23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Thread revival.
There is a new product coming to market in February 2015. They are being called 'mulch mats', and are made from industrial hemp. They compete with petroleum-based weed block. They're an all-natural, biodegradable solution, combining the benefits of natural mulch with the convenience of mats.
There isn't much info on their website except for the product announcement. http://www.woven-earth.com
Full disclosure: I work for Woven Earth, the sellers of the mats. I'm happy to answer any questions.
Here is a link that might be useful: Woven Earth homepage

Flora, I imagine part of the issue for you is that you never get the hot summer weather that brings on super-fast growth. I'm in a cool spring climate as well, maybe not as cool as yours, but once the soil is good and warm the legumes grow at a whopping rate. Very often all kinds of direct-seeded crops catch up with or pass transplanted, IME.
So yes, totally different climates round north america and the UK.

If you have good soil, a nearby water source if needed, the free time so it doesn't become a "job" , I say go for it. What you learn this year , will guide you next year. A few years back I built 8 raised beds 5 feet wide by 50 feet long peaking at 3 feet in the center, with the help of a frontend loader. No borders , when mulched and everything growing I knew my time hadn't been wasted. Then the cicada killers moved in and dug hundreds of holes in the sides of each bed. Every time I watered , the paths between the beds would flood. I now have 1 raised bed , 1 foot tall, but a very big bed. Seems as though irregardless of best laid plans , life will find a way to test your will. I wish you the best of luck. Oh, and with those deer , I found that the fence should go up before they find that garden.

duplicate post. See below.
Here is a link that might be useful: Your original post of this question

As Dig Dirt said there is a discussion already.
I will answer your question though.
The Burpee's Steakhouse Hybrid did well for me, big toms, really good flavor, and produced well. I will be planting them again this year.
You said that you only need 8 seed, you can store the rest of the seed for several years if you keep them in a cool dry place.

Here is a previous discussion about it from over on the Growing Tomatoes forum here. You'll find several other discussions there as well as reviews of Parks Whopper with the forum search there.
Personally I like PW although there are many other just as good varieties. PW tends to have more issues with BER early in the season.
Pull up the "favorite beefsteak" discussion on that forum for lots of suggestions.
Dave
Here is a link that might be useful: steakhouse tomato discussion

Agree. The odds are 9 to 1 that what you have is one of the hybrid varieties simply because they are far more common. Plus asparagus seeds have a very low germination rate and the greens will be the dominate gene so what you get, if anything, will most likely be green.
You will have much better results, faster production, and better quality if you just invest in some additional crowns and plant them instead.
Dave


This is what pin rot looks like....The tissue becomes soft and gives off a very bad odor.
Here is a link that might be useful: SalinasValleyAgriculture
This post was edited by mrdoitall on Sat, Jan 10, 15 at 5:39

to follow up on compost for the garden results:
I might change my answer that compost is enough because we had different results last year when we moved the garden & built new raised beds in a recently cleared area. Our 1st garden in the new location with a lot more sunlight had amazing growth as compared to a few hundred feet away. We joked that with sunlight you can grow anything & there must be some truth to that though some of the stunted growth in the old garden was from the tall conifer roots soaking up the moisture & nutrients.
I moved our rhubarb one day in late March to the new spot outside of the raised beds & observed incredible growth all season. Granted the plants were larger last year than 5 years ago when first planted, but still it was an amazing difference from 2013 to last year 2014 in the new spot. You'd think the plants would have been stunted by digging them up, but because my soil was so loose from the compost amendments it was easy to keep the clumps intact & cart them over to the new spot with the clump of soil attached then I just mulched around after planting. Where before I would wonder what was wrong with my rhubarb that wasn't huge yet like my dad's now I know it was lacking sunlight not nutrients.
Mulch & occasional watering was all we did for the rhubarb back in the old garden & the new spot. I won't spread my compost on it because applying manure when dormant in fall and early winter is easily composted by spring with the rain washing the nutrients down into the soil. I save the compost for mulching in early summer when the soil has warmed.


I'm probably not going to be very popular, BUT.... I had a bed that had great soil, but had hardware cloth( wire very strong and spaced very close together) already in place from crops before we planted our gus.
We ended up planting it just about 6" deep and topping it with tons of compost (as we do each year!).
This is not the optimal way of planting asparagus, but for our situation, it has worked very well!
The gus is ever expanding, and we almost have too much! (NoNo! Never mind! Gus soup is in the freezer!) Nancy

I won't be planting until March. I was just taking advantage of a warm December to prepare a new garden space.
I have a large supply of good garden soil from my previous vegetable garden which will no longer be used. It is a raised lasagna-style bed loaded with rich, wormy, black soil. One way or another, that soil will end up in this new garden.
I don't have rodent problems because of the feral cats living in my back yard.
Thanks
Harry


My (limited) experience is that I winter sow brassica seeds in January. They will sprout when mother nature nudges them to. Last year I planted in raised beds 3 weeks prior to average last frost. They (cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower) all did well. I sowed seeds for the fall crop ~ the 7th of July. I had nice fall crops of cauliflower and broccoli, but the cabbage didn't have enough time to form. I may sow seeds this year 1.5 - 3 weeks earlier for cabbage and probably 1 week sooner for the other 2.
For you, you will want to know your average last freeze (spring) and average first freeze (fall) and sow & plant accordingly.
Also see link below to winter sowing.
regards,
tom
Here is a link that might be useful: wintersowing FAQ

The planting dates are really confusing and hard to believe. As others have said, cabbage and broccoli can be double-cropped in 6B, with spring crops seeded indoors in late Feb, and fall crops seeded in early July. Cauliflower seeds need to be started in early July, too.
I have never gotten decent B sprouts or cauliflower from spring plantings. I now start B sprout seeds the first week of June; the plants bear in November.


Bear's breeches; Acanthus species.
Oh, that's it!