Urban Gardening

Though they got off to a slow start this season, these Sugar Snap peas finally reached maturity.

After producing baskets of delicious edible pods, it is time to say goodbye and make way for pole garden beans.This is part of the succession planting practice here at the Veggie-Bed.

Because bush beans tend to produce their beans all at once, this harvest will only last about 2 weeks.

At that time, the plants are pulled up, the ground is cultivated, and more bush beans are sowed directly into the soil. The beans should be mature in 55 days from the time the seedlings sprout. A second row of beans was sown two weeks after the sowing of these plants. This provides a harvest while the beans are growing (succession planting).

In this 10ft by 10ft plot at the Veggie-Bed is the vegetable fruit crop section. Eggplants, bell peppers, tomatoes, and squash are growing here and are considered fruits.

Botanically speaking, a fruit is a seed-bearing structure that develops from the ovary of a flowering plant, whereas vegetables are all other plant parts, such as roots, leaves, and stems.

The turnips have performed well this season. Some of the leaves are cut off, leaving the root in the ground to continue to grow. The greens are thoroughly washed, then steamed.

Served this morning for breakfast was one of the Veggie-Bed’s favorites, grits topped with turnip greens and a cage-free fried egg.

The summer squashes are starting to flower at the Veggie-Bed. Squash does well here; however, this season because of the cooler temperatures, they are off to a slow start.

Last season at this time the plants were overflowing with fruit.

The last of the spring leaf vegetables. After pulling these plants up the soil is kept cultivated; in late summer, spinach seeds are sown for an early fall harvest.

A welcome visitor to the Veggie-Bed, this little honeybee has the honorable distinction of being the world’s most important pollinator of food crops.

Unfortunately, because of industrial agriculture, parasites/pathogens, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity global bee populations are declining.