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PLEASE NOTE: In the autumn of 1995, we hatched the idea for a free, local gardening publication. The following spring, we published the first issue of Michigan Gardener magazine. Advertisers, readers, and distribution sites embraced our vision. Thus began an exciting journey of helping our local gardening community grow and prosper.
After 27 years, nearly 200 issues published, and millions of copies printed, we have decided it is time to end the publication of our Print Magazine and E-Newsletter.

Archive for the vegetables tag

Growing vegetables in containers

April 18, 2023   •   Leave a Comment

by Jeff Ball

Many homeowners live in a situation where there is insufficient space for even a small veggie patch. Those folks should consider growing vegetables in containers that can be placed almost anywhere as long as they get 8 hours of full sun.

Containers can be used to grow all the salad ingredients: lettuce, carrots, cabbage, cucumbers and tomatoes. Other popular vegetables enjoyed by most everyone are also easily grown in containers, including green beans, beets, Swiss chard and zucchini squash, just to name a few.

There are really just three criteria for the container used to grow vegetables: It must have plenty of drainage holes in the bottom, it must be at least 12 inches deep (deeper is better), and there should never be real soil used as a growing medium. All containers should use a soilless potting mix because it has no weed seeds, carries no disease spores, and drains very well. A good potting mix can be used for years, although it is wise to renew it each spring with some fresh compost and additional potting mix.

Finding containers for growing vegetables is not that difficult. Sometimes you can find some that do the job and are free for the asking. Just keep your eye out. I once spotted lots of used plastic barrels at a food processing facility. Sure enough, they were happy to get rid of them. I got four barrels, cut them in half with a saber saw and drilled a dozen holes in the bottom of each for drainage. That gave me eight large containers that I filled with potting soil and grew a nice harvest of potatoes.

A common container that is effective, but not free, is a whiskey barrel cut in half and sold in many garden centers. Again, you need to drill additional drainage holes, but because of their size, you can grow almost any vegetable in those devices. Tomatoes do especially well because there is so much space for their rather large root systems. 

Years ago, I visited a serious vegetable gardener who lived in a row house. These connected houses have tiny front yards and often no backyard. He had a significant garden growing in over 50 plastic milk crates which he had appropriated for what he considered a “higher” use. He lined the crates with black plastic bags with holes in the bottom and filled them with potting soil. The colorful boxes filled his front yard, his front porch, a second floor balcony he built for holding more boxes, and on a platform he built on top of his garage. 

I asked him if he had any complaints from the neighbors since his garden, while obviously productive, probably did not add much to the aesthetics of the neighborhood. He said he solved that problem by sharing fresh vegetables with his neighbors—a gardener with some political skills. 

All of these containers I have described require watering each day or two by hand. Unlike the soil in the garden, a container filled with plants does run out of water more frequently and must be watched every day. That said, there are self-watering containers available that significantly reduce this worry of missing a watering need. These products are designed specifically for growing vegetables and several have been on the market long enough to have proven that they work well.

Nothing tastes better than homegrown vegetables and those grown in a container can taste just as good as those from a garden.

Jeff Ball has authored eight books on gardening, vegetables, and lawn care.

RELATED: Growing low-maintenance vegetables

ELSEWHERE: MSU Guide to growing vegetables

Filed Under: Vegetable Patch Tagged With: containers, Growing vegetables in containers, vegetables

Cut and come again vegetable harvesting technique

April 4, 2023   •   Leave a Comment

By harvesting just the outer stalks of the chard, it will continue to send up new shoots for later cutting.
By harvesting just the outer stalks of the chard, it will continue to send up new shoots for later cutting.

What do leaf lettuces, kale, Swiss chard, spinach, broccoli, and cabbage have in common? They are all examples of “cut and come again” vegetables. What exactly do we mean by that? Well, as the name implies, it is a vegetable that can have edible portions cut off, but will continue to grow and produce more portions that can be cut again at a later time. Usually, leafy vegetables that grow as a rosette (in a circular fashion or from a central point) are most likely to be cut and come again. Rosette-type plants include: broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, leaf lettuces, spinach and Swiss chard, among a few others.

