Tag: Pumpkins

  • Vertical vegetables save space

    Vertical vegetables save space

    ‘Mighty Sweet’ cherry tomato (Photo by Brendan Zwelling)
    ‘Mighty Sweet’ cherry tomato (Photo by Brendan Zwelling)

    I’m always searching for vegetable crops that go above and beyond normal expectations. I want plants that will produce a generous harvest, yet not take up too much precious garden space. I also want them to be disease and insect resistant, as well as relatively low maintenance. These might seem like unreasonable demands, but my vertical vegetable crops deliver all of this and more.

    Vertical vegetables are simply crops that are grown up off the ground. Taking advantage of vertical space can be as basic as a bamboo teepee covered with the twisting vines of pole beans, or as complex as a living wall of vegetables and herbs that covers the side of a shed or garage, forming a patchwork of colours, textures and flavours.

    Many of us think of vertical crops as those that have a vining growth habit, like peas and pole beans, but even some plants that can’t climb on their own, such as indeterminate tomatoes, are able to produce an excellent crop if trained up a support. If in-ground garden space is tight, try large containers fitted with small trellises, cages, teepees or wire towers to support edibles like cucumbers, tomatoes, small pumpkins and peas.

    Higher yields

    One of the best reasons to grow your crops upward is because it’s an easy way to harvest more food from your garden. Not only does it free up valuable growing space in your beds for lower-growing crops, but it can also significantly increase your overall yield. For example, pole beans grown in an equivalent-sized plot to bush beans will produce a harvest that is two to three times greater.

    Plus, growing your crops vertically will help encourage healthy plants, because they’re not spending their summer battling weeds, insects or disease. Instead, the plants will enjoy maximum sunlight for an optimal leaf to fruit radio, and better air circulation than those grown at ground level, minimizing the threat of disease. Healthy plants will produce both higher-quality and larger harvests.

    Reduces soil-borne diseases

    In fact, gardeners new to vertical growing will marvel at just how healthy their vegetables can be. Because many soil-borne diseases can wreak havoc on plants that are grown at ground level (Hello, tomato blight!), by simply choosing to grow vegetables like cucumbers, tomatoes and beans on vertical supports, you can help prevent or dramatically slow the progress of a wide range of common diseases.

    Pests will also find it more difficult to find their favourite food source if the plants are growing several feet in the air, rather than spread out across your garden beds. In our garden, we also find that insect-eating birds love to perch in our vertical trellises, where they can take shelter among the foliage and munch on any bugs brave enough to try to climb up our cucumbers.

    Finally, vertical crops are easier to harvest than ground-level vegetables, which require extended periods of stooping and bending. Just be sure that whatever type of support you use allows you to easily access the crop — avoid netting with holes too small for your hand to easily pass through.

    Tendrils and twiners

    How plants climb will help determine what type of support to use. Peas, cucumbers, gourds and squash are vigorous climbers and scramble up by using curling tendrils that cling to both vertical and horizontal supports. This versatility enables them to climb many types of structures, including trellises, netting, teepees, fences and cages. Pole beans, on the other hand, don’t produce tendrils, but rather climb by twisting their stems around vertical supports like bamboo teepees, twine or woven wire fences.  Indeterminate tomatoes can’t climb or cling to structures on their own, producing instead long vining branches that root wherever they touch the ground. If left to sprawl on the ground, the branches would continue to grow until the end of the season, resulting in a tangled mess of stems, leaves and fruit. Consequently, the fruit will be smaller and the plant will be susceptible to a variety of soil-borne diseases, such as blight. To vertically cultivate tomatoes, the plants must be trained and secured with fasteners or ties to tall stakes, trellises, towers or cages as they grow.

    Super supports

    One of my favourite side benefits of growing vertical vegetables is the unique architecture and ornamentation that the structures and plants add to the garden. Our gardens feature central pole bean teepees that lend their support to an assortment of yellow, green and purple beans. Nearby, tall and sturdy A-frame trellises bear a heavy load of cucumber, gourd and baby pumpkin vines. In the tomato patch, funky metal tomato spirals soar above the rampant foliage and jewel-toned fruit of our ‘Sungold’, ‘Cherokee Purple’ and ‘Red Pear’ tomatoes.

    Garden centres and nurseries offer many options for crop supports, but creative gardeners can also make their own with a little ingenuity, imagination and brightly coloured paint. Supports can be decorative and ornate like wrought-iron pyramids, or practical like a simple cucumber trellis made from rebar and concrete reinforcing wire.

    Keep in mind that many vining crops, such as pole beans, can quickly reach heights up to 10 feet (3 m)! You would need a ladder to pick such a lofty harvest. Instead, keep supports to a manageable height of seven feet (2 m) or less — your pole bean crop will double back on itself and keep all your tender beans within easy reach.

