Spring is almost here! What are you gonna plant this year?

[4_Legs_Good]

I think these will be the last showers here in So. California, and then it's planting time!

Last year, thanks to my EarthBoxes (thanks to whomever it was who recommended them!) I grew a ton of lemon cucumbers sucessfully for the first time. What a treat!

Last year was also great for tomatoes and berries. I had one cherry tomato plant that produced about a basket every other day until an evil tomato horn worm ate the whole thing practically overnight. My brand new boysenberry and blackberry plants did really well. I hope I trimmed them properly for a harvest this year.

This year I just have to remember to bulid proper supports for everything *before* I plant them!

I wanna get a crop of carrots in my two EarthBoxes and out again before summer so I can get some more cucumbers going.

What are you gonna plant?

david

[TyeDye75]

1. Im not going to plant anything

but Im planning to overhaul my fish pond.

[CottonBear]

2. I container garden in the city.

Bush cucumbers, lettuce, banana peppers, marigolds, herbs in a window box and a cherry tomato.

[4_Legs_Good]

4. My bush cucumbers ended up albino last year

It was really weird. Totally stunted, and totally white. Maybe I didn't plant what I thought I did. It was a horrible Bush cucumber crop. Prolly because of the election - they were protesting their name!

I'm doing much better with container planting these days! I'm finally learning what I can and can't grow in containers.

david

[CottonBear]

16. Sounds like a nutrient imbalance.

Or...they may well have been protesting their name! Bush beans are good for containers too.

One year, when I lived in the country and had a huge garden, all of my tomatoes got blossom end rot. (I think the organic chicken fertilizer was too fresh.) I had to spray them with calcium spray. They recovered just in time for a tornado to wipe out all of the corn, tomatoes and sunflowers. Oh yeah, my well went dry so I spent the summer hauling water from the pond. I had raised beds mulched with paper and straw so the soil stayed nice and moist. Too top it all off, a tractor-pulled disk harrow ran over my watermelon crop (which was planted outside the fence at the edge of a winter wheat field) just as it was near perfection. Those melons were sliced and diced! Still, I had more good veggies and flowers than I knew what to do with and I got lots of exercise.

You know, it's hard to be a farmer.

[4_Legs_Good]

30. Wow that's pretty rough!

Farming must be about 10,000 times rougher than gardening, which is always fun, except when nothing grows. Grrrrrrr...

Tractor story is tragically funny.

david

[CottonBear]

32. I can laugh about the "great melon tragedy" now!

I was able to prop up most of the stuff blown down by the tornadic winds and the well gradually refilled in about a week. All in all, that garden was the best ever!

[flamingyouth]

3. Carrots, tomatoes, green beans, peas

My lettuce is still good from last fall. :)

[4_Legs_Good]

7. Nice!

How do you keep bugs out of your lettuce? I gave up on leafy stuff because it always gets infested, and I'm bug-o-phobic. I now try to plant only "tamper evident" stuff.

I forgot I also had a great snow-pea plant last year. Delicious! But not a huge stir fry fan, I couldn't eat them (with a family of 3) as fast as they were growing, and they don't last long. Hmmmmm...

david

[flamingyouth]

9. My biggest problem is slugs

I use beer traps for them, which works pretty well. Usually, the key is just to keep pulling it up as fast as it grows.

I share my bounty with my next-door neighbors, who have three boys. :D

[wryter2000]

10. Floating row covers

I've never grown lettuce, but I understand that floating row covers, such as Remay, are good for keeping insects off.

[4_Legs_Good]

17. That makes sense...

For some reason because of polination I never think of covering my plants, but for lettuces polination isn't an issue.

I'll look into it. Thanks!

david

[CottonBear]

21. Plant lots of leaf lettuce in a rectangular container

and then thin it out and eat the baby lettuce heads whole. Mmmm! You can cut the lettuce leaves off of the remaining plants and they will grow more. You can do this several times before they bolt to seed. Italian parsley is a good crop that stays green through the winter. Plant it in the spring and you'll have it until the next spring. It makes a good landscape plant for city gardens.

