23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

No, can't open the windows yet! It may be officially spring, but it definitely doesn't feel like it! I potted up 5 tomatoes on the same day, and they are doing fine--exposed to the same conditions, same potting mix, etc.
I know there's still plenty of time to restart, so no worries. I just like to learn from my mistakes, and identify what's going on...never seen anything like this.

BINGO " .... South Facing Window .... " == Sun burn.

Tou might as well remove those leaves since the are not going to make a positive contribution.

I started Asparagus from seedlings rather than crown roots and it took me a good 4 years before they started to thicken a little, then actually 5 years before they were as fat as I was expecting. I didn't do anything but keep adding compost and ground up leaves. I also let mine fern every year.

I've only used home made compost on mine and they are thick as my thumb for the most part.And plentiful! From a 4x8 bed, the 3 of us eat gus about 2x per week.
I do have clay soil, so possibly more nutrients than some.
Nancy

How are they connected on the ends? Unless they aren't well drilled (or nailed) in, and unless the wood is really thin, you won't have to worry about the wood bowing when you add the soil. Longer term, the boards can bow from getting wet, changes in temperature, etc.

If it's not too late, I would really recommend trying to incorporate some of the clay into your beds. Clay has a poor structure and is acidic, but it has lots of nutrients and good qualities that are often overlooked. You just need to mix it with soil amendments like compost, be patient, and watch it become awesome over the years. You have to take a long term view with it. (And I am saying this from experience. You could make pottery with what I have in my yard.)

Go to the big box store and ask them for some sort of bracket to keep the boxes from bowing or separating.
Fill with garden mix from the land fill (or wherever you can get it) the worms will bring the clay up into your boxes! Nancy

I was just reading a bit about this - You want the tubes of straw vertical so that water will run through them.

Here is a link that might be useful: Straw Bale Gardens

I'm in a bit of a pickle then. The tubes of straw on my bales are on the string sides, so one side of strings would have to be in contact with the ground in order for the tube openings to be up. What would you all recommend I do?

In some climates beans are regularly transplanted. If you have cool springs like us it isn't warm enough for beans to germinate until well into early Summer. So I start some beans early in my glazed porch. Then again some more a few weeks later and finally some direct outside. This means that the beans are a range of ages and we don't get a glut coming all at once.

My comment about beans sprouting quickly was made assuming that they are being planted in warm soil and that fairly fresh seed was being used (as in 1 to 3 years old).

Rodney

A problem I sometimes have is mice......they eat the seeds.
I'm glad some of yours have started sprouting!
I've found with my snow peas that I have to pre-sprout them in the house......that way they seem to be less palatable to the mice.

What is great about seeds such as beets, kale, kohlrabi, lettuces, and spinach is that there are typically hundreds of seeds in the packet. What I do is gamble with early plantings. If I lose the early crop, I still have enough seeds for successive crops.

Thank you everyone. Your responses have made me think about the sun and its trajectory here and I will have to give this more thought. The diagonal bed is not an option. Too difficult to mow around it. I am thinkining that my best option may be an L-shape, but I will have to wait to see how the sun shifts to determine where to position the E-W section. Thank you all, will update you later.

Well, my mind is getting a visual this morning, I think it was too late last night. [g] I do follow about the sun rising a little north of east and that a little diagonal orientation to accommodate that would give the beds a full sweep of the sun if it is unobstructed. And that you are right, Dave, it is individual to your property.

I also notice that the sun is lower in the sky right now on my property and the times that the sun is on the garden is different then summer. I used your link to look up the altitude of the sun now, in June, last September and last April, because I wondered how different the height of the sun is now as opposed to as it lowers in the fall and it's actually not that different.

I know that the sun rises a little bit north of east on my property at some point but I didn't realize when I noticed that, that it wasn't like that all the time. And I don't remember what time of year it was when I noticed that.

This morning, it is rising straight in front of the front door of my house, but behind the house across the street. So it always takes a little bit in the morning to get above the roof of that house and my house and hits the western most part of the yard and creeps across and then the house is shading a small edge of the vegetable plot on the East side. I haven't plotted it in awhile, but today I will have opportunity to do that, if the sun stays out most of the day.

