MASTER GARDENER: You Can Grow Vegetables! by Mary Ann Miller, Master Gardener
There is nothing like salad made with freshly picked lettuce and spinach, tomatoes and cucumbers ripened on the vine, or green beans, peas, and squash harvested at peak flavor. The best way to guarantee such delicious vegetables is, of course, to grow them yourself. Often people think they lack room for a vegetable garden, but actually you can grow vegetables in some surprisingly small spaces. The typical vegetable garden is a rectangular plot in a sunny back yard, but there are often random sunny areas which will support veggies quite well. When we experienced groundhog devastation in our main garden at our former home, I decided to try growing some things closer to the house in the hope
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that they would be safe from the marauders. We had a narrow strip of ground between our driveway and a chain link fence. It was only about 2 feet wide but it received several hours of sun. I planted sugar snap peas along the fence early in the spring, and then when the real warm weather arrived, I planted a double row of green beans in the strip. The experiment was a rousing success. The chain link fence provided support for the peas, and as the peas faded, the beans matured and filled the entire strip. Because they were planted in close rows, the beans shaded the ground in which they were growing and discouraged weeds. And, of course, the driveway gave me a weed-free path for cultivating and harvesting the veggies. Another advantage of this planting strip was that I never had to walk on the soil so it remained loose and friable. Vegetables can also be added to sunny flower beds. Lettuce and peppers are attractive among flowers. Smaller, “patio” tomatoes could also be interspersed with other plants. A fence or trellis works very well for peas, pole
beans or cucumbers. I have grown a cherry tomato in the flower bed on the south side of our house. Its location by the light-colored siding reflects the sun’s heat and allows me to plant it earlier than those in the main garden. It also produces later in the year because the house keeps the area free from frost for a longer period. One very mild fall we picked cherry tomatoes in early November! Raised beds are ideal for growing vegetables, and a small bed can be quickly set up. Easy to assemble kits are now readily available in a variety of sizes. Or you can make your own bed by framing an area with untreated wood held in place with rebar or by using cinder blocks. Just make sure the area is no wider than 4 feet so that you can reach into the bed from either side without walking on the soil. If you don’t want to till the ground for your garden, you can simply place wet newspaper about 6 layers thick on top of the grass in the framework and then fill it with purchased garden soil. The newspaper will kill the grass beneath it and eventually break down and become a part of the soil. You can also grow vegetables very successfully in containers, which you can place in any sunny location, even on a patio, deck,
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6 • Panorama Community Magazine: 2018 Spring Home & Garden Guide