23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
My raised bed is 4x8 and I have found that 5 untrimmed indeterminates that are tied to a zig zagged line of pig wire are all I can handle. I put my sungold cherry in a 3x3' bed by it's self cause it gets so big. Nancy
I was told we can't grow tomatoes here because it gets too hot in summer. I have one Big Boy purchased at HD now growing in partial shade. I know jalapeno peppers do fine in partial shade, so giving tomatoes a whirl too. Nice to know sort of what to expect. There are only two of us, so we figured one plant would suffice. The jalepeno went in a month earlier than the tomato and is already producing. No flowers yet on the 1' tall tomato, but it's growing. Soon!
Manylittle, I request that you make use of paragraphing. I suspect not many will read through a long post of one paragraph.
Jonathan Passey of several posts back frames the case very well. I suggest everyone read his post carefully.
In short, to say that mulch rarely is a bad thing (harboring rodents is the main knock against it, or fire-ants in the South) is not equal to solving serious deficits. Notably, it does not solve major nutrient deficiency. We experienced gardeners are attempting to counter the hyperbole in this regard. Those who come along and claim that any critique of the BTE method can only come from those who have never used deep mulch is silly, because few if any experienced gardeners have not experimented with all sorts of mulches.
I have been vegetable gardening for 40 years, and recently retired from a 37 year career as an agricultural research and development manager. For most of this time I have used the European style of raised bed intensive gardens in my hobby, and thought that was ideal.
I tried the BTE method last year for the first time, since I had moved to a hilly property and was establishing new beds. The beds are laid out like terraces on the hillside, supported by wood walls, set into the slope with level tops. The slope is so steep it's more like climbing/sliding than walking around them, so I was hoping the low maintenance feature would be an advantage.
Bottom line, I have doubled the area using BTE this year, my first year results were amazingly successful. The only "problem" I had was that my usual plant spacing produced such dense results that I felt like I was going on safari to find most of the peppers I grew, frustrated because I never found them all. The tomatoes tended to topple when laden with fruit, but I had the same problem in raised soil beds as well. I will need rebar supports apparently, the heavy duty garden center cages I used are too wimpy.
I agree that agronomically speaking the BTE method makes little sense, and the results I saw makes me realize that our scientific methodology needs improvement. It strikes me that the really important aspect to understand in soil is the surface of the individual soil particles, and unfortunately when we test soils it is a homogenized mixture of a core sample that is analyzed. Unfortunately in this way, the complexity of the soil environment is lost.
We are only beginning to be able to systemically study the thousands of different micro-organisms in the soil, because they have been extremely difficult to quantify and identify. Now that we have genetic analysis methodology, more science will become available to document the functions and importance of the biology living in the soil.
Besides retaining moisture, which is a HUGE advantage for the plants and the soil fungal / microbial community that apparently provides a near ideal environment, I am convinced that there is nitrogen fixation happening deep in the BTE beds. The organic acids from the compost are dissolving soil nutrients at the bottom of the beds and the filaments of the mycorrhizae are transporting them upwards into the profile because the filaments are not broken up by any tilling.
Personally, I am a bit reluctant to try too hard to convince the conventional thinkers (of which I was one) to try Back to Eden Gardening, because once everyone realizes how good the method is, it won't be possible to talk the local landscapers into dumping their chips on my property for free.
Seriously, I am convinced this method will help the public realize the shortcomings of our conventional ag cropping system, which is unfortunately helping to turn North America into a desert. Have you ever visited farms in Europe, where they have several centuries of additional farming practice in their history? One word, dismal.
We need to wake up to the reality of our ties to a healthy earth if we want to continue to flourish. Meanwhile as Voltaire said, "We must tend our gardens," only now, that means mostly just watching them grow!
I a lot of people in the far north plant runner beans. I've also heard that they start their regular beans indoors. In a greenhouse is another option, although that wouldn't work for you.
Can you put the seeds in a very large pot of soil in the house and take them in and out for sunny weather for a month or so? Then just move them outdoors when it's warm enough? Beans hate colder weather. They also don't do well in extreme heat like AZ. I always had to really on yardlongs and cowpeas when I was in AZ.
Also, bush beans have shorter days to maturity. But, hard to get much from a couple of pots of bush beans.
in my case I, too, don't get much from runners, so I stick to regular pole. Warm the soil with black plastic, and consider putting up a small hoop house to protect the beans until it is warm enough. The yield of pole beans is largely determined by how long they can produce, and you are in Zone 2.
