How's your garden growing?

[prolesunited]

Did you plant one this year? First timer? Bigger or smaller than normal? What's going well? What needs tweaking?

[vadawg]

1. snow peas and sugar snaps are about finished, shallots harvested

tomatoes, peppers, potatoes and corn on the go, hoping to expand to jujst over an acre of veggie garden by the fall. lots of work for me to do on days off

[Javaman]

2. My cuces bit the dust this week. Got fried in the texas heat.

my tomatoes and lettuce are still doing real well.

I did a test with onions and garlic, they both did real well until the too got fried, but they were planted off season. They should do really well this coming fall/winter.

We learned so much this past season as far as watering schedules and how much room to give the plants.

Plus, we have completely redesigned our garden to take advantage of certain veggies. Next years crop should be a heck of a lot better.

I'm putting in some summer squash, string beans and pumpkin this coming weekend.

[prolesunited]

3. Strange the cukes bit the dust and the lettuce didn't

I have several plots and spread things out so if something hit a crop, it wouldn't decimate the whole thing.

[Javaman]

4. I think the cucumbers died because we didn't give them enough room for air flow.

They began to compete with tomatoes and basil for light.

we keep extensive notes. So next year I will build a wire mesh trellis and give it plenty of room.

This year I just threw together some green metal stakes and bailing wire. Or as I like to call it, the caveman trellis. LOL

[prolesunited]

13. I always look at gardening as an experiment

and not all variables, like weather, are in your control. But you can fix some things. Live and learn. Is it too late to replant? Cukes grow quite fast. You might not get a huge harvest, but there may still be time for something.

[femmocrat]

5. Great tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, and Swiss Chard.

Pumpkins and zucchini coming along nicely. My cukes also got wiped out by too much rain, then too much sun. I was all set to try making home-made pickles this year, too. :cry:

Melons and peas are so-so. Lots and lots of herbs in planters on the patio.

I'm a "veteran" gardener, but we made a huge new raised bed garden this year. I tried to grow some things from seed this year and had mixed results. We turned the old garden into a pumpkin patch (I started them from seeds).

Right now, we NEED rain though !!

[Pat Riot]

11. Swiss Chard! a big fave of mine

I love savory cooked greens, do 'em with some onion and maybe mushrooms, some grated cheese, oh yeah...Swiss Chard can start early cold season but can stand heat, less tendency to bolt like other lettuces and greens. The Rainbow Color type is ornamental too.
This year I got started really late, I have tomatoes (Early Girl, some started indoors some, "volunteers" from last year) Ancho/Poblano peppers, Romaine, almost every herb one could think of except dill, which the bugs got. Not as much variety as I had last year. I was almost going to move, so I almost didn't do anything this year. Fruits that come back perennially are a nectarine tree, Merlot grapes, raspberries and strawberries. The berries are near trouble free and very rewarding; I would recomment these to novice gardeners, but the nectarine and grapes got the black rot each year so far. I tried to be totally organic but it seems I just have to spray the fungicide or watch my babies turn into hard black raisins, no wine making experiments. I have a very small yard in an urban setting and try to do too much crowded in a small space, plus have a goldfish pond, which is probably helping the fungus spread. I will probably have to choose. Also, work seems to always get busier in the spring when everything needs attention. Those grapes grow a foot a day in early June, I swear, you're supposed to prune for aeration but I never keep up with it. Funny you should bring this up now as I just found out next week is dead at work and was thinking I might just use up some accrued vacay pay and concentrate on the garden.

[prolesunited]

14. Sounds like a good way to spend some time off

I was reading about milk being used as a fungicide. Might try researching that.

I think it also takes several years to restore nature's balance in your garden, so that natural predators take control. I was doing some serious battle with aphids last year because the ants were farming the aphids for their sticky liquid. Then a whole army of lacewings, which I never had before, came and helped take control. Nature is so cool.

[Pat Riot]

25. Thank you I will look that up

I can see you and I are on the same wavelength. It's always a trial and error, learn something new every time thing. I once overheard my neighbor making fun of me, "she just STARES. Just stands there and STARES, for a really long time." laughs But I do.

Funny you should mention the insect predators. I was just thinking of buying them, a package deal of Praying Mastises, lacewings and those tiny wasps which names esapes me right now. Two other places I lived in Pittsburgh, I think people who lived there before me had done this. I was always finding praying Mantis egg cases, seemingly out of proportion. I once watched a pair of them mate(don't get any racy ideas, slow and boring) and then she slowly turned around and ate him, starting head first. He didn't resist one iota. He was done.

