Going ahead and starting my thread for my 2015 garden. I have ordered some seeds for new things I want to try so I can have everything ready by seed starting time. Couple new things I'm trying this year is spinach and onions and a few different herbs. Need to do some research on when to plant these. I will have my main garden at out community garden place. My spot is around 24' wide by 84' long with the water access right on it . I also will have a small garden at the house where the spinach, herbs, onions, carrots, and lettuce will go.
I also have a small green house from Tractor Supply Co I got on clearance last fall that I'm going to attempt to use. My dad also wants me to start all of his tomato plants this year too. Hope it goes well lol.
Most of what you are growing at the community garden are for the warm season and the lettuce and carrots are cool season. You might want to think about what you will be growing when. A lot of this depends on your growing season and how long it is. The loose and non-heading lettuce are better because they are easier to grow than heading types and have some tipburn resistance. Lettuce should be planted in succession so you will get a longer harvest.
Thyme and oregano are perennials. You might want to keep them in pots in case they need to be taken in when it gets cold.
You have a nice size community garden. I have a big community garden for Hawaii 19x40 ft (It is supposed to be 20 ft, but it isn't). Yours is twice that. You can get a lot of things in there and you do have things that will take up a lot of space like the corn and squash. Tomatoes will take up less space on trelisses
Carrots need deep rich soil that is fairly fine without rocks or you will get crooked carrots and not too much nitrogen or they end up with a lot of forking. They don't like it once it gets hotter than 70 degrees.
Unless you are going to visit your community garden often, like every day or two, it is hard to grow peas or beans. They have to be picked almost every day an you will still miss some and some will be too mature to pick if you don't go more often than weekly. Same thing happens with zucchini, and chayote a couple of days and they can be past their prime picking.
I do plant corn, long squash (upo), butternut, Chinese wintermelon, beets, carrots ( a couple of times), Asian greens, daikon, and sugar baby watermelon at my community plot. They mature slower so they don't ripen very quickly. I do have chayote there but when it is in fruit, it is prolific and I just either give the mature ones away or throw them in the corner where they will sprout another vine. Shoots are edible too so I get two harvests from it.
I plant hot peppers at my community garden. Bird peppers and tabasco because they are perennial and don't need a lot of care.
I plant things that I am going to harvest all at once like spinach, tatsoi, choi sum under the Satsuma mandarin orange trees.
At home I plant things that need to be either harvested fresh, need to be picked frequently, or things I use a lot so I like the convenience of just going out the back door to get it. Like most of the herbs, lettuce, tomatoes (they do not grow well at the community garden), beans, snow peas, kale, swiss chard, broccoli, cucumber, Silver Queen corn ( it gets maize mosaic virus at the community garden so I need to plant a resistant UH #10 corn there). I have more peppers at home.I plant the majority of the root crops, except taro and ginger that need more water, at the community garden because they grow better there and the leaf and fruit crops at home. The community garden is at a higher elevation so chayote likes it better there and there is more space for it to roam.
I only get to my community garden at most a couple of times a week. When it has been raining and with the holidays, it is pretty much on its own. I think I went last about 3 weeks ago. I have trained my plants to either live on rain or to live with deep watering twice a week. Water hogs like cucumber and tomatoes I keep at home. Tomatoes do not grow well there anyway. I plant things there that don't need to be harvested daily and do not need a lot of care. I do have to grow resistant cultivars since there are a lot of plant diseases in community gardens and I plant more unusual things there and only a few otherwise, it would be stolen. I got rid of the bananas in the plot because they got bunchy top, but also because we never got any bananas. The lock was cut and we caught someone who had climbed over the fence into the garden. Some of my other community garden neighbors are lucky if they get one in 5 bananas to harvest and when they plant rows of eggplant, or cabbages, they get stolen. All I have to worry about is vandalism, and people throwing trash in and in front of my garden. Oh yeah, peeing on my fence.
I agree on the timing for what I need to plant at what time. I don't plan on doing it all at once, still working on a schedule. I will visit my garden a couple times a week until the beans come in then in will go more frequently. For the carrots I have a great spot of rich dark soil that is rock free. Only my second time with carrots (first time was not good) but I have a much better spot for them this time. I'm doing a lot of experimenting this year with different varietys so I hope it goes well. Last year was a good experiment year with growing tomatoes and other plants from seed but I later developed an aphid problem that I had a hard time getting rid of. I'm a fairly young gardener, I believe this will be my 4th good size garden of my own so I'm still learning lol.
