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Fruit and Vegetable Garden

The Linnaeus Fruit and Vegetable Garden is the place to be to learn how to safely manage pests, see the latest gardening techniques, and check out new and exciting fruit and vegetable varieties.

Looper worm on a cabbage leaf

Managing Pests

Yes, we have holes in our cabbages.

But we manage everything in the Linnaeus Garden as organically as possible.  To control the cabbage looper, a small green worm currently enjoying our cabbage and cauliflower leaves, we are using Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis).  This bacterial insecticide is non-toxic to pets, people and beneficial insects, but will cause the worms to stop eating and die. 

One of the best pest-management techniques is to plant insect resistant plants, such as tomato plants labeled VFTN indicating resistance to verticillium and fusarium wilts, tobacco mosaic virus and nematodes.

Other techniques include tossing infested plants or controlling the infestation with non-toxic methods when possible. This spring we are again planting our tomatoes in tubs so that we can easily tip them and spray away spider mites with pressurized streams of water.

Raised beds, espaliered Asian pears - there's always lots to see
in the Linnaeus Garden Vegetable Garden.

Some predators such as the tomato horn worm are large and easily visible.  The best method to control these is to ask your husband to pick them off and place on the shoulder of someone leaving the garden.

Introducing natural beneficial predators is also a control technique. The Linnaeus Garden has a new purple martin house that we hope will attract many pest-eating birds

Growing Techniques

The Linnaeus Veggie Garden uses raised beds full of mushroom compost and chicken manure.  Raised beds have excellent drainage and warm up faster in the spring.  They are easier for gardeners to work in.  Mushroom compost is an excellent soil amender.  It's the byproduct of the mushroom growing industry. It's rich in nutrients and adds good workability to garden soil. 

Nitrogen-fixing legumes such as green beans will be planted in beds with non-amended soil. Too much fertilizer for these types of vegetables causes them to put all their energy into leaf production. We will also be trying some high-yield, smaller green bean varieties grown in containers.

Gourds growing on a cattle panel garden trellis

Check out the gourds and other crops that will be growing in profusion over the trellises made out of cattle panels that curve from one bed to another.  Our Asian Pears along the fence are another good example of how to produce much from a small area.

Heirloom Vegetables - Our Theme for 2010

We are very excited this year to be featuring heirloom vegetables in the Linnaeus veggie garden. These should be diverse and colorful. For example, cotton comes in many colors other than white, and heirloom carrots aren't necessarily orange! This year you will be able to experience the same vegetables grown by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello or perhaps the thousand year old Oaxaca Green Dent Corn.

What makes a vegetable an heirloom? It's not age - some of our heirlooms are as recent as 1943. Heirloom vegetables are those grown from open-pollinated seeds, a process which produces a recognizable, but not identical offspring. This genetic diversity is an insurance policy against future disasters. And many of these varieties have histories as colorful as their fruit.

Naturally-colored cotton, for example, comes from South America and is currently being used by high-end clothing purveyors such as Land's End and Eddie Bauer to offer naturally-pigmented t-shirts, shorts and other cotton clothing in colors such as sage, tan, and peach. Will it do well in our garden? Come watch and learn with us as we experiment with these special seeds.