Vegetable Gardening Page 6
Even though closer planting is possible, don't plant so close that plants have to compete with each other for food, water, and light. If you do, you'll eventually get smaller harvests or lower-quality vegetables.
Following the paths
You can get so involved in the beds, rows, hills, and vegetable varieties that you forget about the paths between everything. Keep the paths at least 2 to 3 feet wide so you can easily walk on them. For larger gardens, consider a few main paths that are wide enough for a passing garden cart.
Be sure to use mulching materials on the paths to keep weeds at bay and make for easier walking. The last thing you want to do is weed your garden paths! Most gardeners tend to use whatever materials are cheap and widely available. Pine straw in the South, hay in the North, and gravel in the arid West are all possibilities for garden paths. I prefer organic materials (everything from ground bark and straw to sawdust, leaves, and grass clippings) because they add organic matter to the soil, helping my garden prosper. Check out Chapter 15 for more information on mulching your beds.
Sketching it out
After you determine the location and dimensions of your garden, you need to sketch out a simple garden plan. Your drawing doesn't have to be a work of art, just functional. All you need is a piece of graph paper and a pencil, a list of vegetables you want to grow, and maybe a seed catalog or two. Then just grab your pencil and graph paper and start drawing. First, draw the garden to scale. Leave space from the edge of the paper, draw in the first row, leave room for a path, and then create your next row. Continue filling in the rows with your favorite crops, taking into account the space requirements of the crops you want to grow (refer to Table A-1 in the appendix); whether you want to plant in rows, beds, or hills; and how much of each vegetable you want to harvest.
Here are a few things to keep in mind as you sketch out your garden plan:
You can't plant everything. Choose your crops carefully, and only grow what you like to eat. And grow only how much you think you can eat. Eating broccoli for breakfast, lunch, and dinner can get old fast.
Not all plants have it made in the shade. Tall crops like corn should be placed where they won't shade other vegetables. The north end of the garden is usually best.
These roots aren't made for walking. Plan your garden with walkways so you can get to plants easily without damaging roots. (For more about walkways, see the previous section.)
Planning on paper helps you purchase the correct number of seeds or transplants and use space more efficiently. It's a good way to see the possibilities for succession planting (following one crop with another) and interplanting (planting a quick maturing crop next to a slower-maturing one and harvesting the former before it competes for space). For example, you may see that you can follow your late peas with a crop of late broccoli, and you'll be ready with transplants in July. Or you may see that there's space to tuck a few lettuce plants among your tomatoes while the vines are still small. You can find out more about these techniques in Chapter 16.
In the following sections, I provide some sample garden designs for inspiration. If you're looking for a basic veggie garden design, flip to Chapter 2. Keep in mind that you can alter the designs in these sections to fit the size of your garden; you also can substitute similar-sized vegetables for those that you don't like. The options are endless!
A raised-bed greens garden
The 6-foot-x-10-foot garden in Figure 3-3 is an easy one to tuck along a house or garage or in a small space near your kitchen. It's composed of four 2-feet-x-4-feet beds with mulched paths in between. The raised beds make this garden easy to access and care for.
Figure 3-3: A small raised-bed greens garden.
The key to getting the most from the raised beds in this plan is to succession crop. For example, after the spinach crop is finished, plant summer lettuces or chard. Some greens, such as the loose-leaf lettuces and mesclun, can be cut and allowed to regrow for a second or third crop (see Chapter 10 for more information on cut-and-come-again lettuce). With a little forethought you can have fresh greens and salad fixings from spring through fall.
An edible-landscape garden
The garden in Figure 3-4 is beautiful and functional. I designed it to be around the front entrance of the house. It allows you to have blueberries, dwarf apple trees, and raspberries close to the house rather than way out in the backyard.
I created permanent raised beds on either side of the walkways leading to the front door. The paths between the beds are growing grass and are wide enough for a mower to pass through. In the beds are a combination of edible flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruits, all selected with beauty and productivity in mind.
