Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

Hey Northern Hemispere! How does your garden grow?

Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

I'm so excited for gardening season!!! This spring dh and I revamped my raised beds -- we took down the old ones, and made two new higher ones. Brought in gardening soil and fertilizer and now they're all filled up and ready to plant!

I won't be planting until after Memorial Day (I'm in Michigan, and that's pretty much the earliest I can safely plant without risk of freeze), but I'm excited the beds are ready!

Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

I am excited. I have garden failed twice now due to the my large population of trees over my entire property.

I am doing spinach and snow peas this year based on gcm advice. They are already planted and I have 7 spinach and 4 snow pea plants coming up. :heart

Normally I wouldn't plant until after Mother's Day (Central Indiana) but since they are spinach and peas already in the ground. We have them in boxes surrounded by wire and watching the sun all day and I think we have moved them to the sunniest square of the back yard.

My dd did all the planting and helped make the chicken wire cages with dh and waters most days, though I do occasionally as well.

If this is successful I may expand.

QUESTION - at some point it'll be too warm for the spinach and peas. What should I plant in the boxes next for the summer (ie only tomatoes and a variety of peppers but the lack of sun I didn't get a lot). I used to avoid plants rabbits want to eat but now I have the boxes and wire so it's all ready to go. TIA!

Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

Do you have room for other things now? In shade, your can usually have decent success with plants where you don't need the fruit. Potatoes, onions, garlic, cabbage, celery, carrots etc but you'd want to start them soon. Your could try broccoli and cauliflower, too. Also herbs.

---------- Post added at 08:43 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:27 AM ----------

Should add that I've never tried to grow potatoes or onions in shade. I'm thinking they might turn out ok, though.

Also, if you have a spot for rhubarb, that should do ok in shade. Rabbits don't eat it so it could go anywhere.

Do you have sun in your front yard?

Also, not sure how interested you are in growing vegetables but some heavy pruning of a few trees would help.

Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

I don't have room. I mean I could make more room in the very tiny corner of my yard I am using now . . .but right now I am waiting to see if spinach/peas successful. I was thinking something over the summer when the boxes r empty for spinach and peas. Both broccoli and cauliflower is good.
We do have chives going in a pot as well. I could do more herbs.
We don't eat rhubarb.
We do not have ANY sun in the front yard. Right by the mailbox at the street gets some. And I have another small patch on the side of the garage. I have my raspberries bushes there though.

Heavy pruning of trees would be fruitless - 1. these are HUGE TALL TREES so the cost would be outrageous I assume. We would have to remove most of our trees and we have very low summer cost in terms of running the AC. We did remove 7 trees.The 7 Trees because of the Ash Borer and I thought - oh look at all the sunny spots in the yard but the remaining trees (15 in the back yard alone) just filled out and no more sunny spots. And when those were removed they had to come in with a bucket truck to lop off the tops. I mean TALL - the branches don't even start for 30-40 feet up.

Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

You could try planting more greens all summer long since they'll be kept relatively cool. Also, many stores get rid of their vegetable seeds toward late summer. I always buy extra now for fall planting.

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We put a rabbit fence around our garden area and made a cold frame with some wood and old windows. The lettuces are already in there, but the other plants I bought are waiting until after mother's day to go in the ground around the garden. I went a little overboard buying plants because it didn't look like my seeds were going to germinate, and I was worried the nurseries would run out. The garden centers are closed. Most of the seeds are years old and I haven't taken care to store them properly, but they've started coming up! Mostly organic or heirloom varieties I can't buy as plants.

I have about four kinds of tomatoes, zucchini, broccoli, two kinds of cauliflower, bush beans, two or three kinds of peppers and three types of lettuce. We also have a well established strawberry patch. I actually had to pull some because they were taking over. I covered the blueberry bushes with bird netting in the hopes to get some berries this year, and I have some asparagus to plant as well. That will be a long term plant, I won't see a harvest for years from now but we enjoy asparagus so it should be worth it. The only spot left for them is where the feral cat colony tends to use as their litterbox, so right now I have some chicken wire and coffee grounds down in the hopes they'll start to avoid it.

Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

Our garden is really kicking off! It is going to be a big one. I'm really, really excited.

DH just finished making me my first permanent raised bed today. I had put in some "well these will do for now" beds several years ago, and then a tree fell on the whole garden two years ago and I gave up gardening. :bag I'm back at it now and bigger, better than ever.

The permanent beds are 4'x12' cedar, 22 inches tall so it is easier to work with, and a wide top edge to sit on. We are planning on making 5 this year, and 2 more next year, plus there is room for one more 4x4 too, we will see if we get that one built this year or next or put something else there. And I'm so excited for proper trellises for everything. Woohoo!

I have 3 of my old "good for now" beds full of veggies. Already planted: bush beans, tomatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, spinach, lettuce, mustard greens, arugula, basil, cilantro, cucumbers, peppers, and a few new perennial herbs in my herb beds right outside the front of the garden. Oh, and I have a few zucchini and one pumpkin planted just straight in the ground - hopefully the voles don't get them! Plus our wild blackberries all over the unusable parts of the yard (hillside, under redwood trees) are growing quite a bit this year.

I have two asparagus and one rhubarb starts to get in still. I'm trying to decide where I want them permanently since they are perennial. I am pretty sure I want to plant them with strawberries as well. So maybe one bed will be a perennial bed. Maybe that 4x4?

As soon as we finish filling this new bed with dirt I have a lot of new seeds to get going. The next rounds of leafy greens, some pole beans (I :heart KY blue pole beans), more tomatoes, and a few annual herbs are all definitely going in. I'm going to try a bit of root veggies, but I'm worried it might be too hot. I do have some shade cloth, I might try it over the greens and root crops. But I do know once we get to August/September I can plant a bunch of those root crops and get a good bumper to put in the cellar. We can grow through November here, it frosts in early December. Zone 9, so a very big growing season. We will be able to grow a bunch of the things I missed out on in the early spring later this year. In many ways, if we make a hot house over one bed we can grow year round.

Wishlist: Some more medicinal herbs are on my list and as I see them I'll get them for my cottage garden nearer the house. I also am looking at getting avocado trees and blueberry bushes. I'm not sure I'm ready for them yet - labor wise, plus I'm not 100% on where to put them yet - our lot is so weird. But it takes several years to get them established well enough to get good fruit so I'm antsy to get started. I'm also trying to figure out garlic, turmeric, and ginger planting. I am not sure how/where I want to do it, or if I've missed the window already - I need to research. I live 20 minutes away from the garlic capitol of the world. I should be able to grow garlic!

I'm hoping to move towards having all our fruits/veggies except apples grown here. Maybe eventually I can get apple trees, but I think it is too shady in the flat spots I have left. :( I've also thought about a kiwi or grape arbor. I love kiwis but I'm the only one. Grapes however are a fave in season.

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This year I tried planting my peppers, squash, and cucumbers in pots and then I planted the pots. Last year I lost several plants to pocket gophers and voles. This year they'll bump into plastic.

I have rhubarb stuck in random places. It doesn't need great soil. I started with two plants and now I have 9 from splitting.

I bought half my tomato plants and those are in. I'm hoping to buy the other half at the farmer's market this Saturday. And I'll see what else they have . . . :yum

I cannot find the seeds I know I bought for bush beans. I may just buy starts, instead.

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Voles... :mad they are the bane of my existence gardening here. We attach hardware cloth to the bottom of all of our beds to keep them out. I hope your pots work well!

