Homegrown Happy Valley

~Homegrown Happy Valley will be featuring guest bloggers during our Eat Local Challenge to allow others to share their experiences. This week Celeste Olmstead shares the secret to getting a big harvest out of a small space.  Celeste is a mom, former writer for Penn State, and supporter of all things local.

This year, my husband and I decided to forgo our 30-foot-by- 30-foot community garden plot in favor of two 4-foot-by-8-foot homemade raised cedar beds outside our kitchen window (and a more unruly squash and pumpkin patch at the top of the hill).  With a new baby, a new house, and limited time to plant, plan, and harvest, it just seemed like a good idea. The only problem, I didn’t want to scale back on the veggies and flowers that I love.  I had to come up with a plan to cram as much as possible into my smaller gardens.

So, while the ground in Happy Valley was frozen solid, I sent my husband outside to build two untreated cedar boxes. Meanwhile, I thumbed through seed catalogs to develop a list of interesting vegetable varieties. With limited space but ample access to our great farmers’ markets, I knew I could skip common vegetables like zucchini. Instead, I focused on colorful heirloom veggies and edible flowers. When I was done, my had-to-have list looked like this:

Tomatoes

• Sun Gold–hundreds of the sweetest orange cherry tomatoes will ripen early and last until late September
• Green Zebra–ripen to green and yellow stripes, beautiful in gazpacho and salads
• Brandywine–a classic: huge, pink slicing tomato
• Pineapple–my favorite: a huge yellow and red tomato

Peppers

• Healthy– the earliest ripening red pepper I could find, because I’m impatient and can’t wait until late August
• Poblano–mild, great in Mexican dishes
• Zavory–not too hot, great in salsa
  

Basil

• Lettuce leaf basil–the leaves on this plant get so big you can use them as wraps
• Purple basil–beautiful next to yellow flowers

Cucumbers

• Lemon–little round yellow treats that you can eat like an apple
• Baby Persian–great for pickles and salads

Other

• Rosa Bianca and Fingerling Eggplant–these small varieties will flourish even in our short growing season
• I chose Purple Dragon Carrots, purple bush beans, and yellow beets just because they look cool.

Raised cedar bed containing bamboo teepee (photo courtesy of Celeste Olmstead)

My next challenge was to figure out how to cram what seemed like way too much into my small space.  To start, I lashed 4 bamboo canes together to stake the tomatoes in the first box. Each of the 4 legs can hold one tomato plant, and with careful pruning and staking, the tomatoes will climb the bamboo stakes. I anchored my basil and heat-tolerant lettuce at the base of each tomato.  I planted two rows of carrots on either side and stuck a radish seed next to each carrot seed.  The early radishes should  loosen the soil for the carrots, which will mature later in the season. I put a pepper plant in each corner and lined the edges with nasturtiums and onions.

Second raised bed containing cucumbers, greens, beets and herbs (photo courtesy of Celeste Olmstead

I started the other box with a homemade leaning trellis for the cucumbers to climb. The design provided room to sow greens, beets, and herbs. When the August sun smolders, these plants will appreciate the shade from the cucumber leaves. I planted 2 rows of leeks at the base of the cukes and sowed the beans in the center. I cornered the box with the eggplants and made a border of signet marigolds and purple basil.

So far, so good. All the rain has made watering a non-issue and the raised beds have kept maintenance to a minimum–at least until the August heat and humidity kicks in and the garden becomes one giant project.  A good gazpacho will make it all worthwhile.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 9:09 am and is filed under Farm, Food, Guest Blogger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.