Greenhorn Gardening! Okra high as an Elephant's eye! Tomatoes on Parade! Egg Plants Apple Green and Pot Black! Basil, Sage, Rosemary, Cucumbers, Pumpkins, ....!

How a little effort and great help brings Homegrown Bounties

August 4, 2024

A grasshopper knows more about gardening than I and my wife Maryse do, still.

We have, however, grown a plenty since early April of this year. That is, I wish to convey, even ignoramuses can plant, nurture, and feed themselves nicely in southern Louisiana.

The bed beneath the window-seat of our little Casa Tropicalia on the West Bank of New Orleans burgeoned with green plants arising

The TIMELINE is below.

Above—April 5, 2024.

The western Plot, April 19.

Front yard as plants begin to burgeon, April 30, 2024, Okra still short ‘uns.

Tomatoes of several kinds—Celebrity and Black Krim planted 30 inches apart, heirlooms of larger girth named Cherokee Blue and Floradel given 36 inches of separation when they started, and LSU Creoles planted 18 inches apart n both of the rhomboid plots parallel across middle of our little lawn, grew fast and grew thick and grew inttangles that overshaded even the mightily proliferant BASIL.

What 25 Days in New Orleans’ Spring will do for plants—Burgeoning of the Window-Seat Garden by April 30!

And two weeks later—

Holy Tomatoes!

Okra exceeded expectations, too. We bought a mere four Okra in starter-boxes at the fabulously chock-a-block resource, Rose Garden Center (75 years young) in Marrero, Louisiana. Two Emerald Green Okra starters and two Spineless Okra starters. Okra!

All four emerged impressively, Couples side by side, … and then the Emerald Green more extended upward, week by week, as their Leaves spread and spread and their their trunks became like towers.

Okra blossoming among Basil, May 11, 2024.

Another surprise were our Egg Plants from the Rose Garden Center. Apple Greens Egg Plants and Black Pot Egg Plants. Egg Plants that mature and soften into palm-size compliments. Something like Potatoes, but sweeter. Something like Sweet Potatoes, but thicker in the nutritious paste that cooking (Maryse’s) can make of them.

Eggplants arising in their pots, May 11.

Here we must also thank TASHA DRAGOVICH. Tasha is one who, as our next-door neighbor JOHN says, is “on-it-all-day.” She’s fortunate in loving her work. She sits centered on the earth and digs and furrows and pats as she smiles.

Tasha as she begins her dig that more than doubled our Window-Seat Garden’s bed, March 24.

Tasha also filled with Heirloom Tomatoes and Marigolds and Kirkland Bell Peppers and Cucumber and more of Eggplants the 36-inch-wide pots along our driveway toward the garage. Tasha was/is an Unfailing Resource! Week after week, she a lot, lot, lot!

Pots and plants along the driveway, May 11.

Bounties were filling kitchen plates as soon as one month after Tasha’s and our putting plants into ground.

Okra! Okra and Peppers! Four Emerald Green and one Spineless on May 5.

Tomatoes were abundant, luscious, and delicious, as prepared by Maryse, May 5.

By early June we plates were of such plenty

that they overflowed.

We had to fence the Tomatoes and add more of bamboo poles for support, June 9.

Still, Tomatoes kept coming.

Above, Celebrities hiding in the Jungle, June 2024.

Below, LSU Creoles and Celebrities in the Western Plot, also June.

Richness of the Tomatoes, sliced by Maryse, June 21.

Cucumbers “came in” and enlarged to 8-inch giants within a few days—see June 24.

Eggplants kept blossoming (June 27)

and providing more of art and music (the Black Pot Trio, below, July 2)

and succulent nutrition (Apple Green with unceasing Tomatoes on Salmon fillet, July 2.

Finally, July 4, we had to strip the Jungle of Tomatoes that we’d been pruning for the preceding four to five weeks. They’d served admirably—Black Krim, Celebrity, Cherokee Blue, and most gigantic and least productive Heirloom the Floradel—but Summer and their yield had dried and shriveled them.

Below, the Eastern Plot stripped of Tomatoes, July 4.

Below, the Window-Seat Garden, stripped of Tomatoes, July 4. (Please note heights of the Okra Couples, the two Emerald Green and the two Spineless.

Tomatoes for compost now rest with oak-leaves along a fence in the back-yartd.

Still, the Okra keep climbing and growing off-shoots that themselves offer more … Okra.

The twin Hibiscus still spread beside with the twin Palms.

Nasturtiums and Marigolds and certainly a pretty pair of Jack-Be-Little Pumpkins and the resurgent Avocado are Not-to-Be-Forgotten.

At the last, snapshots of some of the Bounties ongoing: Five Pot Blacks dangling and growing just yesterday, and the Okra, Mighty Okra, reaching farther and more overtopping eaves.

One plant of Pot Blacks, August 3.

Okra, ever-taller, ever-giving, August 2.

RESOURCES

First, a nod and HOORAY of Praise to Frey Vineyards, maker of the United States’ first Organic and first Biodyamic Wines, for doing so much good over 44 years and for Wines that taste SO GOOD.

Here are Products and Stores that helped us inestimably since early April 2024 in Greater New Orleans.

Fox Farm and its bouncing Happy Frog.

Black Kow and SunGro’s Black Gold.

Below, two of sungro and Black Gold, putting plants first!

Double “M” Feed, Garden & Pet Supply, with one store here on the West Bank of New Orleans, has given us invaluable advice and bargains on boons such as Neem Oil\ and Chelated Iron. Double “M” delivers on its advertising.

Most of all, we’ve benefited from the Rose Garden Center in Marrero, Louisiana.

You can see from photos posted on the Rose Garden Center on its Facebook page how customers appreciate the Center.

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Very likely, there are generous Stores such as Double “M” Feed and the Rose Garden Center near where you live. Likely, they stock products such as those, above, that have helped us at Little Casa Tropicalia.

As for putting in work, here’s the little (compared to the lotta, lotta, lotta put in by Tasha in March, April, May and June) that’s been our routine.

WATERING once and often twice a day.

NEEM OIL in its ferti-lome product, sprayed from a Quart-Bottle in ratio of table-spoon of Neem to Quart of water.

CHELATED LIQUID IRON in its ferti-lome product, sprayed as above in ratio of 1/2 tablespoon (that’s all for this powerful stuff) to Quart.

Anyone can do it!

Any household with access to starter-plants or seeds; and to soil and pots (plots and a bed are nice, but inessential); and to water, warmth and sunshine, can grow vegetables and other food fresh and flavorful and nutritious … Food that we can grow has that special value of gifts raised on our own and among outselves. Victory Gardens galore in 2024, next year, and forever!

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