Poll: Vegetables in your garden

[marmalady]

Middie, try giving your tomato plant a shot of a good veggie fertilizer - just like pregnant moms, it needs extra nutrition while it's making fruit!


I've got tomatoes - grape, Cherokee purple, Brandywine, a plum tomato and a beefsteak; some lemongrass; cucumbers; poblano pepper and a 'Charleston cayenne' pepper; had lettuce and beets, it's too hot now, tho; 2 basils; cilantro; and tons of herbs; sage, rosemary, chives and garlic chives, thyme, marjoram, 2 oreganos, tarragon, savory, and parsley.

 

[GB]

Why bother growing my own garden? Next year I am just going to raid Buckytoms

 

[thumpershere2]

20 tomato, 6 bell pepper, 6 banana peppers, 70 beets, 40 0nions, 3 cucumbers, 25 cabbage, 6 rows of corn, 12 red onions, 4 cherry tomatoes, And a whole lot of catnip. 8 hills of potatos.

 

[Anniebelle]

I have 5 kinds of tomatoes, zucchini, lemon cukes, English cukes, blueberries, raspberries, peas (they're almost done), apple tree (3 kinds grafted on one tree), and extras of all these to give to the food bank. PLANT A ROW FOR THE HUNGRY!

 

[jkath]

i have flat leaf parsley, white sage, rosemary, and thyme (hey, you goin' to scarborough fair?)

thought the same thing while reading it!

I forgot to add my lemon basil (it has taken over all the space under my wisteria arbor!) and my tiny little fig tree. The tree is only 2' high, maybe, but there's 8 figs on it already, and it is happy as can be!

 

[jennyema]

A very impressive show of gardening ability here!

 

[Claire]

I'm all for raiding BuckyTom's, too. 27 tomato plants? I hope you have a good A/C system, because prepping them for canning/freezing would just about wipe me out in the sweat alone.

4 tomato plants (two early girls in the ground, two plums in whiskey barrels)
5 pepper plants (two super cayenne, one regular cayenne, and one poblano)
4 cucumber vines which only are flowering, not setting fruit. I think because it's too hot right now.
swiss chard
Herbs: 3 kinds of mint, sage, 3 kinds of parsley, 2 kinds of chives, tarragon, curry, savory, rosemary, 2 kinds of thyme, lemon balm ... well, you get the picture, the herbs went crazy this year. When hubby was having medical problems earlier this year I made him herbal baths and he loved it. Said he felt like a piece of meat in a soup or stew.

Onions, which aren't doing great, also because of the heat

a lettuce bed which has bolted, and it's too hot to start again (I'm hoping in a week or two to re-plant it). I always put in a mix.

 

[buckytom]

lol claire and gb. sweat is the secret ingredient in canning...

you are both welcome to raid my garden. it is totally organic. no 'cides of any kind, and the only fertilizers i use are yard compost and organic composted chicken poop. i should start composting my own birds poop. i cold compost, only turning the pile about twice a year, so i get lots of earthworms to do their work dirty for me. mwhahahahahahaaa... ok, well enough about poop.
it's all about the soil. i am tempted to build a worm box, with a load of eisenia foetidae (too tired - look it up.) nutting like worm tea and castings for the garden.
again with the poop!

i have so many cukes and zukes coming in; i have to look up the recipe for "freezer pickles", or was it fridge pickles. i made a good korean inspired cuke salad the other day, with hot peppers, celery, scallions, soju, and rice vinegar, but how much of that can 1 person eat?
i just took my first jap - ehem, korean white eggplant in today. now i need a good recipe for white eggplant....

 

[Constance]

You can never underestimate the importance of poop in the vegetable garden!
My husband used to tease me that I'd rather have a truckload of cow manure than a dozen roses.
For several years, I had a greenhouse customer who brought me manure in exchange for his spring vegetable plants and a couple of hanging baskets for his wife.
Unfortunately, he was incarcerated for growing and distributing marijuana. I sure did miss that cow poop.

 

[msalper]

tomatoes, tangerine and parsley... I try to grow cabbage in these days...

 

[pdswife]

Paulie is the gardener around here... he's planted a # of tomato plants, beans, bs, squash, egg plant, corn, spinach, onions, basil, strawberries (silly rabbits ate them all!!)
and a few other things.

I have Peas! Lots of Peas!

 

[jpmcgrew]

I grow everything in large containers in a 8x10 green house.Ive got thyme,basil,mint,lots of different tomatoes,zuchini,cucumbers,carrots,icesicle radishes,mini eggplant,mini watermelons & cantalope,beets,gypsy peppers,marigolds,zinnias,dwarf sunflowers.

As you can imagine its pretty crowded in there but its an experiment so far so good I try to grow alot of miniature vegies to save on room as Im new to this but its a blast to grow something from a tiny seed and get good results.
Ive had alot of success with tomatoes in containers.
Being in northern New Mexico we have a short growing season

 

[jpmcgrew]

I would be in heaven if I had fruit trees and berry bushes.

I would really like a great apricot tree or pear or apple or pear
or or or or.

 

[Claire]

Unfortunately, I don't have a sunny enough spot for a compost heap. We call ours the "non compost heap" because it has never developed into anything but a huge heap of leaves and cuttings (we're talking years here). I never claim to anyone that my garden is "organic", 'though, in fact it is ... this year. I use pesticides as little as possible, and most of the time that works well here in the land of frost and snow. In Florida and Hawaii, where the climate never kills anything, I had too much heartbreak when I'd wake up one morning and find carefully nurtured vegetables simply gone (one good catipillar can do it!) or half eaten (amazing what a gopher turtle can do)(the other half useless), or a mildewy rotted mess. Literally overnight. So I used chemical warfare some years and felt no need to apologise. The advantage of growing your own is that you know what you sprayed on your 'crops', and how much. Even then I used soaps as much as possible (even a bit of Ivory dish soap in your sprayer can help a lot, and you're going to wash the vegs with it anyway). Here I haven't found much need for the chemical answers. Poop -- heck, yes. I buy composted cow manure most springs, and a lady around here sells llama poop. The downside is that it is supposed to be sterilized and quite often isn't .... and instead of planting veggies, I'm planning a field of weeds. Ouch. Luckily, herbs always seem to persevere, as do peppers, and my lettuce patch. I'd never put insecticide on my herb or greens patches, they just don't wash up that well. If the greens patch takes a dive, I live with it. The herbs I think have a natural resistance.

 

[Constance]

I went out to my garden last night to pick some fresh dill to use with my salmon, and found the entire clump being chomped by monarch caterpillars. I picked them off and moved them to a patch of weeds along the fence row, in hopes that they wouldn't get to my parsley, which they love also.
A friend gave me a package of mixed sweet peppers, and I ended up with one purple one, which is ripening faster than the others, and I picked 4 of them last night. Purple peppers are very pretty in salads, and turn green when you cook them.
The heat is cooking my little zucchinis before they get a chance to grow, but the plants still look healthy, and a cool front came through last night, bringing a nice rain and more moderate temps, so maybe I'll get some more now.
I picked an armload of sweet basil, which is now sitting on my kitchen counter in water-filled measuring cups, like little bouquets, waiting to be plucked and processed.