Summer Vegetable Garden

Flowering Purple Majesty Potatoes

Our vegetable garden is coming along nicely these days.  I'm close to adding another bed, and adding a composting pile - also, I just added trellises that I really like.  Since my seed starting didn't go as planned this year, I needed to go out and buy a few plants.

I went to Lowe's this morning with the intention of buying squash, pepper and tomato plants and watermelon seeds, and came home with:

Crookneck Squash
Better Boy Tomatoes
Red Bell Peppers
Sweet Banana Peppers
Crimson Sweet Watermelons

To me, the cost can really add up when buying vegetable plants.  I try to find the best deal by looking at the price and the number of seedlings in the pack.  A number of 4-packs, for example, will have more than one per section.  It might not be the best idea to divide these plants, but it's worth trying.  There were nine tomato plants in the 4-pack that I bought this morning.  I divided the tomato plants and planted the three largest ones in the garden, stripping off lower branches and planting them deeper, to encourage a better root structure.  I also potted the other six and I'll either leave them in pots or plant them in the garden at a later date.  I put the plants next to one of my new trellises, hoping to use it to support the tomatoes as they grow.

I got 5 banana peppers, but I had a hard time finding bell peppers.  I looked for a long time and only found green ones - I finally found individual pots of red bell peppers instead of multi-packs.  I bought two pots of those which got me 4 plants.  I had planned to put the squash in the same bed, but after planting the peppers, there wasn't enough room - knowing how big the squash plants will get.  I had plans to devote a whole field to corn - when I say "field", I really mean a 4 x 8 bed  - but I needed more room to plant the squash.  I almost have a "3 Sisters" garden going on there.

Before I went to Lowe's, I planned to buy watermelon seeds - they were cheap and I have all summer, right?  So, when I was looking at all of the vegetable plants, I ran across watermelons.  There were a couple of different varieties - one would grow 20 pound fruit or the other, Crimson Sweet, would grow to about 10 pounds.  I chose the Crimson Sweet variety for a couple of reasons - I grew it last year and it is a recommended variety of the Clemson Extension, and I plan to trellis these plants.  I don't know how well this will work, but I thought I might have better luck with smaller fruit than trying to support 20 pound watermelons on a trellis.

Wish me luck and hopefully this season will be great!

Garden Update

I have a lot of gardening and landscaping plans for the spring and summer - I just haven't gotten to them yet. I realized as my seeds* were sprouting this week that I was using my only completely free raised bed as a cold frame and I needed to do something about that.

*Both varieties of squash are sprouting, Razzleberry tomatoes, a few cucumbers and maybe a pepper, coneflower and agapanthus. I've also got another tomato, another pepper, watermelon, beans and corn to get started as well.

I can't decide what to do with my pole beans. I was going to put up a trellis made from conduit and twine, but now I'm wondering if it would be easier to do a tripod/tepee in the flower beds where I plan to grow watermelon, squash, cucumbers, pumpkins. I have so many questions about that - I was going to grow cucumbers up a trellis, but they're "salad bush hybrid" - does that mean they will be less of a vine? And am I planting too much of the same family together - squash, cucumber, pumpkins, watermelon?

Anyway, I got some more compost this morning. I opted to get $2 bags from the Romney Street location rather than loading my own at the landfill. I don't need as much right now - just enough to improve the soil in the landscaped beds so I can plant veggies out there. I'm rethinking the design of the bed, now that I've included part of the front yard in my vegetable gardening plan. I've got citrus that I want to put back into a pot, daylilies that I'll eventually move somewhere else - the same goes for the lilies, irises and phlox. I've got garlic that I'll harvest this summer. After all that, maybe I'll be able to design a nice planting that lets me incorporate long term landscaping with vegetables.

Other things growing - The potatoes I planted just over three weeks ago have broken the surface and the spinach is getting to be large enough to start harvesting. Daylilies have sprouted. The water hyacinths in the pond - I had given up on them, but hadn't tossed in the compost pile - they've got new growth on them.

My list of things I want to do is growing as well. The area in the front yard where the garden is, will become a continuation of the side flower bed and curve around in front of the house. I have to edge and smother the grass and mulch. Then I have to decide what to plant and put a path through it to the side gate. I'm planning to use pieces of broken concrete to make something that looks like a stone path. I've started collecting it recently.

I'm planning to take another shot at a shade garden, my first attempt not being the best location, as it turns out. I hope under our oak tree will be good enough. It gets a little morning sun and a little more evening sun - I hope it won't be a problem. I have a 50% off coupon for a garden catalog that I was going to use to buy all the plants for the shade garden when I was ready, but the coupon expires in April and I just don't think I'll be working on it at that point - and with shipping, who knows how much I'll really save.

According to my plan, I need to build two more raised beds (maybe three). I also need to lay out beds in the back yard. There's a strip of grass about a foot wide along the driveway that I want to rip up and plant a ground cover...

More rain barrels, chickens, rain garden/bioswale. The list goes on...

Spring Seed Starting

I got some of my vegetable seeds started today. Here's list:

Tomato - Razzleberry Hybrid
I got this free with my order from Park Seed.

