Michelle Obama is going to be planting a garden at the White House, and from what I hear, it is going to be a garden with vegetables, herbs, and perhaps some fruit. The garden will be near the fountain on the south lawn, and children from a local DC school will join her to break ground today.
Where will the organic herbs and vegetables be used from the garden? In the White House kitchen, of course.
Tomatoes are not hard to grow, even in difficult soil you will get something, but the richer the soil, the more plentiful the harvest. We have a relatively short growing season here, and I like quick results, so for the past few years have been growing grape or cherry tomatoes. I only plant 3-4 plants a year which provides my husband and I with more than enough tomatoes. They seem to do fine in their tomato cages at about a foot apart from one another.
The roots of the plant tend to stay close to the surface of the soil, and though the plants tolerate dry soil to a degree, when there are tomatoes growing on the plants, it is best to keep the soil somewhat moist between rains. I water every couple of days, and in very hot dry weather, daily. I have only once started plants from seeds, it’s not hard to do if you have a sunny place to keep them, or have grow lights. I like to give my local garden shop some business by purchasing young tomato plants.
What kinds of tomatoes do you grow successfully in your area of the Country? We are at about 900 feet in Northern NJ and planting season lasts from mid-may to mid-September, or a little later if we have a mild fall. I harvest all of the remaining tomatoes at the end of the season, even if green, and put the green ones in a brown paper bag to ripen, which they do fairly quickly if they are mature enough.
It’s actually spring-like today, a little cloudy, but in the 50’s, which is nice…and it’s most definitely time to be planning the garden. Even though I do a garden blog and like to garden, I must admit that I like to grow things that aren’t to hard to maintain. The years of being challenged by my garden are over, now I just want to settle into a comfortable relationship with it. So, here’s to some posts on “Easy Veggies”.
Beets are a prized vegetable, both the beet root and the greens are usable in one form or another. We look forward to a trip on our anniversary in only a few weekends to Lancaster, where the Amish use the red juice from the beet and some vinegar to pickle hard boiled eggs…without the shell.
You can use the greens of the beets all year round
You can harvest beets early, when they are small and sweet, they are called “baby beets” at this stage.
You can harvest the later in the summer when the roots are much larger.
If you plant rows, you should allow 3 inches between plantings. If you sow seeds, whether in rows or randomly (my favorite way to plant) plant the seeds about an inch apart, and thin as they grow, up to 3 inches apart.
Here I sit waiting for the first flakes to drop as we wait for March to come in like a lion here in Northern NJ. With a winter like this, one can only continue to dream about what it will be like to begin digging in the soil.
I remember when I was a young girl, I wanted to start my own garden on our property, so my mother allowed me to try to grow in a plot along the side of our house. I remember getting a few plants to grow, but not with the same skill as my mothers gardens. I was pretty much left to learn on my own by asking questions, reading, no one did the work for me. At that time there wasn’t the emphasis that there is now on organic gardening, or using organic gardening products in the garden. In fact, when I was raising my children, there was some awareness of this, but not with the same passion that we see today.
Do you garden with your children? Do you have a site about gardening with children? Please share in a comment. When thinking about organic gardening products, and how important it is to teach children to garden organically for the health of the earth, as well as our own health in the case of vegetable gardening, I was looking at some products at saferbrand.com and liked all the basic products that I saw for killing weeds, as well as organic bug control in the garden or around the home. I but also found the site educational, explaining the difference between natural -v- organic, providing mulching information, and more.
