HOME GARDEN'S EXPERTS DESIGN A VEGETABLE MINI-GARDEN FOR $10
(Page 3 of 4)
May/June 1974
By the Mother Earth News editors
Other varieties that could be used instead of Burpee's Hybrid are Ambassador or Chefini
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CUCUMBERS
At the outset we did not consider cucumbers because of the space the plants required. However, we were convinced by our friends at Burpee that they should be included. Instead of letting them sprawl, we had them placed on a trellis netting (Train-etts). This was placed in the back of the garden and also acted as a background.
The cucumbers proved to be a good crop, even though the harvest 'may not have been as large as we had hoped, but certainly adequate from one short row. Vines continued to bear until frost.
We used the variety Burpee Hybrid. Others that could have been grown include Burpless, Comanche or one of the smaller pickling kinds.
PEPPERS
Perhaps we're old-fashioned, but we felt that in a small vegetable garden a few pepper plants should be included because they add so much flavor to summer salads. (The cooks on our staff said that we didn't need too many peppers to flavor the salad bowl so we used only four.)
The variety grown was Burpee's Fordhook. Others might be Bell Boy or Parkwonder F1 Hybrid.
CABBAGE
Eight heads of cabbage-the number we planned for our garden-may not feed an army, but for a family of four they would provide a few servings of really fresh slaw.
We felt that a vegetable garden should have some color so we put in both green and red cabbage. As a substitute for the Mammoth Red Rock that we grew, we could also have grown Red Acre.
The green cabbage we grew was Earliana. Some other early cabbages that would have also given us similar results are Stonehead and Copenhagen Market.
BEETS
A garden wouldn't be normal if there wasn't some failure.
Ours was no exception. We made our succession sowings of beets, but when they came to a size indicating that they were established, a gopher decided to eat them for dinner. But we meant well. In another year we perhaps could fulfill our plan.
We selected the new Golden Beet for our garden. The reason for this is that this variety does not bleed like the red beet and is especially good for salads. However, if we were inclined toward red kinds we could also have used Ruby Queen or Detroit Dark Red.
LETTUCE
The mainstay of a fresh or salad vegetable garden is lettuce. We used two varieties: one was early (Oak Leaf, 40 days to maturity) and the other late (Fordhook, 78 days to maturity). The Oak Leaf was started early and transplanted to the garden on April 24 and was ready for picking by May IS.
However, we were harvesting lettuce for table use even earlier as instead of picking the entire plant we took the outer leaves from several plants. We suggest gardeners doing this as it encourages the inner leaves to produce more and it also furnishes salad greens over a much longer period.
