Future gardening is a phrase I recently coined. On my blog and web channel, I focus primarily on planting vegetables in pots. My latest blog post featured what I call fast food from your backyard, vegetables that can be harvested in thirty days or less. In recent years I have divided my plant garden into three categories. Fast food, growing summer vegetables in pots and what I refer to as future gardening which is the topic of today’s blog.
I have included blueberries, asparagus, grapes and a dwarf Myer lemon tree in my garden. Yes, I realize that we are talking about more than just plants but since I grow each of these items in pots the principle is still the same. The big difference is that you have to wait a year or two before you can reap a harvest. Popular summer favorites like cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes must be planted over and over each spring while the fruits and vegetable in my future garden only need to be planted once in approximately every seven to ten years.
Your patience will be generously rewarded because once these vines, bushes, and trees began to produce you should be able to harvest food for years to come. Most asparagus roots will provide you with asparagus the second year. The timetable with blueberries is about the same. By the time you enter into the third and fourth summers you should notice a huge difference in your harvest. I chose the dwarf Myer lemon tree because of its size. A word of caution, since lemon trees are considered tropical it needs to be kept indoors during cold months. Here is a photo of the tree I started from seed about nine months ago.
I have chosen to add at lease one blueberry bush and one asparagus plant to my pot garden every spring. It’s my insurance policy. As the old plants and trees die off I will still have plants producing food.
Starting a future garden is inexpensive especially if you buy one plant at a time or in the case of the lemon tree a pack of seeds.
Now is a great time to start. Years from now you will thank me.
Comments
Post a Comment