My large half-acre vegetable garden that I just designed and planted earlier this year is definitely a garden that keeps on giving.
We've been picking lots of wonderful and nutritious vegetables here at my Bedford, New York farm - string beans, edamame, Swiss chard, eggplants, peppers, beets, shallots, and more. While all the rain we've had has affected our tomato crop, others are thriving.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
There has been so much growth in this vegetable garden in the last few weeks. Many of you ask what I do with all these vegetables. I share most of them with my daughter, Alexis, and her children, Jude and Truman – they love all vegetables. I also serve them at my dinner parties and share them with my friends and staff here at Bedford. And, I use them for various media shoots whenever needed, or when we test recipes here at the farm. Nothing is ever wasted – whatever isn’t used goes to my beloved chickens, geese, and peafowl.
One can harvest any time of day, but when possible, the best picking time is early morning, when the sun is just clearing the eastern horizon and greens are still cool and dew-covered from the previous night.
On this day, Elvira picked many string beans or bush beans. Beans grow best in full sun and moist soil. Bush beans are second only to tomatoes as the most popular vegetables in home gardens. Bush beans are eaten when the seeds are small. They are also called string beans because of a fibrous string running the length of the pod. Purple beans are so pretty – violet-purple outside and bright green inside with great flavor.
These yellow beans are also pretty. Bush beans grow on shrubby plants and are very prolific producers. They can continually produce throughout the season with the proper care. In general, bush beans should be ready in 50 to 55 days.
And here are the more familiar green colored beans which are also ready for picking.
There are so many beans under the big leaves. Elvira moves the leaves aside and finds lots and lots of these delicious beans.
The blooms on bush beans are self-pollinating, meaning they do not need to be pollinated by insects in order for their seeds to grow.
Growing in another bed are the edamame beans – whole, immature soybeans, sometimes referred to as vegetable-type soybeans. They are green and differ in color from regular soybeans, which are typically light brown, tan, or beige.
And look at the Swiss chard. The leaves are perfect. Swiss chard is a leafy green vegetable often used in Mediterranean cooking. The leaf stalks are large and vary in color, usually white, yellow, or red. The leaf blade can be green or reddish in color. Harvest Swiss chard when the leaves are tender and big enough to eat.
Here is the yellow Swiss chard. Swiss chard is actually a beet but without a bulbous root. It’s referred to as a member of the “goosefoot” family due to the shape of its leaves. And always cut chard leaf by leaf, so the plant can continue to grow new leaves during the rest of the season.
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.
Although typically a reddish-purple hue, beets also come in varieties that are white or golden orange-yellow.
Our shallots are also so pretty. Shallots, Allium ascalonicum, are a member of the allium family, closely related to onions, garlic, and chives.
Ryan picked some gorgeous onions. Look how big they are.
And here’s just one of many potatoes still to be harvested. The potato is a starchy tuber of the perennial nightshade plant Solanum tuberosum. As the world’s fourth-largest food crop, following maize, wheat, and rice, potatoes are grown from “seed potatoes”, which are certified disease-free and specially grown in nurseries for planting purposes.
This is our best year for cucumbers. We have harvested buckets of cucumbers. Cucumbers require a long growing season, and most are ready for harvest in 50 to 70 days from planting. The fruits ripen at different times on the vine, but it is essential to pick them when they are ready. If they are left on the vine too long, they tend to taste bitter.
And look what else is growing – fresh bird’s beak peppers, also known as Pimenta Biquinhos. These little Brazilian peppers have a fantastic floral flavor and a medium heat. My daughter, Alexis, and I love them. I pickle jars of them every year.
Ryan also harvested several eggplants. Pick eggplants when they are young and tender. Try to pick a little early, which will encourage the plant to grow more, and will help to extend the growing season.
And do you know why it is called “eggplant?” In the 1700s, early European versions of eggplant were smaller and yellow or white. They looked like goose or chicken eggs, which led to the name “eggplant.” See Ryan’s fun video on his Instagram page @RyanMcCallister1.
Sweet bell peppers are popular in the garden – all grassy in flavor and super-crunchy in texture. I love making stuffed peppers – so easy and so delicious. After picking, just wipe them down and put in the fridge. One can wash them just before using.
We grow more than 100 tomato varieties every year. Most tomato plant varieties need between 50 and 90 days to mature, but this year, they seem to be taking longer because of all the wet weather we’ve had. Are your tomatoes still green?
