Vegetable Gardening (82 page)
Even though most blackberry and raspberry varieties produce only one crop a year like strawberries, everbearing varieties produce a summer and fall crop of delicious fruits. Choose varieties that are adapted to your area and that produce the colored berries you want. Raspberries come in varieties that produce red-, yellow-, black-, and purple-colored fruits. Blackberries come in black-colored fruit only, but you also can find varieties without thorns.
Unusual fruits
The berries in the previous sections are the most popular fruits grown in edible landscapes, but you also can get a little wild and try other unusual fruits, too. You can experiment with a wealth of exotic fruits from around the world that may grow well in your edible landscape. Expand your taste horizons and try some exotic-flavored fruits. At the very least, they'll be a conversation piece! Here are a few examples:
Gooseberries:
These woody shrubs grow 2- to 4-feet tall and wide. They're widely adapted and produce green or red, round juicy fruits that are great eaten fresh or made into pies and preserves.
Currants:
These bushes, which are a size similar to gooseberry bushes, produce small red, white, or black berries depending on the variety. The fruits are juicy and tart, so they're primarily used for preserves, pies, and juices. In fact, currant juice is touted as an elixir that's high in health-promoting antioxidants. (Chapter 2 has more on the health benefits of fruits and vegetables.) Like blueberries, these shrubs bear fruit the second year after planting.
Dwarf fruit trees:
While berry crops are the easiest to grow, don't shy away from trying a dwarf apple or cherry tree, too. Tree fruits definitely require more study, but many new varieties are disease resistant and dwarf, making them perfect additions to an edible landscape. Fruit trees generally produce fruit a few years after planting, depending on the type you're growing.
Some other unusual fruits to try depending on your sense of adventure and climate are figs, citrus, cranberry, elderberry, lingonberry, kiwi, and banana. For more information on where to find some unusual fruits for your landscape, flip to the appendix.
Spicing Up Your Landscape with Herbs
How could you plant a vegetable garden without herbs? My mamma's pasta sauce wouldn't taste half as good without fresh basil, oregano, and thyme from the garden; my burritos wouldn't pop with flavor without fresh cilantro. Herbs are easy to grow and take up little space, and many have attractive foliage and flowers — the perfect edible landscape plant. Even if you don't use all the herbs fresh, you can add them to vinegar and oils, or dry them for future use (see the nearby sidebar for details).
I like to plant herbs close to the house for easy access when I'm cooking. The best place for herbs that you often need for cooking is in a container on a deck or patio. Most herbs are compact enough to grow well in containers, yet still give you the yields for fresh eating.
Many herbs produce attractive flowers that bees and other pollinating insects love. A healthy garden should be a-buzz with bee activity, and herbs help keep our insect friends happy. I mix herbs in the vegetable garden, around flowers, and in containers. Creeping herbs, like thyme and oregano, grow great in windowboxes and containers. Taller herbs, like rosemary and basil, make beautiful additions to a flower garden.
While herbs vary in their flavors, smells, and growth habits, most require the same growing conditions: a minimum of 6 hours of sunlight per day, excellent soil drainage, and moderately rich, loose soil. If you don't have fertile soil, a simple addition of compost in spring is probably enough in most cases. Too much fertilizer makes for a bushy plant that doesn't produce the proper amount of essential oils and flavor. And that's what you want from your herbs — great flavor.
Harvesting and drying herbs
Most plants benefit from being cut back, so I suggest that you harvest herbs throughout the growing season. The best time to harvest herb leaves is just as the plants begin to set flower buds — the time when they have their maximum flavor and fragrance.
Cut herbs in the morning when the dew has dried but before the sun is very bright, because many herb oils in the leaves
volatilize
(evaporate) into the air in the heat of the day. After cutting them, wash the herbs, pat them dry, and hang or lay them in a warm, well-ventilated place that'sout of direct sunlight until they're dried (about 1 week). Label and store the herbs in sealed glass or plastic containers out of direct sunlight.
To freeze herbs, wash and pat them dry, and then chop them by hand or in a food processor. Place the chopped herbs in labeled plastic containers and then freeze them. A quick and easy way to freeze herbs is to add a bit of water (enough to make the mixture soupy) to the herbs in the food processor and then pour the mixture into ice cube trays and freeze. When you need herbs for stew, soups, or sauces, just pop in an herb cube.
The following sections take an alphabetical look at my favorite herbs.
Basil
My mother would kick me out of the family if I didn't talk about one of the classic Italian herbs: basil (
Ocimum basilicum
and other species). She's 85 years old and doesn't vegetable garden any longer, except for the pot of basil on the back deck. She and I can't live without it!
While the ‘Genovese' or Italian basil is essential for tomato sauces and pesto, you also can choose from varieties with different tastes for Greek, Thai, Indian, and Chinese cooking (among other cuisines). You can grow basil with flavors such as licorice, lemon, lime, and cinnamon. Plus, these annual plants grow 6 to 18 inches tall depending on the variety, making them perfect container plants. Some varieties have gorgeous all-purple leaves or purple and green leaves with ruffles, making this an attractive plant in the garden.
Even though you can't plant basil until after the last frost date (check the appendix for the last date in your area), it produces abundantly in the heat of the summer. Start basil seeds indoors about 6 weeks before the last frost date or sow the seeds directly in your garden (1/4-inch deep) after the last frost date when the soil is at least 60 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition to seeds, most nurseries also carry basil transplants. Set transplants or thin seedlings to stand at least 10 to 12 inches apart; more room (16 to 24 inches) is even better because it encourages low, bushy plants to develop. Plant in full sun.
After the plants have grown for 6 weeks, pinch the center stalks of the basil to force side growth and prevent early flowering — flowers take energy away from the leaves that you eat. If flower stalks do develop, cut or pinch them off early. Mulch the soil and maintain consistent moisture levels. Basil is generally pest-free.
Basil makes an excellent container plant. Some tall varieties, such as ‘Siam Queen' Thai basil, have attractive purple coloring on the leaves and stems. ‘Spicy Globe' basil forms a small, compact, 8- to 12-inch-tall and round plant that fits easily in a small container.