    One of the simplest ways to support quick-growing crops like peas is to hang netting or twine between two sturdy wooden stakes. Heavier vegetables like small pumpkins or melons should have strong vine support in the form of an A-frame trellis or woven wire fence. The heavy fruit of melons can also be further supported with simple mesh, cloth or pantyhose slings to ensure that they reach their super-sweet maturity damage-free.

    Space-saving vertical crops

    Tomatoes

    Growing indeterminate tomatoes vertically offers many advantages to this disease-prone crop. When grown against the sturdy support of a tall stake, trellis or tower, the foliage of the plants is exposed to maximum sunlight and increased air circulation, and are farther away from the soil-borne blights that commonly damage crops.

    Best bets: ‘Sungold’, ‘Cherokee Purple’, ‘Black Cherry’, ‘Jelly Bean’

    Cucumbers

    Did you know that growing cucumbers on a trellis can double your harvest? It will also produce the longest, straightest fruit. Train slicing and English-style cucumbers up an A-frame or woven wire trellis. Small-fruited cucumbers can be contained in pots fitted with a tomato cage.

    Best bets: ‘Lemon’, ‘Diva’, ‘Sultan’

    Pole beans

    One of the easiest crops to grow, the rampant vines of pole beans produce a long season of tender pods if harvested frequently. The twining stems of pole beans prefer to scale vertical posts, as in a bamboo teepee or arbour, as well as netting, twine and fencing.

    Best bets: ‘Fortex’, ‘Emerite’, ‘Lazy Housewife’, ‘Purple Podded Pole’

    Peas

    Tender shell, snow and snap peas are produced on vigorous plants that grow as short as one foot (30 cm) to as tall as seven feet (2 m), depending on the variety. For a vertical crop, look for vining types; grow them on netting that is supported by sturdy stakes, or up an existing woven wire fence, or allow them to scale bushy “pea twigs” placed thickly in the bed.

    Best bets: ‘Super Sugar Snap’, ‘Oregon Giant’ (snow), ‘Mr. Big’ (shell)

    Pumpkins

    Although I wouldn’t recommend growing giant pumpkins up a trellis, baby types do extremely well when allowed to scale a sturdy support like an A-frame trellis, woven wire fence or wire tower.

    Best bets: ‘Baby Boo’, ‘Jack-Be-Little’

    Summer squash

    Most types of summer squash produce compact, bushy plants that are best grown at ground level. Yet, the tender, trumpet-shaped fruit of the Italian heirloom ‘Trombetta’ are borne on long vines and make an eye-catching addition to an arbour, trellis or fence.

    Best bet: ‘Trombetta’

    Winter squash

    Choose a vining type of winter squash and grow them up a strong trellis or fence. A sling made from pantyhose or a mesh bag will cradle and protect developing fruit.

    Best bets: ‘Sweet Dumpling’, ‘Little Gem’

    Melons

    Like pumpkins and squash, melons need a well-built structure like an A-frame trellis or woven wire fence. Support the growing fruit with a sling made from netting, mesh bags or pantyhose. Look for short-season varieties of muskmelons, honeydew or baby-type watermelons for best results.

    Best bets: ‘Fastbreak’ muskmelon, ‘Sugar Baby’ watermelon

    Beyond vertical vines: living walls and fences

    Gardeners tending smaller plots are getting more inventive and putting all their vertical spaces, including fences and walls, to work. Take advantage of any bare upright surface by affixing pots, window boxes, shoe organizing bags, gutters or watering cans.

    Pallet gardening is another easy way to add extra planting space to an apartment balcony or other small area. First, staple a heavy-grade landscape fabric to the back, bottom and sides of the pallet. When you’re ready to plant, lay the pallet flat and fill the front and top openings with moist potting soil. Tuck in seedlings of compact veggies and herbs like salad greens, radishes, dwarf tomatoes, thyme, parsley and spicy globe basil. Keep the pallet flat for a week or two after planting to give the roots a chance to grow into the potting soil before propping it up against a wall or fence. When the soil is dry to the touch, water carefully from the top.

    Be sure your vertical surfaces offer adequate sunlight for edible crops — four to six hours for salad and root vegetables, and eight or more hours for fruiting plants like tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. You’ll also need to irrigate potted crops more often than in-ground vegetables, so keep a close eye on soil moisture levels.

    Read more about vegetables on Garden Making 

  • Beautiful pumpkins — warts and all

    Beautiful pumpkins — warts and all

    ‘Knucklehead’ pumpkins (Photo from Veseys.com)
    ‘Knucklehead’ pumpkins (Photo from Veseys.com)

    The arrival of the first seed catalogues has coincided with the end of pumpkin season. My friend Clare had a bumper crop of pumpkins (Curcurbita spp.) at her farm garden in Ontario, and her cold cellar is full of the smooth, round globes waiting for winter pies. She gifted me with a lovely specimen that sat on my porch Halloween night, and now is on the dining-room sideboard. Its smooth surface and orange glow tempt me to run my hand over it frequently, and reminds me that such perfection isn’t entirely natural.

