Photo by Flitzy Phoebie on Flickr

​Happy New Year! Forget that pesky diet; start off 2012 on the right (lucky) foot with some black-eyed peas. (We're talking the legume, not the music group.) Eating black-eyed peas on New Year's for good luck and prosperity has long been a southern tradition. Some say it stems from Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, when black-eyed peas along with leeks and other lucky ingredients are consumed. In the south, black-eyed peas are usually cooked with ham or bacon and served with some sort of leafy vegetable like collard, turnip, or mustard greens. The peas, which swell during cooking, represent prosperity, and the greens represent money.

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Photo by Wright Reading

Taste that rainbow.

​What is it?

The most common variety is the garden beet: deep red in color and bulbous in shape. It was first discovered in the Mediterranean some millennia ago. Beets are high in phytonutrients called betalains, which are antioxidant and anti-inflammatory in nature, and their nitrites can enhance athletic performance. Beets are also a good source of lutein and zeaxanthin, both of which aid in macular and retinal health.

The beet root is crispy when raw and turns buttery when cooked, while the leaves are mildly bitter, like chard.

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Photo by Nicholas L. Hall

Ill-gotten figs, boiling in sugar syrup.

​This is the first year that both of my kids are in school, and their daily absence has created a bit of a time vacuum for my wife. Rather than go stir-crazy, she has been spending most of her days volunteering at the school. Trading two kids for 20 may not seem like the way to go, but it seems to suit her. Among the many duties she has taken on around the campus, she found herself the chair of the gardening committee, kindly nominated by a friend who vacated the post this year. She doesn't have much of a green thumb, but is endlessly enthusiastic.

Recently, she organized a community work day, and we spent several hours at the school pulling weeds, raking leaves, and removing ridiculous numbers of dead plants (she tried valiantly to save the landscaping, but the drought took its toll). Our kids, who had begged and begged to come along, promising to work hard and not just goof off all day, goofed off all day. Most of their time was spent on the playground, or eating the donuts we had provided for the volunteers. That is, until my eldest discovered the fig trees.

Unbeknownst to me, she diligently denuded three smallish fig trees lining the playground, plucking their tiny green fruits and gathering them in her pocket. She knows I love figs, and has likely overheard my nefarious plots of thievery, aimed at making those schoolyard figs my own. You know, once they had ripened. She held them out to me excitedly. You could almost see the expectation of praise in her eyes, poor thing.

I let her down gently, explaining that the figs weren't ripe, and were probably more or less inedible. She teared up - I think she was mostly upset that she had wasted them - and she implored me to try to do something with them. She's a sensitive soul.

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Photo by John Kiely

​A Master Gardener will know the ideal dates to plant and harvest each crop, but a Casual Tiller like myself requires a simpler scheme, so I go with holidays. Tomatoes and hot peppers go in after Valentine's Day; broccoli comes out on St. Pat's.

Parsley and cilantro get planted after Labor Day, and just about every other cold weather crop gets seeded or transplanted on Columbus Day or after Halloween. An exception is the radish, which has varieties that can be planted after any fall holiday, Christmas or Hanukkah, and will grow in Houston.

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Photos by John Kiely

​Both of the cauliflower plants in the photo were the same size when I planted them a month ago. The transplants got the same sun and rain, but the normal one on the left was planted in a commercial potting soil, whereas big brother was inserted into custom soil. Why bother to mix soil?

The same reason I mix my own cocktails. I rarely meet a blend I like, whether it's dirt or drink, and I believe I can do better. The difference is that the taste of a Manhattan is subjective, whereas plants either grow better, or they don't. The big cauliflower doesn't fret about what kind of rye whiskey to use, but it looks happy where it is.

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Click to embiggen

​Houston just welcomed two new farmers markets to town: one at HCC Southwest's campus and one at Sugar Land's Town Square. And although our individual markets might not [yet] be as large as the ones in Seattle or San Francisco, we can still boast that there's a farmers market for nearly every nook and cranny in the greater Houston metropolitan area.

But although we have a great selection of farmers markets, there's not been a comprehensive map -- until now. Visit our map of Greater Houston Farmers Markets to see the closest market to you, its hours and days of operation and its typical offerings. You can even click on the name of the market to be taken directly to its website.

With cooler weather prevailing and holiday shopping to do, there's no better time to visit your local farmers market than this fall. Get out there and get fresh.

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Photo by John Kiely

They look like scallions now...

​If you consider the rise of a Full Harvest Moon to be the end of the gardening season, then you aren't from Texas. On any day of the year there's at least one crop you can plant or seed in the ground, and have a productive crop weeks or months later.

When I was buying Green Goliath seeds for the best broccoli in America, I asked Evan of Southwest Fertilizer about any other crops to plant this year. He mentioned radish seeds, then led me to a row of bins holding onion transplants and bulbs. There was a wide variety of white and yellow onions, but I was curious about a bundle of plants that looked like raggedy scallions.

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Photo by John Kiely

​The unique challenge to carrot-growing in Houston is simply a question of depth. A productive local garden can be made with a mere four or five inches of raised-bed soil, but carrots grow to be much longer, or should I say, deeper than that. A few inches underneath the garden is Gulf Coast hard clay, and as my neighbor Tom noted, "You might as well plant them in concrete."

The first possible solution is to go the other direction, by building a length of mound, or planting two parallel two-by-six boards on their edges and filling up the space with garden soil. Another solution is to buy a variety of carrots that are stubby, like Nelson or Sweetness. A third way is to plant them in a large tub or planter.

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Photo by John Kiely

Outredgeous Red variety

​The reason I grow lettuce in cool weather is not because I eat a lot of salads, but rather I don't eat a lot of salads. Lettuce doesn't store well in the refrigerator; worse, it becomes unappetizing before it looks, smells, or tastes bad, but after a salad has been made.

Garden lettuce leaves can also be plucked off the plant and chopped up for garnish, for instance, in tacos or hamburgers.

The best varieties to grow in Houston are leaf lettuces, romaines, and bibb lettuces. Iceberg lettuce is not a proper selection, as it easily gets freeze damage (despite its name), which is something we can expect more of, with the disturbed climate.

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Photo courtesy of Utility Research Garden

How can you not want to buy vegetables from this guy?

​I love grocery shopping...if there's no one else in the store. Picking out produce can be particularly hectic if you're picky, like I am. Worse, it's often a huge let-down to find only chemical-laden, rock-hard tomatoes or ragged-looking beets with the stems and leaves shamelessly cut off.

That's where CSAs come in handy. A CSA is a Community Supported Agriculture program in which a group of people pre-pays a farmer at the beginning of the season, then gets deliveries of fresh, seasonal produce each week. You don't have to worry about picking the best vegetables; the farmer does that for you. And you never have to worry whether your produce is in season or saturated with chemicals.

David Cater of Utility Research Garden has his fall CSA program up and running: BasketCase. I first heard about it through Poison Girl owner Scott Repass, who summed it up perfectly:

"[Cater] is starting a program where you sign up and he will bring you a basket a week of veggies for 14 weeks," said Repass. "Every week, he's going to park a small trailer at Black Hole Coffee House for an evening and you can pick the veggies up there."

It's even easier than a farmer's market.

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