December 2002 Table of Contents

GARDENING
Jack Hardy

Believe it or not, we are midway through the winter vegetable growing season. Of course, most of the time has been taken up with watching the tomato vines get bigger and bigger and producing young green fruits but the next few months should be very productive.

I always try to have something from the garden on my Christmas dinner plate and this year I am trying for English peas. You can’t buy them fresh in the food store so you really have to grow your own. If I have any left over they will go into my favourite risotto, risi e bisi.

For those gardeners who are growing their tomatoes and other plants in pots, don’t forget to lay them on the ground when a nor’wester sets in. Water the pot first as this will both hold the soil in the pot and provide moisture during a drying-out spell. Wind is a plant’s greatest enemy and even established shrubs should be soaked with water ahead of a cold front.

In order to keep the season productive we should make successive plantings. Six weeks between the sowing of tomato seeds is about right. Faster growing crops will need a shorter replacement period. Sweet peppers can usually be encouraged to be productive throughout the whole of the winter season.

If you have not fertilized your citrus and fruit trees for autumn it would probably be best to wait until spring. The autumn feeding really needs to be done early, in September or October.

It is rewarding to have a bright and cheerful flower garden for Christmas and you can get an instant garden for a low price from our excellent local nurseries. Annuals like Impatiens are popular but the best value comes with setting out perennials such as Pentas.

Roses are often looked upon as hard-to-grow northern exotics but many varieties thrive on Abaco, especially in the winter. Roses need to be planted in a sunny location and the soil emended with plenty of commercial cow manure. Many of the roses on sale in local nurseries are recent hybrids so it will be a while before their suitability can be established. Seven Sisters, a Key West rose, grows with no problem. Don Juan is a climber with deeply-scented red roses that does well here. I have a Queen Elizabeth bearing pink flowers that I bought from Pinewoods Nursery fifteen years ago. I recently bought a peach-coloured Tropicana that I had been looking for for several years.

At between $20-$25 dollars for potted plants, roses are about half the price of a fruit tree. What makes the investment worthwhile is the fact that women have a strange attraction to roses and a rose can be displayed solo in a miniature vase, not only by the massed cut dozen or so that is pretty well demanded by women when they feel hard done by. The Queen Elizabeth rose I bought my wife fifteen years ago was a Valentine gift and was bare-root in a burlap sack. She was not impressed at the time but a few months later - and many years since - the gift became thousands of beautiful blossoms, delighting her to this day.

December 2002 Table of Contents