Growing Sun Vegetables on the Plateau

"I'm a long time gardener and was looking for some new, fun varieties of tomatoes to grow this year. A Google search of tomato varieties for the Pacific Northwest produced a Sound Consumer article for 2003, though it came up as the second link! I chuckled when I read the story of growing tomatoes under a cherry tree. I, too, have found that tomatoes need far less direct sun than some suspect.

I am at about 1,000 feet elevation and I grow Cayenne peppers a plenty, along with Hungarian hot wax peppers and great jalapenos. Just start plants indoors from seed in March and wait to put them out until May. The only pepper that has failed to ripen was habaneros. These results are year after year in a garden that only gets full sun until the afternoon and in the fall even less. Don't believe the books, I even grow okra!"

-Angie Wright, PCC Sound Consumer, March, 2010.

post script......Enumclaw is also about 1,000 feet above sea level.

Investing in a Winter Garden is Profitable

Enumclaw residents are fortunate to have some---to a lot---of land around their homes on which to grow a modern day "victory garden" for delicious, healthy eating especially in these tough economic times. Victory gardens have also proven to be very effective on porches and roof tops! Watch the video below and see how to continue saving money throughout the year on home grown food, and feeling good about it.

The White House staff have been busy all year with the development, planting, and harvesting of the White House Garden (our "resource links" has the garden's opening video). The first three plantings of the kitchen garden were bountiful---harvesting more than 1007 lbs. of produce!

The Winter Garden soil has been prepared, and with the help of high tunnels or hoop houses spinach, lettuce, carrots, mustard greens, chard and cabbage will be planted now. Here is the latest video showing the White House Garden's hoop houses and discussing the USDA's new hoop house project for small farms.

Seeds for Life

"We are living in a time of unrest and worry, but the same crocus will grow near the Black Sea as grows in Spain, and these flowers don't need passports and frontiers. The seed is beyond frontiers and beyond nationalities, and the growing of things and tilling the earth is one of the most international...one of the most unpolitical things we can possibly do.

Don't ever forget that the seed is the most important thing in this whole world."

- Clare Leighton, garden writer, 1948
Grandma's Garden Catalog, January 2010

Planting for Extended Harvest

Late summer is the time to plant if you want a longer harvest. You can sow all the "leaf" vegetables (lettuce, cabbage, spinach, arugula, chard, kale) plus onions, Brussels sprouts, and carrots now--for fall, winter, or even spring crops.

Sometimes spring-planted broccoli will continue producing for several months (depending on the severity of the winter). And you can also continue to harvest your root vegetables (carrots, beets, etc.) as long as the ground isn’t frozen. Don't let your harvest end when the weather gets cold!