23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

My first question is which direction is which? Like, is the elm N, S, E or W of the garden? That will let me better picture where all the shadows are going to go over the seasons. But from my experience removing limbs from a tree that was shading my old garden, getting those two limbs gone will indeed make your garden much better. You may not ever get the results you would with a garden with no shade, but you may get good enough.

I'm not sure what about your set up you don't like visually, but it will soften up its hard lines once you have plants growing in it. You could put decorative finials on the the posts I suppose. A couple of clumps of ornamental grass outside the fence to give the winter a bit of interest without competing too much with the garden? A happy scarecrow or some garden decoration? It looks good to me. Cheers!

It looks like you put the garden in the shadiest part of your yard, and then attempted to grow plants that need a lot of sun.

Cutting the branches will help. You should also move the tomatoes, and maybe the cukes, to the beds farthest from the trees. Grow the lettuce and parsley in the shadiest bed, and the rest in between.

If your tomatoes still don't do well, focus next year on vegies that like part shade -- kale, chard, broccoli, etc.

For your fence, I think it needs some vegetation :). I would grow climbing beans and nasturtiums (edible leaves and flowers) in the sunny areas, and runner beans like 'Painted Lady' on the shadier side/s. Careful you do not get the bush varieties of nasturtiums and beans :).

In our zone, the best performers and favorite to my taste are: Blue Lake, Northwestern, and Fortex. I purchase Northwestern and Fortex seeds.

My favorite is Blue Lake. Though a bit late, they do exceptional well in our weather. Each year I save a few Blue Lake, and allow them to either self seed, or scattered to another bed. What's interesting is... though being open pollinated, they came out true after years of group planting of 4 beans. I'm not a bean expert so not sure why... but they just do.

I haven't learnt how to do canning yet so my rating is only for fresh eating.

I agree that Fortex is an excellent snap bean. It is not especially high yielding however.

Jim

I don't think many of us here have experience with tropical tree crops. I have attempted to grow some of those on the list in north florida with not good results other than citrus.

Such a different set of challenges! I don't know what varieties of trees you can choose from ,but a friend had a dwarf date tree (at least I assumed it was a dwarf) that did well for her for years. It was in a really sunny spot in her house. So other kinds might do well too. Maybe ask at the nursery?
I would also stick with heavy mulch if you can to keep the soil from drying too fast.

Thanks both of you I will be carefull, speaking of watering though, what is the average amount of water and how often for a 3 week old sedling to be watered with organic potting mix?

Thanks again,
-Mr Beno

It isn't a formula, a fixed amount, or a set schedule. The plant's environment is a flexible thing so watering needs to flex accordingly. Failing to do that quickly leads to over-watering.

It is as the plant needs it. You determine that by sticking your finger deep into the soil and if it feels at all damp then you don't water. When in doubt you don't water. When the air temps are low you don't water. If the leaf and stem turgidity appears healthy you don't water.

More seedlings are killed by OVER-watering than by anything else.

Dave

If they sit in wet, cold soil for too long you may have a problem, but the snow won't do harm on its own.

Thanks folks! There was a recent post (which I'd overlooked) on this topic, however their potatoes had already sprouted........ Supposed to be in the 60s by midweek, so I'm hoping mother nature is done with her tricks! We need the moisture badly, but I prefer rain to snow........ ;)

Seed variety...inadequate K at fruiting time...cool weather...

...these can all affect wall thickness.

Thanks Donnabaskets! I have moved them inside and will try the fertilizer. :)

Update - 8 days later
Lovage:

Rhubarb:

The pot got rotated when I was moving stuff around. In case you thought it grew a middle stem since 8 days ago - it didn't.

Other perennial plants returning to life

Garlic:

One of the small chives pot.

Tarragon pot:

I didn't realize this tarragon isn't right tarragon so I was disappointed and threw it away in a dry corner and forgot about it. It died and very dry. Imagine the surprise when I cleaned my balcony.

Strawberry patch
.

To: MelissaHess
No idea. Most people don't recommend containerizing the rhubarbs and lovages. I prefer to attempt them anyways and see what works and what isn't. I don't have a yard so no real options. So far they seem to do well in there but I didn't grow a rhubarb in ground before so I can't compare them.