[phaseolus]

5. Roses

I like David Austins, and plan to plant 3 or 4 this year. Haven't decided if I want yellow or pink ones yet...

[xmas74]

6. Lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini, peas

green beans, strawberries, corn, cucumbers, carrots-anything else that looks good at the time.
Also, lots of flowers.

[wryter2000]

8. Earthboxes!

I don't know if I was the one who recommended Earthboxes, but I swear by them. I got so many Early Girl tomatoes off four plants last year I could hardly give them away. I was begging people to take tomatoes. And they tasted sooooo good.

I'll be doing Early Girls again and a Sweet Million cherry tomato. Diva cucumbers. Four types of peppers (Golden Bell and Staddon Select are the best!), an egg plant. Four kinds of summer squash. (The yellow patty-pan squash is to die for.) Pole beans by the garage -- esp. Fortex. Yum, Fortex! And parsnips. Probably start with some snow peas.

That sounds like a lot, but I'm the only one eating all this, so a few plants of each is plenty for me.

[flamingyouth]

11. I'd like to try those - sounds great

:hi:

[wryter2000]

47. My favorite sources

www.johnnyseeds.com

www.territorialseed.com

Territorial specializes in things that will grow in cool summers. I buy plant starts from them. It adds up to way more money than seeds, but when you consider what a yellow bell pepper costs in the grocery store, ensuring that I get lots of fruit is worth the money.

[4_Legs_Good]

13. I grew stuff in my two boxes last year that I've NEVER

successfully grown before, and I grew more than I could handle. A really well tended lemon cucumber planted in my raised garden got maybe 3 fruits all summer. My 4 plants with almost no maintenance (I did end up spraying with NEEN, as they were getting infested with some kinda mite or something), produced probably close to 100 fruits.

My Anaheim peppers were just plain insane, I must have given away 400 peppers from one single Earthbox.

If you were the one who made the suggestion: THANKS!!!

I should probably order a couple more.

Oh, and as an added bonus, I got one frog living in the reservoir of each of them, which my 2 year old and I enjoyed visiting on a regular basis. They would cimb up the tube and watch every time we watered the box.

:)

david

[wryter2000]

44. I have 10 of them now

I really have a small back yard, and most of the garden space goes to flowers (except for the bean trellises), so almost of all of my veggies go into Earthboxes.

I never got a frog. How cool! I do have newts in my garden. They're so cute.

[MadHound]

12. Soybeans

I'm enriching this hard pan clay of mine. Till under the rye grass I had over the winter, spread manure for a couple of months, then plant soybeans, a great nitrogen fixer. Till those under in the fall, spread manure, plant rye grass again, and next spring, hopefully, I can plant a real garden.

[Indiana_Dem]

14. Here's my list:

mint
dill
chammomile
sage
basil
oregano
rosemary
chives
lavendar
echinachea
cilantro
parsley
mint
chives
nasturtium
tansy
eucalyptus
lamb's ears
sunflowers: mammoth grey, firecracker

mushrooms

blueberries
rasberries
grapes
tristar strawberries

jerusalem artichokes
rhubarb
asparagus

benchmark green beans
delicata squash
cucumbers: DIVA, Miss Hybrid Pickler, straight eight
conquistador celery
rockstar F1 pumpkin
bicolor supersweet xtra-tender corn
peppers: hungarian hot wax, green, red & orange
broccoli: Arcadia F1
lettuce: iceberg
carrots, Danvers 1/2 long
watermelon, Ali Baba (from Iraq in honor of Iraq)
melon, American Tam Dew
radishes: easter egg, cherrybelle
tomatoes: brandywine, peacevine cherry, glacier

dwarf trees:
2 apple
1 nectarine
1 cherry
1 peach
1 pear

I am so excited! I'm doing raised bed square foot gardening! :)

[4_Legs_Good]

19. What's raised bed square foot gardening???

I wanna try some new stuff too!

