WNC Gardening

We’re wrapping up another successful gardening year here in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Am and I expanded our garden for this year with more room for our favorites and enough space to try out some new things. In four different plots we had green beans, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, three types of corn, cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins and cantaloupe!!

We planted two different kinds of green beans this year to have enough for canning and freezing. One is a store-bought pole bean and one is what would be known as an heirloom variety known as “greasy beans.” This is an old line of bean local to the mountains, named for its shiny exterior. I got these beans from my Grandfather, who has been gardening and saving seeds for 40+ years. Greasy beans are excellent for cooking and canning and have large, meaty beans; none of this all-pod nonsense that you get with grocery store beans! An excellent article on greasy beans can be read here. We are saving our own seeds this year and next year it is back to all greasy beans, no more skinny pods with tiny beans for us!

Keeping a small garden is not the hard task that many people think it might be. If you can find a small (15 X 20 ft) plot that gets some direct sunlight, you can have a successful vegetable garden. This year I went completely organic…mainly because I was too lazy to do anything but pull weeds! I did not spray for bugs or dust for fungus, though I did add a little fertilizer when I planted everything. I know that using the pesticides or fungicides would help my plants to stay pretty, but I don’t really mind a few holes in the leaves and if it doesn’t help the taste, why do it?! All in all, it was another great gardening year here in the mountains. Look for a post about canning and freezing and some pictures of our harvest later on!

Here is just a few of our goodies:

Half-bushels of corn and green tomatoes.

Go State! Grow organic!

More corn and green tomatoes.