For example, you can grow colorful heirloom tomatoes, a combination of sweet and hot peppers, purple and yellow beans, basil and other herbs, cut-and-come-again greens, strawberries, and vivid root crops. You also can try growing edible flowers such as nasturtiums, marigolds, calendula, and pansies in their own bed and scattered throughout. See Chapter 12 for more on edible landscaping and growing fruits and herbs in your garden.
Figure 3-4: An edible landscape garden of veggies, fruits, and herbs along your front walkway.
An ethnic pizza garden
The garden in Figure 3-5 uses the pizza garden theme from kids' gardens, where each "slice" is a potential topping on a pizza. In my case, each "slice" of this 20-foot-diameter pizza is composed of specialty varieties of different ethnic vegetables. Ethnic cooking is booming as people discover cuisines from around the world. Many of the special varieties and ingredients in ethnic cooking aren't readily available in grocery stores, but you can grow them at home.
The mulched pathways (each 3 feet wide) allow for 3 beds to be in each slice. The four cuisines are Asian, Italian, Mexican, and French/Continental. Not all the vegetables you need for cooking are represented in this garden, but it has some key ingredients that you can't do without, such as chili pepper for Mexican cooking, basil for Italian dishes, and pac choi for Asian cuisines.
Figure 3-5: Slices of an ethnic pizza garden are filled with Mexican, Asian, French/Continental, and Italian vegetables.
Part II
Vegging Out
In this part . . .
Each chapter in this part looks at the most popular groups of or individual vegetables. I show you lots of varieties you can experiment with and the best ways to grow them successfully to harvest. I even talk about other edibles, such as berries and herbs, that are easy and beautiful to grow in your yard or garden.
Chapter 4: Tomatoes: The King of Veggies
In This Chapter
Choosing the right variety for your garden
Growing your tomatoes to perfection
As I mention in Chapter 2, tomatoes are hands down the most popular vegetable grown in the garden. After you've picked and tasted a juicy, vine-ripened fresh tomato, you'll understand why. You can't compare the bland supermarket tennis balls that most people make do with to the taste and texture explosion of the homegrown tomato. The best news is that tomatoes are even easy to grow! Just give them a good start and a little attention during the growing season, and you'll be rewarded with more delicious ripe fruits than you can eat.
Tomatoes are no longer limited to the round red fruits we're accustomed to seeing. Through breeding and the rediscovery of heirloom varieties, tomatoes now come in almost every color of the rainbow, from black to white, and in a variety of sizes, from as tiny as a blueberry to as large as a grapefruit. Modern breeding practices have created tomato varieties that are well adapted to heat, cold, and even containers. Great taste, disease resistance, and ease of growing make tomatoes the most rewarding to grow of all the vegetables.
Even though we all call the tomato a vegetable, botanically it's considered a fruit. Any edible plant part that develops from the ovary of the plant (found behind the flower) after fertilization is considered a fruit, so tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers, and eggplant are considered fruits; lettuce, carrots, oni
ons, and spinach are technically considered vegetables. Of course, this discussion is a moot point, because most folks categorize fruits and vegetables by their uses, not by their botany. (Case in point: A Supreme Court ruling in 1893 declared the tomato a vegetable.) So be it.
Checking Out Tomato Varieties
Before deciding which tomato variety to grow, you first need to consider the growth habits of the different plants. Plants can grow into huge monsters or tiny pot plants. So first decide how much room you have to plant tomatoes, and then decide on the right variety for that space. Whether a cherry tomato, paste tomato, or red slicing variety, tomatoes all fall into one of these categories:
Indeterminate: Indeterminate tomato plants keep growing and growing and growing. The side branches and shoots continue to grow even after fruit is set (in other words, after the flower has been pollinated and the young tomato fruits begin to grow), and they can be stopped only by frost, insects, disease, or an ax. Most main crop tomatoes are of this type.
These tomato varieties do produce a ton of fruit, but the tomatoes tend to mature later in the season than those born by the shorter plant varieties. Varieties such as ‘Better Boy' and ‘Brandywine' are good examples of indeterminate tomato types.
