Vegetables and Herb Gardens
Way back in another life I worked as a flight attendant for Braniff International, after I got laid off I applied for another airline Flying Tigers out of San Antonio. This division refurbished airplanes that were no longer certifiable by the FAA for commercial transport. At the time of my visit to their hangers in San Antonio they were finishing the outlandish touches on a Boeing 707.
I was amazed at the beauty of this aircraft. The bathrooms had gold faucets the hand rails were gold too, instead of plastic or a carpet type covering for the walls there was a beautiful silk covering all the walls. Leather furniture and oak tables in the dining area as well as in the two staterooms. The kitchen had conventional ovens. The person conducting the interview asked if I could cook. I decided immediately that I would go to Paris and enroll in Le Cordon Bleu. Less then one month later I was at the doorsteps of this prestigious culinary school.
Less then 10 minutes later I was turned away. The classes were booked solid six months in advance.
Well, I did stay in Paris for a month; I enrolled in an intensive French language school. I had studied French for three years and thought that this would be a good time to learn to speak like a native.
After I returned form Paris I found a lady in north Dallas who was a certified Cordon Bleu instructor. Still wanting the job with Flying Tigers, I signed up for her classes. After two months of learning to cook meals good enough to entice my future wife to seconds and thirds I returned to San Antonio.
I offered to prepare a meal of their choice. But was immediately turned down since they had hired all the flight attendants they needed, all female by the way. I felt cheated at first since they had suggested that they wanted someone with cooking skills never mentioning female attributes.
Well my cooking skills were not wasted over the past few months I have been preparing most of my own meals. During this process I have learned that I can still cook and have come up with some pretty darn good meals.
All my meals are vegetable based. I love using all kinds of leafy vegetables spinach being my favorite. I always cook by supplementing my vegetables with a source of protein. Shredded chicken or beef, beans or nuts and eggs. Something about a hard-boiled egg fresh out of the boiling water on a cool plate of spinach or mixed greens bathed in spicy oil and vinegar that makes my mouth water.
While I was growing up in Peru I would regularly go to the open food market with my mother. I was always grossed out when we ordered a chicken whose neck would be broken before our eyes. When we went to the butcher he would cut pieces of meat so fresh that blood would drip on the counter making me feel sick to my stomach. The fishmongers were not so bad, since the fish were mostly buried under a thick covering of ice and quickly wrapped in paper. Sometimes the fishmonger would cut a hole in the paper so that the fish “could see who was going to eat it.”
But when we got to the area of the market where the vegetables were sold my mood would change. The first thing that we would see was the potatoes, all sizes and hundreds of colors, literally! Every shade of reds, blues, oranges, browns as if you were looking at a color chart at the paint store.
And the herbs! As soon as you got into the row of herb vendors the fragrances would overpower you. You wanted to touch each bunch so that you could release the fragrances and no matter how many bunches you touched the new fragrance took over the last. Within minutes my mouth would always water, my hunger would grow. My mother would always buy some bananas for me eat and wane my appetite.
Early this year I went to Philadelphia and somehow found myself inside The Reading Terminal Market. As soon as I entered my memory returned to the nasty old market in Lima. I do not know why? It must have been the fragrances, especially when I wandered into the herb section. The fragrances took over my other senses. I loved this place and want something like that here in North Texas.
Now that I am cooking more, I love going to the Farmers Market even though there are not as many vendors as in the past and finding organic growers is like throwing dice. But the open-air effect always reminds me of the time spent in the Peruvian markets.
Central Market, Whole Foods and now Tom Thumb are stores that I frequent for my grocery needs. Central Market always gets most of my money just because they will let you taste before you buy. And if I taste something good I will add it to my grocery list.
Sally Sutton, our in store landscape designer, is a vegetarian who brings wonderful salads to work every day. Some days I can be at the opposite end of our store and can smell the wonderful fragrances wafting from her Tupperware luring me over to see what she made her salad with. Inevitably we start to talk about locations from where she gathered her ingredients.
Sally is a true gardener, she knows a lot about all kinds of plants including vegetables and herbs. Sally has worked on her garden soil for years now and continues to improve the soil with amendments such as humates, lava sand mycorizal fungi and lots and lots of compost. When it comes to compost Sally uses materials that came from her garden as well as supplements of cotton bur compost. After every season she cleans her garden removing debris to her compost pile and then adding her compost. I do not know if Sally turns her vegetable garden or believes in the no till method where she lets her compost leach in to the soil. Leaching is the way that the soils of forest and prairies get watered. By using the no till method and mounding compost and other organic matter the obvious results are that you discourage weeds, reduce the need for watering and you save time and back pain by not turning the soil.