Many gardeners are probably familiar with cutting just the outer leaves of kale, spinachand leaf lettuce, so that the plant continues to produce fresh leaves that can be cut again a few days or weeks later. This helps extend the harvest without adding more plants to the garden. Eventually the plant will bolt (go to seed), at which point the vegetable will no longer produce the sweet edible leaves you want to cut, and the plant will need to be removed. It is also possible to cut the entire head of leaf lettuce providing the cutting is done about 1-1/2 inches above the crown, the growing point of the plant. If you cut off the crown, you may as well remove the whole plant.

Swiss chard and beet leaves also grow as a rosette. By harvesting just the outer stalks of the chard, it will continue to send up new shoots for later cutting. If you like to eat the greens on a beet, then you can harvest a couple of the outer leaves from each plant. When you cut the outer greens, leave about an inch or so of the stem on the beet.

While broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage are also rosette plants, we don’t think of them the same way as most of the loose, leafy plants. Probably because we are harvesting the flower head of broccoli, the large head of the cabbage, and the small buds of the Brussels sprouts. However, done correctly, these vegetables will also continue to produce more for harvesting.

For Brussels sprouts, harvest from the bottom up. Cut the larger heads that develop at the bottom and allow the buds higher up to continue developing, then harvest as they grow. If you cut the rosette tip of the plant, the sprouts will tend to mature at the same time. For broccoli, if you cut the terminal head, side shoots will develop. They will not be as large as the main head, but will continue to be produced for several weeks. Lastly, for cabbage, cut the large central head, leaving the outer leaves and the root in the ground. Wait a few weeks and you should begin to see smaller heads forming at the base of the leaves that were left. These will grow into small cabbage heads, just a few inches in diameter, but sweet and delicious in soups, stews or salads.

Think of “cut and come again” as a type of plant pruning. As with all pruning, be sure that your cutting tool is clean and sharp. Take care not to cut the growing crown. Cut the mature outer leaves, preferably while they are still a little young, to help maintain the quality of the successive cuttings. Use care to maintain watering to reduce stress on the plant. Eventually all good things come to an end, so when the cuttings begin to lose flavor, the plant loses vigor, or seed formation (bolting) begins, the harvest is over and it’s time to grow something new!

Mary Gerstenberger was the Consumer Horticulture Coordinator at the Michigan State University Extension in Macomb County, MI. For vegetable and gardening information from MSU, visit www.migarden.msu.edu.


Call the toll-free Michigan State University Lawn and Garden Hotline at 888-678-3464 for answers to your gardening questions.

Elsewhere: Use this harvesting technique to have a continuous supply of vegetables during your growing and eating season.

Filed Under: Vegetable Patch Tagged With: Cut and come again, Harvest, vegetables

Janet’s Journal: A Veggie Smart Perspective

May 2, 2017   •   Leave a Comment

Harvest time at Ernie Bergeron’s—beautiful as well as tasty and fragrant.
Harvest time at Ernie Bergeron’s—beautiful as well as tasty and fragrant.

One man’s successful transition of backyard lawn to vegetable garden

Rainwater can be collected for irrigation. Bergeron’s downspouts fill rain barrels. The barrels are elevated on blocks so they can be tapped to supply the garden.
Rainwater can be collected for irrigation. Bergeron’s downspouts fill rain barrels. The barrels are elevated on blocks so they can be tapped to supply the garden.

Being laid off from your job can certainly change your perspective. In the early 1970’s, trucker Ernie Bergeron received a lay-off notice. Perhaps it was because the future wasn’t looking too bright that a new, dim view of lawn overtook him one day. He recalls standing in his backyard and wondering, “What am I growing all this grass for? I can’t eat grass!”

So he started digging, and planted a vegetable garden. 30 years later, retired but still digging, he improves his techniques every year. The vegetable “bed” now fills every inch of his 750 square foot backyard. It lives up to Bergeron’s description—“my country garden in the city,” partly because it’s completely walled off from the neighbors by lush, bird-planted grape vines and black raspberry bushes that grow along the enclosing fences.

It’s as self-contained as any farm, too. It includes some perennial crops as well as the more standard annual vegetables. There’s a compost area, rainwater collectors and a gravity-fed irrigation system, storage for equipment, plus many practically ingenious and whimsically inspired inventions. A salvaged 55-gallon drum is the main element in an elevated, rotating compost bin, which he turns daily to reap a steady supply of crumbly dark compost. His latest project was once a truck cap. It sits on a cinder block frame now, its black sides absorbing heat and windows oriented to admit light. Bergeron’s fitted it with shelves and is nearly ready to put it to use as a greenhouse.

