Vegetables for your garden
It’s the circle of life: vegetables for your garden, vegetables for you.
Tomato
Tomato is the commonest garden vegetable in the U.S.. Tomatoes are easy to grow in most any vegetable garden, and there are hundreds of varieties from which to choose. Tomato plants can be determinate or indeterminate. Determinate varieties tend to ripen faster.
Varieties: Red tomato varieties are usually used for vegetable gardening, but yellow, orange, and pink varieties are also available. Early Girl’s smaller red fruit ripens in less than two months. Celebrity provides a good yield and can be harvested in about 70 days. For homemade ketchup or tomato sauce fresh from the vegetable garden, plant Roma or Viva Italia.
Spinach
Spinach has been gaining in popularity lately and can be eaten in salads or as a side vegetable. When planting a vegetable garden, remember that spinach can germinate as soil thaws, so late winter sowing is feasible. Spinach is high in vitamins and minerals, and preserves its nutritional value better when cooked in the microwave.
Varieties: Spinach gets gritty, so rinsing is recommended. Varieties are divided into crinkled-leaf aka savoy and plain-leaf aka flat-leaf. Plain-leaf varieties offer a less gritty texture. Dark Green Bloomsdale is a common crinkled-leaf variety used in vegetable gardening. Giant Nobel is a popular plain-leaf spinach.
Carrot
Carrot is a commonplace in the vegetable garden, and is a useful, easy to grow, and highly nutritious vegetable. Planting a vegetable garden with carrots requires you to work the ground well, removing soil debris that can discourage or alter growth. Avoid excessive fertilizer, as too much nitrogen produces carrot top growth rather than root growth (and as his annoying TV work reveals, no one likes Carrot Top).
Varieties: The names of carrot varieties sound a bit like characters from an Alexandre Dumas novel: Danvers, Chantenay, Nantes. And it’s quite possible Bugs Bunny was chewing on a Maroon carrot when he said “What a maroon!” You could even make up bedtime stories for your kids with carrot names such as Scarlet Nantes, Little Finger, and Thumbelina (the last two are of course baby carrots).
Peppers
Vegetable gardening with peppers demands lots of sun and warm, well drained soil. Peppers are slow growing, but they’re also productive and pretty much pest free. Wait until nighttime temperatures are reliably above 50?F before seeding peppers in your vegetable garden.
Varieties: There are a plethora of pepper varieties, which is one of the reasons peppers are a vegetable gardening favorite. Sweet Bell peppers are commonest in the U.S., but hot peppers are definitely worth growing. If you want to melt your tongue off, grow Habanero or Serrano peppers. Or for homemade salsas and such, try Jalapeno or Red Chili.
Broccoli
Broccoli is a recommended selection for vegetable gardening in milder climates. Depending on your region, broccoli can be sown in the vegetable garden several weeks before last frost, or transplanted in early spring. Broccoli plants reach heights of two feet or more. Harvest broccoli when the head matures before flowering begins.
Varieties: Green Goliath is a reliable producer that was developed to be grown in the home vegetable garden. Green Comet matures early and is more heat tolerant than other varieties. Transplanting is recommended with most varieties to help avoid summer heat.
Beans
Vegetable gardening parlance recognizes many types of beans, but they’re generally divided into two groups: pole beans and snap beans. Snap beans were formerly known as green beans which were formerly called string beans which can be described as bush beans. Prince must eat a lot of beans.
Varieties: Derby is a popular bush bean variety and Kentucky Blue is well regarded among pole bean varieties. Whatever bean variety you choose, plant beans in a different part of your vegetable garden each year to help avoid diseases.