Released: March 21, 2002

Also see: March 2002 Yard 'n Garden news package

It Isn’t Your Grandma’s Garden

MANHATTAN, Kan. – Lifestyles and science both have transformed the typical U.S. vegetable garden.

"Many of today’s gardeners wouldn’t say that they actually grow food crops. Yes, they typically buy a few tomato plants every year. They may be experimenting with different types of hot peppers. They may have a patch of perennial herbs or grow leaf lettuce in spring. Unless they have a big area designated in their yard, however, they probably don’t call what they do vegetable gardening," said Chuck Marr, horticulturist with Kansas State University Research and Extension.

New plant varieties are making this kind of non-plot or small-plot vegetable gardening possible.

Today’s choices include recently "acclimated" varieties of vegetables traditionally grown in other counties. Early-spring salad crops, for example, can now combine lettuce and cabbage plantings with bok choi and Swiss chard.

Beyond that, plant breeders started working years ago to develop better varieties of traditional U.S. garden crops. One result has been on-going change in the definition for "standard size." Seed suppliers’ offerings for 2002 are mostly compact, highly productive and often ornamental vegetable plants – including dwarf varieties and a number with disease and/or insect resistance.

"Of course, the downsizing trend has been sort of relative. Cherry tomato plants used to be huge. The modern varieties are just really big ... although some bush types are a significant improvement," Marr said. "The situation is similar for sweet corn, pumpkin, watermelon and many other plants that always have required lots of room."

That’s why U.S. gardeners often make a kind of bottom-line decision now when they choose which plants to grow. Vegetable by vegetable, they compare "amount of space required for amount of food produced."

"The smaller, more productive plants tend to win out every time," Marr said. "After all, compact plants can fit between shrubs. They can go toward the back of a flower bed, along a fenceline or in a corner bed. If necessary, they can even go in a pot. So long as they get enough sunlight, they’re unlikely to need anything more than gardeners already are providing for annual and perennial flowers."

Few U.S. vegetable plants are perennials. So, warm-season crops can replace cool-season crops and perhaps yield their position later in the year for a second cool-season go-round. If integrated into landscape plantings, vegetables also can grow in a different site every year.

"Rotating crop locations in that way is often the best kind of pest control," the horticulturist said. "The tomato disease that overwinters in soil or garden debris ends up too far away to infect the next year’s tomato plants."

Marr listed the following as good options for Kansans interested in trying a small or landscape-integrated vegetable garden:

* Any cool-season salad or "cole" crop, including leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, bibb or butterhead lettuce, spinach, cress, sorrel, Swiss chard, chicory, endive, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage.

* The "greens" – mustard greens, beets (for the top), purslane, collard greens, kale, kohlrabi.

* Almost any tomato from pulpy romas to juicy "beefsteak" varieties – except the space-eating cherry tomato types and disease-prone heirloom varieties.

* Almost any pepper, whether green, red, yellow or purple and whether sweet-tasting, mildly hot or fiery.

* The non-vining "root" crops – radishes, carrots, leeks, shallots, green onions, chives, turnips, beets.

* Compact cucumber and eggplant varieties.

* Bushy snow pea and sugar-snap pea plants.

* Small bush-type varieties of the summer squashes, including yellow squash, zucchini, and scallop squash (now available in white, pale green, dark green and yellow).

* Annual or perennial herbs.

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K-State Research and Extension is a short name for the Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service, a program designed to generate and distribute useful knowledge for the well-being of Kansans. Supported by county, state, federal and private funds, the program has county Extension offices, experiment fields, area Extension offices and regional research centers statewide. Its headquarters is on the K-State campus, Manhattan.

Story by:
Kathleen Ward, Communications Specialist
kward@oznet.ksu.edu
K-State Research& Extension News