Pam Cortes pans left to right in her vegetable shed – a raised bed with a tall wire mesh cage – and rattles down her latest endeavors: tomatoes, onions, garlic, oregano, basil, lemon verbena, peppers, tomatillos, cucumbers, dill, zucchini, peppers , Jalapenos, spinach and broccoli.
She corrects herself: “It’s actually Broccolini. I took a bite of it and it was fine. “
A shed full of vegetables and a real bite is a big step for Cortes, 49, who rarely cooked – and ate vegetables even less before the pandemic. Their gardening consisted of little more than planting flowers in the ground and wishing them good luck.
Like many other Americans, Cortes has a new hobby.
She and husband Luis Cortes have owned Echo Workshop, a custom electronics and home automation company in the Houston area, since 1999.
In addition, the couple had a band for several years, Space City Funk, in which Luis was the drummer and Pam played as “DJ PJ”. For the past few years – before the pandemic – Cortes was the drummer for the Mambo Jazz Kings, a sideline that kept the couple busy at night and on weekends.
Pollinator: Cortes plants flowers in vegetable patches, as well as in nearby pots, to attract pollinators that will benefit the vegetable crops.
Accompanying planting: Cortes learns about planting companion plants when one plant is protecting another. Examples include planting dill and basil to protect tomatoes from hornworms, or nasturtiums to catch aphids. Texas Master Gardeners have a helpful guide that you can download from txmg.org.
Garden app: Cortes uses the From Seed to Spoon app during the gardening season. It covers everything from planting dates to controlling pests and the weather. It’s free.
Old Farmer’s Almanac: This may sound like something your grandparents used, but the almanac’s daily email tips provide great gardening and weather tips, she said. Register online at almanac.com.
Best hack: An old wooden pallet was set up lean-to-style and Cortes adjusted it to hold herbs.
Dried Herbs: Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Recommends Drying the herbs on the same day they are harvested. Rinse under cold running water, remove damaged leaves, then shake or pat dry. Since our climate is so humid, let’s skip air drying and go straight to oven drying. Remove the washed leaves from the stems and place them on a single sheet of paper towel on a baking sheet. Be careful not to let the leaves touch each other. Cover with another layer of kitchen paper and place in the oven. Do not turn on the oven; Heat from the oven light or pilot light should be sufficient. You can stack the paper towels with herbs up to five layers, depending on the humidity in your kitchen. Herbs are dried while the leaves crumble.
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When the pandemic broke out, work slowed dramatically – at least for a while – and music concerts stalled. The Corteses, married for 18 years, spent more time at home and began walking to move around and just relax.
On a walk, the Corteses passed the house of a new neighbor who had built a huge greenhouse. The neighbors were there so the Corteses decided to be neighborly and approach them.
In reality, Pam just wanted to know what was going on in that new building in the back yard.
“I was so impressed with the lady down the street. She had it all in her greenhouse and it looked like so much fun, ”said Pam. “I like being outside and I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.”
Luis has a woodworking workshop that he didn’t have time for, so it was an opportunity for him too.
They started in the fall of 2020 with a raised bed, a wooden structure with plenty of space and a cage made of wire mesh to keep birds, squirrels and other hungry critters away. They also set up a couple of metal troughs for winter crops, one for carrots and one for lettuce.
When her first carrots came out of the ground, Pam was so proud that she posted a picture on Facebook. Wrapped in a winter jacket and fluffy white earmuffs, she held up the white, orange, and purple root vegetables like trophies.
Driven by her excitement, Luis began working on a larger work area for her, a full-fledged 12 by 16 foot greenhouse. The foundation was poured in early October and was operational by the end of November. Some of their staff helped build the structure and were grateful that they could do something.
“This is my happy place,” said Pam, showing off the greenhouse, flower beds, and growing plants and fruit trees in her once bare garden.
It has large sliding door panels on one side and French door panels on the other. There is a trolley to work and store and lots of shelves. It’s wired to power so she can run a small heater in winter and fans in summer, which are mounted high on stands that rotate.
One day when Luis wasn’t busy, he asked Pam if she wanted another raised bed, and then built one that now contains several plants, including four pineapple plants, all of which make tropical fruits.
Then came what Pam calls the “berry barn,” another cage area with blueberry and blackberry bushes in the bottom and strawberries in pots. Here, too, a high cage made of chicken wire keeps the animals outside.
Pam started with ideas from her neighbor, advice, lots of plants from the nearby Enchanted Gardens nursery, and tips from the internet, Pinterest and YouTube.
“I went into the magic forest and started snapping things. I like tomatoes and Luis loves cucumbers. I thought, ‘Let’s try onions and garlic and different peppers,’ said Pam.
The From Seed to Spoon app was Pam’s first stop in helping her set up a virtual garden – with pictures of her actual plants – and learn what to do and when to do it. Since she enters her zip code into the app, she receives special advice on the Gulf Coast climate.
A daily email tip from the Old Farmers Almanac was more practical than she’d imagined, with all sorts of gardening tips, including the Houston area.
She got to know the advantages of companion plants, kieselguhr (a natural insect killer), which beetles are good (spiders) and which are bad (ants and aphids).
For example, planting mint near cucumbers will help keep insects away from the plants. Bee balm and mothers also repel insects.
“It was all trial and error and watching a lot of YouTube videos,” said Pam of her study journey. Her first time with tomatoes and cucumbers was unsuccessful, but this summer she was luckier.
A few stalks of seven-eared sweet corn are encouraging, and she’s hoping to harvest seeds from her sunflowers to use in her bird feeder and feed the chickens she plans to raise in what is likely the next phase of her suburban garden plan.
She harvests a lot of herbs and is ready to learn how to dry them and use them in oils, either for cooking or as a fragrance. She experimented with magnolia blossom and lemon balm in grapeseed oil and was encouraged to try other combinations.
“I would never have tried this without the pandemic,” said Pam. “I hope that I can do it well enough that I want to learn to cook.”
diane.cowen@chron.com