Determinate: Unlike indeterminate varieties, determinate varieties tend to stop growing once the shoots set fruit. Varieties vary in the degree that they're determinate, but these plants generally tend to be shorter and produce less fruit. However, they do mature fruit earlier than indeterminates. Varieties such as ‘Solar Fire' and ‘Oregon Spring' are good examples of determinate types.
Dwarf: These stronger determinate plants tend to reach only a few feet tall, produce all of their fruit at once, and then stop producing for the season. These plants are excellent as patio or container plants, producing cherry tomato-sized fruits. The ‘Patio' and ‘Tiny Tim' varieties are examples of dwarf tomatoes.
Dwarf-indeterminate: The best of both worlds, these plants stay dwarf, only reaching about 3 to 4 feet tall, but continue to produce full-sized tomatoes all season long. They grow well when planted in containers or in the garden. Some dwarf-indeterminate varieties include ‘Bush Big Boy' and ‘Husky Gold'.
In Figure 4-1, you can see the differences between determinate, indeterminate, and dwarf plants.
When in doubt about a variety's quality, look for the All-America Selections (AAS) winner label in the variety's description. This group evaluates new varieties yearly by conducting trials all across the country for outstanding growth and flavor. A variety with this label will likely perform well in your garden.
Tomato varieties also can be classified as hybrids or open-pollinated plants (see Chapter 3 for more information):
Open-pollinated refers to varieties that have the ability to cross-pollinate among themselves naturally and produce plants that resemble the parents. All heirlooms are open-pollinated and are generally considered varieties that were grown prior to the 1940s.
Hybrid varieties are the products of crosses between two varieties that wouldn't necessarily naturally cross. Hybrids are an invention of post-World War II plant breeders to make varieties more productive, uniform, and disease resistant.
One more way to classify tomatoes is by their color, shape, and use:
Color: What was once exclusively a red fruit now comes in orange, yellow, green, black (really dark brown), white, and striped colors. The only color not represented is blue; however, give breeders a little time, and it may show up someday!
Shape: Tomatoes have been traditionally available as a round fruit, but new shapes pop up all the time. Some shapes that are available today include oblong, egg, cherry, grape, pear, and flattened.
Use: While I mostly like to eat tomatoes fresh off the vine, some varieties are better suited to sauces, canning, and drying. (Check out the later section "Studying some saucy tomatoes" for more on varieties that are great for processing.)
With so many distinctions, how do you decide which varieties to plant? In this section, I help you decide by listing some of my favorites.
Figure 4-1: Determinate and dwarf plants tend to be shorter and produce less fruit earlier than indeterminate plants.
Enjoying classic red, round tomatoes
When you say the word "tomato," most people think of red, round tomatoes. They're the classic, bright red, juicy, meaty tomatoes that we all want to grow. You have hundreds of varieties to choose from, so deciding can be difficult. But, don't worry! The following list includes some of my favorites that you may want to try:
‘Better Boy': This hybrid indeterminate produces smooth 8- to 12-ounce fruits 72 days after transplanting that are great for slicing. This variety has good disease resistance.
‘Big Beef': This All-America-Selections-winning, indeterminate hybrid is loaded with disease resistance, producing blemish-free 8- to 10-ounce fruits. This variety matures 70 days from transplant.
‘Bush Big Boy': This hybrid dwarf-indeterminate variety produces 10-ounce fruits on a 4-foot-tall plant 71 days after transplanting.
‘Cold Set': If you're trying to grow tomatoes in a cold climate, try this open-pollinated variety. The 4- to 6-ounce fruits set 65 days after transplanting on determinate plants that can tolerate a light frost.
‘Costoluto Genovese': This Italian indeterminate heirloom is close to my heart and taste buds. The 8-ounce fruits are deeply ribbed, juicy, and have a strong tomato flavor. The plants love the heat and produce fruits 80 days after transplanting.
‘Delicious': If you want to grow "the big one," this indeterminate heirloom is for you. The plant produces fruit 77 days after transplanting, and those fruits often weigh more than 2 pounds each. This variety holds the world record for the largest tomato: 7 pounds, 12 ounces.
