23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

I have four 5'x10' boxes terraced into a hill. I've grown all kinds of beans in the boxes, as well as tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, peppers, eggplants, carrots, leeks, lettuces, herbs, peas, cabbages, kale, you-name-it.

I find the boxes offer an advantage with certain vegetables, although some of that is because they are terraced, with one side about waist high. With beans, for example, I sow the seed fairly densely, use no trellising, even for pole beans, and get a nice dense mat of beans climbing all over themselves at a perfect height for harvesting.

Planting big leafy vegetables like zucchini is pretty cool because I can easily peek underneath and admire the whole other world under the leaves that looks like a veggie wonderland.

I have three 4x8 beds, and two 5x16 beds, and a long "u" shaped bed around the perimeter of the garden. I have grown pole and bush beans in the beds and they have done very well. Bush beans can be succession planted by planting again as soon as the other is done. With pole beans you should be able to plant things around their base that dont get too big.
Tammy

Here is a link that might be useful: My beans in raised beds

There are all different size boxes

My "companion planting" list says hot peppers do well with escarole...and basil, parsley, oregano

Basil, parsley, scallions for sweets

It is often called wide-row gardening - fairly common practice been around for probably 30 some years - see link below for pics in links to info.

And yes i have used it for years. Others here have posted about it too but I can't recall who off hand. One recent discussion I'll see if I can find for you.

Some do enclose the beds but usually with a moveable frame of some type. I guess because they like the appearance better or something. But most don't. I don't. You don't have to alternate the beds but it is easy to do and quite good for the soil improvement. And if you have a series of them then rotation is easy to do, just skip 3 rows over for tomatoes or whatever each year.

If you use clover or rye for the ground cover (aka green manure) you'll get good break-up of the clay soil too.

Bought compost can be risky from what I have heard. Never had to buy it as we do plenty all on your own with the hay fields and cattle manure. But you have the space now to start doing your own so get a good load of manure and get a big pile started. Meanwhile there is good stuff out there and you'll need to track down a good source to get incorporated into all your tilled clay.

You can buy it in bags but that can get expensive so look for a source that does active hot composting rather than just stock piling it, uses diverse ingredients, and that is at least 90-120 days old. It should be a good dark brown in color, smell like earth not ammonia, and crumble well in your hand with no big recognizable pieces.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Wide row gardening

I'e always reffered to raised beds with no sides as passive wide bed gardening. I used it for years. Just went to flat gardening last year.

We're looking into getting some 5 gallon containers from a local restaurant that serves pickles (fingers crossed) and possibly using these smaller ones as the reservoir if they fit inside.

After all of the research I've done and the help from y'all, it's no wonder that my first attempt at container gardening last year, which consisted of 3 tiny plastic planters on the deck here at work, with no reservoir, not even a dish underneath them to keep excess water from running away, failed so miserably. I think I had 1 pea and 1 cherry tomato over the whole summer. It's an entirely different art from gardening in the ground.

Marc

Use the 5 gallon for the reservoir and the small bucket for the plant. Then you will only have to water every 2 or 3 days.

Better yet, go to a big box store and get some 10-20 gallon containers for $5 each. Or get them at yard sales, if recycling is a requirement.

5 gallons is still too small for efficient water usage and for healthy-sized plants. A tomato plant, for example, needs bigger than that.

As someone mentioned on another thread, a good method is to let the hose run for an hour or so, then dig down and see if you find a dry layer of soil below the top, damp layer (and then a deeper damp layer below that). Keep the hose running until the dry layer disappears.

That's your length of time. Where I live it is 1.5-2 hours for vegies, 3 hours for stuff I water less often such as shrubs.

For frequency, do as Dave says and see when the soil gets dry a couple inches down. For me, that's 2-3 weeks for vegies, 4-5 weeks for shrubs.

Of course, the dry layer thing might not work if you live in a desert, but anywhere else it should :).

I can only get to my garden on the weekends so that's the only time I run the soaker hoses. I usually do it for about 2 hours per hose. I've never noticed a problem with dried out plants doing it this way.

Most of my plants are under a thick landscaping fabric so that probably helps conserve moisture too.

It looks like you are heading for a June harvest or late May with the broccoli. You probably could have set out plants at the end of March if the weather has warmed some. Broccoli and cabbage are tender to heavy frost and freezing until the roots get established. You can tell when roots are established because the plants are growing after transplant.

I grow fast-maturing broc and cabbage in spring, and it's ready in June from early April transplanting.

I often have seedlings waiting to go into the ground until another crop is harvested. Tomatoes will hold in containers for quite a long time.

In my garden, the first big turnover of space comes in late June, when early garlic and cabbage are harvested. I don't plant anything where tomatoes will be planted in May.

I generally have good luck just watering from the top. Just make sure they have good drainage and get good airflow or you risk drowning them or developing mold.

I don't start big batches, so it's not bad for me to have the starting pots in large dishes of any sort to catch the overflowed water. I pick my pots out of the dish after they have drained and then dump the overflow into a container to save for the next watering. I think if I had a larger number of plants, I would set them on some sort of mesh screen which would sit over my drain pan--then I wouldn't have to worry about moving the pots to dump the excess water. And, they would get some extra airflow around the pots from below.

Probably due to my own technique, I've not had luck with bottom watering. But, I figure the way I do it works for most seeds and rain falls from above in nature so I go with it.

I agree that it sounds like you're underwatering - I don't believe that the soil for seedlings should ever get "really dry".

