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By Hilda, on August 8th, 2011
 I’ve been seeing a lot of articles and blog posts about canning lately; it seems like the economy is inspiring people to preserve some of the harvest for later. One of the more interesting things I’ve seen is this post in Facebook notes, called Mock Pineapple—Bring on the Zucchini! It seems that, if you have more zucchini than you can use or give away, you can preserve it, for use as a pineapple substitute later.
Did you have trouble processing that last sentence? Well, I can understand why! In general, I’m not a fan of facsimile food – my palate is apparently too refined to accept a soy substitute for chicken (or anything else). But this recipe intrigued me. Basically, it calls for shredded or cubed zucchini to be simmered with pineapple juice, and then preserved in canning jars. Strangely enough, it also calls for pineapple extract for extra flavoring. Here’s what the author of this post says about the recipe:
 And it does taste just like pineapple. You can bake it in bread, put it on yogurt, on pizza, or even eat it right out of the jar. With this recipe you will never complain what to do with all that extra again. Bring on the zucchini!
The comments on this post were also interesting. One commenter said she had tried this, and that the texture was different from real pineapple, so it was only suitable for baking. Another noted that with all the ingredients, it probably wasn’t much cheaper than buying cans of pineapple for cooking or baking – so really, it’s more about using up all your produce than about saving money.
Other canning-related tidbits I’ve found on the Internet recently:
- On Ethel’s Blog, this post called The Humble Mason Jar is an entertaining essay on all the uses for canning jars.
- On Attainable Sustainable, a lesson on the Anatomy of Canning Jar. The beauty of it is that all brands of jars use standard lids, so it’s easy to recycle glass jars indefinitely and just replace the tops.
- Also from Attainable Sustainable, a very useful tip about Classico spaghetti sauce and other products that come in jars you can reuse for canning, because standard lids can be used to seal them.
And finally, a group called Canning Across America is declaring that Saturday, August 13 is Can It Forward Day, and is sponsoring live, how-to canning demos that will stream on the Internet at www.FreshPreserving.com. Viewers will be able to ask questions and post comments in real time. There’s also a “Can-a-Rama” — a week of home canning parties nationwide from August 14th to 20th.
By Hilda, on July 22nd, 2011
 A cucumber vine reaches for the sky on natural lattice panels Among vegetable gardeners who have limited growing space, tomatoes definitely seem to be a favorite crop – you can find room for a tomato plant or two just about anywhere, even if you have to tuck it into a flower bed or grow it in a container on a sunny terrace.
But what about veggies that like to sprawl out over a large area, like cucumbers? Look up the spacing requirements for them, and you’ll find a single cucumber plant can spread out over 12 to 20 square feet when grown in traditional rows.
One way to make better use of space and maximize yields is to grow vertically – that is, to let your vining plants expand upward instead of outward, by supporting them on a raised structure. It’s a perfect solution for anyone growing in containers, raised beds, or other small plots of land (like a narrow side yard).
The best and easiest candidates for vertical growing are beans, cucumbers, and all kinds of summer squash (like zucchini and the common yellow crookneck varieties).
Winter squash varieties (acorn, butternut, Hubbard) can also be grown vertically, but you’ll have to find a way to support the heavy fruits as they ripen. The same goes for pumpkins and melons — these extra-large fruits can present their own challenges when they don’t have a spot on the ground to rest on.
There are other benefits to vertical growing as well. When plants are raised off the ground, leaves are less susceptible to slug damage. Since foliage dries off faster after a rain, fungal problems are reduced. And, your vertically-grown plants may have more leaf surface area exposed to the sun, resulting in better growth.
The most important way to ensure success with vertical growing is this: Know the difference between vining and bush varieties of the same crop – not all varieties have been bred to grow upward!
Some specific tips to keep in mind for climbing vegetables:
- Beans. There is a huge difference between bush beans and pole beans. Bush beans are relatively short, self-supporting plants that don’t climb. They have been bred specifically for commercial farmers; their lower height makes harvesting by machine easier. Pole beans, however, can climb to ten feet or more – and the added height means you can harvest twice as many beans, from the same amount of space.