Where are you located? I'd love to do blueberries, but I don't think it gets cold enough here in Southern California to grow them.

Oh I'm gonna try grapes too this year. Got the plants ready to go on once it stops raining!

david

[Indiana_Dem]

29. This website will explain it better than I can:

http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

Good luck gardeining this year!

[CottonBear]

36. Thanks for the great link.

I'm bookmarking it right away. I'd not heard of this gardening technique. I like it very much. I am going to suggest this to my clients. (I'm a landscape architect.) I can see how one can integrate this type of garden into many kinds of landscapes from city to rural. It is especially good for those people that want something very neat and structured.

[Indiana_Dem]

41. No problem!

Glad to help out! :)

[MissB]

46. It really is wonderful

I own a half acre lot, but I still do square foot gardening (mostly because I have large trees and only a bit of good sunlight). It is so easy to maintain the plots - way easier than a regular garden.

[Dying Eagle]

15. Marijuana

about 200 of them.....oh shit Patriot Act.....J/K DEA, no pot her!!!

:smoke:

[edbermac]

24. Me too...but don't say marijuana...let's call it "Maryjane"...

We'll fool them all...:smoke:

[sniffa]

45. for medicinaL purposes, i'm sure

*cough* i'm suffering here. ;)

[LiberallyInclined]

53. June 1 is the best time to plant outdoor pot.

that's when my seeds are going in.

[blackcatpgh]

18. patio garden

we don't have a proper backyard, so i'm doing container gardening for the 3rd year in a row (boy howdy, do i miss our old "real" backyard). i usually plant:

roma tomatoes
paprika & banana peppers
basil

and morning glories to climb the fence

looking forward to spring...

[4_Legs_Good]

22. My garden keeps creeping over the back yard more and more every year...

my wife is starting to get ticked. I keep pulling up the lawn to plant something new. I have more dwarf trees in the tiny yard (maybe 1/8 acre) than are probably possible to maintain. Especially since we have crappy development soil, but the citrus really love it.

david

[Padraig18]

20. We're finalizing our plan.

We'll decide by week's end.

:)

[4_Legs_Good]

27. Wow! A plan!!

I always come up with a plan *after* I've planted stuff...

and then of course I end up with a jungle and regret it the rest of the year.

Good work!

david

[Padraig18]

28. Thanks!

:)

[RebelOne]

23. What do you mean that spring is almost here?

It seems it is here now in No. Georgia. It was in the 70s today. I don't want spring. This is winter. I want winter weather. I am a cold-weather person and we haven't been getting much winter weather here for the past couple of years. Oh yeah, as Bush said, there isn't any global warming. Can't prove it by me.

[4_Legs_Good]

26. You know it really irks me when people living in cold climates

"welcome" global warming. I mean sure it's nice to have the sun out and the ice melted, but DAMN, there are some areas of the planet that are supposed to be cold all year. If you don't like it, then MOVE somewhere warmer.

To accept global warming because it means I can plant my garden 3 weeks earlier is absurd. There are also places which are now unlivable as a result.

Anyway, my sympathies to you! Hopefully we can get rid of this imbicillic wave of anti-environmentallism soon and in a couple centuries fix what we've broken.

That said, winter only lasts a couple months in Southern California...

david

[BlueHandDuo]

25. Fava beans, kohlrabi...

...oh, who am I kidding?

Radishes, carrots, zucchini, chives.

[prairierose]

31. I don't have a lot of room so I think....

I'll stick to tomatoes and I'm looking at lettuce & beans. We'll see, I've been looking at the seed catalogs. But I think I'm going to stick with organic and/or heirloom seeds this year.

