NBR: Who else is gardening?

jackiback · August 2013

So I am growing a garden for the first time ever, and you guys. I am totally obsessed. It is maybe my favorite hobby ever.

I'm growing green beans (bush), jalapenos, chili peppers, tomatoes, cukes, marigolds and pumpkins. I did have a bunch of herbs but we couldn't eat them as fast as they grew. They got totally out of control. Last week, I tore them all out, bagged them up and gave them to friends. I gave their spot to my crazy-huge cukes

Isaac is REALLY excited about the pumpkins and we planted them late so they are just now flowering and I'm crossing all my parts that we get at least one so he can make a jack-o-lantern

The vines look great though so I think we'll be fine.

I'm just so, so shocked that everything is growing so well. For some reason when I was planting everything I was just like "there is NO WAY that this is going to work" and the fact that it is is shocking, even though people have been doing this for a bajillion years.

Talk to me about your garden. Shaun teases me because I could talk gardens all day (The amount of times I say "pollinators" in a day is embarrassing.) so I wanted to bug someone else for a change

ChristyDM82 · August 2013

I have a raised garden. Unfortunately it's only doing so-so this year. My pole green beans look awesome. Bush beans never even came up! Strawberries did great. Zucchini got one tiny zucchini, then it stopped growing, so I don't know what is going on there! I have one spaghetti squash that is doing okay. Dill and basil did awesome. Carrots are doing well. Bell peppers are doing so-so.

I have jalapenos growing in my aerogarden that are doing well.

You could dry your extra herbs next time, unless you prefer just giving them away.

Jen748 · August 2013

You know we are.

Brett's already getting plans laid out for next year. We are trying to decide if he's going to continue with the raised beds, or if he's going to go Farmer Brett and use one whole section of our front yard as a garden with a fence.

SusieBW · August 2013

This is my first year with veggies, too! We just have a small 4x4 raised bed this year. Starting small. We'll put in a second one next year. And this thread just reminded me that I meant to water this morning, but ran out of time. Shoot.

My favorite thing so far was having fresh cut lettuce every night. Next year, we will plant more lettuce. My tomatoes look really good (one 4th of July, one Purple Cherokee, and one chocolate cherry plant). I'm going to have a TON of tomatoes in a couple of weeks. The broccoli is awesome, but everything else seems just okay. I tried square foot gardening, and I really think the plants are just too close together. I also didn't account for how tall broccoli gets! I got one big harvest of beans, but they seem to have slowed down, and I have 4-5 cucumbers coming, but they seem like they're growing very slowly. Oh, the jalapenos have done well, too. But my one single bell pepper plant only produced one single bell pepper. And I don't even see any more flowers on it. I had broccoli rabe early on, but it got completely out of hand, and DH and I realized that we don't love rabe, so I used some flowers in bouquets and then ripped it out. Thing was almost as tall as me!

I'm also volunteering at a community garden that grown veggies for food pantries this summer, and that has been great, too. We had a farmer plant it all out for us, and we just have to tend to it and harvest everything. I missed the last two weeks of work nights, but I'm really excited to go tonight to see how everything is doing. They are doing tomatoes with no trellis or staking or anything, and that seems odd to me. So I'm anxious to see how it's going.

I'm glad that you are enjoying it so much! I like seeing all of your gardening posts on IG.

How is everyone handling their tomatoes - stakes, trellising, cages? I have a trellis and one stake, and the three tomato plants are just all growing together on them. You really have to get in there to tell which vines go with which plant, but the fruit are really distinct between the three different kinds of plants that I have, so it's all good.

AshleyT121 · August 2013

My garden has done GREAT so far this year. We've had successful crops of romaine, leaf lettuce, radish, spinach, white onions, and broccoli. I actually threw a ton of lettuce out because there was way more than we could eat. Lesson learned.... I need to stagger plant my greens so they aren't all ready at the same time.

We had two small hiccups. Only 1/3 cauliflower plants produced veg, and the bugs got to it before I took it out. Our carrots didn't produce either. I tried an old farmers trick of planting the radish and carrots in the same row (radish come up first, are harvested, then the carrots come up) but it didn't pan out for me.

My tomato plant hasn't produced any ripe tomatoes yet, but there are TONS of green ones well on there way. As of yesterday it was the only thing left in the garden. Last night I sowed 2 rows each of carrots and radish. Then I did a half row each of onion and romaine. In a week or two, I plant some more of each to fill what's left of the garden space. I'm excited for my fall harvest!

