May 5, 2016

Good morning, this week I would like to mention that the Community Garden on the West side of town behind the West Texas Food Bank has garden plots available. Whether you are a novice or an experienced gardener this is a great deal. It is fully enclosed with a deer fence and there is water available too. Please contact Martha Latta  at mjlattala@gmail.com or call/text at (432)386-2452 and have a great gardening experience.

Say you had a very limited space but you wanted to grow veggies year round..You also wanted easy to care for veggies. Since moving to Alpine I have found such a list. Granted it would become quite boring but it can be done.

These veggies I have sown every month of the year. Although I have found that winter sown seed does get stunted and seed sown the second week of February will out grow any seed that is sown between the middle of November and the first week of February. These veggies will grow in anything that west Texas can throw at them. If these veggies are mulched well, they may not need to be covered with fabric. The covering of fabric does make the leaves much more tender.

This list includes Swiss chard, Toscana (dinosaur) kale, green onions, carrots and beets. Save for the carrots and beets these plants can be cut and let regrow. With chard and kale the lowest oldest leaves are taken and with the green onion the whole plant is cut at ground level and then regrows. A quick way to get green onions going is to purchase some green onions at the store. Cut off about 1/2 inch of onion with roots attached and plant. You will be enjoying green onions soon. Of course eat the onion tops that you cut off.

With two of the above mentioned veggies two are very closely related they are (I love scientific names). These are Beta vulgaris and Beta vulgaris subsps. Vulgaris, cicla group, flavescens group. Ah yes quite a mouth full. Beta is Greek for beet and vulgaris is Latin for common. It seems one of these guys is extra special common.

Beta vulgaris is the common garden beet that comes in red, gold, chioggia (beet with red and white circles), and white

Beta vulgaris subsp. Vulgaris, cicla group, flavescens group is non other that Swiss chard. The group designation that the flavescens group has broad stems and the cila group has wide leaves.

There are a very large number of kale varieties. A number of years back the Toscana kale was suggested to me because it is nutrient dense. It is also quite hardy to boot.

The same with carrots there are a huge number to choose from. I have settled with Amsterdam II. They were bred to be a baby carrot, they are coreless , and quite sweet (especially during the winter).

Growing up I remember having disgustingly terrible canned red beets and fresh boiled Swiss chard (to smithereens) during the summer months. I am not sure why we did not grow carrots but mom was not a kale fan, end of argument.

After leaving home I discovered kale and like it quite a lot. Deb has made kale chips where she strips the leaves from the stem, tosses in flavorings of choice and then the leaves are dried in a food dehydrator until crisp. A very healthy choice to potato chips. Of course it can be eaten raw, juiced, stir fried, dehydrated and used as a soup thickener. A versatile veggie.

Having the fond memories of youth, it was not until moving here that I tried fresh beets. I was growing veggies for sale and a customer requested the specialty beets (note above list) and for some reason never returned my messages when they were ready for harvest. There was a little enhanced vocabulary and then we set out to figure what to do with several square feet of beets. We found the very best way to cook them besides making them into a borsch was to roast them. Hands down roasting is my favorite. Especially if they are caramelized a little and the sweetness is concentrated.

As for chard it is very adaptable. It can be eaten raw, stir fried, steamed, sauteed, added to soups eaten raw. An interesting note from a snow bird that was staying in Alpine for the winter, he commented how he really liked the salty flavor that our chard has. He said that their chard in Wisconsin did not taste the same. I think this is due to our alkaline soils.

As for carrots and green onions they can be eaten raw cooked with roasts or even flavor soups. Just what ever your heart desires.

So these veggies can be grown year round uncovered although if we were to have one of those chilly winters of our recent past it wouldn't hurt to throw a blanket over them for the duration. Just like an insurance policy to keep these veggies coming.

The garden keeps cruising along. The recent cool snap will keep the peas around a bit longer. This past Sunday I picked the first harvest of green beans. I hope to be listing them soon. O f course the cool spell will slow down everything but I am sure the warmth will soon return. Even though it is April I have seeded another bed of carrots. I am hoping the cooler weather will play into my favor. Carrots can take 2 weeks to germinate and need to remain constantly moist for that time. With wind storms and low humidity, this can be a challenge. It pays too have beds waiting in case opportunity knocks.

It has been a umber of years back that I tried growing soy beans. At that time I found that our alkaline soils did not work well with soybeans. They stayed small and were always fighting iron chlorosis. I have found an Iron chelate that is time released so I am going to give soy beans a whirl again. This could be interesting. The variety is specificity grown for edamame. The soy beans will fill out the rest of my beds, I will have 32 of 32 beds in production. A first in a number of years. I am usuing Azaguard to help combat root knot nematodes instead of solarizing. Time will tell how well this works if mortality is minimal and then buy root observation when I pull the plants this fall. I am very hopeful for this approach. Trenching around beds and burying plastic is more work than what I really care to do.

This week I anicipate harvesting chard, kale, green onions, carrots, lettuce, summer squash and beans. Beets are finished until the next bed is mature.