I don’t have okra plants. I have okra trees. Several are over 8 feet tall. I have to pull them over and stand on tiptoes to snip off any ripe pods. But I’m not complaining. I have had a bumper crop of okra this summer, and they are still producing! Okra and peppers, I have discovered, are two vegetables that don’t like cool weather. The later you can wait to plant the okra, the better they do. … [Read more...]

We had such a successful garden this spring that we decided to extend our growing season with a few beets. Nancy scattered some in her patio boxes and they sprouted immediately. We are now in the process of thinning. Beets prefer cool weather to brutally hot summers, yet if you plant too early in the spring, they just sit there and sulk. Some years, I have sewn beet seeds with phenomenal luck … [Read more...]

In early spring, I get antsy about growing things. For the past few years, while working and typing articles at my Lights Out office in Ruckersville, I have been starting seeds in small Jiffy pots. I put them in the bathroom window with lots of afternoon sun. Later, I transplant them to my garden in the back yard, sometimes with success, sometimes not. This past spring, I started some yellow … [Read more...]

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockleshells and pretty maids all in a row.   I remember that from my first book of nursery rhymes. I didn’t have much of a cockleshell crop this year, but my squash, cukes, tomatoes and okra have kicked ass. Several of my backyard gardener friends also admit to having one of their most productive gardens … [Read more...]

We have not had a deer in our yard this year (extreme hard knocking on wood), but we have had plenty of squirrels. Squirrels can inflict almost as much damage to a garden and plants as deer and nothing seems to stop them - except a product from Messinas called Squirrel Stopper. This stuff really works. We had some beautiful red tomatoes ripening on the vines on our patio and the very day we … [Read more...]

My timing as a back yard gardener is not the best. I usually plant too early. I get excited with the coming spring and plant in early March, which is fine for things like greens, onion sets and lettuce. But the rest of the stuff lies in state, like little seed coffins. Then I have to replant and often that’s too late. Still, I enjoy gardening. Watching stuff grow, watching anything sprout and … [Read more...]

Don’t have space for a garden, you say? Do you have a patio or driveway that gets some sun? Then you have space for a great garden. This spring, my wife Nancy decided to plant a patio garden. She had a number of large wooden and pottery planters, and filled them with garden soil, added a little fertilizer and we have already been enjoying the fruits of her labor while my in-ground garden is … [Read more...]

My wife Nancy and I are having a cucumber growing competition this summer and, so far, she’s way ahead. She planted three or four vines on the carport in large pots and has put up a couple 7 pound pickle batches so far. Nancy planted smaller, pickling cucumbers, which took off right away. I, on the other hand, planted Burpless cucumbers and just picked the first ones last week. These are big … [Read more...]

Nancy loves to can pickles. Well, I’m not sure if she loves to can them but I know everybody in my family loves to eat her sweet, crunchy homemade pickles. My wife has a work-out friend at the gym that in seasons past has grown enough cucumbers to supply the Vlasic Company. Really. She has a big garden supplemented with lots of manure and it’s been all-we-want cukes from her plot for at … [Read more...]

They say that May 10 is the time to plant tomatoes - with little or no chance for frost after then - so lots of tomato plants will be hitting the soil this weekend. If you have not yet selected your plants, and if they are available, consider a vine or two of Abraham Lincoln tomatoes. I stumbled across this hybrid variety a few years back. I was at Snow’s Garden Center and needed a couple … [Read more...]