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I planted carrots, beets, green beans, cucumber, lettuce and spinach from seeds, but they didn't come up so I bought new seeds and replanted lettuce, green beans, cucumbers, and spinach and now they haven't come up! :hunh What is up with that? I had one zucchini seedling come up from seed and now it seems to be gone, so I'll try to replant that. The only things doing halfway well in my garden are the plants I bought at the nursery - tomatoes, jalapeno, watermelon plus the onions that I planted that had sprouted from my last grocery order.:lol

Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

That permanent bed is filled and ready to plant. It was a LOT of hard work and digging to get it full, but it's finished and I can plant tomorrow!

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My first batch of seeds barely came up either. The heirloom kale seeds I ordered online came up but the Ferry Morse seeds I put in my Walmart order (just because it was easy) barely came up. Just a few out of 4 packets! I've had duds over the years but never this bad! Makes me wonder if there was some kind of seed issue this year. :shrug

Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

I have SEVEN spinach plants and FOUR pea plants. DD said she planted the same number of each so some of my sugar snap peas plants didn't make it.
My neighbors garden got eaten so they put wire like we did. She said to me - I think I either need to decide if I am a tree person or a gardening person (she has a treed lot like ours). And our gardens are both near out mutual fence line bc that is our only sunny spot - it crosses our fence. We both had 3 trees taken down near there (actually the previous owner did for them).

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I put my broccoli and cauliflower in yesterday and then had to cover them because there was a frost predicted! I have to wait a bit for the other plants.

The bird netting is going to almost completely cover the strawberries, but I decided not to put that down yet. It seemed to discourage the pollinators. The plastic net I put around the blueberry bushes to keep the birds off was not squirrel proof. One of them ate a section away and a bird went in and trapped himself inside. I've had these bushes for years and have yet to get a single berry :lol

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I need to get some fuel for our rototiller so we can plant next week. The starts I tried all failed miserably - of 36 squares in the seed tray only 4 sprouted and they nearly all died. :doh I will have to get some starts from the store at least for tomatoes, and some pea packets so we can at least plant those.


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Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

I bought more tomato plants today. The second batch of peas I planted are starting to come up. I found the packet of bush beans. In the garden. Damp from the rain. :doh I'll plant them anyway, they're probably fine.

Sprayed the fruit trees with neem oil and none too soon.

Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

I'm not a great gardener, and our soil here is tricky. We also may be pulling down our fence this summer to replace it, which is leaving a lot of stuff kind of (gestures vaguely at the backyard)...yeah.

I put 6 tomato plants along the house today, with a celery plant (never done celery before!). Also, basil in a pot. In our backyard, we have a semi-raised bed. I'm hoping to coax the rhubarb in there to produce more. I'm also putting in a couple zucchini and a pumpkin later today. I also have a strawberry planter that I'm going to fill. At the greenhouse today, I picked up some enriched soil that might help our clay-heavy yard dirt out. Hoping for something to grow!

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We ate our first cherry tomato from our first garden today!!

We bought a Garden Tower back in March and got some nursery starts. The squash all died. The peppers are fine, but don't seem to be growing. The eggplants are flowering. The cherry tomatoes are doing great! I just had to get creative with the tomato stakes - I had to put them on top of my Garden Tower, then thread twine under the branches and tie that to the stakes at the top. I learned that tomatoes are supposed to be planted at the top! :doh:giggle

Oh and we have several herbs doing nicely, and we planted cilantro seeds that just sprouted.

I had never planted a garden in our yard before because it is watered with reclaimed water, so I viewed that as completely toxic. (And I wouldn't plant anything in our ground either for the same reason.) So we turned off one section of the sprinkler system so we could start the garden. This weekend, a friend suggested that we have the reclaimed water tested and that it was likely as clean as potable water. I don't know...but it's a good idea to get it tested. It would be so nice not to have to container garden absolutely everything.

Other "issue" is that our back yard is almost completely shaded. We have one small spot that is sunny a lot, and that's where we put the Garden Tower. But also, I believe that in FL, some shade works fine because the sun gets too hot here. So, we'll have to experiment.