 Pole beans grow on a simple, home-made support
- Cucumbers. Choose seeds or seedlings carefully, and don’t end up with a “bush”variety. While bush varieties are still sprawling plants, they’re not really climbers. Instead, they put out vines that radiate only three feet out from the plant’s center – meaning they require only 9 square feet of space, about a third of what a vining cucumber needs when grown flat. In this way they’re considered “space-saving” types. But choose a vining cucumber variety to grow vertically, and you can grow one to two plants in just one square foot of space. For more specific tips on growing cucumbers vertically, see BluestoneGarden’s post on Urban Organic Gardener.
- Zucchini and crookneck squash. There are a few heirloom varieties of zucchini and other kinds of summer squash that are prolific, vining climbers. Most types, however, tend to be sprawling, bushy plants that want to grow flat but can be coaxed into growing vertically with a little bit of effort (you’ll have to tie the stems to your trellis). Just be sure to avoid those that are labeled as “space-spacing” varieties; they’ve been bred specifically to grow horizontally. And if you don’t have immediate success growing summer squash vertically, try a different variety next year, till you find one that works for you.
 Zucchini fruit and flower
In general, you’ll need plant supports of at least six to eight feet tall for cucumbers and squash; taller for pole beans. It’s best to start out with your growing structure already in place, and then set out plants at its base – you’re less likely to damage roots this way than if you try to anchor a support into place once the plants are already established and growing.
As you experiment with vertical growing, you can create your own plant supports from materials you have on hand — dowels, bamboo poles, wire, twine, etc. You can also grow vertically on a chain link fence, or on a trellis mounted to the side of a shed or garage. If you have an arch or arbor framing a walkway or gate, consider using it to support scarlet runner beans, which are both edible and decorative, with their bright red flowers. And if you’d rather purchase your growing supports, there’s a wide range of functional and decorative products on the market. For very narrow spaces (against a fence, in planter boxes, etc.), a fan trellis allows you to grow straight up and flat. In raised beds or large containers, a tall obelisk is both functional and decorative.
By Hilda, on January 2nd, 2011
This week, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial by George Ball, chairman of the W. Atlee Burpee company — those folks that send out the very colorful Burpee seed catalog every year about this time. Although the timing of this piece makes me suspect there were promotional motives involved, Ball proposes a horticultural strategy to employ in the war against childhood obesity:
As an agriculturist and horticulturist, I believe that the answer is simple. As parents, educators, nutritionists and marketers, we have to imbue our children with the love of—and consumption of—the most beneficial food for growing bodies. This means fresh vegetables and fruits, whether store-bought or home-grown.
In our research at Atlee Burpee, we have found that kids who grow vegetables alongside their parents eat them regularly and with gusto. Peas, green beans and raw carrots—the very vegetables that kids are told to eat, their parents’ admonishing fingers wagging—are particular favorites.
I’ve read of other research that suggests the same thing — that when kids are involved in growing vegetables, they’re much more likely to want to eat them. (It’s hard to argue with this conclusion, isn’t it?) Mr. Ball is urging all parents to do some vegetable gardening, even if it’s on a limited scale, like growing cherry tomatoes in a container. He’s also put out the call for churches, schools, community centers and other organizations to sponsor community gardens and children’s gardening programs.
And of course, this being 2011, there has to be a political slant to this issue:
While the first lady deserves the credit for focusing the nation on childhood obesity, it is an issue that both political parties can endorse. Vegetables are deliciously nonpartisan.
The photo above comes from the Flickr photo stream of Downing Street. It’s being used in accordance with a Creative Commons license. You can find the original photo here.
By Hilda, on October 1st, 2010
 image: ClagettFarm, via Flickr
Like tulips and daffodils, garlic is planted in the fall — October or November, depending on where you live. And you can usually expect to harvest the crop in July.
I’ve never grown garlic myself, but I just read an article in the New York Times about the growers who keep us supplied with garlic. It was a fascinating read (who knew there were heirloom varieties of garlic?), and I was thoroughly entertained by this light-hearted comparison between growing garlic and running a pyramid scheme:
If you bury each clove separately in October or November — think of them as seeds — you should be able to harvest 30 to 35 new garlic bulbs in July. Split those bulbs and plant the cloves next fall, and you will have 150 garlic bulbs by July of 2012. The following year will deliver 750 heads, and the summer after that, 3,750.
And the year after that? Now we’re getting into Bernard Madoff-style math. At this point, you can surely spare a few bulbs to start your neighbor’s garlic garden.