Squash - Early Prolific Straightneck
Hopefully these will be ok. I've had these for two years, apparently.

Squash - Dixie Hybrid
Same goes for this variety, too. I got these last year and never planted them.

Cucumber - Salad Bush Hybrid
They looked like nice, small cucumbers, and are recommended for our area. I'mn planning to grow on a trellis.

Pepper - Sweet Spot X3 Hybrid
These look like sweet banana peppers that Robin wants.

Pumpkin - Autumn Gold Hybrid
I got three varieties of pumpkins to play with - small, medium and large. The first two will probably make good jack-o-lanterns, and I'm curious about the large one. They're supposed to be hundreds of pounds. I heard my brother-in-law tried these a few years ago - I thought I ought to try them out.

I'm also starting some non-vegetable seeds. If these get to a decent size in a month, I may take some to the plant swap - probably not likely.

Confederate Rose (hibiscus mutabilis)
I got a seed pod off of one around the corner from our house.

Agapanthus
I read an article about these in the paper and I started seeing them around. When one set seed, I collected some. PJ Gartin said she collected seeds the same time I did, "though I suspect that what I'll get (if anything) might not exactly like the parent plant. However, that's just the risk seed collectors take." She also told me that it may take 30-90 days for germination.

Devil's Trumpet
This plant had a couple of huge seed heads, almost the size of a golf ball. I harvested the seed and we'll see how it goes.

Echinacea - "Bravado"
Robin really wants coneflowers, so I bought a number of kinds from Park Seed.

I'm still waiting on several things from Park Seed:
Tomato - Better Boy Hybrid
Coneflower Collection
Pumpkin - Howden, Big Moon

2010 Vegetable Garden Planning

It seems that I am doing more vegetable gardening than anything else these days. I'd like to write about a variety of topics, but this is monopolizing my gardening time lately. It's still at least three weeks before I plant potatoes and onions and maybe more lettuce and spinach, and I'm already planning the vegetables for the summer. It seemed a little early when I was looking through my Park Seed catalog Sunday night, but as I thought about it, some of the vegetables will be transplanted to the garden in late March, after having been started from seed six weeks earlier - around the second week of February. After I realized that, I felt like I was almost late. So, these are my choices from the Park Seed catalog - most of these varieties are recommended for our area by the Clemson Extension and can be found in my vegetable garden chart.

Pole Beans - Kentucky Wonder, Blue Lake, Kentucky Blue
Kentucky Blue looks likes the best, but I've grown the other two, so I might get all three. I'll be able to compare the three and see which ones I want to grow in the future.

Sweet Corn - Early Sunglow, Silver Queen
These are regular sweet varieties, rather than a super sweet or sugar-enhanced hybrid. The Early Sunglow can be planted earlier than normal, so we'll get corn through the whole growing season.

Cucumber - Sweet Slice, Diva, Sweet Success(seedless), Salad Bush
I know we won't eat all these cucumbers, but I thought I might grow one. The Salad Bush variety looks like the one for us. The catalog calls it "a space-saving slicing cuke".

Watermelon - Sweet Beauty Hybrid
I know we might only eat a slice or two of watermelon, It's always good to have one to eat in the summer, and if I have more, I'll give them to neighbors or take one to a fourth of July party.

Peanuts - Gregory
I've never grown peanuts before, but I thought I would give them a try. I have to figure out how many plants I need to get about two pounds of peanuts. I boiled some peanuts a couple of summers ago in the crock pot and they turned out pretty well.

Pumpkin - Autumn Gold, Howden, Big Moon
I don't know if I'll grow all of these varieties. They are very different, so I thought I might try them all. Autumn Gold pumpkins are 7-10 pounds. Howdens will be 20-30 pounds. According to the catalog, Big Moon may produce 150 pound fruit. I think my brother-in-law grew some of these huge pumpkins a couple of years ago and I'm just a little curious.

Squash - Early Summer Crookneck, Enterprise (straightneck)
To the best of my knowledge these are bush type squash and I'd really like a vining type. Squash take up a lot of space and I'd like to grow these on a trellis of some sort if I can. Several years ago, I bought a squash plant from Lowes and it was a vining type. Ever since, I've ended up with bush type, and I'd rather not have that. If I can't find what I'm looking for, I think one of my neighbors grows it and probably has some seeds I can have.

Tomatoes
I'm still looking at tomatoes - I haven't decided which variety to grow yet. Everything I read about them, talks about how many diseases they can have, so I don't think I'm planting them in the garden ever again. I'm planning to use five-gallon buckets to grow them in from now on. I can put them anywhere and it'll leave room in the garden for other veggies.

Peppers
Same goes for the peppers. There's even more variety of peppers than tomatoes, or it seems like. I'm planning to get a few varieties of bell and sweet peppers for Robin.

Sunflowers
I'll probably get a mix of sunflowers and stagger plantings through the year, so we'll have them for a long time.

Coneflowers
I'm planning to get the four different varieties that Park Seed has.

Strawberries
I've got to learn a little more about strawberries before I buy any. They're sold as plants, so I have some time before I need to order them.