Probably gonna start my tomato seeds around Valentines day. Puts me about 6 weeks by average last frost for spring. If anyone has recommendations for zone 7 carrots, lettuce, and spinach I would love to hear it.
all excellent advice from imafan! I would just say that the thyme and oregano are perennials, so it is nice for them to have their own spot, where they won't be bothered too much by digging around for other things. But they are cold hardy perennials. Mine stay out all year around, here in zone 6.
Valentine's day should be perfect for you to start tomatoes. I used to start them then here, but it turned out to be just a bit too early for me. You are about that much ahead of me.
Carrots, lettuce and spinach are usually direct seeded in the ground as soon as the ground can be worked. You could start the lettuce and spinach indoors and I am planning to start some indoors this season, just as an experiment to see how they do compared to direct seeded. The carrots do not like to be transplanted and need to be direct seeded. Depending on how the season goes, my guess would be that as soon as the ground can be worked would turn out to be some where around 1 Mar for you.
And yes, agree with imafan that it would be nice to do something with that big community garden for the early season, before all your warm weather stuff goes in. Also have you thought about mixing in a few flowers? Having some nectar and pollen bearing flowers in and around your garden is very helpful for attracting beneficial insects. Good ones for this include bachelors buttons, sweet alyssum, borage (aka bee's bread), anise hyssop (a perennial herb that is lovely in teas), dill, fennel and/or parsley (all in the carrot family) when allowed to bloom, mints or lemon balm (easy spreaders best grown in pots) , basil, ornamental grasses. But of course, there's no point in trying to attract beneficial insects (like lacewings and ladybugs that will prey on your aphids, honey bees to pollinate your squash, and tiny parasitic wasps that will control your hornworms), if you are going to spray poisons in your garden. It's an either/ or proposition.
Best wishes!! Keep us posted how it all works out for you.
Two more early spring herbs that grow well from seeds are cilantro and chervil. They bolt and bloom as it gets warmer and will have tons of tiny white flowers for the beneficials when there are only few things in bloom. You might give some thoughts to flowering "weeds" including grass in strategic places (hover flies LOVE lawn grass in bloom).
I sow peas and fava beans where I intend to grow heavy feeders like corn and pumpkin/squash as well as tomatoes later. Tall vining types for the heavy feeders and taller growers for deeper roots and more "pea straw" -- dead stalks and vines to use as mulch later -- quick maturing dwarf "bush" varieties for where I will need the space earlier.
I also try to space them so I can plant the next crop in between while the other one is finishing up.
I think I'm experimenting with growing mustard before tomatoes this year, too, though not necessarily as green manure.
Sounds ambitious, and have some good comments. I'll try to break down a few thoughts, FWIW
Carrots. Not easy here, but can be done. Yes, direct sow in home garden, take forever to come up. We have one woman at our farmers market we call 'The Carrot Whisperer' as she is successful (she lives on the MS side).
Herbs. Start from seed, and if not enough for big enough buy some starts. As mentioned, are perennials, so you want to have a designated area in you home garden for them. Put in some parsley for you and the black swallowtail caterpillars. Dill not easy here, along with cilantro. (do-able if you have to have!!)
Beans. You will want several plantings of the bush beans, every 2 -3 weeks. As one group plays out, the next kicking in. Also have the groupings in different areas, as the bugs moving into one can easily jump to 2nd group. (perhaps alternate home and comm garden).
Spinach can be done here, but plays out early. Try some swiss chard that goes all summer. The slugs will love you for that and lettuce.
Flowers. Always need flowers for pollinators and they are pretty! It is interesting to see suggestions from more northern neighbors! Bachelor buttons come and go fairly quickly in spring. Zinnias always good to put in here and there. The anise hyssop a good pollinator flower, and is perennial, so put some in with your herbs. I grew some dwarf cosmos last season, and it was great. It's shorter than the regular, doesn't need to be staked. The yellow and orange mix out did the pink purple mix for whatever reason. Coneflower another nice addition to your perennial area. And don't forget the sunflowers, here, there and where-ever!