Tomatoes are heat loving plants, so they need the hot weather to mature, but ours are getting there – some of our cherry tomatoes are red enough to pick.
Everything is loaded in trug buckets and brought up to my flower room, where they are washed if needed, then bagged and stored in the refrigerator until ready to use. How was your harvest this weekend?
Colorful flowers are still blooming in and around my cutting garden.
Fortunately, there are many flowering plants that blossom this time of year, including rudbeckias, phlox, balloon flowers, and sweet peas - and my large flower garden, located just behind my main greenhouse, is filled with them. My goal for this garden was to always highlight unusual flowers from different parts of the world using seeds from trusted sources and seeds I find during my travels. I really enjoy seeing what pops up during the season.
Here are some photos - enjoy.
There’s always something to see whenever I walk through my flower cutting garden. Right now the garden is filled with Echinacea purpurea, or purple coneflower – a hardy perennial. Echinacea purpurea has a large center cone, surrounded by colored petals that brighten the garden in mid-summer. Echinacea is a genus, or group of herbaceous flowering plants in the daisy family. Look closely to see a happy bee on one of the flower centers.
Nicotiana is a genus of herbaceous plants and shrubs of the family Solanaceae, that is indigenous to the Americas, Australia, southwest Africa and the South Pacific.
It is also called tobacco flower, or flowering tobacco – and yes, Nicotiana has high concentrations of nicotine.
Ageratum houstonianum, a native of Mexico, is among the most commonly planted ageratum variety. Ageratums have soft, round, fluffy flowers in various shades of blue, pink, or white.
These are the showy flower heads of rudbeckia. Rudbeckia’s bright, summer-blooming flowers give the best effect when planted in masses in a border or wildflower meadow.
Here’s another variety of rudbeckia. In general, rudbeckias are relatively drought-tolerant and disease-resistant. Flower colors include yellow and gold, and the plants grow two to six feet tall, depending on the type.
Shasta daisy flowers provide perky summer blooms, offering the look of the traditional daisy along with evergreen foliage. They are low maintenance and great for filling in bare spots in the landscape.
This is a balloon flower, Platycodon grandiflorus – a species of herbaceous flowering perennial plant of the family Campanulaceae, and the only member of the genus Platycodon. It is native to East Asia and is also known as the Chinese bellflower or platycodon.
Balloon flowers get their name from the unopened buds, which swell up prior to opening and resemble little hot-air balloons.
This is a double, white, bell-shaped flower. Balloon flowers thrive in sun or partial shade. It likes well-drained, slightly acidic soil; and although the balloon flower plant will tolerate dry conditions, it prefers plenty of moisture. This cold hardy plant also does best in cooler conditions in summer, so afternoon shade is a good idea for warmer regions.
I have many, many roses in my flower garden and in various other areas of the farm. This perfect yellow climbing rose is blooming on one of the arbors in the garden.
Here’s another rose growing on the fence – such a beautiful pink. A rose is a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus Rosa, in the family Rosaceae. There are more than a hundred species and thousands of cultivars.
Also growing on the fence surrounding the flower garden is this dainty perennial sweet pea or Everlasting Pea. It is a herbaceous climbing vine with beautiful bright flowers that grows up to 10 feet tall. This pink and white variety is one of our favorites.
Here is another one in crisp white. The perennial sweet pea blooms in summer, and blooms are on long peduncles above the foliage. It climbs by tendrils and can be trellised or used to cover a fence or other structure. It also makes a nicely mounded ground cover.
Euphorbia marginata is a small annual in the spurge family. It is commonly called snow-on-the-mountain, and is a warm-weather annual native to prairies from Minnesota and the Dakotas to Colorado and Texas. The foliage is so pretty. Snow-on-the-mountain is great to use in borders, meadows, and cutting gardens.
The phlox is thriving in the garden. Phlox has superb heat and mildew resistance. Phlox is a tall and upright grower that’s great for the back of the border, or even planted at the edge of the garden among the shrubs. Phlox also comes in a range of colors from pure white to lavender to even red and grows happily in most parts of the country. If properly planted and sited, phlox is largely pest and disease free too – a perfect perennial.
This phlox is called ‘Robert Poore’. The deep green foliage is topped by large rounded clusters of fragrant magenta pink flowers from summer into early autumn.
Here’s another phlox variety. The flowers bear a mild fragrance and come in a wide range of colors. These perennials also attract hummingbirds and butterflies.
