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Garden Plans for 2012: Vertical Garden
Except for the annual & perennial herb gardens and the areas with flowers, this is the end of our garden plans for 2012. As I am writing this post, the Ditch Witch is making quite a racket outside my window digging out where the drain lines will go.
This is our second year of doing a “vertical” garden of trellises. We will be using the same cattle panel trellises that we used last year. While we probably could have fit 6 trellises into the garden, we decided to stick with only 5 so that there is more space to get between the trellises to work.
We also originally planned that this garden would be to trial a bunch of different cucumbers. However, we decided that a whole garden of cucumbers was likely to be a little much. So, we ended up with half the garden planted to cucumbers and the other half to a mixture of squashes, melons, and pumpkin.
Cucumbers
We chose to grow 2 types of long, slicing cucumbers, 2 types of mini snack cucumbers, and 1 pickling type. (The Family of 4 Garden is also trying another type of pickling cucumber, so we decided that would be our comparison with our pickler.)
The two slicing types are ‘Suhyo Cross’ and ‘Sweet Success.’ If you’ve been following the blog for a couple years, you might remember that we grew ‘Suhyo Cross’ in the Asian Garden 2 years ago. It was extremely productive, but the fruit were a bit ugly because we didn’t use a trellis that year. ‘Sweet Success’ is an older All America Selection that has an excellent flavor, although the cucumbers aren’t always the most beautiful, uniform shape. I’ve grown it before, but we haven’t had it in the garden here.
The two mini snack cucumbers are ‘Cucino’ and ‘Rocky.’ Both produce cucumbers that are 3-6″ long at maturity with thin skins. Both varieties are new to the garden and to me. ‘Rocky’ is seedless and doesn’t need pollination. It is also supposed to be an early and prolific producer.
Our pickling cucumber is ‘Salt & Pepper,’ which is a white cucumber with black spines. It is definitely our “novelty” cucumber for the year. We will be comparing it to ‘Homemade Pickles’ in the Family of 4 Garden.
Squash
We chose two winter squashes for the garden, ‘Pinnacle’ Spaghetti Squash and ‘Sunshine’ Kabocha Squash. The spaghetti squash variety is supposed to be a “personal sized” squash, weighing in at about 3 lbs. The kabocha squash is a bright orange-red that almost looks like a pumpkin. It will be a little larger at 3-5 lbs each. The vine is supposedly a “short vine” compared to some squash, but it should still do well on the trellis.
Melon
Neither of the two melons are average cantaloupe this year. (We will be reprising the ‘Tasty Bites’ cantaloupe in the Mexican Garden.) The Kazakh melon is an heirloom that I have grown in the past. It is a small, yellow-skinned melon that has very sweet, floral, white flesh. The ‘Honey Orange’ Honeydew Melon is an orange-fleshed honeydew that I have tasted in the past, and it is also very sweet and flavorful.
Pumpkin
We decided to try a pumpkin this year, since they don’t have to be any larger than squashes or melons. (No, we’re not going to try a giant pumpkin on a trellis!) ‘Lil’ Pump-ke-mon’ is a small novelty pumpkin that could be used for decorating or eating. The pumpkins are about 5″ in diameter and 3″ high, with white and orange stripes.
Garden Plans for 2012: Tomato Garden
I would say that of all the gardens we have planned for this year, the Tomato Garden is the most standard. We’re not doing anything too crazy this year, in large part because we wanted to choose varieties that we thought would be successful even if we get them planted late. We also are re-trying a number of varieties from last year that just didn’t have a chance to really show what they can do.
Since this raised bed is 32 feet long (8 feet longer than we have been used to), we realized that we didn’t have enough tomato cages to really make good use of that space. Hence the design you see above. We are planting half of the garden with tomato cages for support and the other half using the Florida Weave (aka Stake & Weave) system. We have chosen 8 tomato varieties, and we will plant one plant of each in both halves of the garden. This will give us the chance to really see the difference in how the plants are managed in the two systems. I don’t expect to see any yield or fruit quality differences, but it might show the pros and cons of using both systems with indeterminate and determinate tomatoes.
