24,795 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

It probably depends on how well your garlic bed drains. If the soil drains well the rain should not be a problem and the moisture will help the garlic to sprout and grow roots. If the soil drains poorly then it could cause cloves to rot before getting well established. But then again poorly draining soil may be problematic for the garlic period.



Thought I would report back on my results of this fall planting. The Boston Pickling Cukes began flowering Sept 6 and I started harvesting Gherkin sized cukes on Sept 19. They are still producing but the fruits are maturing much slower than they do in July from my spring planting. The plants are also starting to look pretty ragged and don't seem to care much for the cooler weather and looking at the current blossoms it looks like 90% or more are male with very few females currently coming on. I am going to do one more batch of pickles this weekend and then inspect again for female blossoms and if I don't see many I think I will pull the plants and put that bed to rest for the winter. I think Mid July will be the latest that I try to sow Cukes in the future.
The yellow squash plant didn't do much at all. It didn't get enough sun due to some shading from a cherry tomato plant and trees. The plant never got over about 1 ft tall and 2 ft across but the poor little thing still tried to put out a few mini squash that only got about 4" long.





O so you have a season long enuff for melons... good deal.
I had one Bush Sugar Baby this year which is an achievement in CT. It was a personal size melon. I've had better and I have bought worse. Will certainly try again.
I've heard SC has the best soil for sweet melons.

beesneeds,
I have successfully grown "wild" asparagus from seeds in pots until fall (first hard frost). I cut the tops, remove the roots, cleaning them to remove the soil and I place them in the refrigerator. I plant the crowns the following spring. I have had great success doing this method of seed saving- planting. A few years back I had forgotten 15 roots and they looked pitiful after spending a year and a half in my crisper drawer. I planted them anyway and 12 of the 15 survived !
Good luck.

I need some advice on my own asparagus experiment. I didn't read up on these and stuck some seeds in a garden pretty late in the season. Six of them grew. I didn't do much soil prep and decided they wouldn't survive the first winter so I moved them into a large deep container. Two of them still live in my garden. I plan to plant them in a properly prepared raised bed this spring. My question is should my asparagus ferns be droppy or be able to stand up? Also some browning is happening on the container plants. I had read that you cut back after the whole plant turns brown. Is this what's happening or is that on older plants? I seem to have better plants in the garden now. This might be some transplant shock but overall, the plants are still getting bigger.

I've got my small area worked up with added compost and just about ready to set out my collards. Think I'll use a collar around each since I've so few plants to putter about with.
Also, I forgot to ask, after the first frost, am I supposed to harvest the outer leaves of each plant and leave some to grow on. How will I know when I've taken enough leaves off of each plant? How often can the leaves be harvested? I guess you can tell I've never grown veggies before! :-)
What type of fertilizer should I use? Maybe something like a fish emulsion? Sad to say my soil is not as healthy as it should be but I am working on it.
My thanks to everyone for your helpful comments. I'm so excited to see if I can grow something I can actually eat.
Mary

Cath....I'm with you! I've spent a few $ on my gardening hobby, but refuse to pay the supermarket prices for organic produce!
Recently, my sister turned me on to some organic farmer friends of hers who charge very little for a box of organic stuff that I don't currently grow! WooHoo! Nancy

You know, that used to be the case, that "organic" veggies were a lot more expensive than those that weren't. But in my neck of the woods, it really isn't that much more, at least in my neighborhood food markets. Consumer Reports did a study on that recently , and found that the markup on organic foodstuffs was all the way from enormous to negative (as in, the organic stuff was cheaper). The markups seen were vastly higher for meats than for veggies. In any case, the fraction of your food budget that you spend on veggies is quite small for most people. As organic consumption increases, the markup will be smaller, and commercial farmers have learned a lot about how to farm organically.
I know, I'm just being a devils advocate here, but as long as we're talking about the "value" of home gardening, there are things that can be said.

I grew some for the first time last year with slips that grew from a store bought plant. I had one sweet potato with about a foot long vine on it. I took 4" cuttings and rooted them well in water before I planted them. The silly sweet potato kept sending out vines so I kept rooting and planting them. I must have harvested about 50lbs. of sweet potatoes. They tasted just fine to me.

So Peter reading your post I decided that it is the time to harvest sweet potatoes. This is my first attempt to grow them. I bought 8 pack starter flat at the end of June. I wanted to fill the space left from the spring vegetables. I planted 4 of them in the vegetable bed and the other 4 in the different spots with pumpkins and melons. The last 4 did not receive any care, grew slowly and were overwhelmed by pumpkins and melons. Those in the vegetable bed had drip irrigation and more sun and at the end of the season the vines were everywhere. I really thought that the ones in the vegetable bed will have better crop. But when I dag them out I did not find any difference. In both cases there were some potatoes but not very many of them, they were immature because of their thin skin. And I was not surprised given that I planted them quite late. It feels like they could grow a couple months longer.
But one plant really surprised me. The root on this one was HUGE, it partially stack out of the ground surface. This plant had no actively growing vines, just some sprouts on top. It was also heavily shaded by the overgrown okra. But it looked mature and ripe. And now I am wondering what was different for this potato plant and for the others, which were growing in the same vegetable bed, but mainly grew vines but not roots.


I store min indoors, through this last summer with seasonally constant temps around 76F 40%RH in the summer. Near the floor, where it's a bit cooler, and away from any sunlight. As I said, they last a year. I'm surprised, but pleased. Done this for three years.




Ok - thank you. I've read about people saying to use it and others say it doesn't really matter. Since I have a small area that I'm growing the vetch, I'll give the inoculant a try.
Hopefully the shelf life is longer than one year, since I'll have 1 lb of vetch seeds and inoculant that treats 8 lbs.
Thanks again.
Chris
Also, is the vetch in the second picture far enough along?