[4_Legs_Good]

33. I kinda gave up growing from seeds last year...

I now buy seedlings from the nursery. Maybe I should get back to seeds, though. I'm sure I could do it, and it'd make me feel like I'm making progress as a gardener...

david

[sphincter]

34. White Widow

I have 4 little White Widows growing in pots on my balcony. Looking forward to harvest.

[4_Legs_Good]

35. Is that some kinda spider?

No clue what a white widow is!

david

[redqueen]

37. Tomatoes, onions, potatoes...

we'll see how those go.

I should separate my irises, but I think I'm too late. :(

[4_Legs_Good]

38. How do you grow potatoes?

I've never done them. Are they difficult? Are they worthwhile if you don't have a lot of space?

Onions is a good idea! I should do them too.

david

[redqueen]

39. They're SO easy.

As far as space, though, I'd say not really...

Do you order? I like Burpee's. :)

[4_Legs_Good]

40. Order?

Order seeds? No, usually I buy seedlings from a local nursery. I might get back into seeds, though.

How much space would make growing potatoes worthwhile? How many potatoes would you say would be a worthwhile yield?

Seems like such a fun thing to grow.

david

[yellowdogintexas]

42. prob a few tomatoes, some basil, dill,

a new rosemary bush,

and several pots of dragonwing begonia


I may also put a big batch of marigolds in my tomato bed as well.

[Lauri16]

43. As far as flowers go...

I wish I could tell you, but I don't know a posie from a pansie. That's my husband's department. We have some tulips and daffodils & some other ones that I can't remember the name of, that come up every year.

I do know that we'll have the vegie thing going. Tomatoes, beans, peas, carrots, etc. I do alot of canning of vegies.

[MissB]

48. I think I'm still trying to "unplant"

The woman who lived here before me planted a 15' by 25' patch of Crocosmia - the orange variety. It is quite beautiful and all that, but..... wugh. I certainly don't need nearly 400 square feet of one species of flower.

For now, I'm digging it up as I can and putting in a cottage style perennial garden. I think I dig up about 300 bulbs every square foot or so.

[khashka]

49. Tomatoes

Which I do every year. I always look forward to flowers and fruit from my dwarf lemon tree. Probably some parsley, rosemary, thyme and dill.

Flowers? I haven't decided yet. But I highly recommend Queen's Tears (I've also heard it called Queen's Necklass). When it blooms a hanging blue flower opens up dropping a pink flower that drops a yellow flower. Difficult to make bloom, but when they do... oh man!

Khash.

[InvisibleTouch]

50. Definitely garlic this year.

I use a lot of garlic in cooking, and the whole point of the patio garden was to save some money on food - so that'll be one thing I won't have to buy this summer.

Other than that, I'll go with radishes (my easiest and most successful crop), butterhead lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and little round carrots again. Oh, and sunflowers. Marigolds for added color and to keep some of the pests away. And I may try squash, beans, and peas again, but I haven't been too successful with them in the last two years. I try to do some companion planting, as there are some crops that enhance each other, some that inhibit each other, and some that deter one another's pests.

Looking forward to nice weather, but it's a long way off....

[4_Legs_Good]

51. For garlic, do you just break up an old root

into individual cloves and plant them?

I've done that, but never harvested them. Or do you grow them from seed?

david

[InvisibleTouch]

52. You plant it as cloves...

...and while I think you can get seeds too, I understand the cloves give you faster and more reliable results. I've actually never done it before, so I will probably order some cloves from a catalog, or buy them from a garden center. I think you can't just plant cloves that you buy in the store, they won't give you good results. (Perhaps treated with a preservative for transport, to keep them from sprouting?) I guess I'll find out! :)

[lpbk2713]

54. Already did some planting about a month ago.....

I planted some Roma tomatoes and they're coming along real fine.



Before and after..... You can't tell but they are blossoming profusely.



Also planted some jalapeños and some banana peppers and they are doing well too.

[Bonhomme Richard]

55. I'm going to plant my Rear in my canoe. n/t