I would love to do some flowers in my garden, guess my only questions is that since I will be in a community garden probably where a lot of people spray for bugs, is it worth the effort to plant these flowers? I would love to use flowers instead of bug spray. If it would be worth the time to plant some flowers, I'm thinking at least some marigolds to attract lady bugs, but I need to do some research on it.
I'm also not sure how early I can get in the community garden. They have to plow the whole thing and then make the rows, every lot gets 8 rows I think and that's how they mark off the spots. I have a feeling I can't get in there in time for cooler weather plants but I can try.
I was browsing a tractor supply store yesterday on my lunch break and found a new (to me) kind of corn I'm going to grow this year. It is a Ruby Queen Hybrid sweet corn. I had been looking at the colored corn online a while back and could never decide on one till I found this. This is a sugar enhanced corn that supposedly stays red after you cook it. I found some reviews on it and everyone seemed to really like it. The stalks turn red and make good fall decoration too.
I read about it on Burpees website and it says to plant it with another SE corn to boost pollination and yield of the corn, luckily the other corn I'm planting is a sweet corn so it should work. I also bought a small greenhouse at tractor supply last year (my favorite store if you cant tell) and I pulled it out of storage yesterday and assembled it.
I have a small update for seed starting. Planted seeds on Feb 1st for tomatoes, strawberries, thyme, califlower, and peppers.
Initial problem is I didn't use a heat mat, this has caused some delay in some of the seeds coming up and some varieties of tomato not coming up at all, lesson learned lol. That being said the top 3 rows (left to right) are tomatoes, the 6th row down is strawberries, and the 7th is thyme. This picture is about 4 days old so I have more tomatoes up now and a couple pepper plants. The first tomatoes that came up are now starting to blossom their second set of leaves. I'm gonna wait maybe one more week to see what else comes up then I will replant using a heating mat. I checked the fridge top but it isn't warm. My dad is keeping his starters on top of the satellite tv box and surround sound box. If that works out good for him I may try that.
Love the thread already! Those Ruby Queen pictures look amazing, and cute little seedlings! Looking forward to the rest of the posts, and I love the name of the thread as my last name's also McKinney ;D
Seedlings are looking good! There's something odd about planting tomatoes, peppers, and cauliflower all at the same time. Cauliflower is a cool weather crop, can be transplanted into the ground a month ahead of your average last frost date. Tomato can't go in the ground until all danger of frost is past, and peppers need a the soil even a bit warmed up after that.
rainbowgardener wrote:Seedlings are looking good! There's something odd about planting tomatoes, peppers, and cauliflower all at the same time. Cauliflower is a cool weather crop, can be transplanted into the ground a month ahead of your average last frost date. Tomato can't go in the ground until all danger of frost is past, and peppers need a the soil even a bit warmed up after that.
Still learning lol. Hoping to build a small cold frame this weekend and get the cauliflower in it. I will baby the tomatoes for a while and I wondered if it was too early on the peppers. Luckily only 1 came up so I can wait to replant those.
McKinney88 wrote:I have a small update for seed starting. Planted seeds on Feb 1st for tomatoes, strawberries, thyme, califlower, and peppers.
Initial problem is I didn't use a heat mat, this has caused some delay in some of the seeds coming up and some varieties of tomato not coming up at all, lesson learned lol. That being said the top 3 rows (left to right) are tomatoes, the 6th row down is strawberries, and the 7th is thyme. This picture is about 4 days old so I have more tomatoes up now and a couple pepper plants. The first tomatoes that came up are now starting to blossom their second set of leaves. I'm gonna wait maybe one more week to see what else comes up then I will replant using a heating mat. I checked the fridge top but it isn't warm. My dad is keeping his starters on top of the satellite tv box and surround sound box. If that works out good for him I may try that.
I messed up on this. The strawberry plants are actually cauliflower. Oops.
Check the rules of the community garden. Most of them have rules about what can and cannot be grown, height limits and what you can spray. Most only allow organic controls, but it does not mean people comply.
