Master gardener Paul James, host of HGTVs
Gardening by the Yard, visits his vegetable garden and discusses the weather, cool-season crops, transplants, summer crops and other gardening topics.
Despite wild swings in weather, the garden looks good. Many of the cool-season crops such as chives, garlic, cabbages, potatoes and greens are ready to harvest. James hasn't had to spray or dust for bugs, and the only fertilizer he used is compost that he applied a couple of weeks before planting time.
Now is the time to plant summer crops such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, beans, squash and cucumbers. Although James likes eating summer crops, he's not fond of growing them. Unlike spring crops, summer crops take up a lot of room, and they tend to get ravaged by everything from bugs to borers to bunnies.
To prep his bed for pepper transplants, James removes the spinach that is getting ready to bolt. He saves the best leaves for a salad and tosses the rest into the compost pile. He then adds more compost to the bed, working it into the first few inches of soil and raking the area smooth.
First to be planted is a bell pepper known for its sweet red flesh. Planting couldn't be simpler: just dig a shallow hole, place the transplant in the hole, cover it with soil and water well.
The eggplant he grows is the traditional or classic rather than the elongated Asian variety. He plants only one plant, because this is all the fresh eggplant his family can use. (Besides, eggplant doesn't stay fresh very long.) Eggplants are related to peppers and are planted in the same way.
Tomatoes are the No. 1 backyard garden vegetable in America, and James says they are especially good when sliced and served with a good buffalo mozzarella, some fresh basil, extra virgin olive oil, a touch of balsamic vinegar, a little sea salt and freshly-cracked pepper. James doesn't like growing tomatoes because he says they take up too much space, they're prone to insects and disease in his area, and they fall over in high winds. So he plants only one. First, he places a big plastic tub in a sunny spot and fills it with a mix of garden soil and compost. Then he adds a tomato transplant and tops it off with a cage made from reinforced wire mesh.
Last on James' plant list are squash, beans and cucumbers; all three do better for him when planted from seed rather than transplants. He sows the squash and cucumbers in hills with five seeds per hill. Later, he will thin them, leaving two or three of the strongest plants on each hill. To save space, he plants the cucumbers on a ladder trellis, which straddles the base of the hill. He also plants pole beans (an Italian shelling bean known as 'Borlotto') on a trellis and encircles them with some plastic-coated fencing to keep the bunnies from eating the plants.
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