Another less obvious benefit is that you do not expose beneficial microbes and bacteria to air and sunlight therefore keeping the underlying soil alive and healthy.
Sally and her husband eat more varieties of herbs and vegetables than her garden can produce causing her to forage at local supermarkets. But!… she does prefer to pick her own and support the local growers. Sally told me about several websites that she found where you are able to purchase organic vegetables and herbs, eggs from free-range chickens and beef from prairie fed cattle.
www.localharvest.org
www.eatwild.com
www.pickyourown.org
Sally knows that when plants are producing fruit they are stressed and as any female, must receive more nutrients during this period; so as plants grow and start to bud and produce flowers in Sally’s garden, she side dresses monthly with Green Sense Vegetable & Flower Food and regularly applies liquid sprays such as fish emulsion, kelp and molasses by using Green Sense Foliar Juice.
Since Sally works on her garden at least twice a week she is able to spot changes in plants leaf color. At that point she will inspect the plant to determine if a disease or an insect is attacking her plants. Once she has determined the cause she will try to use the most effective least toxic tool to eradicate the problem.
Insect and disease control is most effective when started early. By inspecting the plants each time you work in the garden you can win the battle before it gets out of hand. Sometimes it is more effective to toss one infected plant out than to allow the disease or insect to take over those around it.
In the Dallas Morning News comic section Sunday March 29th, Dennis The Menace and his mother are working in their garden
Dennis asks his mother: How come you like gardening so much?
Mrs. Mitchell: Lots of reasons: fresh air, plenty of exercise, spending time in the sun, feeling of accomplishment, and having lots of fresh vegetables.
Dennis: You are leaving out the best part.
Mrs. Mitchell: What?
Dennis: Playing with all this great dirt!
For Dennis the great dirt would be fun, the cool feeling, the fragrant smell. But, for his mom and most parents the best part would be teaching their children the wonders of a plant, how the simple seed germinates and grows to produce tasty, colorful plants.
Roses
Just like vegetables, roses need regular feeding too. I just had a customer who said that he has been reading about roses and started his rose bed last year.
When I asked him how often he fed his roses he said that he had not yet fed the roses.
“What book are you reading?” I asked.
“Some book I got in Tyler.”
“Are you skipping pages, like the part where they tell you to feed the plants monthly?”
I tried to explain how each rose takes a lot of energy from the plant and needed constant feeding. I hope he understood.
Roses like acidic soils. At customer’s homes where we maintain their lawns and flowerbeds we amend the soil regularly with cotton bur compost. Cotton bur compost has large particles that help keep the soil from compacting and help acidify the soil. We also try adding sul-po-mag at a rate of five pounds per thousand square feet.
Sulphur: promotes strong root development. Sulfur deficient soils produce rose leaves with both yellowish leaves and veins. Some people see that as an iron deficiency and mistakenly only add iron. I only add iron to my soils if the application of sul-po-mag does not correct the yellowing leaves.
Potash: improves the quality and the color of flowers.
Magnesium: promotes chlorophyll formation that allows photosynthesis to occur and produce dark green foliage. It also promotes healthy, disease-resistant plants.
Tricograma wasps: There are many entimologists who think that we are going to be attacked by webworms again this year. Tricograma wasps can help control the caterpillars once they have climbed into the trees or shrubs that they feast on.
Before this happens you can apply dormant oils to the plants as well as to the soil below. Saturate the area with Organocide which is a product made from sesame oil to help control the caterpillars as they come out of the soil.
Beneficial nematodes: This is a good time to apply these predator worms to help control fire ants, grasshoppers, crickets and hundreds of other ground dwelling pests.
Spinosad for Fire Ants: Some people recommend molasses for fire ant control. I do not. Since I found out about Green Light’s Fire Ant Control, I have been pleased with the results. It is cheaper then molasses, easier to apply and goes a lot further. One container cost around $13.00 and covers up to 10,000 square feet.
For larger areas I still recommend Ascend. Ascend contains abermactyn with is a growth regulator. A 2.5 lb container cost around $40.00 and can treat up to two acres.