My only regret is that I planted all one time harvest plants. As in, they grow, we pick and that's it. I wish I had more constant harvest plants, but I planted what I knew we eat most of.

AshleyT121 · August 2013

Oh! And MH has a potted herb garden that does really well every year. I think he only has chives and oregano this year because he didn't get around to planting anything else, but it looks nice on our deck and there's nothing like fresh chives on baked potatoes.

SacGeoLover · August 2013

We have a very small garden that we're working on for the first time. All I can say is you live and learn. All my garlic and strawberries died on the first go around and the birds have eaten every single one of our tomatoes. We did get one chili pepper, lol. I'm starting over and I'm going to attempt a fall/winter garden, but start a few things indoors. We're working on how to cover it so things don't get eaten, as well.

packfan20 · August 2013

I can't wait until I have a better yard and can't plant more stuff. This year I just have rosemary and tomatoes. I've already had a handful of Sunsweet tomatoes and they are delicious!

@susiebw We use the round, wire tomato holder things. I think here they are called tomato baskets. Got them at Home Depot for $3. I did stakes last year they were no competition to my gargantuan tomato plants.

I've done mint in the past and cilantro, which reseeded the back yard and I've spent the past two years pulling out random cilantro plants. Ugh.

ChristyDM82 · August 2013

Ashley T said:

Oh! And MH has a potted herb garden that does really well every year. I think he only has chives and oregano this year because he didn't get around to planting anything else, but it looks nice on our deck and there's nothing like fresh chives on baked potatoes.

Love fresh chives. They are perennials so if you have somewhere you can plant them in the ground they'll come back. I bet you might even be able to keep them in the garage or basement in the pot over winter if you can't plant them. My mom had some in a pot last year, dumped them in her woods in the fall and in the spring they were alive! So she dug some up this year and put them back in a pot!

ChristyDM82 · August 2013

SacGeoLover said:

We have a very small garden that we're working on for the first time. All I can say is you live and learn. All my garlic and strawberries died on the first go around and the birds have eaten every single one of our tomatoes. We did get one chili pepper, lol. I'm starting over and I'm going to attempt a fall/winter garden, but start a few things indoors. We're working on how to cover it so things don't get eaten, as well.

You should see my garden, it looks like a cage! I have 25 strawberry plants that I wanted to keep the birds out of. My garden is raised and my H made doors for it- so they swing open for me to get into it (they are wood frames with netting ). Then we put netting on top of the whole thing! It looks like a cage but nothing but bugs can get in now.

MrsC7 · August 2013

I really wish gardening was a skill I possessed. Instead, I will watch from the sidelines with my black thumb and munch on the goodies grown in your gardens

RiverPlate · August 2013

We are - most of my IG pics are from the garden. We have a raised bed that is doing okay - the carrots, onions, and lettuce were awesome, but my 4 indeterminate tomato plants (2 Cherokee Chocolate and 2 I can't remember) have gone rogue and are shading out everything else. I haven't even gotten any tomatoes from them either - they're still all green.

My potted veggies are doing surprisingly well. The peppers are pretty rockin, and I've got a basil plant larger than my 2 year old. The dwarf cherry tomato varieties I planted were more work then the paltry yields, I don't think I'll go that route again. My green tomato variety (lime green salad) tastes amazing, but next year I think they need bigger pots. My favorite so far has been the Russian Persimmon, which is a nice light orange tomato that is absolutely fantastic. The Mountain Gold has huge tomatoes but they haven't ripened yet. I'm still at war with the local squirrels over my tomatoes though.

I just planted my second-season in the front bed - a (hopefully) artfully arranged design of purple and white kohlrabi, cabbage, dwarf peas, and swiss chard. I put some brussels sprouts and dwarf cucumber for pickles in my strawberry patch. It's the first time I've done that though, so we'll see what happens.

AshleyT121 · August 2013

Christy_Daisy's_Mom said:

Ashley T said:

Oh! And MH has a potted herb garden that does really well every year. I think he only has chives and oregano this year because he didn't get around to planting anything else, but it looks nice on our deck and there's nothing like fresh chives on baked potatoes.

