This has been a busy week in the veggie demo garden. We have begun fall planting in the row garden, even though we are still pulling spent spring plants and tilling amendments into the soil. All of the beds in the raised bed and container area have been prepared and most of the planting has been completed in those beds. In addition the Junior Master Gardeners who use the pizza garden bed have been hard at work this week putting in their second fall planting.
We got another inch and a tenth of rain the past week so things have been growing well. The herbs, most of which don’t need a lot of water, seem to really take off when we finally do get some rain. So we have had to cut them back to keep the bed in shape.
We are still harvesting okra from the row garden and this week we also harvested some Delicata winter squash and about twenty watermelons for donation to The Caring Place. The raised beds produced some pepper, okra, eggplant and for the first time since we planted it earlier this summer we also harvested some Malabar spinach.
The cucumbers that were planted in the row garden last week are doing well and this week we added cabbage and kohlrabi. We will plant more veggies in the row garden over the next two or three weeks.
We have planted so many varieties of fall veggies in the raised beds and containers that we’ll just list them all here. Some of this will be a recap from our entries of the last several weeks, but here’s the list of what has gone in over the last month or so.
This year we put potting soil in the ADA-enabled planting table and we decided to use small, shallow-rooted plants that we hope can grow in the limited space without drying out between watering. We put in two transplants of a red leaf lettuce called Galactic. We also planted a lot of things from seed: Golden and Baby Ball beets, Rouge de Verone radicchio, Monet’s Garden and Paris Market Mix mesclun, and Watermelon and Hailstone radishes.
In the Asian veggie bed we planted transplants of Woody’s Special Centex bunching onions, tatsoi and jol choi as well as the following from seeds: White Stemmed, Mei Qing and Green Fortune Baby pac choi, Napa Monument Chinese cabbage and Miyashi White Daikon radishes.
The bed devoted to Italian vegetables received transplants of Toscana kale, arugula, a volunteer tomato plant, garlic chives and Blanca Riccia endive as well as some generic garlic. From seeds we planted broccoli raab, Rustic arugula, Rouge de Verone radicchio, Smoky Bronze fennel, Heirloom Italian lettuce, and Red Russian kale. OK, we know that Russian kale isn’t an Italian veggie, but it seemed to go well with the other stuff. We plan to add a couple of small-head cabbages to the mix soon as well.
The rest of the fall veggies are spread over several beds and containers. Here’s what they included:
Transplants: Red Sails and Flashy Troutback lettuce (the latter is a cos lettuce, similar to Romaine), Chedder, Graffiti, Veronica Romansco and Snow Crown cauliflower, Toscana kale, Jade Cross Bussels sprouts, Packman broccoli, Ruby Perfection cabbage, red chard, white chard, collards, arugula, garlic chives, and Juliet and Celebrity tomatoes.
From seed: broccoli raab, Alaska and Dwarf Gray Sugar peas, Baby Ball, Chiogga, Golden and Red Gold Candy-Striped beets, Rustic arugula, purple kohlrabi, Scarlet Charlotte and Pot of Gold chard, Carnival Blend, Little Finger and Circus Circus carrots, Sparkler, Hailstone, French Breakfast, Easter Egg II and Watermelon radishes, Paris Market Mix mesclun, White Globe and Tokyo Cross Japanese turnips, purple mizuna, and Purple Osaka and Ruby Streaks mustard.
We will probably plant some more greens in the raised beds over the next couple of months and we may plant some onions or leeks from seed as well, just to see how they do.
As soon as we are able to, we will put together a sort of post mortem on the spring and summer crops to let you know what did well and what didn’t work for us. Stay tuned.
The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday and Friday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.
Leave a Reply