Planting garlic cloves from the grocery store may or may not be successful, so the experts recommend starting with cloves that have been grown especially to be used as seed. If you want to give it a try, here are a few mail order souces:
By Hilda, on July 12th, 2010
This tiny, unassuming vegetable garden caught my eye recently on a garden tour. It was tucked away in the side yard of a rather large, elaborate estate garden, in a sunny spot near the kitchen door. And it reminded me that growing vegetables doesn’t have to be done on a large scale — after all, not everyone wants to put up jars of stewed tomatoes or fill the freezer with bags of pole beans.
Wouldn’t be nice to have just enough produce and fresh herbs to use for summertime meals, without having to deal with a surplus, or constant garden chores? For this kind of small scale gardening, these tiny raised beds seem perfect, eliminating the need for tilling, digging, and amending poor soil. Even though this kitchen garden is very utilitarian, I still found it charming.
Raised beds seem to be a trend right now. I recently saw another very functional raised bed garden on the food blog Hungry Memphis. And the L.A. Times home & garden blog featured a gardener who is using raised beds to grow vegetables in her tiny front yard.
However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kitchen garden more beautiful and well planned than Brooke Giannetti’s, below. Brooke blogs about interior design over at Velvet & Linen, where you can enjoy a photo tour of her gorgeous potager. I love the way she’s planted low growing herbs like lemon thyme outside the raised beds to soften the edges a bit!
By Hilda, on July 6th, 2010
Whenever there’s any kind of discussion about heirloom varieties of plants, I immediately think of Thomas Jefferson, so I wanted to pass along this NY Times article. It chronicles how the staff at Monticello today maintain the gardens as authentically as is practical, drawing heavily from Jefferson’s own exhaustive records — between 1726 and 1824, he kept meticulous journals documenting when each seed was sown, and how it fared.
 The vegetable garden at Monticello, Charlottesville, Va. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
According to the article, our third president was not only a prolific but an innovative gardener who took full advantage of various micro-climates on his estate:
After he left the White House in 1809 and moved to Monticello, his Palladian estate here, Jefferson grew 170 varieties of fruits and 330 varieties of vegetables and herbs, until his death in 1826.
The intense heat and humidity of a Virginia summer explain why colonial gardens were planted only in spring and toward the end of summer, when temperatures cooled. But Jefferson gardened year-round, planting early in heat-collecting beds along the mountain slope and growing heat-loving crops like okra, melons and tomatoes during the scorching summers. He also grew cool-season lettuces long past their time in the low-lying, damper areas farther down the mountain.
Monticello also houses the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, a program that collects, maintains and sells a wide selection of heirloom plants, especially those grown by Jefferson or discovered and developed in his lifetime. Some of the veggies being grown today in Michelle Obama’s kitchen garden at the White House come from seeds that originated at Monticello.
Planting Tip:
Growing Heirloom Tomatoes in Dry Climates
For all you California and Western gardeners out there, the L.A. Times home & garden blog has a great piece about heirloom tomatoes. It touches on the fact that heirloom varieties come true from seed, unlike modern hybrids, and offers tips for separating the seeds from the fruit to save them.
By Hilda, on June 7th, 2010
 I have never had a desire to grow gourds in my garden. They just don’t seem very useful to me, even though the Park Seed catalog sells seeds that could enable me to grow my own loofah. Yes, a natural loofah sponge is really a gourd — after you grow it, you just let the skin shrivel off, revealing the network of fibrous matter inside, then cut off the ends and shake out the seeds and it’s bath time.
But today I learned from one of my favorite blogs, Garden Rant, that there’s a group of guys in Virginia who grow gourds for the purpose of fashioning them into musical instruments. They call themselves the Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra. Their website makes the following statements:
The Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra resides in Richmond, Virginia, where members grow gourds, make instruments and create music. A band of musicians with dirt under their fingernails–they put the “cult” back into culture, and “culture” back into agriculture.
Original music played on handmade instruments made from locally grown gourds, the Gourd Orchestra plays its own brand of paleolithic lounge music – mixing past with present, rhythm with melody, and chaos with order.
The website also allows you to sample the Gourd Orchestra’s music, which is actually rather pleasant and catchy in an odd, earthy kind of way.
And let’s not forget the gourd-growing tips. I looked them over, and it seems as if the seeds should have been in the ground weeks ago, but if you have a long growing season where you live, it might not be too late to get started. And if you’re already a veteran gourd-grower, please leave a comment!
Loofah image, above, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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About
The Author
Hilda Brucker
 Hilda combines her
love of gardening
and passion for writing
in her blog entries.
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