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Letter to the editor

Backyard garden can be horn of plenty

Want fun, more outdoor exercise - and lower grocery bills? Your landscape can become a cornucopia, overflowing with benefits.

By John A. Starnes Jr., Special to the Times
Published January 12, 2008

With gas prices and mortgage payments outpacing our paychecks, few things are more gratifying than being able to rely on the garden to keep food on the table.

A modest garden of vegetables and herbs, along with fruit trees and perennial tropical food crops, can ensure fresh homegrown produce all year.

The only vegetables I routinely buy are onions, potatoes and frozen green peas. There is a sublime joy in walking through my yard and gardens and harvesting their abundance for my next meal. Our balmy climate and some secrets taught me in the 1970s by wise, elderly Florida gardeners can turn any yard here into a constant cornucopia.

Invest in soil nutrients

First and foremost: "Feed the soil, not the plants." Our sandy soil needs nearly all plant nutrients and organic matter and often needs to have its acidity reduced. I feed my soil four times a year, in March, July, September and December, using a rotation of menhaden fish meal, fresh horse manure, dry dog food nuggets and composted mulch. Each spring I lightly sprinkle dolomite on my gardens so that my soil is just slightly acidic; that favors all my crops and roses. Every now and then I sprinkle some cheap clay cat litter, which helps hold moisture once it is turned under. Healthy, vital soil produces well-nourished plants that resist bugs and disease.

Too busy to go organic? Keep your soil well mulched. I use coastal hay from a feed store or chipped mulch from tree trimmers and feed it quarterly, along with a balanced, low-chlorine chemical fertilizer such as Sunniland Palm 8-6-6. This formula is perfect for a wide range of landscape plants and all vegetable, herb and fruit crops. It contains major nutrients and trace elements. A light quarterly sprinkling of it can give the discouraged vegetable gardener a much-needed jolt of success.

Seasonal crop rotation

The other big secret to growing many of your meals is: "Right crop for right time of year." Many familiar vegetables require a cool winter and fail in spring and summer, so they are best planted from late October through February. Not only are they not harmed by frosts, they often taste better after one.

There is an easy way to improve your existing landscape and grow plenty of fresh, pesticide-free produce with little time and effort.

Scan your landscape beds for those empty spots where you can tuck in vegetable plants that add color and interest. Let's say one of your beds has either no border plants or skimpy ones. Just turn the soil with a shovel and scatter the seeds of easy-to-grow, frost-tolerant, cool weather crops like turnip, romaine lettuce, mustard, bok choy, arugula, kale, collards, broccoli or radishes. Water the seeds in to barely cover them with soil, then hand-water daily for two weeks for best germination. Afterward a deep watering every five days or so keeps them thriving. Within weeks you will have a lush green border that provides a steady stream of fresh greens for three or four months.

Has your mailbox seen better days? Buy a packet of scarlet runner beans and plant six of them at the base. The graceful green vines will soon swirl around the post and, as they climb, will begin to bear cheery red flowers that hummingbirds love. These soon transform into stringless bean pods that are tasty and tender, raw or cooked.

The tender young leaves can be snipped into stir fries, soups and salads for color and nutrition and mild flavor. The huge red and black seeds are perfect for a child's first attempt at gardening.

It's even easier to buy a four-pack each of broccoli and tomato seedlings and tuck them into empty spots for a fast solution to bare gaps. Imagine adding color and lush greenery to your landscape as you and your family savor fresh, crisp broccoli and tangy Roma tomatoes. A thriving tomato plant amid conventional landscape plants is a real conversation piece. And when summer's heat is about to return each April, begin phasing in new crops for that season.

A multipurpose garden

Perennial plants that produce food also produce security and self-sufficiency. Why grow a hedge of all-too-common ligustrum and photinia bushes when we can have lovely flowering, fruiting shrubs like Surinam cherry, Barbados cherry, calamondin, key lime, guava, or star fruit? In my own yard I plant only trees that bear fruit, mainly various own-root citrus trees and a lychee tree and two Moringa trees.

Our climate gives us the luxury of growing some perennial food plants, which bear year after year. They are easy to start fresh from cuttings stuck in the ground: for example, cassava, which is the source of the savory yuca served in Cuban restaurants. The 8-foot plant adds tropical lushness to any landscape, and bears nutritious leaves savored as a chopped, cooked "green" in many countries. Every 18 months or so it yields a bumper crop of tasty roots, wildly expensive in produce markets.

Chaya is related to cassava and is often called tree spinach because of its nutritious, tasty cooked leaves. They are borne on an 8-foot plant whose lovely white flowers are magnets to butterflies. Many butterfly gardeners grow it without knowing it is used as a perennial vegetable in South America and Asia.

Sweet potatoes readily make a permanent patch for themselves. All summer, every summer, they bear vast quantities of leaves tastier and more nutritious than spinach. The vines make a lovely groundcover and can be a landscape feature instead of being relegated to the vegetable garden.

If you enjoy fresh herbs, rosemary, lemongrass, East Indian basil, papalo, ginger and peppermint add visual appeal as well as free food for cooks on a budget.

By turning our sand into soil, by working with the hot and cool halves of the year instead of fighting them, and by growing a mix of perennial fruit and food plants, we can enjoy a year-round cornucopia that brings security into our fast-paced, budget-driven lives. There is a gratitude that comes from knowing that the yard we care for can return the favor.

John A. Starnes Jr., born in Key West, is an avid organic gardener and rosarian who studies, collects, cultivates and hybridizes roses for Florida. He can be reached at johnastarnes@msn.com.

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Some like it hot . . .

Many tropical and subtropical plants struggle during winter, but glory in the half of each year that is hot and muggy. I plant mine beginning in March each year to ensure steady harvests all summer into early fall.

Black-eyed peas
Okra
Sweet potatoes
Surinam spinach yalinum
Taro
True yams (Dioscorea species)
Moringa tree
Adzuki beans
Hyacinth beans
Luffa
Chinese yard-long beans
Hot peppers
Field acre peas
Lemongrass
Amaranth
Chayote
Urad beans (from Indian grocers)
Eggplant
Calabaza pumpkins
Velvet beans (Mucuna pruriens)
African jack beans (Canavalia ensiformis)
Cassava ("yuca" of Cuban cuisine)
Sunflowers
Sugar cane
Thai basil
Rosemary
Mexican oregano (Lippia graveolens)

. . . some like it cold

Here are some reliable crops for the cool half of the year. Most are in the cabbage/mustard family.

Broccoli
Bok choy
Brussels sprouts
Cabbage
Turnips
Cauliflower
Mustard greens
Swiss chard
Snow peas and sugar snap peas
Carrots
Kohlrabi
Lettuce
Arugula
Daikon radish
Nasturtium
Kale
Beets
Rapini
Potatoes
Roma and cherry tomatoes

John A. Starnes Jr.

[Last modified January 10, 2008, 18:40:42]