2012 Veggie Garden Thread

[Whiteroom_Guardian]

Seeds just put in: Cucumber, Watermelon, Cantaloupe.

Transplanted more basil into the ground and tomato plants are in as well.

Everything else is absofuckinglutely killing it. My dad has the uber sweet connect for aged grass fed manure. About 30 yds of that with almost 400 pounds of lime = plant heaven (we don't use lime where the tomatoes go though cause they like it acidic).

I have kale growing 1.5 inches a day right now!!

Also have a mile long driveway with hundreds of ancient raspberry bushes growing on both sides. Gonna get at least a couple hundred pounds of epic berries in a few weeks.

They don't call it the Garden State for nothing!

[pepperdawg]

Same here in CT - stuff is growing out of control -

Doing a bunch of hot peppers this year -

Bhut Jokias (Ghost Pepper), Trinidad Scorpians, 7-Pots and some White Habenaros all from seed

and more comon stuff from nursey-bought plants - cayannes, hot thai, Scotch Bonnet and habenaors...

Other crops:

Yellow Squash is killing it
Pickling Cukes
tomatoes
beans
lettuce (Iceberg,Butter crunch and some romaine type)
radishes and some 3-colored carrots form seeds.

pics later in the the season

[Name Redacted]

We just bought a house and have a small, above ground, vegetable garden in the back yard. Anyone have any recommendations for what to grow at high altitude in ColoRADo? I know that lettuce and such will grow but I'm hoping for something a little more exciting.

[BurnHard]

^^ How high? I'm in Boulder, see Pg 1 & 2 for what I'm growing ... tons of options.

[Name Redacted]

^^ How high? I'm in Boulder, see Pg 1 & 2 for what I'm growing ... tons of options.

Yeah, I'm around 9000 feet. Short growing season and intense sunlight don't help. It's also still getting below freezing on some nights.

[BurnHard]

Yeah that's trouble. Build a small greenhouse? Cheaper and easier than you'd think ... Or hoop houses. Or walls of water. Or ... Tons of options, but definitely restricted growing potential.

Grow salad (can handle the frost), root veggies (carrots, onions, garlic, parsnip, turnips), lots of cabbages.

[bagtagley]

Zesty, thanks for the detailed post! I don't have raised beds, but it will be easy to adapt your scheme.

I'll see if the library has Four-Season Harvest, Thanks CC.

Anybody want to school me on Tomatillos? I'm currently training it up a couple of stakes, which is clearly not the right method. I'm thinking it needs to be trellised, which I don't have. I'm in the process of building up a sort of trellis for my cucumbers, attaching pieces of rabbit fence to garden stakes (stacked, to get some height).

[BurnHard]

This year's gardening season in the Boulder area is completely, ridiculously, fucking amazingly out of control! So much sun, so much heat, and now a few heavy rain storms, shit is growing out of my ears...

First eggplant of the season:


Can't keep up with the amount of summer squash. Anybody got any storage ideas for summer squash?


Guy on the right is a Cantaloupe, overshadowed by the massive zucchini plant on the left.
The Cantaloupe plant has a minimum of 25 flowers or so...


One massive italian zucchini plant


My Swiss Chards just keep producing and producing, on and on. I harvest easily 2x a week, each time enough for a 4 person dinner.


Eggplants


San Marzanos


More Eggplant


The big pictures


The tomato trellis is working wonders. My San Marzano plants are 7ft tall, I can't reach the tips anymore, and each plant has dozens of tomatoes. ~$30 investment, infinite payoff. Fuck those $3/each whimpy tomato cages!

[BraddA]

^^^Shocked you're still getting chard. Heat seems to have cooked mine for the season.
Question: any issues with blossom end-rot with your chilies last year? We had a terrible yield, as did quite a few of our neighbors. We've got a few that seem like they'll produce this year, but a few others that seem to be going south. Again.
I've done a fair amount of research, and the consensus seems to be that irregular watering is the culprit. Hard to combat while experiencing monsoonal flow. Any suggestions?

[BurnHard]

Didn't grow chillies or peppers last year, only tomatoes. Last year's tomatoes were mostly San Marzano plants, I had to throw every single tomato away because of blossom end rot. Usually, the rot would set in before the tomato would even start turning red. This year, I already have a few San Marzanos turning red and no blossom end rot yet.

