Carolinas fruit & vegetable gardening : how to plant, grow, and harvest the best edibles PDF
Preview Carolinas fruit & vegetable gardening : how to plant, grow, and harvest the best edibles
CAROLINAS FRUIT & VEGETABLE GARDENING How to Plant, Grow, and Harvest the Best Edibles CAROLINAS FRUIT & VEGETABLE GARDENING How to Plant, Grow, and Harvest the Best Edibles KATIE ELZER-PETERS MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA contents dedication 6 acknowledgements 7 preface 8 PART I growing edibles in the carolinas 10 CHAPTER 1 the carolinas region 14 CHAPTER 2 seasonal gardening 18 CHAPTER 3 planning your garden 24 CHAPTER 4 building great soil 30 CHAPTER 5 planting your garden 38 CHAPTER 6 growing your garden 48 PART II fruit & vegetable Profiles 68 CHAPTER 7 fruit & nut Gardening 72 Growing Citrus in the Carolinas 104 Fruit Shrubs & Brambles 108 Vining & Garden Fruits 120 CHAPTER 8 Vegetable & herb gardening 130 Cool-Season Gardening Tips & Tricks 133 Cool-Season Vegetables 136 Cool-Season Herbs 176 Warm-Season Gardening Tips & Tricks 186 Warm-Season Vegetables 190 Warm-Season Herbs 218 resources 240 glossary 242 index 249 meet katie elzer-peters 256 dedication For Margaret Shelton, the greenest thumb in North Carolina. 6 acknowledgments I always liked to write, but without the patient instruction of Mrs. Wilhoite, Mrs. Quandt, Mrs. Libby, Dr. Swasey, Dr. Garrison, and a graduate student teacher at Purdue whose name I’ve long forgotten, but whose influence was enormous, I would not be the same person today, and would not have the privilege to do what I do. Billie Brownell has continued to nurture my writing over the past few years, and I appreciate all of the insights and improvements she has helped me make. Billie, I hear your voice in my ear when I write—and that’s a good thing. My thanks go to Roger Waynick, original Publisher of Cool Springs Press, and to Mark Johanson, my Acquiring Editor for this project, each for taking a chance on me. Once you start working on a book, there are people along the way that take the word doc and make it into a beautiful book. For that I have to thank the copy editors and designers and hort editors and indexers for their work. Without them, it’s all just words on the computer that might or might not make sense, and are certainly not very interesting to look at. Every writer needs a cheerleader, and Tracy Stanley at Cool Springs has been that and more. She is the most patient, encouraging, and helpful editor one could ask for. This has been much easier with you to help me. Thank you so much, Tracy! The Owner and Chef of Epic Food Co., James Bain, along with his staff, have been so friendly and nice, allowing me to camp out, drink their tea, eat their chocolate chip cookies, steal their WiFi, and devour their glorious vegetable creations while working on this book. Thank you. And I couldn’t do anything without the love and support of my parents, who never said no when I wanted them to buy me a book and my husband— chief garden-waterer and dog wrangler in the house. Joe, you have the patience of a saint, and I’m glad you’re mine. 7 preface I have been gardening since I could walk, and I have enjoyed, throughout my professional career, teaching others how to garden. When faced with the task of making vegetable gardening an easily digestible (pun intended) topic for new gardeners, I tried to come up with a method of organization that differed from the usual A–Z list of plants. Organization by Function, Not Name Gardens don’t grow well when alphabetized. I know this because I’ve tried to plant alphabet vegetable gardens for kids. The cucumbers end up growing all over the beets, and the grapes shade the eggplants. It’s messy. So why should your gardening book be organized that way? Sure, it’s easy to look things up alphabetically, but what if the book, through the way it is organized, could help you plan your garden? Now we’re talking! (There’s always the index and the alpha-order plant list to help you look up the location of your favorite veggie’s information.) In the Carolinas, you can garden year-round. Greens and root crops flourish in the winter, and tropical vegetables such as tomatoes and peppers thrive during the hot summer. This book has sections covering cool-season gardening and warm-season gardening. Your fruit or vegetable garden doesn’t need to be this big in order for you to enjoy fresh produce! 8 A few holes in the leaves of this eggplant plant won’t affect the fruit. It isn’t just weather you have to be concerned about, though. The plant families (stone fruits, cabbage relatives) and their growth habits (tree, shrub, vine) also influence where you plant them and how you grow them. The fruits section is organized by growth habit to make it easy for you to figure out where to plant the plants, so that they produce well for you without taking over your entire garden. Hopefully this admittedly unusual style will help when you’re ready to put shovel to soil. Just open to the section you want to tackle and go! Never Too Ugly to Eat If there’s one piece of advice I could give to any new gardener—the one thing you can’t ignore—it is this: your garden doesn’t have to be gorgeous to produce well. Your tomato plant could look like it is on its last legs, but if it is still flowering and pumping out tomatoes, don’t sweat it. The eggplant leaves might have spots. The eggplants will probably be fine. Just because you see a few holes here and there doesn’t mean you need to bring out the big guns and spray everything. If you see aphids on the plants, get out the hose and spray them. If that doesn’t work, try insecticidal soap. (Read on to learn how to deal with aphids and other pests.) If you see a giant tomato hornworm, pluck it and squash it. But don’t feel discouraged if your garden doesn’t look like a magazine cover. Is what you’re growing tasty? Good. That’s what you’re going for. Now get out there and get your hands dirty! Get the book dirty, too! That’s what it’s for. —Katie 9 PART I growing edibles in the carolinas I firmly believe that if you understand how plants grow, you’ll take better care of them and have better results. It isn’t enough to know just the how-to. To be successful at gardening, you also need to know the why-do. With a bit of information, gardening suddenly goes from mysterious to predictable. You’ll learn that if you prune a plant this way it will grow that way. Part 1 of this book gives you everything you need to know to grow the best edibles in your home garden. Carrots are easy to grow in the Carolinas. 10
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