Vegetable gardening isn’t so popular as flower gardening, but you wonder why, when you stand in Bergeron’s domain and sample the produce. One bite of a fresh-picked cuke or whiff of a warm, ripe pepper and I’m ready to redesign some flower beds to make room for potatoes, corn and beans. It’s like trading one sense for two or three—less visually exciting, perhaps, but heavenly in scent and taste, and much more likely to draw me in to touch and fondle.

And as for the possibilities – the sky’s the limit in this oldest of gardening pursuits. In the 6,000 years that beans have been cultivated, gardeners were not sitting still but selecting and passing on their favorite varieties. Although commercial farmers in North America now restrict themselves to just six potato cultivars, hundreds of types still exist, legacy of ancient New World gardens that provided a range of potato-y flavors from nutty to tart.

It would be a shame, on many levels, to let that legacy pass. European explorers of the 18th century found far better gardens in the Americas than they had known back home. Native Americans grew more species and varieties than most Europeans had ever seen, and in many cases used more advanced techniques. It’s likely that Bergeron, keen on treading lightly on the Earth by growing organically, would have enjoyed comparing notes with those gardeners. They would both know from experience that thorough soil preparation and the plant’s own health are the best defense against any pest.

Bergeron worked hard on his soil preparation at first, but now he works smarter and less hard. “What I found when I first started digging was that this lot was used once for a dumping site. A manufacturing plant that was near here seems to have just dumped truckloads of scraps. It was disgusting. I knew I had to do something to make the soil better.

“Now I cover the whole yard with 10 to 12 inches of leaves in the fall. I wait until it dries in spring then sometime in May I turn the leaves and till them in. Maybe I’ll till them twice if they weren’t all the way dry the first time. Then I level it all and make my raised beds.

“I use string to outline my paths and then dig down, taking soil from the paths, throwing it on the rows and leveling it off. I usually make the rows no more than four feet wide so I can work in them without stepping in them. I can work two feet into the row from either side without stepping on it. It’s important to stay off the rows because the plants grow so much better in loose soil.

“I don’t start seed in the house, usually. The plants are too spindly when I grow from seed in the house. I buy my plants already started, although this year I’ll try out my new greenhouse. Some things I sow directly, of course—beets and carrots, for instance. I make my little rows and start the seed right there.

“I cut some rhubarb and horseradish in May. How do I manage to work around perennials like horseradish and rhubarb when I till in the leaves? I just till right over the horseradish – small pieces come up all over; enough for me to use if I watch for them. The rhubarb grows along the edge with the raspberries and the grape vines on the fence, where I don’t till.

“I don’t do much to the fruit. I prune the raspberries when I have time. I cut the dead canes out and throw a shovel of compost over their roots once in a while. I actually don’t dare go right in with them because I’d be sure to cry and because of what I’d look like—a guy trying to wrestle a wildcat!

“I grow way more than I can eat—here, have some of this cabbage, and some cucumbers. And I eat things other people might not think to try—here, taste this,” he says, pointing to the weed purslane that covers a bare area. “Really high in vitamin C, and tasty!”

“Learn how to make compost instead of using those chemical fertilizers – it’s free. Who fertilizes the forest? No one!,” says Bergeron.
“Learn how to make compost instead of using those chemical fertilizers – it’s free. Who fertilizes the forest? No one!,” says Bergeron.

Ernie Bergeron’s suggestions for the vegetable gardener:

  1. Don’t plant too early. “I usually wait until the latter part of May to plant. I’d rather be late than early.”
  2. “Learn how to make compost instead of using those chemical fertilizers—it’s free. Who fertilizes the forest? No one! I shovel compost onto the beds, and also make compost tea. And not only do my plants grow, but they grow well, even though I’ve been growing the same things in the same places all these years. No rotating—there’s really not room to rotate in a yard this small, anyway. It’s the compost and all the leaves I add that does it. If I have to buy fertilizer, I use fish emulsion and use it sparingly, maybe one or two times a season if the plants look a little pale.”
  3. “Get away from chemicals. You don’t need them if the soil is in good shape. And encourage birds—a bird feeder I made from a metal trash can lid brings lots of birds in here. My friends the sparrows eat lots of bad bugs!”
  4. “Keep weeds down by mulching with grass clippings or with leaves. You can store the leaves in bags from the previous fall. Just put the leaves in trash bags then cover the bags with a tarp so moisture doesn’t get in.”