And yes I heard about the winter-like spring over there! Hope it warms up quickly for you to start gardening.

To: stuffradio
Starting seeds are fine and all but why don't you try to split your rhubarb crowns so you will have multiples? It's faster than starting them from seeds (I'm told you have to wait two years for good harvest if using seed route.) Heard you're supposed to do it when it's in dormancy so little late for crown-splitting anyways. Just a thought.

I don't know lovage but it looks a lot like angelica, maybe they are related?

The biggest rhubarb I've ever seen was in the PNW, the region is made-to-order for it. Too bad you don't have in-ground space. No vacant lots in your area?

That sounds like a good plan :).

If they don't bolt, then they will probably continue to grow until next spring -- is which case they might need the space!

I grow leeks every year, but I have only dealt with them where the seed is planted in December or January and the starts planted out in the early spring. Your summer-sown, fall-transplanted ones are a mystery to me. I don't know what they will do but I am very curious to find out :).

If they do start to make a stalk, I suggest you harvest them immediately. Long before the flower develops, the layers of the leek convert to one woody core and a thin outer covering. You can still use them in stock and stuff, but they are not leeky-textured and tender.

Wait!!!

Just chop off the tops and eat them, then transplant the bottom 1/2 in inch of the stalk, plus the roots to the new location. They will regrow from the stump, and are not likely to bolt once they have been cut back so aggressively.

You can have (halve?) your leeks and eat them, too.

Neuro - Google 'cauliflower buttoning' for more details on what causes it to happen and why it was suggested to pitch these and start fresh transplants. Assuming you have time as we don't know your zone.

Then make your own decision if you think your plants suffered any of those causes. Since we can't see the plants or how severe the damage was all we can provide is best guesses.

Dave

I've found that even if some damage occurs at a young age, when a plant grows out of it and thrives, it almost always produces well. The only exception I can think of is for onions, where early stress can cause them to bolt later on, even if they appear to be growing well.

Some studies have even shown that plants affected by stress (especially at the cotyledon stage) produce better than normal. But, I don't recommend beating your plants up to prove this....

As far as cauliflower buttoning goes, in my experience it always occurs due to heat stress when the plant starts to head.

-Mark

All that space. Why not grow everything. Great idea. Wish I had that yard

We are trying to do even more stuff. We might get one or two cows, we'll have some chickens soon, and my niece got a Sheep we'll have. There is a patch of lawn that's about 45 feet wide and 90 feet long I'm working on improving. I will also be increasing my Garlic yield year by year in hopes of being able to sell $2,000 worth a year and get farm status. If all goes well, the year after this year I should be growing about 1,000+ garlic plants.

You have alot of excellent advice here. I would simply add that you will do yourself a big favor to read at least one good book that covers all the basics of gardening. Square Foot Gardening was mentioned, and it is very good. I would also highly recommend Growing Vegetables & Herbs by Taunton Press.

I don't see that anyone has recommended mulch. Mulch is the easy answer to weed control. I use pinestraw, but you can use chopped leaves, grass clippings, even newspaper or cardboard too (and other things). Let your soil get warm and then apply a thick layer over the entire bed up to about 3 inches from the base of each plant. Your weed problems will be nominal for the season.

With regard to soil amendments. Soil Conditioner is just finely chipped pine bark. It is tilled into clay soil and helps to loosen and texturize it. It's very effective, but doesn't add a whole lot of nourishment to the soil. I am personally very fond of Composted Manure and Spaghnum Peat Moss. But as digdirt said, you really should have your soil tested. It will save you from adding stuff you don't need. My soil is very high in phosporous and potassium, so I only add nitrogen in the form of Blood Meal or manures. Will your soil be like this? You'll only know if you have it tested. This can be done through your local County Agricultural Extension office. It is only $5 here.

You are off to a good start. We wish you great luck!

> What have you found to be the best ways to prevent/get rid of
> weeds organically? My husband bought a weed claw grabber thingy but
> something more preventative might be nice too.

