In the Garden with Pat Rubin

Bee garden writer Pat Rubin writes about everything that grows, from flowers and trees to vegetables and lawns. Pat volunteered for several years as a Placer County Master Gardener and has written about gardening for many national and regional publications. In addition to gardening, she spends time raising and showing miniature horses and miniature donkeys.

In the Garden will include news, events, advice and other gardening tidbits. Pat will also answer reader questions.

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May 8, 2007

Plant it now

The vegetable/herb selection at all area nurseries is at its peak right now. Capital Nursery, for example, has at least 50 varieties of tomatoes, dozens of types of peppers, and long rows of squash, melons and cucumbers. There were all sorts of herbs, including peppermint, cilantro, parsley, chives, rosemary, thyme and sage. There were onions: red torpedo, Walla Walla, yellow Bermuda. Leeks, chard, strawberries and artichokes round out the selection.

If you haven’t started the vegetable garden, now is a good time. Plants put in the ground now will quickly catch up with ones planted earlier when the weather was cool, wet and unsettled.

One word of warning, though. Buying a plant or two of corn won’t yield anything. Corn needs to be planted in blocks. In fact, a four-by-four foot block is probably the minimum plot size for good yields. The reason is that the pollen falls on the silks, and it takes quite a bit of pollen to produce fat, full ears of corn. The more corn you have, planted closely together, the better chances of a good crop. So unless you have the space to do it right, you’ll get corn stalks for Halloween, but no corn for the dinner table.

My quick stroll through the nursery turned into a bit of a buying spree. That’s the danger of a visit to any nursery: I find plants I must have, that I can’t live without, that simply must be a part of my plant repertoire. This time, however, I was able to limit myself to vegetables and herbs. I came away with eggplant, cilantro and chives.

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