Cousinjordo's 2016 Garden

[cousinjordo]

Hello All!

I'm the new kid on the block, but I was overdue for finding a good community of gardeners to share my successes and woes with in the adventure of greening my thumb. Lucky I found ya'll! I've been haunting the forums for advice for a while now, but I wanted to join in the action. I come from a long line of gardeners in my family in south Arkansas, but have only been doing my own garden for 2 years in my home (south of Nashville, TN) and 2 years before that in the beds outside my Nashville apartment building ...even though they didn't appreciate my take on summer "landscaping"...

My garden is roughly 50' x 25' in full sun in southern Middle TN, zone 7a. I try to operate mostly organic, avoiding pesticides whenever possible. I do use neem oil and spinosad to control the bugs, but stay away from sevin and malthion unless circumstances become tragic. We make our own compost throughout the year with food and yard scraps and manure from the farm I hunt, and I spread it before tilling at the beginning of the year. I try to only use synthetic fertilizers at the beginning of the year per soil tests and maybe a little 10-10-10 in row trenches at flowering. In the images below (taken 5/2/16), from bottom to top, I have planted:

Okra (I added/planted a row yesterday, not pictured)
Spinach and Green arrow peas (picking now, see last picture)...
-I will just take a few pickings from these and replace with cucumbers in a week or so
Carrots, multiple varieties...and radishes
Butter crunch lettuce (far right, runs along the fence)
Yellow onions
Red onions
Yellow bells, Cayennes, Red bells
Sweet potatoes
Contender green beans
Red potatoes
Sungold cherry, Black cherry, better boy tomatoes
Pink girl, cherokee purple, bradley tomatoes
Straight neck squash and Zucchini

Here's a picture my wife took yesterday of our first picking of green arrow peas...so delicious.

Happy to join in the fun in here. Hope I can be of help to someone in here someday...I know ya'll have been help to me already! Any questions for me, please ask!! I love to talk gardens

[MOFishin]

Welcome!

[imafan26]

Welcome. That is a nice garden. You even have some yard left! 50x25 you can grow a lot and it is in full sun.

[KitchenGardener]

It looks beautiful, all of it (including you)! I had the same thought as Imafan: that you will have plenty of room for even more, unless you'll leave things like cucumbers and sweet potatoes and tomatoes to sprawl in the garden instead of aiming them out (in the case of cukes and sweet potatoes) and staking them (tomatoes). You can also potentially take a companion planting approach, knowing that you can replant in the radish and carrot space (but you know that already, cuz it sounds like you're doing it with the peas).

You know, I never get tired of garden pictures!

[cousinjordo]

Here's some updated pictures of my tomato plants today.

[cousinjordo]

So we are having a bumper crop of Contender bush green beans this year!! This is my fourth picking in a week from one 20' row of a full grocery sack of beans. We have eaten them sautee'd and man, are they delicious! The rest we've blanched and frozen. 8 or 9 quarts now I believe. And we still have to put up these from last night!

Also, I've got peppers out the wazoo (there's a few japs under the beans) and my red potatoes are starting to die back so I've been pulling a few every day. I'm not sure if their dying back is from blight (septoria?) or if it's just their time to die. This is my first year growing potatoes, and they've been in the ground since mid march...so I'm not too sure. It looks like they still had some small buds growing on the ones I've pulled but we are still getting a great harvest nonetheless. What you see above is from two plants.

Also, my tomatoes seem to have recovered from the fungus well with copper spray and neem oil, especially now that it has heated up. They are growing like crazy along with everything else in the garden. Overall, I'm hoping for a good garden year!

[imafan26]

It looks like you have worked out a plan that works for you very well. Very nice harvest.
I grew contender beans before, how long did the plants last for you?

If you add some manure in the fall to the garden before you put it to bed and keep adding compost you will find that you don't need a lot of the synthetic fertilizer. I am glad you did a soil test first. I gardened for years without doing a soil test. I did not know where to get them. Once, I did get a soil test, I found that I could cut my fertilizer bill a lot by not adding what I did not need. It is better for the environment too to only use what you need. Too much excess fertilizer can buildup and leach into the waterways where they cause a lot of problems.

Either you have a lot of family and friends to feed or you have a lot of extras. What do you do with them?