Love fresh chives. They are perennials so if you have somewhere you can plant them in the ground they'll come back. I bet you might even be able to keep them in the garage or basement in the pot over winter if you can't plant them. My mom had some in a pot last year, dumped them in her woods in the fall and in the spring they were alive! So she dug some up this year and put them back in a pot!

Yeah, they're pretty indestructible. We haven't planted new ones in years. They just come back every spring in the same pot!

duxcaelo · August 2013

SacGeoLover said:

We have a very small garden that we're working on for the first time. All I can say is you live and learn. All my garlic and strawberries died on the first go around and the birds have eaten every single one of our tomatoes. We did get one chili pepper, lol. I'm starting over and I'm going to attempt a fall/winter garden, but start a few things indoors. We're working on how to cover it so things don't get eaten, as well.

Absolutely! We have a container garden that we expand by about three plants a year. This year, the basil and cherry tomatoes have just produced like crazy. The oregano, parsley, strawberries, and lettuce have struggled in the heat. We have twelve pepper plants (cayenne, bell, and some sort of Scottish pepper), but only four peppers. I hope that more of the flowers will turn into some. We had weeks where we were getting twenty plus tomatoes and it's been sad that we haven't seen much else ripen yet.

Also, it was recommended earlier in the year on the board, but we put some fake snakes into our pots and the birds have been much better about leaving the plants alone!

SacGeoLover · August 2013

duxcaelo said:

SacGeoLover said:

We have a very small garden that we're working on for the first time. All I can say is you live and learn. All my garlic and strawberries died on the first go around and the birds have eaten every single one of our tomatoes. We did get one chili pepper, lol. I'm starting over and I'm going to attempt a fall/winter garden, but start a few things indoors. We're working on how to cover it so things don't get eaten, as well.

Absolutely! We have a container garden that we expand by about three plants a year. This year, the basil and cherry tomatoes have just produced like crazy. The oregano, parsley, strawberries, and lettuce have struggled in the heat. We have twelve pepper plants (cayenne, bell, and some sort of Scottish pepper), but only four peppers. I hope that more of the flowers will turn into some. We had weeks where we were getting twenty plus tomatoes and it's been sad that we haven't seen much else ripen yet.

Also, it was recommended earlier in the year on the board, but we put some fake snakes into our pots and the birds have been much better about leaving the plants alone!

This sounds like ours- lots of tomatoes and basil, not much else survived the heat and the birds. That's a great idea with the fake snakes, maybe I'll try it when we regroup.

SacGeoLover · August 2013

Christy_Daisy's_Mom said:

SacGeoLover said:

We have a very small garden that we're working on for the first time. All I can say is you live and learn. All my garlic and strawberries died on the first go around and the birds have eaten every single one of our tomatoes. We did get one chili pepper, lol. I'm starting over and I'm going to attempt a fall/winter garden, but start a few things indoors. We're working on how to cover it so things don't get eaten, as well.

You should see my garden, it looks like a cage! I have 25 strawberry plants that I wanted to keep the birds out of. My garden is raised and my H made doors for it- so they swing open for me to get into it (they are wood frames with netting ). Then we put netting on top of the whole thing! It looks like a cage but nothing but bugs can get in now.

That's awesome!

jackiback · August 2013

Oh! I forgot: I already harvested a bunch of radishes and plates carrots in their spot- root crops are so scary bc you have no idea if they worked until you pull em up!

We staked our tomatoes with bamboo and built kind of a structure for them to vine up.

ETA: Also forgot red and green bell peppers. Am realizing that I have quite the garden going!!

Jen748 · August 2013

SusieBW said:
How is everyone handling their tomatoes - stakes, trellising, cages? I have a trellis and one stake, and the three tomato plants are just all growing together on them. You really have to get in there to tell which vines go with which plant, but the fruit are really distinct between the three different kinds of plants that I have, so it's all good.

We are going to have to come up with a new plan for ours. They've gotten too big for the cages we bought.

AshleyT121 · August 2013

I only have 1 tomato plant (we aren't big tomato eaters) and it's in a cage. Unfortunately, we had a HUGE storm a couple of weeks ago and it took a beating. It's still hanging on, but we'll see how long it lasts.

SnShne322 · August 2013

I have enormous pine trees in my yard so the soil is absolutely terrible. We've tried neutralizing it before, but weren't successful. I want a garden so bad, but unless it was a container garden, I don't think it would thrive. We couldn't even get mint to come back. That stuff's supposed to grow like weeds!