I water seed flats with the "gentle rain" setting on a multi-setting water nozzle on a hose, and water them until the water runs through and out. And I never let them get bone dry.

I did the same thing with tomato cages last year and my cucs. I planted burpless and pickling cucs. I did not notice a bit less yield than when I left them on the ground. The plants seemed healthier and I did not have any insect issues (which have been a problem in the past). The vines will climb up and back down the cage then across the ground if you don't keep an eye on them, so I doubt they were any shorter.

My concern is the height of the cage limiting the growth and also the shape of the cage not supporting or promoting proper vine growth.

I'll just see how it does since I'm probably not going to change it now.

The seedling cucumbers in the single pack I bought had 3 tiny stalks all next to each other. Am I supposed to let those all grow or do I pick the healthiest one and allow that one to grow by itself?

I once had a mole run in the fall that went down to the garden. In the spring after I planted sweet corn, They tunneled right down the row and ate the grains. I had to "intercept" the tunnel with field corn sown across the tunnel.

>I am working a temporary job promoting Bayer Advanced chemicals at Lowe's. The Scott's rep, my competitor, said they eat other things. Oh, how I'd love to prove her wrong!!

I know that Scott's was recruiting Master Gardener's to push their products. Does GA allow MG's to recommend products by name?

Some of these comments made me giggle.

I had the same problem trying to figure out what I wanted to grow, where I wanted to grow it, why I wanted to grow it, and then ran into the problem of what was actually available (I prefer start seedlings over seeds) at the store. I planned to put in artichokes and ended up with pattypan and acorn squash instead. I started with a 6x4, added three 2x2 pallets (6" deep) for greens and my daughter to plant bush beans and mini sunflowers, and just added a 4x4 bed. Not to mention a few 7-gallon pots, 5 gallon pots, and anything else of size that can hold dirt and a plant. I'd give parts of my anatomy for a big yard with better soil (I'm urban farming it) with just a little more sun each day than I get now and revel in the production. And keep planting more and more. My dream is a potage garden some day...where I can grow food for use now, grow food for preserving, and grow food for giving to friends because nothing beats fresh grown veggies!

This post was edited by THatstat on Thu, Apr 18, 13 at 11:05

You have gotten a lot of good advice, but i'll add a couple of more things...
1) Give your plants plenty of space. I have several 4x8 raised beds and the first year I put 4 tomato plants and some other plants in each one. Wayyy too crowded. It just looks so empty when you plant those teeny tiny plants! lol but trust me, they will take over. I now put two tomato plants in each box, on opposite ends, and they still end up covering the whole box by the end of the season.
2) 10 tomato plants is a LOT of tomatoes. I planted 7 plants last year, a variety of tomatoes, and nursed them through the worst drought in the history of my area. Then they all got blight, got infested with pill bugs (which apparantly isn't possible but I will tell you for sure it is), and lost most of my tomatoes from August on. I still ended up canning 112 jars of salsa and we ate fresh tomatoes every day.

Laying out a garden isn't as some people make it sound. I've been gardening for year and still spend hours trying to get it right.
But basicaly you need to make a plan with indications of north , west, east, and south.
Put the tall plants on the north end and work tward the south with the shorter items.
But the tricky part comes when you start putting in summer crops after the spring crops are over.

All of the above! Plus, there are so many variables that you will learn by doing, reading and observing!
Like maybe I should have my tomatoes in a bed next to the house on the south side to get a few more degrees of heat (I'd have to build a new bed, so not this year!) or I can have a few more beds for winter in this area, and still have some lettuce and shade lovers in this bed!
Check out your neighbors' set ups! I get whip lash driving places and checking out the gardens! We often have to stop and admire a random garden at my insistence! ;)
I still have troubles with summer/winter gardens cause we have a very long growing season, lasting into Nov/Dec sometimes! This is why I have a couple of dedicated beds right near the deck (less mud!) for fall/winter stuff. I do tone it down in the winter to a couple of beds and work on amending the spring/summer beds during the winter (we don't freeze much, just some frost)
Keep reading and learning! And Happy Gardening! Nancy

Yes, as Deborah says, don't plant in FL until summer heat is done. Same here in Socal.

I tend to believe companion planting advice tends to be more anecdote than science, but overall I believe in polycultures over monocultures.

They say alliums are helpful for brassicas. I tend to plant green onions (allium fistulosum) as a cut & come again crop along with other things. They do well as a cool-season crop.

Lettuces get along with lots of crops, and as they do well in partly shady conditions and cooler weather, they might do well in the understory with the brussel sprouts.

In terms of companion planting, I like to think along the lines of niches both in space and in time.

So, in terms of space we can look at tall plants vs, short plants, shallow roots vs. deep roots, etc.

Opportunities in time would be something like sowing very short season crops (such as a baby greens mix) alongside a long-season crop, such as brusell sprouts (120 days). The greens mix will grow quickly and you can start harvesting after a few weeks, gradually thinning the greens as the brussel sprouts need more space.

If I had an available bin I would probably put bagged manure in it. However it keeps well in the bag. There is a series of small pin prick wholes on the side of the bag. You can add a little moisture with a water spray from time to time. The plastic keeps the moisture in. I stack the bags becaue it is easy to store that way. The end product is far from dry and dusty. It is moist with virtually no odor. I would characterize it as mighty fine compost.

Zeuspaul

Send that bagged compost to lab to examine the soil foodweb(microorganisms,etc), I bet fresh compost would have ten fold the life then the bagged crap...