The place we have now, just too small and crowded, but I have improved the soil incredibly and organically in the past 9 years, via compost and mulch. What was heavy clay and hardpan (hurt my back for life digging this pond, worth it) is loose dark dirt with wriggling earthworms when barely disturbed.

I enjoy observing and thinking of new hypotheses. The scientific method is what good gardening is all about, I think, and what sets apart people who "get it" from people who say, "I can't grow anything. I kill things." You have the basic biological needs: sun, air, soil/nutrients, water. If it didn't make it, one of those was a reason, or some critter ate it or disease got it.

Free to cheap food and cheaper than therapy.

[petronius]

6. With silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row...

Sadly, no garden for us - laziness is the main reason, but apartment-dwelling isn't really conducive to farming...

[RiffRandell]

7. Our first organic raised bed results:

Tomatoes-great

Cukes-fair

Zuke and squash-good

Radishes-sucked, we didn't thin them out enough

Green beans-good

Carrots-fair

Strawberries-fair (in a separate pot)

Lemon tree-good (that's in a separate pot)

Herbs-good, catnip out of control

Potatoes-great

[Pat Riot]

26. our own and neighborhood cats

would destroy catnip by rolling around and just eating it to death, so I had the brilliant (breaking arm patting self on the back) idea to do it in a hanging planter.

[Gormy Cuss]

8. We're year-round gardeners-- we have the climate for it.

The summer garden is a bit smaller than normal because we thought we'd be under drought restrictions (we won't, thanks to some late season rain.)

It looks like we'll have a good year.

[prolesunited]

15. I envy you

But, I learned to can last year (water only, don't have a pressure cooker), and we have a big freezer. Opening those jars in the winter tastes like summer. I hate store-bought produce.

[dysfunctional press]

9. forty feet by forty feet...

plus a big ol' strawberry patch.

this is our third year out of the city, and our third garden.

[Broken_Hero]

10. Its going very well,

the tomatoes will be ready in about ten days, and the Zucchini are HUGE and they have been ready for the past two weeks or so.

I personally, can't wait until the bell peppers start coming up, and the onions.

[Richard Steele]

12. AWESOMELY, mostly.

I have 5 vareities of heirloom tomatos and 3 peppers
that are coming along nicely;
one of my "green zebra" tomatos is flowering already....

My zataar is coming up all over the place, and my cilantro
is a foot tall and bunching like gangbusters.....


The year's biggest disappointment has been my "Hii-Shi-Ko:" onions;
we planted them every which way: tiny pots, big pots,
in the ground in rows, in the ground in a 5'x6' area....
They are just "failing to thrive" all over the place...:(:

[prolesunited]

16. Every year gardeners have something that doesn't work

Sounds like the rest is great, though.

[1gobluedem]

17. Mine is a big weedy mess

Because I broke my elbow two weeks ago and haven't been able to work in it. I suggested that my SO's eleven year old twin girls do it and was sternly informed that they are ON VACATION.

I might be able to do something this weekend; elbow is healing nicely. The eleven year old attitude still needs some work, though.

[prolesunited]

18. My reply

Do you want to EAT while you're on vacation?

[1gobluedem]

19. Well, it's a flower garden

But still it looks awful.

[prolesunited]

23. I obviously wasn't thinking flowers.

Although I do have some flowers. I'm really focused on veggies. My sister is just the opposite and just does flowers.

[Raffi Ella]

20. My Canna's are starting to bloom

yellow ones :D I had pink ones too but they died over the winter. and my pink roses along the driveway are starting to bloom again. It's pretty except for the lawn which is starting to brown from the lack of rain.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

21. my tomato plant is not doing too well.

:)

[prolesunited]

24. What are its symptoms?

Is it getting enough sun and water? Tomatoes *love* the hot sun.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

29. it has yellowing leaves. itson the window sill so its getting as much sun as there is to get

in nyc. which these days isnt very much

[LynzM]

22. Ok considering it's rained for most of the last month.

We could really, really use some sunshine... but things are still growing, just slowly. :)

[hibbing]

27. growing like crazy now

Hi,
I have tomatoes and cucumbers, some in containers some in the ground. The recent heat has really made them take off. Not much production yet and some of the baby cucumbers are getting munched by something, and I have no idea what. I know my tomatoes will come in soon enough and I will have enough to share with neighbors which I always enjoy doing.

Good luck fellow gardeners!

Peace

[MajorChode]

28. I traveled too much this spring and didn't plant anything

All I have are my peach and fig trees. I didn't spray any of my peaches this spring so bugs took about half my crop on my first tree. The 2nd tree has a month or so to go and one peach tree didn't produce at all. The figs are coming along nicely.