AshleyT121 · August 2013

SnShne322 said:

I have enormous pine trees in my yard so the soil is absolutely terrible. We've tried neutralizing it before, but weren't successful. I want a garden so bad, but unless it was a container garden, I don't think it would thrive. We couldn't even get mint to come back. That stuff's supposed to grow like weeds!

Could you do self contained raised beds? They'd have to be deep, with some kind of enclosed bottom to keep the existing soil from mixing with the soil you add, but it would be doable I think.

SnShne322 · August 2013

Ashley T said:

SnShne322 said:

I have enormous pine trees in my yard so the soil is absolutely terrible. We've tried neutralizing it before, but weren't successful. I want a garden so bad, but unless it was a container garden, I don't think it would thrive. We couldn't even get mint to come back. That stuff's supposed to grow like weeds!

Could you do self contained raised beds? They'd have to be deep, with some kind of enclosed bottom to keep the existing soil from mixing with the soil you add, but it would be doable I think.

Yes, that's probably an option! Sometimes I think the most obvious ones fly right by me.

jackiback · August 2013

SnShne322 said:

I have enormous pine trees in my yard so the soil is absolutely terrible. We've tried neutralizing it before, but weren't successful. I want a garden so bad, but unless it was a container garden, I don't think it would thrive. We couldn't even get mint to come back. That stuff's supposed to grow like weeds!

Yup. The person who lived here before us planted mint and we cannot.get.rid.of.it. I go and tear it out every couple of days. It is growing through the cracks in our driveway.

RiverPlate · August 2013

jackiback said:

Oh! I forgot: I already harvested a bunch of radishes and plates carrots in their spot- root crops are so scary bc you have no idea if they worked until you pull em up! We staked our tomatoes with bamboo and built kind of a structure for them to vine up.

I love your set-up. How did you do it?

Kate&Mark · August 2013

My garden is half great, half terrible. My herbs are all doing well - as are the carrots and tomatillos. My peppers, eggplant and cucumbers tanked. The surprise of the year has been sweet corn - I think we'll actually have a few ears to eat soon!

84Lauren · August 2013

I miss my garden! In AZ, we plant in October and go through April or so. We have two raised beds, one for vegges (lots of lettuce, it's SO convenient to be able to just pull a few leaves for sandwiches and stuff) and one for herbs. I LOVE fresh herbs, we usually do basil, parsley, cilantro, oregano, thyme an dchives. We did chammomile last year too but never used it.

Menrandes · August 2013

We have a container going on this year on the deck. Variety of peppers, which are doing great. Cucumbers which produced for a bit but now are looking sad. Tomatoes, bush beans, basil, parsley, and oregano are the others and they are doing ok. But I'm incredibly happy with the peppers.

RevJen · August 2013

If we decide to go to FL, that would more than likely be our planting season too. Right?

Nova726 · August 2013

I'm so jealous of the gardening skills, I can barely keep my grass alive.

jlq2005 · August 2013

We planted a garden! And by "we" I mean my H. He mostly does all the work for it.

He planted cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, watermelon, zucchini, potatoes, and pumpkins!

We've already gotten a ton of cucumbers, and there's still more coming on. We also got a good amount of zucchini, though our plant got some weird white mold stuff on it and it sort of died. Our one pumpkin plant got the same thing.

We have a TON of tomatoes on! Our plants are a little ridiculous. They are huge. I've never seen such big tomato plants.

We've also got a lot of watermelons on, but they keep cracking on the bottoms. We put some straw underneath them, to see if it helps. We want at least one good one to try.

Our potatoes aren't ready yet, and I'm not sure how well they are going to do. The plants got really tall, and couldn't hold themselves up, so we stacked them. Then we were gone for 4 days, and when we came back all the plants had fallen over, we're assuming from a wind storm. So we'll see how many potatoes we end up with.

Mrs.GinTN · August 2013

I love this post! I grew up on a farm so I have been gardening as long as I can remember. Now that I have my own place, the entire lot is smaller than my mom's garden. :-) Earlier on, I had onions lettuce, yellow squash, and zucchini. Right now, I am getting lots of tomatoes, cukes, and okra. My herb garden has garlic, basil, and the dreaded mint. This weekend I had enough tomatoes to do a run of cans, and I have been freezing okra for a couple of weeks. I love gardening! It really is a great hobby.

NBR: Who else is gardening?

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