entire property. On the smaller (micro) , yet no less important scale are the elements of design: line, color, texture, form and scale. If these sound somewhat familiar to you, think back to any art classes you took in school. These attributes are not unique to landscaping and gardens. They are somewhat general artistic principles. You could just as easily apply them to a painting or a sculpture as you could to a cottage garden.

Now I could discuss each separate point in depth. and give you a complete informal education in one sitting. But that would require me to wear my fingers down to nubs typing. I have no wish to do that because I have a garden to plant soon. So, dear reader, this becomes a series. I will work through each of the design elements in more detail since each is worthy of it’s own post. Then I will move on to the design elements. Each of them deserves their 15 minutes of fame as well. I will keep it as interesting as possible and practical enough that anyone can follow along. I hope you will stay with me through this journey.

To be continued…….

First up: Balance

2019 Garden Plan….at least I hope it will be.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of my goals for the winter was to do the advance planning for my vegetable garden. It’s nice to do it now rather than in the rush of spring. I have time to look at my journal from last year (yes, I keep a planting and harvest journal) and see what worked and what didn’t. Before I get into what I hope to have in store for this year….a little background is in order.

In the Beginning….

We moved into our current house in August of 2016. The big back and side yards were part of what attracted us to it. I immediately declared the south side of the house, a section hidden by fence, as the new “vegetable garden area”. The whole area is maybe 20’x 35′. It gets sun all day, but due to the mature cypress hedge on our southern border, part of it is sightly shaded. It was too late for a garden that year. So I sat, and I waited. Plotting and scheming the whole time. During that wait, I fell in love with the concept of Square Foot Gardening. At our last residence, I ignored conventional row gardening anyway and packed everything in as dense as I could, as a result I had some great yields. So this seemed like a logical step forward to me.

Spring arrived and I came out of the gate hard. I built nine raised beds, 3’x 6’x 8″ out of pressure treated lumber. I used fence boards to make it more economical as they are pretty cheap and the beds wouldn’t be that high, so sides collapsing wasn’t a concern. And I ordered up a load of topsoil. Here is where it went bad. The topsoil was nothing more than this real fine, screened clay. I cut it with compost and as much organic matter I could get my hands on. But it wasn’t near enough. That first season, I had serious compaction and drainage problems. Everything was stunted and only a few of the real hardy things did well. I was expecting some problems, just not to that extent.

Next season I added manure and raised bed soil to all the beds and mixed it in as much as I could. I also noticed last season that the beds have a nice worm population which I took as a good sign. Things were much better last year. I planted a ton of different stuff. I had zucchini and cherry tomatoes in such quantity, that I was sick of them long before the season ended. I started a bunch of stuff inside from seed and that gave me a nice jump on a few things.

This time around

So here we are in 2019. What is my plan this year? This year I am going to start replacing a few of the beds with something a little more hardy. I plan to keep the same size as it is good for working. I just want to use some sturdier lumber and build some cold frame tops for a few of the beds. As for Square Foot Gardening, I am going to stick with it, but ease back on the density just a bit. Especially with beans. I think it will help improve yield. I also plan on adding more organic matter to all of the beds this year. probably more raised bed soil and maybe a little composted manure.

I plan on having a good variety of stuff again this year, just at a more manageable level. So here it goes:

Green Beans and Yellow Wax Beans: I will plant half a bed of each. I prefer bush beans to pole beans, just easier to work with. The dog does too, because she likes to steal them when I am not looking. I have a lot of “Provider” Green Bean seed left over from last year. So I just need to buy more yellow. And I will stagger the plantings by a few weeks.

Red Butter Lettuce and Romaine Lettuce: I had these in beds previously, this year they go into pots on the deck. Too many critters having their way with them last year. Plus then in the heat of the high summer, I can move them to partial shade to help get a handle on bolting.

Swiss Chard: I suddenly can’t get enough of this. I planted Rainbow Chard last season and it went nuts, and I went nuts for it. But I will scale it back to three plants instead of the six I had last season. Not everyone feels the same way about it as I do so I had problems trying to give away the excess.

