23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

We've been down to 23 here, and also had snow. Assuredly the coldest earliest weather since I have been here since 1981.

Very pleased with my collards. I had left about ten unpicked outside the hoop houses, they suffered through multiple sub-15 nights, with 96 consecutive hours of freezing weather. But yesterday afternoon it went above freezing for about 5 hrs. They popped back up and were promptly picked, about 40 lbs before cleaning. Lots of greens, obviously I will not go under the hoop houses until after Christmas.

runswithscissors: You got me. Must know how you go about doing this. I'm not into the hoop gardening because I would have no help in doing this, but if it is a flourescent deal which I have set up under lights in a 50 degree garage, it tweeks my interest intensely. Give me the details--and you are in a colder zone which would help. Barb

Well, my suggestion doesn't meet the test of being inexpensive, but it's a lot less complicated to set up than many others you've gotten. I got the late fall gardening jones bad last year, so I told my family that the only I wanted for Christmas was an Aerogarden. I used mine in my small, windowless office at work to grow herbs. In about 8 weeks, I was able to harvest six different herbs. People grow dwarf peppers and tomatoes as well as greens in them. It's a lot if fun for a small investment in time.

Oh, Nancy, what a great idea! I love stuffed peppers but hate all the extra work to do the stuffing. I am going to try that! Go You!

I had a pleasant surprise with my pepper harvest this year. In early July I bought a TAM pepper on a whim. I was told that it was "heatless". Not mine. Not even close. HOT!

However, we have a South Korean medical student living with us this year and he adores hot peppers, as does my son in law. So, I made hot pepper sauce using one of the recipes from Pepper Joe's web site. They are loving it! That one plant yielded enough for 6 pints of sauce. I'll plant earlier next year!

Sometimes, surprises are good...

Here are the Red Peppers I picked today. The plants are still putting on fruits, should I cut the fruits so the plants don't waste there energy?

I'd take that supplier's response with a grain or two of salt Mark. Especially if you end up with 50% female. The % of all-male plants received differs from supplier to supplier.

It isn't that they have 'reverted' but that some growers aren't nearly as careful with their crown selections for sale nor as dedicated to assuring quality as some others are.

Even so any of the Jersey series still surpasses production of quality spears when compared to the Washington strains.

Dave

Thanks for the input. I did think it odd that the supplier used "Hybrid" instead of naming the specific cultivar.

My advice is :
Do it small scale and learn from your experience. Then the following season you can decide better how much you can handle.

What about a community plot or find an empty lot that you could use, near your current place as well as where you might move to?

I don't know that juglone qualifies as an oil.

Dave has the best idea....use the hulls on an area where there are no plants of any kind. That's probably even true for the finished compost, if you want to be safe. There are a jillion lists of juglone sensitive plants....each seem to be different from the others. Best to be cautious.

Pecan shells are an expensive but attractive mulch used in my area but mainly in perennial beds, not vegetable gardens. I would use them in an established garden area.

Should they be covered? If so, plastic or remay?

This post was edited by MickEmery on Sat, Nov 23, 13 at 23:44

Our very first freeze was two weeks ago. It went down to 23. My broccoli leaves (uncovered) were burned, but the plants made it. Heads were not damaged. I did, however, put row cover over them after that. I really want them to make it all winter. I like the side shoots even better than the big heads. Personally, I wouldn't take the chance. It just doesn't take much time to cover them.

Don't put lime down until you have the results of a soil test. Most mulches don't greatly decrease the pH of the soil.

Thanks.

How well does compost suppress weeds when applied as a mulch? (I use quite a bit of compost, but have never used it as a mulch for fear that the weeds would like it too much).

To explain better, the lime is for what I think the soil already needs. There is a nearby asparagus bed that tested at 5.5 a few years ago, I'm assuming this soil is the same (though I may have added a little lime before planting strawberries in the past and there has been some compost and cow manure added over time). The bed is newly planted- I transplanted some crowns about a month ago after they had gone dormant. I meant to get a soil test done- but it's turned into one of those tasks I didn't get to- and it's now 15 degrees with snow blowing everywhere and I'm not sure if I'll get it done before the ground is too frozen. I'll probably go with cedar mulch (I really want something that will suppress weeds) but if anyone has other suggestions let me know.

Growing indoors will be extremely difficult unless you can get 6-8 hours of sunlight and good ventilation. There are more chances of diseases when these are grown indoors. But if you have space for even 1-2 containers outside you can certainly grow them easily. It is best to grow them in summer but you can start seeds indoors about 8 weeks ahead of time or buy transplants from nursery.

Here is a link that might be useful: El Paso Twigs

If you have grown them successfully outside, in the garden or IN container, then may consider growing them inside. Then you have to educated yourself about GROWING UNDER LIGHT.

But what you want to do is to germinating and growing seedling to be planted out in the spring, THEN that is another issue.

Ok thank you two for the help I'm gonna have fun with my first tiller yay gotta try not to get carried away and do the whole yard

I'm surspised at giving the tomato plants only 2' apart. Seems a little close, depending on the type of tomato plants. The 3-4 feet between rows isn't just mainly for us humans to walk in, the plant roots go out into those spots too!

Actually, saying 3-4' between rows can be a little misleading (depending on how you interpret that) because it doesn't address how wide the rows themselves are. A tomato plant has a much larger footprint than a bean plant, so if you plant a row of bean seeds, then measure 3' over from your furrow and plant another row of beans, fine, plenty of room. But if you plant a row of tomato transplants, especially monsters like some of the cherry tomatoes, measure 3' over then do a row of okra, you won't have room to move come midsummer, because those can both average 3' in diameter.

I have lots of space and I like to be comfortable in the garden, so I have a 3' spacing for everything: 3' wide row for planting, 3' wide path for walking, 3' wide row for planting, etc. For smaller things I end up treating it like a small bed, and plant rows within rows, like with lettuce, bush beans, garlic. I could probably do with smaller pathways, but not smaller rows.