Planting for a Four Season Harvest, Part 6
Starts
Tomatoes Outdoors
Tomato seed can be sown now
directly in the ground, novelty varieties
such as Cherry or Yellow Pear, which don't take so long to
mature. Or more "early" tomatoes which grow more quickly than the
main crop and will be ready to take over when the first lot of tomatoes
is petering out in late summer.
For most tender crops,
though,
wait until the environment is thoroughly
warm for the second big planting period of the gardener's year.
The following go in: lots of bush beans, cucumber, summer squash.
I plant 3 kinds of this favorite vegetable: White Bush Scallop; some
form of the dark-green Italian zucchinni; a Yellow Summer. Last
year I grew two: Early Prolific Straightneck and Seneca Butterbar
Hybrid; the first pale yellow, the second, buttery, and both good.
The main-crop tomatoes go
in now, too. I select only the best
from the flats; a short, stocky plant is better than a tall, thin
one. In all, counting the early tomatoes already established, 3
to 4 dozen plants are needed. Fresh or canned, juice or soup, I
eat tomatoes daily.
I plant more corn ---
probably a dwarf variety --- which takes up less
room in the backyard, matures more quickly, is out of the way sooner,
and makes room for fall crops.
Last year a friend in Oak
Lawn, Rhode Island, sent me seed her husband
had saved which produced dainty ears of white-kerneled corn, 4 to 5
inches long. The original might have been White Midget.
Other good dwarfs are Golden Midget, Golden Honey whose stalks are only
3 feet tall, Miniature and Carmel Cross which produces full-sized ears
on rather short stalks.
To be continued....
Tirrell, R. 1966, February. Planting for a 4-Season
Harvest. Organic Gardening and
Farming.
Reprinted by permission of Organic Gardening magazine. Copyright
Rodale, Inc., U.S.A. All rights reserved.
www.organicgardening.com.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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