Growing Vegetables A to Z

One of the first vegetables of spring and it’s a perennial too. As with any perennial plant, it takes about 3 years to get your asparagus plants to come into their own. You’ll have to be patient and not pick any for the first year. Put once they’re up and running, you’ll be enjoying fresh asparagus for years.

Beans just keep on producing. You can plant bush beans in succession every 2-3 weeks and have a continual harvest or just put up a couple of tepees of space saving pole beans. And there’s so much more variety than what you can find at the grocers.

Tips for Growing a Fall Crop of Green Beans.

Brussels sprouts take their time growing and then, just when you think there’s nothing left to pick in the garden, your Brussels sprouts are tinged in frost and ready to enjoy. You can start harvesting the lower sprouts earlier, but they really are sweetest after being kissed by frost.

As decorative as they are tasty. A field of cabbages looks too good to cut. But do. Try some of the less familiar types, like the puckered savoy, the self-blanching Chinese ‘Michihli’, or the Italian heirloom ‘Nero di Toscana’ (Black Palm Tree).

Corn so fresh it doesn’t need to be cooked. If you haven’t experienced that, you owe it to yourself to try growing corn. Corn is pollinated by the wind, so you need enough space to plant it in blocks. But it’s quite an attractive plant, so you won’t mind making room.

There’s a whole world of eggplants out there, just waiting for us to learn how to cook it well. There are stripped, mottled, green and even egg-shaped white eggplants to experiment with. Eggplant absolutely loves heat and sun and the larger fruited varieties need a long summer to yield well. But the long thin eggplants, like the Asian ‘Fengyuan’ and the AAS winners ‘Hansel’ and ‘Gretel’, are great for shorter season gardens.

A Look at Eggplant Varieties.

Few vegetables require so little work and are so good for you. Most greens (and reds) do really well as late season crops, as replacements for the fading bean and squash plants. And some are so beautiful, like ‘Bright Lights’ Swiss chard, they can do double duty in the flower garden. However they’ll need some protection from the ground hogs, who love them too.

It may seem like a sacrifice to give up space for something you can’t eat, but what would a harvest season be without a display of ornamental gourds? Gourds can easily be grown anywhere in your yard, since they start being ornamental long before you harvest them.

How many vegetables can you eat fresh, without cooking? If you think all lettuce is tasteless, try a mixed blend and surprise yourself. You can succession plant lettuce all summer. When the temperature heats up, it helps to plant lettuce in the shade of taller plants, like pole beans or tomatoes. Grow the cut and come again types and you’ll never be out of lettuce.

What a treat, being able to go outside and dig up an onion when you need it. It takes a long season to grow onions from seed, but luckily there are transplants and sets, or onion bulbs, that speed up the process.