If the sun is directly facing my front door as it rises this morning, does that mean that my house is not sitting directly on the EWNS compass points, but a little bit South of East? It would seem that if it's rising directly East of my house, then a true East/West orientation of my beds would give me the most sun possible, could that be right?

Thanks, SOkra and Dave

Are they the peppadews??

I doubt that what they were discussing 7 years ago on this thread were peppadews, which appear to be a round cherry pepper shape. I grew some seeds from store bought "mini sweet peppers" sold by Pero Farms. They are 2-4 inches long, shaped like corno de toros, have few seeds and have a very pleasing sweet pepper taste. They have thick walls and keep well. They taste much better than any bell pepper I've tasted. All my plants grew like the red one I took the seeds from. I love them!

Here is a link that might be useful: Mini Sweet Peppers

I have read this advice as well as the opposite and I've tried both with habaneros. I think my results with single planting have been better. I did get bigger peppers by putting two in a pot, but I also got noticeably fewer of them, and the peppers seemed to have a waxy color about them.

On the other hand, I've also had bad luck with peppers far apart. So it seems like a happy medium is best.

A saying I read about peppers was that "peppers like to hold hands" meaning that they do best when planted close enough together that, when grown, their leaves will overlap slightly. This seems to be the happy medium for me. Growing at that distance produced abundant, medium sized, rich orange habaneros.

I also do not thin them at all. I start lots and lots of individual seedlings, and then transplant them into place. Thinning just makes me feel bad about the plants that get pulled up. :( So I only do it with seeds that are too small to handle individually, like argula.

Angie

There seems to me to be a couple of different options here. Close planting - holding hands, love that - might be worth a try, 6" apart. But I think the almanac site was saying to leave seedlings very close, 1/2" or so, and grow them more as a multi-stemmed plant. I haven't been able to find much about this but one link (can't find again right now) was about increased yields in the fields when a couple of tomato plants/seeds were planted in each hole. Interesting and counter-intuitive. Also helps when/if one plant dies, the other carries on and doesn't leave a gap in the planting. I think I'll try some of my peppers and tomatoes like this.

I add hardware cloth to any new bed (NOT chicken wire! It's holes are too big and it rots after a couple of years!) due to our gopher problems!
Anywhere you live, I would ask some neighbors or the extension office what to expect for your area. Gophers, moles, voles, rabbits, groundhogs etc.. I would especially go with the neighbors, cause while I have never seen a rabbit wild in this area, 5 miles away they run rampant! Nancy

Thanks again, Nancy! You are a wealth of information today! :-)

Thanks to all for your replies! I think my initial plans were a bit ambitious... Sounds like I need to downsize quite a bit. I was originally planning on laying it out as a square foot garden, so I was thinking one plant per square foot = 64 plants in an 8x8 bed... Which is definitely too crowded, now that I really think about it.

The 8x8 bed wasn't really a choice... It came with the house, so we figured we'd just go with it our first season here. Next year, we'll be building several smaller beds that are easier to maintain.

Thanks again!

There is a square foot gardening forum here that might help you out. Nancy

D and others have given you some good advice. Toms 2 feet apart are fine. As D said....toms need 3 things: sun, sun, and more sun. I got caught with my pants down last year on my tom support system. Indeterminates must be supported well. This year I used 4'x8' welded wire panels used for concrete mesh. They are lashed between 8' T posts. I think I should be dialed in better this year.

I'd love to see that arrangement, you don't have a photo do you?

One of these days it will warm up and dry out a bit up there in Dakota.

I am blessed to have been able to plant a couple things out in the gardens...sugar snap peas and onion plants. The lady called this morning that the onions were in. I set them out with fertilizer this morning. the ground works up like a dream on my amended beds. Where the soil is less amended, it is somewhat wetish. The Candy onions were large and had nice live roots on them.

Just so you know I'm not kidding, I work in Syracuse, NY. I live about 25 miles away from Syracuse.

Take a peek at this one too (5 worst winter weather cities in US):
http://www.farmersalmanac.com/weather/2010/09/07/5-worst-winter-weather-cities/

Feel better now?

Here is a link that might be useful: Top Snowiest cities in US 2013/2014

I always leave mine too, but they flop all over everything when they get tall. I'm thinking of giving them support this year. Anyone try that?

I get some twine and wrap it around a few times. It keeps them out of the paths. Nancy