Edible Garden Design

This week in our garden…

a metal paint bucket planted with chives, a jalapeno pepper, and silver-leaf oregano

terra cotta and metal pots work well for growing vegetables and herbs

… we’ve added a few containers of herbs and vegetables to our mix. Yes, that’s mulch in the pot – in this brutal heat, you definitely should mulch in your pot to conserve water and fertility!

Thanks to everyone who participated in my container growing workshop on Sunday and thanks to Pat and Bruno for hosting! The swiss chard-zucchini quiche was delicious and a special treat after our class. Of course, the chard and zucchini were grown in Bruno and Pat’s container garden. The class was held under the shade of a fig tree and covered the basics of growing food in containers. Here’s a re-cap:

1.Start with a plan: sketch out your space, collect containers, decide what you want to grow and whether or not they will do well in containers.

2. Almost any container will do but bigger is better in order to maximize your growing space. Terra cotta, glazed pottery, metal and wood are good choices.

3. Use a high-quality organic potting soil and organic fertilizer for best results.

4. You can grow almost anything in containers but it is wise to choose crops that are shallow-rooted (especially for small containers) such as lettuce, spinach, and radishes; quick to mature to maximize your yield; and also consider using appropriate varieties for containers.

5. Be sure to check your containers and water daily or as needed. Containers dry out much quicker than your in-ground garden beds!

Matt’s Wild Cherry is a great cherry tomato variety for containers

This week in our garden …

Buckwheat (above & below)

Purple Hull Peas

Black-eyed Peas

… our cover crops are up and growing. We use buckwheat, purple hull peas and black-eyed peas as summer cover crops. We broadcast the seed in late June and July and then lightly rake them into the soil. Sometimes we’ll add a thin layer of grass clipping mulch or leaves onto the top of the seeds to help them stay moist until they sprout. Once the seeds sprout, we manage the cover crops in several ways. We clip some of the buckwheat sprouts at the soil surface using our garden scissors and throw them into our summer salads. Buckwheat leaves and stems are delicious! By letting the roots remain in the soil, they add valuable organic matter as they breakdown. (Back on our farm, we used to let some of our buckwheat go to flower for our honeybees. Buckwheat honey is something special for sure! It’s thick and dark like molasses.) We’ll let some of our peas go to seed too so that we can harvest the pods and eat the peas. We don’t usually turn the cover crops into the soil although you can certainly do this (before they go to flower and seed) and they will add some nitrogen and organic matter to your soil. But be careful when tilling under your cover crops in the summer – you might burn off more organic matter than you add! Another way to ensure that your cover crops are building your soil is to skim or trim off the tops, leave the roots and soil structure intact, and add the tops to your compost pile. This way most of the valuable nutrients and biomass is captured in your soil and in your compost pile.

This week in our garden …

…  they’re heeeerre! I found a few leaf-footed bug nymphs on our tomatoes. Sometimes these are called stink bugs, but they are slightly different though they do the same damage. You can actually see the proboscis on the nymph in the top picture. They use their proboscis to pierce our ripe fruits and suck out the juices. The best organic control for these is hand-picking, but they’re fast little buggers! I squished these guys after I took their picture.

This week in our garden…

… we have edible flowers! Well, we’ve let our last artichoke go to flower (you actually eat the artichoke bud before it flowers) so that we can enjoy its gorgeous purple bloom. The yellow squash blossoms make a fabulous soup. And the red turk’s cap flowers are a colorful and tasty addition to any salad!

Edible Garden Design helps Central Texans create beautiful and productive edible gardens that are sustainable, delicious and appropriate for our climate.

This week in our backyard garden…

…we’re harvesting sungold cherry tomatoes and enjoying big, beautiful sunflowers! Actually, we’ve left the sunflowers in our garden to act as a “trap” crop for stink bugs. Stink bugs like to suck the juicy sweetness out of tomatoes, peppers and other fruits. Watch out for them in your garden since they’ll sneak up on you this time of year! Notice the netting around the tomatoes? That’s used to keep birds and squirrels from nabbing our sweet little sungolds.

This week in our backyard teaching garden…

…we harvested potatoes! The Red Lasotas and White Kinnebecs did fabuous this year, thanks to some very loose, double-dug soil. Here in Central Texas, Potatoes are usually planted around Valentine’s Day and harvested in May and June.

Edible Garden Design helps Central Texans create beautiful and productive edible gardens that are sustainable, delicious and appropriate for our climate. We can do a comprehensive design for you or simply provide you with a design sketch that you can use to build your own garden. We’ll also help you install and maintain your vegetable garden, edible landscape, small-scale orchard, beehives or backyard chickens. Check out our services and workshops!

Hello and thanks for visiting my new blog/website! While I am not new to gardening, I am a beginning blogger and am still trying to figure out how to navigate through this program and out into the web. I am excited to announce the “soft” launch of my new business, Edible Garden Design. Actually, I am still considering other names and will be filing a DBA (doing-business-as ___) in fall 2009 but am working with Edible Garden Design for the moment. If anyone has any creative ideas, let me know! And if you want to exchange web design services for some help with your vegetable gardens, let’s talk. Thanks for understanding and happy gardening!! – Amy

Edible Garden Design helps Central Texans create beautiful and productive edible gardens that are sustainable, delicious and appropriate for our climate. We can do a comprehensive design for you or simply provide you with a design sketch that you can use to build your own garden. We’ll also help you install and maintain your vegetable garden, edible landscape, small-scale orchard, beehives or backyard chickens. Check out our services and workshops and let us know how we can help you!