My Thriving Vegetable Garden
Here in the Northeast, temperatures today are expected to hit the mid 80s - a little break following this week's humid heat wave.
Despite some uncomfortable summer weather, the growing vegetables at my Bedford, New York farm are thriving. Yesterday, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, and I picked green peppers, artichokes, beets, radishes, turnips, and others. The crew also did some more maintenance work - weeded, prepared beds for the next crops, secured stakes where necessary, and put down landscape cloth around the perimeter of the garden for my pumpkins. With a garden this large, it's important to visit every day and keep up with its care.
Here are the latest photos, enjoy.
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- My gardeners and I have been spending a lot of time in this large half-acre space. In order to have delicious, beautiful vegetables, it’s important to harvest and replant, check on what’s doing well and remove what is not. This garden has been so productive and all the vegetables look fantastic.
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- My tomatoes are growing beautifully, and every single one is off the ground. Keeping tomato plants off the ground is important to prevent fruit rot and the spread of disease. Tomatoes are naturally sprawling plants that put out roots along their stems when they touch the soil.
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- I use bamboo stakes to support the vining plants. The horizontal and vertical canes are very sturdy.
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- I also use bamboo for the peppers and eggplants – upright supports that are placed around all the growing plants.
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- Here, the hot peppers are doing well, and will soon be ready to pick. My crew loves hot peppers, and I grow many of them to share.
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- I used these wrought iron stakes for the eggplants, which can be heavy. The twine is pulled from the ends of the rows keeping the branches of the plants from breaking.
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- I prefer to pick eggplants early when they are young and tender. Picking early will encourage the plant to grow more, and will help to extend the growing season.
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- Our sweet bell pepper plants are also well-supported with bamboo.
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- I picked a whole bucket of green peppers and there are still more to harvest.
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- The tomatillo, also known as the Mexican husk tomato, is a plant of the nightshade family bearing small, spherical, and green fruit. This is my first year growing them in this garden and they’re doing splendidly.
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- I’m a firm believer of succession planting, the practice of following one crop with another to maximize a garden’s yield. It is a very efficient use of gardening space and time. As soon as one bed is picked, it is cleaned, raked, and fed in preparation for the next crop.
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- Close by, Ryan is already making rows for a new batch of beans, which will sprout within the next two weeks.
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- We already have another bed of basil growing.
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- This year, I decided I would plant all the pumpkins around the perimeter of the garden. What do you think? And, to keep the area neat and tidy, I put down this landscape weed cloth.
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- Here, one can already see how the vines are growing onto the cloth. It’s an experiment, but I think the pumpkins will do very well here.
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- These are the peas. I grow both shelling peas, which need to be removed from their pods before eating, and edible pods, which can be eaten whole. I planted many peas along my trellis in the center of my garden.
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- Ripe squash will be firm, fairly heavy for its size, and vibrantly colored. Some are already too big, but still delicious. And don’t get confused… all zucchini are squash, but not all squash are zucchini. The term “squash” refers to the plant species within the gourd family, which is divided into winter squash and summer squash.
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- Here, Ryan picks the beets. Beets are sweet and tender – and one of the healthiest foods. Beets contain a unique source of phytonutrients called betalains, which provide antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and detoxification support.
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- Although typically a reddish-purple hue, beets also come in varieties that are golden orange-yellow and white.
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- These are the turnips from the garden. Turnips are smooth flat-round and white vegetables that mature early and are best harvested young – when they are up to two inches in diameter. The flavor is sweet and fruity, and the texture is crisp and tender.
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- The sunflowers are still looking great in the center of the garden. Sunflowers come in an amazing variety of sizes and colors. Some grow as tall as 15 feet, with flower heads larger than a foot in diameter, while others only grow to five feet with heads only six to 10 inches across. Enjoy your gardening weekend!
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