We tried to select varieties that are 75 days or less to maturity after transplanting, although we fudged a bit on a couple of them.
‘Valley Girl’ is a early tomato producing medium sized tomatoes that is supposed to set fruit under both heat and cold stress.
‘Country Taste’is an indeterminate hybrid “heirloom type” tomato that we tried last year with little luck. It’s supposed to be a larger tomato with great flavor.
‘Bellstar’is a determinate paste tomato that is early producing with high yields.
‘Martha Washington’ is a brand new hybrid “heirloom type” that boasts wider adaptability and productivity with an heirloom flavor. A little bit later producing.
The 4 heat set varieties, ‘BHN-189,’ ‘Solar Fire,’ ‘Super Sioux,’ and ‘SunMaster’ we grew last year, but we wanted to give them a better chance this year, hopefully planting them a little earlier and closer to “regular” tomato planting time. Of course, we’re also hoping for a summer that is less crazy hot!
Garden Plans for 2012: Mexican Garden
Another one of our theme gardens this year is the Mexican Garden. This garden is going to be a fun mix of more commonly recognized vegetables with some uncommon vegetables!
We relied heavily on Rosalind Creasy’s book, The Edible Mexican Garden, for inspiration in planning our Mexican Garden.
Starting from the left side, we of course had to put in several peppers. Since we had so many peppers last year, we didn’t want to go crazy. Still, we have 6 peppers, ranging from serrano to bell peppers. Then we have a few rows of a black bean that can be used as either a dry bean or a fresh shelling bean. With the amount of space allotted, we know that we won’t get tons of beans, but it should be enough to have fun growing them.
Of course, the herb most people associate with Mexican cooking is cilantro, because it is in salsa. Unfortunately, cilantro doesn’t like the heat here very much in the summer, so we are also growing culantro. Culantro is an herb that has a similar flavor to cilantro but much better heat tolerance. We’ll also have a Mexican Oregano plant.
Cantaloupe are also a native Mexican vegetable/fruit! We are reprising the ‘Tasty Bites’ melon from last year on a trellis, as well as giving a shot at growing jicama. Jicama is a tuber vegetable, but the plant is a huge vine. It needs a long growing season, so it will be fun to see if we get anything from it.
You might have noticed that we skipped the tomatoes in the Mexican Garden, in favor of 4 tomatillo plants. Supposedly tomatillos produce better if they have another tomatillo as a pollinator, so we decided to try a purple tomatillo (2 plants) and an large green tomatillo (2 plants).
The two zucchinis are a paler grey color, rather than a typical green or yellow on a summer squash. The ‘Ronde de Nice’ is actually a round zucchini.
All the way on the right side of the map, we have 2 plants of ‘Aztec Red’ Spinach. Don’t let the name fool you – this is not a spinach in the sense we normally use it. It is a native Mexican green called Huauzontle (or Huauzontli). It is in the same family as Lambs’ Quarter, a common weed, which is also edible. The young, tender leaves of the huauzontle are eaten, as well as the immature flower buds. This will be a fun one to experiment with on some recipes this summer!
Garden Plans for 2012: Beautiful Vegetables
We have all kinds of fun themes throughout the Demo Garden this year, and this garden is another one. The vision behind the “Beautiful Vegetables” Garden is to have plants that have strong ornamental value as well as being edible. In addition, the Master Gardeners doing the planning on this bed were interested in incorporating some plants that have higher protein content.
As you can tell, much of this garden is a departure from many of the things we typically see in a small Kansas vegetable garden, and that’s not a bad thing! (That’s what the Family of 4 garden is for.)
