23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
I let my Kale grow all summer long, and grow it does. By the time October rolls around, my kale stalks are usually 3 feet tall from clipping the bottom leaves all season. I grow, blue curled scotch, redbor and lacinto varieties. They taste great all summer long. I'm in zone 6b in se Pa, so we don't have much difference in weather. As for the spinach, it is still fine. Lows are still in the 50's at night. My spinach is usually spent and out of the garden around June 1st, about the same time the first pea harvest comes in.
No need to scrap them. Just plant your beans and things around them - plenty of bare space there - and let them keep growing. Interplanting is the most efficient use of space. Still plenty of harvest time available for them before the beans get big enough to start producing. My lettuces and spinach are still going strong and will for another 3 weeks or so and my soil is still too cool for planting beans.
Dave
Yea I did as well as I could with my schedule. They had been outside in small pots for about two weeks in a screened in porch so the sun was probably brighter outside of it. But yea they aren't getting worse for sure and I'm spraying fungicide every two weeks this year. Cause last year I didn't and all five of my tomatoes got infected but luckily I cut all the affected areas and sprayed fungicide on the rest and everything was fine so I'm trying to prevent any illness early in the season mainly because my second round of tomatoes are already putting out their first true sets of leaves so I'm trying to keep that spot disease free :)
Yeah, you don't "earth up" sweet potatoes. You just stick them in the ground like would root some ivy or other type of vine. I use 6 inch slips and root the bottom half. It's funny because this is the third sweet potato question on here within the last week or so. Tis the season. You should be able to get around 1 lb of harvest per gallon. So basically a 25 gallon container will give you around 25 lbs of sweet potato goodness. I am sure there is a maximum depth you can achieve in growth. A garbage can may be too deep. You could be better off using a half barrel.
Deer seem to sample everything. They have eaten not only green tomatoes but the leaves to the point I had no tomatoes for a couple years. This was after 10yrs of growing tomatoes in the same garden and not having the deer eat the tomatoes.
Deer even eat the tips of the wild black berries growing here. They didn't bother the Jerusalem Artichoke plants but the woodchucks would eat the lower leaves.
Deer also eat the day lilies, which are abundant, but only a taste in early spring.
fwiw - I plant broccoli to see if I have any woodchucks nearby. They seem to go right after broccoli.
I wish something would eat the dandelions and other weeds I have here.
Interesting planter! I have a couple of stack-a-pots, but the compost tube is intriguing. In the future, I would highly recommend using coir for the worms instead of peat. Much less acidic.
Have fun! And please keep us updated.
It states you can grow those in the unit and I did pick out some varieties that were better fits for containers. The sun gold was just seed I had and thought I'd see how it goes.
Also my co-worker had one last year, she grew squash, tomatoes, peppers, and beans with no issues. I even have the pictures from hers last year. If it doesn't work out, well I have my actual garden and I'll not repeat next year. I'm testing it to see what it can do.
You don't need a pole next to each. Just enough poles to support the weight as they climb the strings. Say a pole about every 2.5 to 3' along the row. Then run your strings horizontally from pole to pole.
Peas have tendrils rather than twining stems and they prefer something small diameter to get hold of. I use twiggy prunings I for peas. At the end of the season the prunings and the pea plants can go on the compost heap. No untangling and no plastic waste to dispose of. Here's an example of what I mean.
I just hand pick and drop in bucket of soapy water. You can just wipe the eggs off the plants with your fingers. If its a really bad infestation I spray with Neem but it can kill beneficials too so its a last defense and rarely used. I never use Pyrethrin but I'd suspect that yes, you'd have to do a follow up spraying since it is a contact-only pesticide.
Dave
Thanks Dave
I did start to handpick and squash but when I picked one off several of the others on the same fern would bail off into the mulch. I guess now that I knocked out the adults I might be able to manage flicking them into soapy water if there are not so many.
Well, it's just a matter of farming grass for animals to eat, instead of tomatoes and asparagus for humans to eat. Why, grass grows year round, so it's a nutritionally intensive policy that never allows for (gasp!) bare ground. Of course, the law should require that such grass gardens be well stocked with cattle, sheep, and goats, as well.
From a dedicated front yard vegetable gardener.
You guys have helped me enormously. Right now, I think I'm going to wait until June, but I'm keeping them outside until they get a bit sturdier. Right now it's really windy and thank goodness they're on the porch and not in the bed. As for crowns--if this experiment fails, I may try crowns. Right now, though, they seem to be pretty content.
I actually keep my tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants together on purpose, because I want to rotate them and not plant these things (all in the same family) in the same place for at least the following two years. I've somewhat divided my garden, all around my house, into three garden zones. Then I rotate, keeping these three together in a zone. I also keep my squash and cucumbers in a zone, with watermelons, cantaloupes, etc. In the other zone I grow peas and beans, maybe corn, sometimes some potatoes, and any other random vegetables I want to grow. I think if I had more space, I'd go to 4 or 5 zones, but my zone size is based on approximately how many tomatoes and peppers I want to grow in a year.
I found an old (2011) discussion I started on the Container Gardening forum about my experiment with potato towers. It includes photos from one garden web regular who did have an impressive yield. You might find it interesting:
Tale of two potato bins, with photos
The photos I posted in that thread have disappeared, but here is the one of 20 pounds of potatoes harvested from just over one pound of seed potatoes in an 18-gallon tote:
Ohiofem, thanks for sharing. It was very informative to read, especially the fact that only some cultivars would make potatoes up the stem. I guess the earthing up of potatoes my farther was used was just to prevent them from going green and not to increase yield.
"The plant itself looks ok but every week the plant had 2 or 3 leafs that turn yellow and then brown."
I'd like to have such stable cukes. As long as they're growing much more than dying, there should be no reason to fret.