Urban Gardening

Root vegetables are the underground plant parts that we eat. This season a variety of root vegetables were grown at the ‘Veggie-Bed.’

Next season we will plant legumes where the root vegetables grew as part of our crop rotation cycle.

The legumes replace nitrogen in the soil used by root vegetables.

Writer: Tom Myrick

Belonging to the Capsicum annuum species, the banana pepper produced a high yielding ‘fruit vegetable‘ this growing season at the Veggie-Bed located in the Southeastern United States.

This bowl of banana peppers (also known as yellow wax peppers or banana chilis) is the last of the harvest. They are medium-sized chili peppers that have a mild, tangy taste. While typically bright yellow, it is possible for them to change to green, red, or orange as they ripen.

Different varieties of Capsicum annuum do well at the Veggie-Bed. One such variety is the cow-horn pepper.

Both banana peppers and cow-horn peppers are a hot-weather crop. Requiring full sun and a well-drained, nutrient-rich soil they flourish during the growing season.

Writer: Tom Myrick

The Veggie-Bed’s 2019 Growing Season Overview

At the Veggie-Bed this 2019 growing season, we decided to group vegetables that have similar nutritional requirements in the same garden plots. The groups were designated to the following categories:

• Leaf Crops (utilizes nitrogen in the soil)
• Legume Crops (replenishes nitrogen in the soil)
• Root Crops (utilizes potassium in the soil)
• Fruit-vegetable Crops (utilizes phosphorus in the soil)

In the new raised rows, a mixture of manure and compost for increasing the nitrogen level, along with potash (potassium) and colloidal phosphate (phosphorus) was worked into the ground. Now since the growing season is over, pine needles are applied between the raised rows to control winter weeds. Organic compost will be worked into the raised rows throughout the winter.

At the beginning of the next growing season in 2020, we will test the soil and amend it as needed. The vegetable groups will rotate in the following order:

Leaf Crops → Legume Crops → Root Crops → Fruit-vegetables Crops → Leaf Crops

This creates a four-year crop rotation cycle that will help prevent the spread of plant diseases and reduce insect infestations.

Writer: Tom Myrick

Because of the excessive heat and lack of rain this summer, we are prepping the Veggie-Bed for next season. In this section, legumes and leafy vegetables were grown. Pine needles are applied between the rows, and composted horse manure is applied to the rows of soil. Next spring in this section, fruit-producing vegetables, and root vegetables will be grown. This is part of the Veggie-Bed’s crop rotation system.

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.