Zucchini: Okay, so last season I had about 6 plants…..I didn’t have the heart to toss the extra seedlings so I found them a home. My freezer is still stuffed with vacuum sealed bags of zucchini. This year…..1 plant. Maybe a second later in the season, we will see.

Yellow Squash: See Zucchini…..same story just a different colored vegetable.

Potatoes: One of the beds I plan on re-building is the potato bed. This way I can make it deeper. I plan on half a bed of Pontiac Red and half a bed of Yukon Gold. Last year I got a lot of earlies which was great.

Tomatoes: I have been a tomato junkie since I was little. I love them. I planted a few oddballs last year just playing around and grew a lot of Romas. This year I plan on scaling it back a little. No Roma. Just Cherokee Purples, Sweet Cherries and some Brandywines. I am also trying a new seed by Burpee, called “Steakhouse Hybrid”. It’s a giant indeterminate Beefsteak type with fruits upwards of 3 pounds. I like odd things, what can I say.

Cucumbers: These are my wife’s favorite an one of mine. I grow them every year. This time I plan on trellising them in a bed along my deck. I have doe it before with decent success.

Peppers: I tried a ton of different varieties last year. I had great success with Aji Dulci’s, but I will not be repeating that. I gave most away. This year, Green Bells, Red Peppers, Ancho Chilis, Jalepenos and a variety I discovered last season called “Sweet Chocolate”. Dark chocolately flesh, very sweet.

Kale: I have been growing Tuscan Kale for several seasons now. I does great in upstate New York. It really gets it second wind in the fall with the cooler nights.

Broccoli: I haven’t had a lot of luck with it the past few seasons. This year I plan on just a few plats, but growing them in pots . This way if I fail again, I haven’t wasted precious bed space.

Carrots: The bed for carrots is the second bed I plan on re-building this year. For the same reason as the potato bed. I want more depth. Like the beans, I will stagger the plantings a few weeks apart. They store good in the ground, but they are vulnerable when out there. So I would rather have a fresh batch every few weeks and take them direct to table.

Corn: Last year was a corn fiasco. I started a batch inside. Got the seedlings outside and they never really progressed. So I started over from seed. Good germination and the corn got about 5 feet tall, then the wind storm came after a few days of heavy rain and put a hurting on it. On top of all that, the deer ravaged the corn patch. So….fencing this year. Plus some tall stakes and guide lines to keep the corn straight.

Delicata Squash: I am trying this out for the first time. My plan is to grow it in this huge pot I saved from a fruit tree I bought. I am a huge squash fan and everyone raves about these. Plus,they are pretty pricey if you want organic. So I can hopefully get a good yield and feast cheaply.

Melon: I am trying a new hybrid of cantaloupe called “Mango hybrid”. I have a little spare bed space, so I plan on giving it a lot of room and see what it can do.

Brussel Sprouts: I may try these….not sure yet. I have been eating a lot of them lately, so I thought why not give a stab at growing them?

And although not vegetables, I plan on adding some Blackberries along my southern fence. It seems like a good use of space and I love blackberries. Hopefully my blueberries will come back a little harder this year too. Last year they performed poorly.

Lastly, I found a northern hardy fig. It’s a bush, not tree,, and I have a spot in full sun in the back yard where I have the remains of a stump to pull out. This wold be the perfect spot for it. It’s a variety called “Violet de Bordeaux”.

So that’s the plan. Seems aggressive doesn’t it? It’s a lot of growing in a little bit of space, but that is the essence of what suburban gardening is all about. How much can I produce? If I can make the soil a little better and fertilize when I am supposed to this season, who knows how much I will get. I do keep a harvest journal. I weight everything as I pick and compare it to what it costs at the local grocer. Last season I grew just under $400 worth of produce. This year I want better yields, and my goal is $600 or more.

So that’s it. Any thoughts comments or experience would be appreciated. I enjoy hearing the wisdom of others. I would rather learn from your mistakes whole I have a chance. Just like I invite you to learn form mine.

Up Next, The Great Winter Lettuce Experiment…..