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We have a community garden here where I live, and I have a 4x16 raised bed. First, all the seeds I planted were taken over by some invasive weed; the head gardener told me it was from compost they used 2 years ago and I couldn't do anything to eliminate it but use landscaping cloth. So I did, and covered it with muktch, but lost my carrots, beets, beans, and lettuce. (I started the beans in pots and will transplant because I can't direct sow again due to the landscaping cloth). We had a terrible cold snap, 5 nights at or below freezing, including one night in the mid-20s. Most everyone lost their tomatoes and peppers. I wrapped mine (and eggplant and cucumbers) in various winter coats and blankets, and covered them with plastic totes and buckets. On the coldest night, I also placed a glass jar of hot water next to each plant. Everything survives, thankfully, as did my celery, peas, and spinach. Hopefully now things will begin growing again.

My herbs are doing well, planted in containers on the porch because I can't run up to the community garden every time I need herbs.

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I grew up in a yard with a lot of clay. It is tough to garden. I hope your soil amendments help.

Maybe you already knew this and don't care, but strawberries won't survive the winter in one of those strawberry pots. They're only perennial in the ground.

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My garden is in! Had to wait until after the last frost. I am a novice gardener, we will see what happens.

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I have things sprouting...not sure if they are weeds or the stuff I planted yet! I'm not a good gardener. I used a companion planting chart and planted a ton of stuff close together...so hopefully a lot of it grows. Our soil is really alkaline and hard. I had some compost I threw together last year and mixed that into the soil with some peat moss and gypsum. In previous years, things would sprout but just wouldn't grow/produce. I'm hoping the soil amendments help.

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:yes I ended up putting them in the ground.

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So . . . yesterday I was looking and I thought those spinach plants are getting REALLY tall for spinach and then I realized those must be the pea plants and the pea plants must be the spinach plants. Once I realized that it was so obvious that was the case. DD planted the seeds and made really cute signs for the boxes. She must have mislabeled the boxes :giggle

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:giggle

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I think most of what I see sprouting in the garden is weeds. :doh I will see what it looks like this weekend, then I will probably throw in the towel and just go buy starters. I think I will go ahead and order some seeds from a local company. Hopefully they will sprout if I have the starters for back up :lol

Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

I can't remember if mentioned that I signed up for a free victory garden class with the University of Idaho extension office. It's a pretty comprehensive class- covering everything from compost to canning and everything in between for those interested. I imagine other states have the same thing or you can sign up for U of I's class. I need to look at the stuff on pests since I know gophers and bugs will be here before I know it!

I've got a few of my seeds sprouting. I went ahead and planted new seeds from local areas and starters anyway. If I end up with a bajillion plants in a small area in a couple weeks I can always transplant stuff. I would LOVE to have enough food to donate. That's my goal anyway.

Still working on my new compost pile and mucking out the sheep/goat/llama pen. We had a good rain so I'm digging out dirt where I'm doing the compost pile to create elevated areas in the pen so the animals have more areas to stay dry.

Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

I started 7 tomato plants in the window in January, so we've got cherry tomatoes now. Yummy. Terrified to transfer outside.

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I’ve got more actual plants sprouting and a bajillion mallow weeds :doh. I’m going to lay cardboard on the walkways because the mallow is out of control. Going to mulch around plants as they get bigger. Hopefully that helps.


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Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

The deer just came through and ate the tops off of most of my garden. :hissyfit I'm really sad. The smell of tomato plants is incredibly calming to me, like new baby smell calming. Sometimes when I'm overwhelmed I just go down and sit quietly and listen to the plants grow. They make a little clicking noise as they grow and it is delightful.

I forgot to close the deer fence last time I was in there. I don't think I've lost any plants completely except maybe my bush beans. Even if they recover, I don't think I'll get a good harvest. :( Thankfully all my leafy greens were under shade netting and are completely unharmed. Last week I had a huge infestation of worms eating my cabbages and kale. I got rid of them and then this. :sigh I'm learning, this is only my second big garden. DH is going to make me a self-closing gate so I don't have to remember to close it.

Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

I’m so sorry. The self-closing gate sounds awesome.

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My peas plants are not looking so hot. I don't know that I will get peas.

My spinach looks good but still small. It may be too late for those too.

My friend in the hood gave me 2 tomato starters and I planted them.

I am worried just not enough sun. :sad

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I don’t remember what I planted where and have a ton of mallow weeds. But stuff is growing so that’s cool. J is super motivated to earn PlayStation money so he’s pulling weeds. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...afbe0a0174.jpg
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...7fa0b69793.jpg


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Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

It is so discouraging when animals or pests get in to the garden. In previous years I've had a problem wtih bunnies -- even digging under the fence to get in. We have a good fencing system now so I think we should be good... We'll see.

Still early in the season for us in Michigan. Plants went in almost 3 weeks ago! They're growing so much every day! It's super exciting to watch.

Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

I didn't see this earlier.
I wasn't planning on gardening because I was due during the first part of planting season here. March 20th.
But when the pandemic started I decided it needed to happen a week before my due date my 12yo and I broke out the equipment and started working.
Peas 2 of 6 sprouted and did well.
beats I wasn't able to get back and water these enough, they didn't sprout. Seed are also old.
Kale also old and didn't sprout
Cherry tomatoes I have 8 plants. I started 12 knowing the seeds were also old and only 2 failed!
Radishes grew fine but became woody.
Carrots from last year were already growing and ready for harvest,
Broccoli, cauliflower both grew ok, but I planted them too late, they never grew a head only leaves. I'm hoping to get a head this fall.
Later I tried beans, they didn't sprout so I put in potatoes and they are doing fantastic.

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Re: Vegetable/Fruit Gardening 2020
 

Pocket gophers are getting quite a few sugar snap peas. :sigh The cats are getting quite a few pocket gophers. But, obviously not enough.

Tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, kale, and peppers look fantastic. Squash and cucumbers look okay.

Lettuce looks small and thin. I won't buy Ferry Morse seeds again.

We've had a few strawberries and are awaiting the big explosion of berries.

My grape vines look amazing this year, too! My kids can eat massive amounts of grapes so I'm really excited. I have Concord, himrod, and reliance, all seedless. They are all so much more flavorful than grapes you can buy in the store. I'm planning to pick up a few more vines this summer.

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Does it take3 years to get grapes?

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I don't recall exactly but that sounds about right.

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Most of my tomato plants are recovering, but not all. DH hasn't made my gate yet, but did make a tomato arbor so I can have string my tomatoes up. I'm hopeful still. Also wondering if I should just plant a bunch more. :shifty

We got our first cucumber and zucchini from the garden. Several more zucchini are about to come in so I need to get something set up for freezer preservation there. The leafy greens are coming in (enough to stop having to buy them from the store!) and I need to get those dried and put up as green powder.

My winter squash are taking off, and I just planted the seed for our halloween carving pumpkin. This variety can supposedly grow up to 100lbs! Who knows for sure but sounds like fun for the kids to have one big pumpkin. :)

Our wild black raspberries are going gangbusters this year. We are going to have way more than we can eat or put up, but that is fine, the birds love them of course.

I have big dreams for my property, and it is really hard to go slow with them. We have so much room, and we live in zone 9. That is a great growing zone for nearly everything. We don't really have hard freezes ever, so with good planning I can grow many things year round. I was looking into what it would take to grow everything we regularly eat, and I can do it, even down to many of the spices. All except coconuts and bananas really. So now I want to just do it all right now, but I can't. We don't have the infrastructure set up yet. I don't have a way to get into the garden for as much time as it would take to set up because of how inaccessible it is, so I have to work around DH's work hours. :(