Although you have a huge plot, even bigger than mine, don't go overboard with the planting. Space things out a bit and plant for succession. If it is the first time, you may have to do some tweaking to figure out the best places for things and if you plant too many seedlings in a tray, you can still run out of room once they are planted out. A few extra are fine in case some break, grow crooked, or die. I seeded some romaine lettuce in my garden and have to thin them now and I have to choose which ones to transplant and which ones to have for dinner.
There are no rules in the garden about spraying anything, not intended for a organic garden area. Really the only rule is you maintain your plot and keep it up or you lose it. This will be my 3rd year out there.
Looking good! Your tomatoes are well ahead of mine -- the earliest of which are just now putting out their seed leaves. Your peppers are a bit ahead of mine, which have small true leaves. But all that seems appropriate, since you are in zone 7 and I am in zone 6 (for the time being!! ) (We are thinking about moving down by you, to Chattanooga, later this year!)
rainbowgardener wrote:Looking good! Your tomatoes are well ahead of mine -- the earliest of which are just now putting out their seed leaves. Your peppers are a bit ahead of mine, which have small true leaves. But all that seems appropriate, since you are in zone 7 and I am in zone 6 (for the time being!! ) (We are thinking about moving down by you, to Chattanooga, later this year!)
I hear Chattanooga is nice! When my kids get older I want to take them to the children's museum down there and this train place.
I started getting some yellowing on the true leaves of my tomatoes. I think I am over watering them.
wow, you look like you know what your doing. I am a first time gardener, but can appreciate what you have going on so far. I hope you don't mind me tagging along during the growing season in your forum to see if I can pick up on a couple of things. happy growing.
vaporizer wrote:wow, you look like you know what your doing. I am a first time gardener, but can appreciate what you have going on so far. I hope you don't mind me tagging along during the growing season in your forum to see if I can pick up on a couple of things. happy growing.
No problem, tag right on along!
Late update. Here is an update on my tomatoes. The community garden is not ready yet so I bought some bigger pots for my tomatoes till I can plant them out there. I have 16 of these right now.
Here is my cauliflower and carrots:
In this picture top to bottom is cilantro, basil, lettuce, and thyme.
love the green house/indoor seed starting operation you got there! Blows mine out of the water, I just have some shop light hanging from the ceiling of my garage on some string. its a pretty sad set up. I hope to do something like yours next year. great job, keep up the good work!
Pulled up a carrot yesterday to see how they were doing and I got a baby carrot! Mine first one ever.
Also got my garden at the community place planted Monday. Loaded up all the plants I had and my tiller and got it done. Also planted my corn, squash, and cucumbers and a few other things.
Time for another update. The community garden is going well for the most part. It literally rains almost every other day so I have a lot of weeds I have not been able to get after yet and till. This is my plants before the rain season started back a few weeks ago:
This is some of the tomatoes I have on them now:
A few tomatillos also:
Picked a little of my cauliflower this week, has a weird purple tint on some of it too.
If you fold the leaves over the cauliflower head when it is forming to shade it, it will help to keep them blanched.
You have done very well for a first time gardener. Your community plot is much larger than mine and mine is big by local standards. I have way more weeds.
Yea I was told by an older man to fold the leaves in and put a thick rubber band around the cauliflower but I kept forgetting. My community plot is covered in weeds right now unfortunately. Been too wet for the past few weeks to till them. This my third gardening too.
Been a while since I updated. Things are going ok. Weeds at the community garden got way out of control because of the constant rain we had but it finally dried so I could get in and till them up.
Had some tommy toes coming in, these have already ripened and been consumed by my son lol.
Been a really good year for my lettuce I started from seed. Tasty too.
This was my tomato plants when I first got them out and no weeds:
Some green Romas:
Some tomatilloes (which have been consumed by some kinda worm now)
Cauliflower:
Some cilantro, thyme, and basil, cleaned and dried all of them for storage.
My cherokee purple plant at home. Probably 6 to 7 ft tall now. the tomatoes on it havnt turned yet, I think it been to hot,
This is what my garden looked like before I could get in and till it!
. I also will have a small garden at the house where the spinach, herbs, onions, carrots, and lettuce will go.
) (We are thinking about moving down by you, to Chattanooga, later this year!)
