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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!
Friday PhotoEssay: A Look Back at 2009
Last week I finally finished uploading all of the 2009 Demo Garden photos to Flickr. I have to say…the vibe from those pictures is much different than you get from looking at a lot of the 2011 pictures! I thought I would share some of my favorite pictures from that year, since I got to enjoy them again as I was uploading them. To see all the 2009 pictures, click here.
We overwintered this radicchio from 2008, and this is what it looked like just after Valentine’s Day in 2009! Still one of my all-time favorite Demo Garden pictures.
I think all of the radishes we planted in 2009 were Easter Egg Mix Radishes. At least, all the pictures I took were of them.
2009 was the year of the cherry tomato! We had them coming out our ears. This bowl was one of the first harvests in early July.
This was the year we had a full bed of zinnias. The flowers were extremely photogenic, even if the rest of the plants weren’t particularly beautiful.
We got lots of rain in 2009, and the garden was lush and full of insects. This big grasshopper was one of my favorites, but there are lots of pictures of spiders, grasshoppers, butterflies, and other bugs in the archive.
Fall 2009 was the season of beautiful Bok Choy. And rain, as you can see. I think that was the season that our Bok Choy looked its absolute best. The weather was perfect with no insects and no bolting.
Since 2009 was the year before our raspberries succumbed to Phytophthora Root/Crow Rot, the berries were large, luscious, and still ripening in November!
Doesn’t looking back at some pictures of a really good gardening year make you a little more excited for this year?
Have a great weekend!
First Look at our Garden Plans for 2012
It’s a little bit funny that we’re talking about our planting plans when we aren’t remotely close to having beds to plant in. However, we’re eternal optimists and are forging ahead with our planting plans, regardless of whether or not we ever actually get to implement them! I think we’ll have some very exciting things in the garden this year, assuming the construction goes well this spring.
Friday PhotoEssay
I’ve got a few more pictures to share from the destruction this week. Maybe then we can move on to happier topics.
Here’s our version of those really expensive tricolor pepper packages you see in the store. These peppers were hidden lower on the plants, and so didn’t get picked when they were smaller. I know I have a hard time leaving them on the plants long enough to get this big.
Poor habaneros – the plants were covered in blooms this week, but no peppers. Maybe we’ll try them again next year.
I know the glare on the plastic bag is bad, but I was too lazy to dump out all these little guys. We had a full gallon bag of these Mini Belle Peppers. I wish they had been about twice the size.
Another look at our overflowing compost bin. I was really sad to pull out those citrus marigolds. I think everyone else was too, because they were almost the last thing removed, and I ended up doing the deed.
We did have a few casualties during garden demolition this week…I didn’t see this one occur, until the aftermath. Poor screwdriver. I also know there’s a missing hammer head somewhere in the garden. I’m actually surprised that we didn’t break at least one shovel in the process, since we were using them as crowbars.
Have a great weekend!
Friday PhotoEssay
I hadn’t really realized how much I miss all the fall gardening that we usually do until I was going through some pictures from the last 2 years. It makes our garden this fall seem pretty sad.
I’m sure the tomatoes are the main culprit for the sadness. These two plants toppled over in the wind a couple days ago. They just got too top heavy with all the growth and fruit at the top, and then the wind knocked them over. Luckily, it seems like no harm was done. I stood them up and stuck a couple posts in the cages to help hold them up.
Some of the Master Gardeners worked on planting a new shade trial garden this week. We have several different types of ornamentals and grasses that we are testing for K-State to see how well they do in a situation where they are competing with tree roots in a non-improved soil.
The Mini Belle Peppers are fairly prolific, although the fruit are still about 1/2 to 1/3 the size I think they should be. They probably need more fertilizer, but they aren’t going to get it. Isn’t that orange color beautiful, though?
Last year, the citrus marigolds just keeled over in the heat of summer. This year, the plant didn’t look very good for most of the summer, but it is finally holding its own. I love the lacy foliage with the tiny blooms. I did try eating one (yes, they’re edible), and it wasn’t bad. But not quite good enough for me to dig out that citrus marigold sauce recipe.
I haven’t shared as many cooking adventures this year, but here’s a picture of one interesting experiment. This is a Peanut-Pork Satay with lots of peppers, and instead of noodles or rice, we made Cucumber Noodles. Yes, that’s right – that slightly green pile of noodles is 100% cucumber. (Well…probably 98%, by the time you account for butter and seasoning.) We sliced the cucumbers into noodles with a mandolin slicer, blanched them in boiling water, drained them, then sauteed them in butter. They were pretty good!
Here are 4 of the 5 melons we picked this week. They are pretty small, and unfortunately, not very tasty. The small ones tasted over-ripe and mealy. The larger ones were better, but still not as sweet as we might have wished.
Have a great weekend! Next week – Garden Demolition!