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

Filed Under: Janet’s Journal Tagged With: Janet Macunovich, Janet’s Journal, vegetables

Detroit’s Bandhu Gardens sells harvest and shares Bangladeshi food culture

March 18, 2017   •   Leave a Comment

Bandhu Gardens recently cooked bitter melon (pictured) in a recent cooking class. (Photo: https://www.instagram.com/bandhu_gardens/)
Bandhu Gardens recently cooked bitter melon (pictured) in a recent cooking class. (Photo courtesy: @bandhu_gardens)

NPR:

One hundred seeds: That’s the number Minara Begum needs to plant in her Detroit backyard in order to grow enough vegetables such as squash, taro root and amaranth greens to feed her family for the year.

She learned to cook and garden at a young age in Bangladesh. In the two years since she moved to the U.S., she’s grown traditional South Asian crops to feed her family — and whoever visits — on any given day. There’s always a pot, or several, on the stove.

For Begum, this is a way of life. But through Bandhu Gardens, in Detroit, Begum and her neighbors are able to leverage their culinary skills into an entrepreneurial venture.

Bandhu Gardens sells surplus vegetables that are grown in the backyards of about six families to a handful of popular area restaurants. Last year they sold 120 pounds of greens, beans and peppers and 25 pounds of squash to restaurant accounts.

Read the rest of the story…

Filed Under: Clippings Tagged With: Bangladesh, Bangladeshi, Bhandu Gardens, detroit, Eastern Market, Food, vegetables

Meet the farmers producing near-perfect vegetables for the most demanding chefs

January 27, 2016   •   Leave a Comment

The farmers at The Chef’s Garden in Ohio are producing vegetables that not only look perfect but have taste to match. Photo: Michelle Demuth-Bibb/Chef's Garden
The farmers at The Chef’s Garden in Ohio are producing vegetables that not only look perfect but have taste to match. Photo: Michelle Demuth-Bibb/Chef’s Garden

NPR:

There’s a small corner of the restaurant world where food is art and the plate is just as exquisite as the mouthful. In this world, chefs are constantly looking for new creative materials for the next stunning presentation. The tiny community of farmers who grow vegetables for the elite chefs prize creativity, too, not just in what they grow but in how they grow it. They’re seeking perfection, in vegetable form and flavor, like this tiny cucumber that looks like a watermelon — called a cucamelon. The Chef’s Garden is a specialty vegetable farm in Huron, Ohio, about an hour west of Cleveland. It’s a family farm, where three generations of the Jones family work side by side with about 175 employees. It’s a place where vegetables are scrupulously selected and then painstakingly coaxed from the ground.

Read or listen to the full story and view photos here…

Filed Under: Clippings Tagged With: chefs, Culinary, the chefs garden, vegetables

What’s the difference between a pressure canner, pressure cooker, electric canner?

September 18, 2015   •   Leave a Comment

MSU Extension:

Canning has been making a comeback in popularity the last few years. One just has to look at the aisles in the stores and see all of the different gadgets related to food preservation. But when do some of these gadgets become more than something the consumer needs to have? I was in a major kitchen store recently and saw a name brand pressure canner sitting on the shelf next to an electric canning device. As an Extension Educator, many questions have been asked in classes I teach, via e-mail, and over the phone about pressure canners and other cooking appliances.

Let’s begin with some simple facts. There is a difference between a pressure canner used for canning and a pressure cooker used to cook roasts and chicken dinners on the stove top. Often the two are talked about in the same conversation, and I want to be clear, they are not the same. A pressure canner is designed to can low acid foods (vegetables, meat, poultry, fish and wild game) they are designed to hold canning jars (upright) and process at a temperature higher than a water bath canner. A pressure cooker or pressure saucepan may not maintain adequate pressure; they heat and cool too quickly, which may not destroy microorganisms that can cause foodborne illness in home canned food. A pressure canner has either a dial or weighted gauge, and may hold multiple jars of canned food depending on its size. Pressure cookers are smaller and they may or may not have a way to regulate the pressure. The pressure cookers do not come with pressure gauges, and they cannot be safely used to process home canned foods.

