What am I growing this season. Part Two
In the continuing justification of my crop choices this season as I downsize the garden to meet the needs of my empty nest, let me tell you what I’ll be putting in Sector Two:
I have no plans at all for the first bed in the row. According to the new and improved plan it is excess to requirements and will be ‘laying fallow’ and ‘resting and healing’. Unless I accidentally on purpose grow too many zinnias and fill the bed. You can never have too many zinnias, they are so cheerful.
In the next bed over will be my brassica. The only major change there will be less broccoli, and even those I’ll be attempting to be more effective with succession planting, so I don’t get the boom and bust situation I usually deal with. So, in the roll call of brassica, I have:
Summer Green Broccoli, Heirloom ‘Romanesco’ Broccoli, Sprouting Summer Purple Broccoli, Red Mini Cabbage, Savoy King Cabbage, Heirloom ‘Savoy Purple’ Cabbage, Tuscan Kale, Green Duke Kohlrabi and Early Purple Vienna Kohlrabi. Aside from the broccoli everything else is pretty much a one at a time with vague attempts at succession planting. All except the Kohlrabi. I love Kohlrabi and grow loads and am much better with having a continual supply. I grow the two different varieties for the sole reason that they look good in the garden!
Following on from this is the Odds and Sods. This is supposed to be a spare space for the fun, interesting and last minute must haves, but I’ve got too many of these that the bed is filled with my favourite weirdos. Taking pride of place are Peanuts, Okra, Roselle (I’m still attempting to master these as I’m dying to try them in my own made fruit teas and candy them for a sweet treat.) and Glass Gem Corn as one of three corn varieties I have managed to separate out over time without cross pollination. This variety is so beautiful and opening each ear is such a wonderful surprise that it would be wrong not to grow them. Although to be fair I still haven’t figured out the best way to actually eat them, mainly because they are just too pretty to eat!
The eggplants used to hang out here too but now they are over with the tomatoes, and I’ve reduced the number of okras so technically – flying in the face of the downsizing, there is space for something fun, should it catch my eye.
Another bed with no actual change is the onion overflow bed which holds all of the other oniony things that aren’t the staple Pukekohe LongKeepers. You could say this is the ‘fun onion bed’ if indeed onions are considered fun. It is the things like Shallots, red onions, spring onions and leeks.
Big changes have come to the next bed. I have foolishly for years grown zucchini plants with different shades of green and my favourite Solar Flare which is a stunningly cheerful bright yellow. I don’t need as many zucchini that come from four plants, but you should see them pickled in slices in the jar! Or effortlessly piled up on a plate. It is such a stunning visual feast, and we eat with our eyes. I have had to have a stern talk with myself, and I have managed to convince myself to knock it back to two plants – The delightful Solar Flare and Blackjack that will provide such a nice contrast that my jars will still look aesthetically pleasing.
As for the excess harvest that zucchini automatically create… I have a couple of favourite tricks up my sleeve. So too many zucchini aren’t actually a problem in our household, but we just need a little less of the good stuff.
With a reduction in space in this garden bed, they will scooch over to make room for some newly homeless Rockmelons and Honeydew melons. Their growth habit is similar so they should all get on in this new blended family. My intentions are to only grow one of each as these can be as prolific as the zucchini, but we have no trouble taking care of sweet melons.
Moving on to the next bed we have another kitchen staple with a bit of fun on the side. We like to add Bell Peppers to most of our meals so in an attempt to get a year’s supply in the freezer I like to grow half a dozen plants, and it seems to work well. We’ll see next season if this is enough or too many after a year with less mouths to feed.
On the fun side, there are so many cool and interesting peppers and chillies that can bring variety in flavour, colour and purpose and as a seed grower it would be an opportunity missed if I didn’t take advantage of the situation to try things that aren’t available to those who don’t grow food. Although this year I’m backing away from the hot stuff. It would seem as we age our bodies can reprimand us more severely if it doesn’t approve of the things we pop inside. Besides chillies can be such prolific plants and we have enough hot sauce in various guises to last us for several years, if not into the next decade! The only hot concession is the Jalapeno because we love a bacon wrapped cream cheese stuffed popper on the BBQ and I love cowboy candy, even if it doesn’t love me back.
The other soft options are Corno di Toro Pepper, High Health Pepper(which I’m trying for the first time but can’t remember why I picked it), Sweet Banana Pepper, which I can’t actually seem to find the seed and am hoping to find a plant at the garden centre, if not I’ll just grow and extra Hungarian Wax Peppers. It will be a little strange not to have a billion heat bombs waiting to be turned into some palatable, but I’m here for it.
Ordinarily Sector Two is host to the salad crops but in the reshuffle they seem to have been overlooked. Instinctively I did gather seeds to grow because you can’t not have salad crops considering how much of a dietary supplement they are. In an ideal situation they will be succession planted with seeds, seedling and eating stages all present in the garden pretty much all the time and as it is just the two of us we only need a few plants of each so I’m sure I can find space to pop them in somewhere where they won’t get in the way or mess up the crop rotation. In a pared back garden, we are just going with the variety we get from the Cut & Come Again Lettuce, with the Heirloom ‘Tom Thumb’ for small heading lettuce and Lettuce and French Breakfast Radish for a bit of crunch.
Finally, the last bed in Sector Two has been gifted to my lovely Mother in Law so in her downsized lifestyle she can exercise her green thumb and grow what she wants, with the benefit of giving her a fabulous reason of visiting often.
Although it is a lot less, it does seem like a lot more when I’m trying to justify myself. But wait, there’s more…
Come back soon – for the last list of vegetable choices in my downsized garden.
Sarah the Gardener : o)
Tree kale needs to go? How perennial is that? (I know it is not on the list.) I loathe kale, mostly because it became such a fad, but I really miss tree collards. They were a traditional housewarming gift that I noticed were popular in Watts when I first went to the Los Angeles region in the late 1980s. They are still there, but not as common. (It is still amusing that your seasons are half a year ahead of or behind ours, and that before midnight here, it was already tomorrow there, and now, it will be tomorrow in a quarter of an hour.)
The kale stays in the garden for about a year and then bolts. I like to keep my brassica on the move so I don’t get club root disease, so after a strong season, it gets the chop and started again from seed.
For me it is normally weird to see the northern hemisphere gardeners harvesting blackberries and doing other autumnal things when my daffodils are at their peak! The seasonal baton is about to be passed down to us! : o)