Any organic matter helps - leaf mold, chopped straw or hay, cotton or coffee hulls, etc. Not as effective at compost but helps. Peat skews your soil pH so use depends on your pH. Sand, per all the discussions over on the Soil forum, doesn't help much and it takes a lot of it. Even unfinished compost works and it finishes composting in place. Did you fill the whole bed with only compost? Nothing else?
Your compost contains enough diverse components or just turf. Perhaps it needs more carbons added to decompose. Do you run an active hot compost pile or a stacked cold pile? What is available to you locally?
Dave
If you have soil that is heavily clay and tends to be slow to dry out, warm up, and tends to be cloddy, I think 3 inches of medium/ coarse sand can do wonders to loosen that soil up. For my silty clay loam I also add a good bit of peat moss. I love what this does for my soil. Just today I went out and tilled in the planting rows for a row of gladious and a half row of super sugar snap peas. How did the ground work up here in wetish Indiana?...like a sand box.
Rhizo1 ; Thanks for correcting my radical spelling of radicle. I actually do know better, but I'm getting old .....
(Interestingly the gardenweb spellchecker is objecting to "radicle." I wonder if I actually had it right to begin with, but the software radicalised it. Anyway, GW should know better!)
A passing update to soaking seeds, I also purchased some Lupine flowers which I hear are infamous for not sprouting without a good soak and possibly even some husk scoring. I soaked the seeds for 24 hours, and got about 50% of them swell and crack the skins to their seeds right off. Inside was a classic green embryo, however the others had shown no signs of swelling. I scored the ones who had not swollen with a simple nail file, and of those about 85% caught up to their siblings within just a few hours.
I've planted all my seeds now and already a Lupine has pushed from the starting medium and is trying to push out two cotyledons after only 12 hours. I expect 100% success with the lupines. :)
I'm never a fan of planting only 1 of anything. It cuts your odds of having any success way down. 2 plants will double your odds, 3 will triple them. Especially when cross-pollination is required. And one doesn't normally only plant one melon plant per mound anyway, you plant 2 and often 3 to insure adequate male and female blooms at the same time.
So I would success you sort your seeds, and if you don't want to grow them as transplants but decide to direct seed instead then plant 5-6 seeds of each in separate hills next to each other, close enough that the vines will be able to intertwine for pollination, and then thin each hill to 3 plants once the plants are 3-4" tall.
Dave
Hi Dave - thanks for the feedback. I do have asparagus in a bed all its own I have too many onions to put out in other places, and was thinking I might be able to use the room in the asparagus bed around the asparagus so it's not "wasted space" once the asparagus is growing to fern. Thanks for the quick feedback.
If your mix already has a little fertilizer in it, you're probably OK. You don't want to risk burning them. My eggplants were planted on March 14 and are still in their seed starting mix. I just gave them a very light feeding at 1/4 strength. In a week or so I will transplant to regular mix in 4-inch containers. They look a week behind the one you call your good one.
It is kinda funny about how some people plan their summer gardens on the basis of these hardiness zones.
Yes, although the hardiness zones are not necessarily indicative of frost-to-frost growing season, I guess they can be used that way. But formally, they aren't really all that useful for vegetable gardening. They're really mainly for shrubs and trees. The American Horticultural Society is specific about that, in reference to the hardiness zones -- "By using the map to find the zone in which you live, you will be able to determine what plants will 'winter over' in your garden and survive for many years."
Hey guys it matters!
Annuals will die earlier in different zones! I buy perennials and if it's hardiness is 20 degrees I won't buy it to high must be 0 or less TX weather is bi polar. I also determine hardiness by drought tollerence if it can dryout before watering and how long it will bloom here because plants bloom longer in different zones. Also lighting determines where I will place the plant as to what kinda of heat will be on the plant. TX heat and Sun time is a lot hotter...the suggestion for watering you can't follow here the same as other hot zones...Happy Planting
the cordless cultivator. no spend money on something else. best used after it is worked up for weed control. 30' x 5' garden a good hoe would be better investment. may want to consider spading that size garden with a spading fork. it doesn't have to be done all at 1 time. or consider a mantis type tiller. check e-bay for mantis tillers. $300 new.
That's what qualifies for overgrown in vegetation? You should have seen some of my property last year....