    Plant hybridizers have worked for decades making traditionally attractive pumpkins such as ‘Connecticut Field’ (damseeds.ca) in sizes from mini to monstrous, with blemish-free skins, shell colours ranging from ghostly white to blazing red, and thick meaty interiors. But it’s news to me that breeders are now working to make ugly pumpkins with all manner of warts and bumps.

    The dramatically warty, pale beige French heirloom pumpkin ‘Brode Galeux d’Eysines’ (seedsavers.org) comes by its wart-covered exterior naturally. The prominent, peanut-shaped warts almost entirely cover the surface of this reportedly delicious pumpkin. The ‘Red Warty Thing’ pumpkin (gurneys.com) is vivid scarlet-orange with full wart covering, though the warty lumps are less raised and more under the skin (and that may be the effect of some breeding work).

    Tampering with pumpkin genetics has drawn on warty genes and produced hybrid strains with colours, shapes and surface textures that were previously bred out of cucurbits, but now considered desirable. The Knucklehead strain (veseys.com) is tall and dark orange, with a smooth surface interspersed with irregular dark green warts on a 12- to 16-pound (5.5- to 7-kg) squash. ‘Goosebumps II’ (stokeseeds.com) is globe-shaped, eight to 12 pounds (3.5 to 5.5 kg), with a bright orange shell and generous clusters of orange and green warts. (The large wart clusters might be hard to carve around, but ‘Goosebumps II’ would be quite a conversation piece on your verandah.)

    Plant breeding and marketing over the past century has encouraged the perception that all pumpkins are shades of orange. But heirloom species (and new hybrids) now more readily available show us that there is quite a lot of diversity in pumpkin colours. ‘Fairytale’ (territorialseed.com) is an open-pollinated, deeply lobed, pale oak to mahogany brown pumpkin squash with a squat shape and meaty interior. The heirloom Cinderella pumpkin, ‘Rouge Vif D’Etampes’ (damseeds.ca), is almost tomato red, while F1 hybrid ‘New Moon’ (stokeseeds.com) is eight to 12 pounds (3.5 to 5.5 kg) with smooth, rice-white skin and firmly attached dark green handles.

    And then, there is the deep category of pumpkin sizes. Suffice to say, there is a pumpkin to fit every nook and cranny of your garden, from ‘Dill’s Atlantic Giant’ to the compact F1 hybrid ‘Windsor’ pumpkin (both from halifaxseed.ca), small enough to grow in a patio container, and producing short vines with six-inch (15-cm) orange fruits.

    Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and warts are back on the pumpkins. I’m for anything that gives us more choice and greater selection.

    More that may be of interest:

    Pumpkins as groundcover

    Dreaming of a giant pumpkin

  • Pumpkins as groundcover

    Pumpkins as groundcover

    Last week a young hemlock had to be taken down at the back of my garden, a victim of high summer temperatures with insufficient moisture. Yes, I’m the guilty party, and very sorry for my neglect of this tree’s simple need for regular irrigation. I’ll be over-compensating all season, delivering fertilizer, water, staking and providing every form of assistance required in this garden!

    'Gladiator' pumpkins. (Photo courtesy of stokeseeds.com)
    ‘Gladiator’ pumpkins. (Photo courtesy of stokeseeds.com)

    With the tree gone, there’s a wide space of rough ground with many substantial weed colonies. I see weeks of digging ahead, trying to get this under control. What to do? I could attempt to smother the weeds with dark plastic, but that would be quite unsightly in such a large area. I could douse the plants with a vinegar-based herbicide, but it would take multiple applications over the summer, and the garden would smell like salad dressing.

    I decided to postpone the substantial weed removal work until autumn, and look for a temporary “green” solution for the summer. That’s when I thought of pumpkins. Nothing grows faster than pumpkins, which send their vines out along the ground and produce lots of wide green leaves. I can dig two or three holes, dump a bag of composted manure in each, and set out pumpkin plants. When the taller weeds poke their heads up, I’ll just remove the tops (to prevent seeding) and worry about their roots in autumn. I hope I get some pumpkins, too!

    I was startled to discover the size of fruits and cost of some hybrid pumpkin seeds. Looking at a catalogue (stokeseeds.com), I was interested in ‘Full Moon’, an open-pollinated pumpkin, producing startling white fruits, each weighing 60 to 88 pounds (27 to 40 kg). A packet contains five seeds, costing $10! (Because ‘Full Moon’ is open pollinated, saved seeds will come true and be identical to the parent.) Well, it’s too big, anyway. I’ve settled on ‘Gladiator’, a classic dark orange pumpkin with sturdy stems, weighing 20 to 30 pounds (9 to 14 kg). I’m betting that if I get any fruits, they won’t reach full size in only a half day of sun. But then, you never can tell when a pumpkin planted in a hill of manure might get just enough of a power boost and conquer the earth.

     

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