What is your biggest veggie garden experiment in 2010?

[tedln]

My biggest experiments this year are probably things most everyone has done before, but this is year 2 for me.

Ted...I planted my squash seeds today. Do I have to cover them immediately? I know I will have to hand pollinate and I am ok with that.

No, I covered mine early because I don't know when the first wave of borers will arrive. It will probably be another couple of weeks. Usually when the first extended hot weather shows up, they show up. After the first wave, you can uncover for a month or so until the second wave or second generation of borers arrive. Some parts of the country only get one generation and it lasts for a couple of weeks. I will keep mine covered because squash bugs are around almost all the time. I've never had much damage from squash bugs, but I figure since I have the netting up, I may as well use it.

You won't need it until your plants are up and growing pretty well.

When the natural pollinators like bees become active, I may simply leave the netting up for a couple of hours while I work in the garden. Then keep an eye open for borers. They are easy to recognize. When they show up, I will put the netting down.

Ted

[Tate]

Thanks for sharing. I am going to try that next year at least for some of my plants. Good idea!

Tate

[kgall]

Last year I lost all 9 of my squash to them!

[tedln]

Ted, those are some beautiful plants, but I got confused. Do you use a traffic cop to direct each how to grow? I admire how much you get in those boxes.

I hope no cops are around. They would arrest me for vegetable abuse. That bed is planted even heavier than I normally plant. Thats why I listed it in my "experimental or just messing around" category.

While I have a lot of space, it is simply easier to grow more with less. If you noticed, that bed is designed almost entirely for vertical growth. When the carrots and Swiss Chard are gone, I will probably plant a couple of varieties of tomatoes so we can eat tomatoes with our Christmas dinner again. Then it will be a totally vertical garden.

I purposely plan to grow a lot of stuff vertically in order to best use the square footage of my garden. I'm thinking about growing melons and cantelope on my current cucumber trellis next year. I think they would do well because they wouldn't have to hang straight down.

Ted