From my own research, looks like blossom end rot is mostly due to lack of Calcium. If your soil is too far out of the proper pH range (~6.5 for tomatoes, probably similar for peppers), then calcium uptake will be negatively affected. Overfertilization with Nitrogen can also deplete calcium. The key seems to be adding Calcium (in the form of agricultural lime) early in the season, and adding Phosphate to balance the acidity. No rot so far, knock on wood....

[BraddA]

Nice, thanks. I'll look into the phosphate, and will try ag. lime next year. Thanks.

[bagtagley]

In Utah, I had issues with blossom end rot. A couple doses of Epsom Salts took care of it, for the most part.

[BackCountryNC]

I'm in North Carolina at 4500ft. Is it too late to start anything? If not, what do you suggest I try growing?

[Sirshredalot]

Basil ought to do just fine for you if you're starting now. We're starting another round of carrots now, and we're somewhat north of you.

[skifishbum]

3rd year on this spread

harvested a bit of aspragus this season
had a great cherry harvest

added a few more bare root black and rasberry damn strawberries are overunning my blueberries
ended up with about 30 different varities of tomatoes bout a 1/3 from seed
still harvesting broc and even managed a few califlower heads this season
somehow one of my bush bean seed packs ended up to be pole
gave up on corn but got a few hops going this year for a bro who brews

definately in full harvest mode now

got a dehydrator for xmass dried most of our berries and been making some tasty kale chips
bought and harvested a few k of worms this year been topdressing w/ black gold aka worm shit
hopin our white pine water share makes it into sept

[GiBo]

Bum, how do you dry the kale chips? Do you put anything on them or just cut them up and put them in plain?

Weird year for us. Tomatoes have been so so. Green beans came on strong and then just died. Good cucs. Just now getting buds on the eggplant, which is also weird for here. I think the mild spring/early summer fucked things up this year.

[skifishbum]

did one batch with a soy/honey based marinade came out a bit salty
and another batch with a white wine lemon based marinade
marinaded over night then 8/10 hours @ 100 degrees in our nesco tray dehydrator

[The AD]

I finally got a small raised garden put in. This year I've just got a couple tomato plants in there, but they are doing well. No mature fruit yet, but should have some soon. Seattle can be a tough climate to grow tomatoes in. We only had four days in July over 80 degrees.

[brice618]

Pepper OD soon.

[vinzclortho]

New Garden at the new house...this is June 14th of this year


and this past weekend


A variety of tomatoes, eggplant, squash, basil, italian parsley, chives, dill, poblano and sweet banana peppers. Really enjoying gardening, never done it before! I was AMAZED at how these suckers grew from tiny little sprouts into 7 foot tall plants in a few months!

I can't take credit for this stuff though, this was from the efforts of the previous owners...




also anybody know what kind of weed this is and how I get rid of it without killing my lawn?

[bagtagley]

Tomatoes: Septoria, tobacco horn worms, squirrels and my dog.

Cukes: Cucumber beetles and squash bugs.

Zucchini: Squash borers and squash bugs. 3.5 fruits from 4 huge plants.

Typical year for me. I generally let the tomatoes bush out, but I trained them up this year which helped them outgrow the disease. I can't reach the top of my cherry tomato. Heirlooms haven't produced much, but are still going. The Zucchini fucked my shit up. Cukes always die around mid-August, but they kicked it much earlier this year. I think it was all the squash bugs those big zucchini plants attracted. Had more squash bugs than normal this year. Squash borers are a new one for me. Completely decimated the plants in a matter of days. On the plus side, all my chiles have kicked ass, as have the tomatillos, beats, green beans and herbs.

[Zesty Not Spicy]

The garden is producing crazy! Pretty slow start to the summer for us so I'm just now harvesting tomatoes but overall a pretty good year. Pissed that I didn't plant any pickling cucumbers becasue I'm getting about 4 or 5 slicing cucs every day. First year doing corn and so far so good with the ears growing nicely. Hopefully I can harvest in the next coupel weeks.

[pepperdawg]

Pepper OD soon.

Some of my superhots - startign to turn yellow this week - which is good as frost is a coming