Read the rest of the article here…

Filed Under: Clippings Tagged With: canning, electric canner, Harvest, pressure canner, pressure cooker, vegetables

Identifying and treating blossom end rot

August 24, 2015   •   Leave a Comment

MSU Extension:

Blossom end rot is a physiological problem usually associated with tomatoes. Many gardeners have seen it, but may not know why it happened. Michigan State University Extension horticulture educators and Master Gardener hotlines receive a number of calls as gardeners begin circling their gardens looking for ripe produce.

Tomatoes, being the biggest garden diva, are alarmed and shocked at many situations that other less neurotic vegetables ignore. Tiny doses of herbicide, blowing sand and lack of water will produce damage to tomatoes while other vegetables tough it out. But other plants, if stressed enough, can also experience blossom end rot. These are peppers, eggplant, summer squashes and melons.

Read the rest of the article…

Filed Under: Clippings Tagged With: bloossom end rot, peppers, squash, tomatoes, vegetables, watermelon

A guide to growing and harvesting vegetables in the fast lane

April 25, 2015   •   Leave a Comment

Cherry Belle radishes. (Flickr / Ripplestone Garden)
Cherry Belle radishes. (Flickr / Ripplestone Garden)

The Salt at NPR.org:

Yes, it is true that gardening requires patience.

But face it, we live in an impatient world. And gardeners everywhere were depressed by the brutal and endless winter.

So we are understandably eager to get sowing. And to see results by … well, if not next Thursday, then maybe mid-May?

There are two ways to make this happen. Some garden varieties naturally have a short germinate-to-harvest cycle. Then there are the hybrids developed at universities and seed companies. They take two plants with great traits (like early arrival or cold tolerance) and forge an even hardier offspring.

For guidance on the world of speedy plot-to-table vegetables, we turned to Ryan Schmitt, a horticulturist and garden blogger in Longmont, Colo., and Weston Miller, a community and urban horticulturist for the Oregon State University Extension Service.

Read the rest of the story…

Filed Under: Clippings Tagged With: fast, germination, growing, Harvest, speedy, vegetables

Ketchup ‘n’ Fries grafted plant coming

March 3, 2015   •   Leave a Comment

ketchup-n-fries-grafted-plantThe Salt at NPR :

Love growing potatoes and tomatoes? This spring, gardeners in the U.S. (and Europe) will be able to get both tuber and fruit from a single grafted plant.

It even has a catchy name: Ketchup ‘n’ Fries.

“It’s like a science project,” says Alice Doyle of SuperNaturals Grafted Vegetables, the company that’s licensing the variety for U.S. markets from the U.K. company that developed it. “It’s something that is really bizarre, but it’s going to be fun [for gardeners] to measure and see how it grows.”

This isn’t a genetically modified organism but a plant of two different nightshades: the top of a cherry tomato grafted onto a white potato.

“Tomatoes and potatoes are in the same family, and that makes it feasible,” says John Bagnasco, also of SuperNaturals.

Read the rest of the story…

Filed Under: Clippings Tagged With: french fries, fries, grafted, ketchup, vegetables

Designer edibles allow gardeners to grow for taste and good looks

May 20, 2014   •   Leave a Comment

The nearly translucent Glass Gem Corn looks more like a work of art than a vegetable. (Photo: Greg Schoen/Native Seeds)
The nearly translucent Glass Gem Corn looks more like a work of art than a vegetable.
(Photo: Greg Schoen/Native Seeds)

 

The Salt at NPR:

To the home gardener who says “been there, done that” to the heirloom green bean, the French breakfast radish or the Brandywine tomato, take heart.

Nurseries and seed companies are competing to bring you the most colorful and flavorful designer edibles they can come up with. They travel the world looking for the next in-vogue plant for the home horticulturist. Every few years they introduce these new chic varieties in their catalogs and websites.

Alice Doyle, a founder of Log House Plants, a wholesale nursery for classic and unusual plants, says some of her customers are like wine connoisseurs who are always seeking the next best thing.

Read the rest of the story…

Filed Under: Clippings Tagged With: chic, colorful, designer edibles, flavorful, fruit, vegetables

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