‘Early Girl': Despite being an indeterminate hybrid (which generally matures later in the season), this plant produces 4- to 6-ounce fruits only 52 days after transplanting. You can experiment with the ‘Bush Early Girl' version as well, which has the same characteristics except that it only grows 2 feet tall.
‘Oregon Spring': This determinate, open-pollinated variety is bred for cold tolerance and relatively few seeds in each fruit. The 7- to 8-ounce fruits are produced only 58 days after transplanting.
‘Solar Fire': This determinate hybrid was bred at the University of Florida, so it's heat tolerant. The large, 7- to 10-ounce round fruits are disease resistant and mature 72 days after transplanting.
‘Stupice': This Czechoslovakian indeterminate heirloom is an early and cold-tolerant variety that bears 1- to 2-ounce fruits 52 days after transplanting.
‘Super Bush': This determinate, 3- to 4-foot tall hybrid plant is great in containers. Unlike many other container-adapted varieties, the ‘Super Bush' variety produces large, 8- to 10-ounce fruits on disease-resistant plants. Fruits are produced 85 days after transplanting.
When in doubt about choosing a variety to grow in your garden, ask your local garden center, farmer's market, or neighbor who's growing tomatoes for suggestions about what grows best in your region.
Surveying all the other colors of tomatoes
Tomatoes of a different color (other than red that is) are very popular. The flavor of many of these varieties is comparable to the red varieties, but the colors can be outstanding in salads and casseroles, or just by themselves. Here are some beautifully colored varieties you might try:
‘Black Krim': This indeterminate Russian heirloom has unique, 12-ounce, dark reddish-brown fruit. Both the skins and the flesh are colored this way, and the fruit color darkens in hot weather. Fruits are produced 80 days after transplanting. This tomato is something really different!
‘Brandywine': This Amish indeterminate heirloom has unique potato-leaf foliage and produces 1- to 2-pound pink fruits with red flesh — reportedly the most flavorful of all varieties — 80 days after transplanting. You also can buy a similar ‘Yellow Brandywine' and ‘Red Brandywine' if you'd like all the colors of ‘Brandywine' tomatoes in your garden.
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‘Cherokee Purple': This heirloom indeterminate bears 10-ounce dusky rose- or purple-colored fruits with thin skins about 80 days after transplanting.
‘Great White': This indeterminate heirloom plant produces 10- to 12-ounce white-colored fruits 85 days after transplanting. The meaty fruits, whose skins and flesh are white, have a mild flavor, few seeds, and a creamy texture. When combined with ‘Black Krim' it makes an interesting black-and-white tomato salad.
‘Green Zebra': These 3-ounce fruits are produced 75 days after transplanting. The skin and flesh are green even when ripe. The flavor of this indeterminate heirloom is tangy and sweet and makes a mean fried green tomato dish.
‘Husky Gold': This AAS-winning dwarf-indeterminate hybrid plant only reaches 4 feet tall, but it produces deep golden-colored, 8-ounce fruits 70 days after transplanting.
‘Lemon Boy': The first lemon-yellow-colored tomato, this hybrid indeterminate produces 7-ounce fruits with lots of disease resistance 72 days after transplanting.
‘Long Keeper': These determinate, open-pollinated plants produce 6- to 7-ounce orange-red fruits 78 days after transplanting. When unblemished fruits are gathered before the first frost, they can last in winter storage for up to 3 months. (Flip to Chapter 19 for more on storing fruits and vegetables during the winter months.)
‘Striped German': This German heirloom indeterminate variety produces 16- to 32-ounce fruits with beautiful yellow-orange skin and red marbled flesh 78 days after transplanting.
Sweetening the pot with cherry, grape, and pear tomatoes
Cherry, grape, and pear tomatoes sound like fruits, and they may as well be for their sweet, melt-in-your-mouth flavor. Nothing is more satisfying to me than going into the garden and munching on handfuls of cherry tomatoes. Rarely do these babies even make it to the kitchen.