Gardening in July
12:00 AM - Jul 01, 2009
I know it’s not fall but it’s time to start your fall vegetable garden. Utilize the beginning of the month to clean vegetable beds and add compost. Mid to late July is time to put in a new batch of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, summer and winter squash. We should have these starter plants available at The Great Outdoors. I have never actually put in a fall garden. The 4th of July marks the time I rip most of my spring garden out. Spider mites have taken up residence on most of my plants and what veggies that are being produced are scarred by stink bugs. Peppers and eggplants are tough and get to stay in the ground. Some people claim the fall garden does better than the spring garden. The main reason I’ve avoided the fall garden is I’m tired. It’s hot, and at this point I’m a little tuckered out. I’m tired of weeding, watering, fighting insects, and I’m even tired of harvesting. But my husband and I are determined this year to grow the bulk of food we eat so we will be putting in a fall garden. Another first for my garden this month is the addition of a topsy turvy planter (as seen on TV, not at The Great Outdoors). I have poo pooed them because I don’t think they provide enough room for roots and plants are not meant to grow upside down. But who am I to bad mouth something I have never even tried. I will post my results
Many mornings I walk the mile and a half to work. I go down different streets on different days to change it up. I like to see who’s growing what and what’s in bloom. This spring vegetables started showing up in more and more of the front yards in my neighborhood. A pepper in a terra cotta pot, eggplants mixed in a flower bed, earth boxes, square foot gardens, ect.... I like the idea that planting tomatoes in the front yard may become as normal as putting out geraniums and marigolds. A couple of books have been published about front yard vegetable gardens, Food Not Lawns, author H.C. Flores and Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Yard, author Fritz Haeg. Edible Estates has a web site at www.fritzhaeg.com. There are pictures of an Austin apartment complex that has had an attack on its front yard. The yard that inspires me the most is on www.pathwaytofreedom.com. This house in Pasadena, California is on a 1/5 acre lot and provides all the produce for four adults, plus a business selling salad greens, vegetables, and edible flowers to local restaurants. For a fun fictional garden, rent BBC’s series ‘The Good Life’. This comedy from the mid 70’s shows a couple’s many trials at becoming self sustainable.
Are vegetable gardens a trend? Spring ‘08 is when we first noticed an increase in vegetable sales. We could not keep tomatoes in stock, even the growers were running out. Last winter seed potatoes and onion set sales more than doubled. We were having to restock the seed racks every week. This spring we ordered any and everything edible, even if we had never heard of it before. Beetberry? Customers were requesting more variety. We started looking for sources for rhubarb, comfrey, horseradish, ect… We pre-booked tomatoes to insure we would not run out. At the annual American Nursery and Landscape Association Clinic last February people in the nursery industry all over the U.S. and Canada said that their vegetable and fruit sales were up. Even local and national news contacted us to ask about increased vegetable sales. So are vegetable gardens a trend or a shift in how we live? We shall see.