The claw grabber thingy would be for big weeds that have escaped notice until they're hard to pull. I would also recommend getting a tool designed to cut tiny weed seedlings off when they sprout - the idea is that you cut the weeds off and barely disturb the soil. Possibilities include:

- A "hula hoe"
- A collinear hoe
- A "wire weeder" like the one they have at Johnny's. This is a short-handled tool and might work better for your raised beds than the above two long-handled tools. You have to crouch down, but you get better precision.

A plain old classic "hoe" is not all that good for this job - it's better for chopping out bigger weeds and various soil-arranging tasks.

If I were assigned to manage your garden, I would use the wire weeder to weed around the plants, and hand-pluck weeds that are dangerously close to the plant stems. This is another reason for avoiding the hexagonal spacing - with hexagonally spaced plants, it's harder to weed with a tool without accidentally cutting off the plants.

Weeding-with-a-tool is also a reason for _spaced_ plants rather than scattering seed. For example, if you're willing to kneel down and hand-pluck a lot of weeds, scattering lettuce seed works just fine. If you're going to lose patience with that, as I would (and if you're not quite sure you can distinguish between lettuce and weed seedlings), then you're better off sprinkling your seed in little rows or, most formally, growing seedlings elsewhere or buying seedlings and then placing each lettuce plant in a specific place.

To clarify, I'm not suggesting old-style "row farming" where you might have one row of lettuce and two feet of path that you walk in. (Not that that's necessarily wrong if you have the space - it has non-obvious advantages - but that's not your garden.) I'm just talking about simplifying the spaces between plants so that they're easier to weed.

And you might want to increase the spacing just a little this first year, again to make the weeding easier. This past year, in fact, I grew my beans about six inches apart in the "row", and exactly eighteen inches apart between the "rows", though that was all in a bed and I never ever stepped between the rows. It was much easier to weed between the "rows" when the plants were young, and the plants ended up growing quite large, I think reflecting the larger underground space available to them. Easier work and, I think, not significantly fewer beans. Now, I had all the space I could possibly work, so I'm not really recommending that you use a space as big as eighteen inches, but maybe just a little extra space.

Mulch is dandy, though for some reason it doesn't control weeds well for me - it makes the soil moist and soft and happy, and the weeds as well as the plants love that. So many people swear by mulch for weed control that I'm confident that I'm doing something wrong, but I (1) don't know what that is and (2) have too large a garden last year and this year to be able to thickly mulch it all. So I'm controlling weeds other ways.

This year I'm also trying out biodegradable landscape paper; I don't know yet if I recommend it. The only thing that I know is that it has to be very firmly secured or you'll come back the next day to find it blown to the other end of the garden. :) Maybe biodegradable landscape paper _under_ mulch will be the magic.

> I do not know if I should trust the hardware store brand though. I am
> looking at "Evergreen" brand top soil and manure.

My apologies for asking, but when comparing prices, you are accounting for a cubic yard being twenty-seven cubic feet, not nine cubic feet, right? I just want to make sure; when doing the math fast in the past I did once forget to add that third dimension.

In any case, this is where I'm not a great deal of help. I don't use raised beds, so most of my soil is just the ground. :) For amending, I most often use Gardner & Bloome products. Their bags say "Organic", but I don't see "certified organic", so does that really mean organic in an organic gardening sense, or just in a dictionary word sense? I don't know. :) Anyway, I use the Farmyard Blend and the Soil Building Compost. But now that we have a bigger garden, I think that I also need to find a trustworthy by-the-partial-truckload source.

I have more than once seen a big blob of soil dumped onto a tarp in front of a neighbor's home, so I think that it's not all that unusual to have it delivered that way and then frantically wheelbarrow it back to your garden. But that assumes that you've found the trustworthy source in the first place.

I suppose some of those really deep boxes will be for your asparagus.

No these front boxes are going to have 3 husky cherry tomatoes and the left side not sure yet. It has to be something atleast 3ft tall.

The asparagus box im building in similar in depth

You can get away with way less box than you have there...

It has a false bottom only about a foot deep. Thought it looked nicer and had better support this way