Pocket Vegetable Garden (Gardening in a Small Space)

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Since my garden is in New Jersey, any comments that I make about the following vegetables refers to a planting zone similar to mine.

Looseleaf Lettuce: I always plant looseleaf lettuce because it is ready to eat so quickly. My favorite is Green Ice. I feel that Green Ice tastes the best and is the slowest to bolt of any that I've tried. I'm usually able to get some salads till the end of July.

String Beans: I grow Blue Lake because I happen to like their flavor the best. To save space and get the highest yields, I have put 6 foot stakes right next to the waist-high fence that separates my garden from the rest of the yard and ran a water-resistant string all along the stakes. First the beans grow up the fence, then I gently guide them up the stakes, and finally I start wrapping them around the string. This way I can have high yielding pole beans and not take away any space from my actual garden.

Summer Squash: I really haven't settled yet on a favorite zucchini. I have used and liked both Burpee Hybrid Zucchini and Butterstick Hybrid. What I'm really looking for, however, is a very compact plant. I received Roly Poly Zucchini as a free sample with my seed order and that's what I'm going to try this year. Tip: Squash bugs often burrough into the stem and destroy the plant . Instead of slitting the stem and getting it out as is often recommended, I use a crochet hook through the soft spot in the stem to get them out. This causes less damage to the plant.

I tried a new kind of vegetable spagetti squash called Hasta La Pasta last year which is ready in 73 days rather than the usual 100 days and my family liked it so much, I'm going to give it extra room this year. To prepare it, first steam it until soft, cut it in half, and then take a fork and shred it (it will come apart in strands looking somewhat like spagetti.) At this point I put it in a baking pan, add a little spagetti sauce and mozzerella cheese and bake it until the cheese is melted. Because the squash is in strands, it seems to absorb more of the flavor of whatever sauce you decide to put on it.

Eggplants: I have always liked the Japanese variety of eggplants the best and the variety that I have been growing is called Millionaire Hybrid. Last year I tried something called Purple Blush Hybrid which yields an eggplant about the size of a softball tinted lavender. This was supposed to be decorative and taste good but I still prefer the flavor of the Japanese eggplants. By the way, my garden is in the back yard and most of the sun is in my front yard, I always grow my eggplants (which need a lot of sun) in front between the decorative bushes. I'm not sure if my neighbors think that this is just another flowering plant, but I did have the mailman ask me once if I knew that there were eggplants growing in my front yard. By the way, I read that Eddie Alberts (the actor in Green Acres) made his entire front yard into a vegetable garden.

Tomatoes: The best-tasting tomato that I've ever grown is Burpee's Supersteak Hybrid which is a beefsteak-type tomato. However, although I do grow a couple of rows of them, I don't have the patience to wait until mid- to late-August for my first tomato. Therefore, I also grow Burpee's Early Pick which also tastes good and is ready in 62 days.

Peppers:I've always preferred frying peppers over bell peppers and my favorite is Gypsy Hybrid. However, for some reason, many years I've found it difficult to grow as many Gypsy pepper plants from seed as I need and I've always supplemented then with Cubanelle peppers that I've bought as plants from the nursery.

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Because I don't have very much space, I try to use every inch. Besides the main part of my garden which is 5 feet wide by about 45 feet long, I use the fence between my garden and the yard to grow pole beans, and the space between the bushes in my front yard to grow eggplants.

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Lettuce Started in a Container
I've never liked planting those tiny lettuce seeds. This year, instead of planting the lettuce seeds directly in the ground, I used a 9" x 13" plastic container with holes punched in the bottom. I filled this with potting soil and put a shallow layer of vermiculate on top. I evenly sprinkled the lettuce seeds on this and put a little move vermiculite on top of the seeds, pressing everything lightly so that the seeds had good contact. I let this container grow outdoors until the seedlings were easy to handle. Then I transplanted them into the garden at the correct spots, 3 per spot (about half the seedlings were left over). When a few of them died, I replanted these spots with the seedlings that I had left over in the container. Two weeks later, it took only a few minutes to thin out the lettuce to only one per spot and now the entire patch is growing great without a lot of effort on my part.

Separating Seedlings
I usually start my seedlings growing about 5 in a container which I later transplant so that they each have their own container. I found that by gently soaking the entire root ball in a basin of water and swishing them around gently, I can separate the plants with practically no apparent root damage. If the root systems of the plants is really overgrown and tangled together, I take a hose with a sprayer attachment on it and gently spray the soil off the root system. This usually works and the roots separate pretty well. I always water the newly-transplanted seedlings with Miracle Gro so that they'll get off to a good start even if a do happen to break off a few root hairs.

Early Start for Cucumber and Squash
Instead of planting cucumber, zucchini and other types of squash directly into the ground (especially if the ground might still be too cold but the air is warm enough), I start these seeds by wetting a paper towel and rolling the seeds into it. I then place the paper towel with the seeds into a plastic sandwich bag which I have labeled with the name of the seed. I check the seeds every day because they usually germinate within a few days. I then plant the germinated seeds in disposable plastic cups where they can grow for a little while until the soil warms up or I find the time to plant them.

This is the first year that I have had a problem with rabbits. I think that the reason that I have rabbits now is new construction has taken the place of the woods that were just down the street from me.

Whatever the reason, although my string bean seeds germinated just fine, when I went to look at them a few days later, the growing tip of every bean plant had been chewed off. I was suspicious of the cute brown bunny I had seen around my house.

After doing some research I found that others had tried spreading moth balls between vegetable rows. I decided to modify this idea because I didn't like the possibility of loose moth balls being eaten by animals or that when it rained the moth balls would dissolve into the soil (with who knew what effect). The following is the method I finally decided to use and so far it seems to be working.


Materials That I Used
You will need 35mm film can, a utility knife, string and a box of moth balls.

Method

Cut a hole in both the bottom and cover of the film can with the utility knife. Each of the holes should be about one third the surface area.
Put the string through the bottom of the film can, fill the film can with about 3 to 4 moth balls, then run the string through the cover of the film can.
Snap the cover back onto the film can,
Tie the film can horizontally to the fence (or thumb tack it to a stake) low to the ground (about bunny-nose height). I put them about 2 feet apart.
     

The advantages of putting the moth balls in the film can and hanging it horizontally is that the film can keeps the moth balls dry when it rains so they won't dissolve. Also, animals won't accidentally eat them. Another advantage is that because there are so few moth balls in each film can and they are so close to the ground, I can't small the moth balls.

As an extra precaution, I also ripped off strips of aluminimum foil and attached these to the fence about every 2 feet apart also.

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