And here’s beautiful white phlox with pink markings in the center.
Morning glories are annual climbers with slender stems, heart-shaped leaves, and trumpet-shaped flowers of pink, purple-blue, magenta, or white. The vine grows quickly—up to 15-feet in one season.
The anemones are also holding strong. Anemone is a genus of flowering plants in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae. Most anemone flowers have a simple, daisy-like shape and lobed foliage that sway in the lightest breezes. Depending on the species, anemones can bloom from the earliest days of spring into the fall months. This is just one of many growing just outside the garden.
And of course, the sunflower – the popular and cheerful annual whose giant, round flower head look like the sun. Sunflowers come in vibrant yellow, but they’re also seen in orange, red, bronze and even white. Young sunflowers turn to face the sun as it moves across the sky. They face east at dawn and then slowly turn west as the sun moves. During the night, they turn back east to begin the cycle again. This is known as heliotropism and is due to the presence of auxin, a growth hormone in the stem. This process continues until the sunflower is mature. I hope you’re still enjoying the late summer blooms where you live.
Now that it's mid-August, it's the perfect time to plant some fall brassicas - broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and Brussels Sprouts. The end-of-season cold weather will sweeten them up and make for a great harvest.
A few weeks ago, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, started several trays of seeds for our autumn crop. When planting brassicas, it is important to plant seedlings rather than seeds so they have time to become established before any drastic temperature fluctuations. Yesterday, the plants were big enough and strong enough to put into the ground. And then it's just six to eight weeks before we're picking fresh fall greens once again.
Here are some photos.
We start many of our vegetables from seed inside my greenhouse where they can be nurtured until they are ready to transplant. If you follow this blog regularly, you may recall Ryan started these trays just weeks ago.
The trays are kept inside our Urban Cultivator until they germinate, and then they are brought out into the main greenhouse to grow some more.
It doesn’t take long, but now they’re ready to get into the ground.
First, the beds are cleared of any organic debris left over from the last crop. For fall planting, as soon as early-season plants have passed their prime and appear close to bolting, they can be pulled out and the area can be replanted with a different crop. Rotating crops will help avoid diseases particular to one plant type and balance nutrients in the soil.
In this bed, Ryan measures the area for cabbage. The cabbage seedlings should be spaced at least 12 to 18 inches apart in the row…
… and then those rows should be two to three feet apart. Proper measuring will ensure the vegetables have enough room to grow. Our cabbages have been so beautiful and large in this new garden.
Cabbage seedlings have roundish leaves with very small teeth. As they grow, they get a thick center stem and then the green or purple cabbages in the center.
Ryan gently removes each seedling out of the tray. Seedlings should be about two to three inches high before transplanting, and after the seedling has its two “true leaves.” True leaves are the leaves that grow after the initial seed’s cotyledon leaves appear.
Ryan is using a stainless steel widger from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. This is one of our favorite tools for working with small plants. The unique convex stainless steel blade is ideal for delicately separating seedlings and transplanting.
The seedling should be planted at the same depth it was grown in the tray. Ryan scoops a handful of dirt to make a hole.
And then gently places the seedling into the soil.
As with every plant, Ryan then tamps down on the surrounding soil carefully to make sure there is good contact.
Here is the bed all planted – it won’t take long before these grow. They will be watered and checked every day. We still have a lot of summer vegetables growing, so there is always something to harvest during the season.
This is a tray of Brussels sprouts. Like most vegetables, Brussels sprouts need a minimum of six hours of sunlight daily. They also like fertile, well-drained, moist soils with plenty of organic matter.
Ryan looks through the tray and thins the seedlings. He selects only the strongest, healthiest, and most compact plants.
And then using the same widger, Ryan removes the plants from the tray and places them where they will be planted in the garden bed.
Brussels sprouts need room to spread out, so Ryan places them 18 to 24 inches apart also with two to three feet in between rows.
And then just like the cabbages, he plants the Brussels sprouts as deep as they were in the tray and then tamps down lightly around the plants. These require a fairly long growing season, about 80 to 100 days to harvest.
The leaves are similar to broccoli and cauliflower, but more circular in shape and grow in whorls. Once developed, the plants will be upright with a single stalk thickly set with small, firm, cabbage-like heads.
Ryan also plants new beds of cauliflower, broccoli, Romanesco, mustard greens, and kale.
With the right timing and care, any garden is one that keeps on giving. I look forward to every harvest. We’ll be picking again very soon!
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