The centerpiece of this garden is a runner bean with attractive pink-salmon flowers, called ‘Sunset,’ lined on either side with a dwarf runner bean that has orange and white bicolor flowers.
On either end of the runner beans, we will have black sesame, which is a complete experiment, since none of us have grown it before! The catalog says it likes heat and humidity, so we’ll find out!
On the left end of the garden we are planting 2 pepper varieties that are very ornamental, while still being tasty. The right end of the garden will be dedicated to Edamame (aka soybeans eaten green). We know soybeans grow in Kansas, so it’ll be fun to watch these grow.
On the top edge, we’ll have 2 ‘Cardinal’ Basils and 2 Red Shisos. The ‘Cardinal’ Basil has a more condensed, dark purple/red flower head as opposed to spikes. Red shiso is an Asian herb often used in sushi. Then the middle will be planted to cilantro when it gets cooler in the fall.
On the bottom edge, we are going to try some red bunching onions (the tops are still green, but the stalks are red) and both a red and a green radicchio.
All in all, this will be a fun garden to see how all these different plants do for us!
Garden Plans for 2012: New & Unique Vegetables
Despite the totally muddy state of disrepair that the garden is displaying right now and despite the lingering memories of last summer, we are forging ahead with our plans for the garden this year!
One of the themed gardens we are planning for this year is New and Unique Vegetables. Of courses, this is right up my alley!
This is a smaller bed, at slightly less than 12 feet long, with our typical 4 feet wide. Because we aren’t quite sure when we’ll be able to plant, we have plans for regular May planting, with a long list of options if something goes wrong and we can’t plant until July or August. (If we get to that point, I’ll share those ideas with you. Assuming you are still reading this blog when all I have to say is along the lines of, “Gee, maybe we’ll plant something sometime maybe.”)
But we are still positive and hopeful that we will be able to plant by sometime in May to early June. Just like we’re hopeful that this coming summer won’t be so terribly hot.
Anyway, let’s talk a little bit about what’s in this garden.
There are two types of zucchini – one is yellow and the other green. The fun part about these squash is that they both are striped squash. So while the plants aren’t crazy out there, the zucchinis themselves should be interesting.
Then there are the 2 eggplant. Even I can’t avoid eggplant every year. We managed to have ZERO eggplants in the garden last year, so I guess it is okay to have a couple this year. (And in the interest of full disclosure, I did eat a quite good eggplant dish at one of the local Indian restaurants last weekend. Anything is edible with enough spices…!) One of the eggplants is a white variety that produces small, egg-sized fruit. ‘Prosperosa’ is an Italian eggplant that is not the full dark purple, and instead of being an oblong, teardrop shape is much more rounded with slight ruffling near the stem.
Two tomatoes – although technically only one is a tomato. ‘Indigo Rose’ is the new purple tomato that is a very dark purple with an orange/red interior. The skin is supposed to get darker with more exposure to sun. The second “tomato,” the Litchi Tomato is technically not a tomato at all, although it is a cousin. The plant itself looks more like an eggplant, and the fruit are the size of cherry tomatoes with caps kind of like tomatillos. It is very sweet in flavor, but the plant protects its fruit well with prickles on the caps, stems, and leaves.
We are going to continue to make good use of our cattle panel trellises throughout the garden, and on this trellis we are growing one melon and one squash. The melon, ‘Lambkin,’ is a type of melon called “Piel de Sapo” or “skin of the frog.” Sounds appetizing, right? Actually, I had one of these melons at a farmers market in Rochester, MN a couple summers ago, and it was incredibly sweet with an interesting floral flavor. I’m excited for us to grow it here! The squash we had originally selected was a tricolor acorn squash, but we are already on plan B for that one…tentatively we are going to try ‘Fairy’ Squash, which is a 2 1/2 lb. winter squash that doesn’t seem to readily fit into any of the normal winter squash categories.
So those are some of the different things we’re trying this year…are you trying anything new or unique in your garden this year?