[Lindsaylew82]

Contender beans have been doing very well here, as well! They are beginning to look a little ragged, but we have put up 9 quarts already, and I picked 3 gallon bucketfuls this morning. They'll break down to 5 or 6 more quarts. I've been picking about 9 days now. Lots more on the bushes, but they're beginning to shrivel a bit here. It's been mid to upper 90's though, and I'm horrible at watering.


Your garden is so beautiful! Your work is paying off! I'm ready for some taters! We are still waiting on ours!

[cousinjordo]

Here is a picture of last nights potatoes. We also picked, blanched and put up another 4 qrts of beans.

imafan, Contender Beans do very well in my area. They may be looking a little ragged right now, but I think it is mainly from my handling of them as they get picked every other day or so. They are still producing and will continue until august (if they act like they did last year).

Lindsay, maybe I'm just lazy...but I never have to water my garden since I started growing in the ground as opposed to raised beds. I have a rain gauge outside in the garden, and we typically get at least 3/4-1" of rain per week. Obviously, if we go through a long dry spell things would be different, but we've been fortunate so far. About 2-3" down, my dirt is always pretty good and moist.

I will get some more pictures of the garden tonight and post. Thanks for all the nice comments!

Only thing I am currently dealing with are a whitefly colony that has moved in on my tomatoes. It's been about 12 days since my last neem application, so I guess I need to hit it more often. They just appeared over the weekend.

[cousinjordo]

Carrots and lettuce from last night....and one jalepeno!

I'm being blessed with a very productive garden this year!!

[cousinjordo]

Here's an updated picture of the whole garden!

[cousinjordo]

Hey ya'll! Here's my latest:

Deg all my red potatoes as the foliage died back with a great harvest of red taters. They are currently curing in my pantry and hopefully will keep a couple months at least. But we will probably gobble them up faster than that! They've been so delicious.

Pulling more onions every day as their necks tighten up after falling over. Getting a good harvest in my opinion. I've never grown onions before so I'm glad we got some good ones!

The carrots have been fantastic! A few got a little tough but we've been pulling them in the intervals we planted them and they are plump, sweet and absolutely fantastic. I like the mixed colored varieties, but the nantes have been my favorite.

I've also since pulled my contender beans up and replanted the row. They were producing still, but they were going to starch and filling in with the tough beans so quickly, I just decided to start fresh. I planted 3 days ago and I already have 1 inch seedlings popping up. I think they should make it in the heat just fine, they did last year with no problem.

My tomatoes are growing well, squash and zucs are putting out but not like last year. Peppers are still producing like crazy across all the varieties. I can't wait for some salsa!!!

[Lindsaylew82]

squash and zucs are putting out but not like last year.

Ours were slow at first, but I fed them a little, and I've been giving them extra water, and they seem to have picked up the pace!

We mowed our beans down as well, for the same reason. We will wait until fall to replant them. It gets too hot and dry for them in our garden. We are gonna plant OKRA! Tasty, yummy, best ever vegetable okra!

Very pretty onions!!

Awesome job on your garden!

[rainbowgardener]

Your garden is looking great and producing beautifully!!

[cousinjordo]

Thanks ya'll, we are super excited for the bountiful year.

Lindsay, I saw your post in your forum about catching some squash bugs "in the act"....and if you mean the same thing I think you do, I CAUGHT SOME YESTERDAY!!! What nerve! On my good, food producing plants!

If you check out the full garden picture above, you can see my okra growing in the row closest to the camera. I think I may need to thin them a little more, but they are growing so well, I just hate cutting them down I know it's probably the right thing though. What do ya'll think?

[Lindsaylew82]

Lindsay, I saw your post in your forum about catching some squash bugs "in the act"....and if you mean the same thing I think you do, I CAUGHT SOME YESTERDAY!!! What nerve! On my good, food producing plants!

Those Nasty McNastersons! No respect! (I LOL'd for REAL on this! Resident Man asked me what was so funny!)

If you check out the full garden picture above, you can see my okra growing in the row closest to the camera. I think I may need to thin them a little more, but they are growing so well, I just hate cutting them down I know it's probably the right thing though. What do ya'll think?

I think it's ok spacing. A little extra fert, a little extra water....okra can take a wee bit of crowding! It isn't usually problematic for me until August when the heat and drought at peaking....which may just be THIS early in this area. (This weather is really something!)