63 replies to this topic

[prasantrin]

I don't garden, and I have a black thumb. Or whatever kind of thumb one has when even cacti do not survive in one's care. But this year, I am growing some tomatoes, chiles, and herbs. All in pots, of course. None of that in-the-ground-stuff for this chick.

So I've got questions. . .

If I've got a nice potted tomato plant or two (quite large, and one of them has some fruit already), and I make a little hole in the soil, can I go ahead and stick a basil or rosemary plant in there? So I'd have a tomato plant and a herb plant in the same pot. Very efficient, no? Or would it be too much to have two kinds of plants in my pot (not sure how big the pot is--maybe 10" in diameter and 14" high?)?

If the temperature is above 0C, but under 5C, should I bring my tomato plants indoors? I've heard they're very sensitive to cold, and I don't want them to die (although if the cold killed them, at least I wouldn't be directly responsible). But just how sensitive are they?

[GG Mora]

If it's cold but not freezing, your tomato plants may refuse to flower or flower very late. Rule of thumb is that you shouldn't plant them out until the soil temperature is 60°F (±15°C). I would definitely bring them in if it's going to be 5°C or below overnight.

10" is kind of a small pot for a tomato plant. I'd shoot for closer to 18", at which point tucking a basil plant in shouldn't make much difference.

[GG Mora]

I have about 40' of peas (shelling) well underway, plus 2 beds* of garlic, a few rows each of cabbage, fennel, and bok choy, plus a bed of salad greens (mixed lettuce and both wild and hybridized arugula for cutting, mache and butterhead lettuce for heading), with some Tuscan kale and herbs and a bed of radishes, parsnips, beets and carrots. Also planted 2 beds of onions today and 6 18-inch grow bags of potatoes. Warm-weather crops (tomatoes, peppers, basil, beans, cukes, squash) will probably wait a few more weeks.

* A 'bed' Chez GG is 4' x 8'.

[prasantrin]

Can you come to my house and plant my garden? And take care of the upkeep, too?

I'll put the plants out during the day, and bring them in at night for now. It's just evenings when it's too cool for them, I think.

The tomato plants were on special--pot, cage, mostly grown flowering tomato plant (about 2 feet high already). So I figured the size would be A-OK! Darn. We've got a some unused terracotta pots I could use, but they're so heavy that I'm avoiding using them, at least until it's warmer at night. I need to replant my roma tomatoes and jalapeno plants soon, I think. Those ones are just tiny plants.

[Rail Paul]

Your terra cotta pots may absorb a considerable amount of sunlight, warming the soil on that side of the pot. I've found the dark plastic pre-planting pots to be warm to the touch late in the day, even though the air temp may still be modest.

[StephanieL]

We got another plot in our building's garden, and this one gets more sunlight (if the sun ever decides to come out). N planted carrots, 3 kinds of beets, borage, little strawberries, Jerusalem artichokes, sunflowers, and probably a couple of other things I'm forgetting. Once the sunflower stalks get high enough, she'll plant beans next to them. The indoor chili plant continues to do well, and we have a fine crop of micro-watercress and mustard greens in another windowsill pot.

[mongo_jones]

planted 15 tomato plants this year--they're all doing well; a sungold has even already put out fruit. peppers are catching up. my question today is about lettuce and chard.

lettuce: i planted a bunch of romaine and a bunch of red sails (frilly red lettuce). being an idiot i assumed these were loose leaf varieties that i could just keep harvesting some leaves from all summer, but it turns out they're not. so: do i just pull the whole plant out to harvest? or is there some benefit to snipping the leaves off at soil level and leaving the rest of the plant in? if i rip the entire plant out can i seed more lettuce in the same spot? or is it too late to seed new lettuce?

chard: how/when to harvest? do the leaves get bitter after some size point? and do i just snip stalks off as needed at soil level? will the plants keep sending up new leaves?

[GG Mora]

planted 15 tomato plants this year--they're all doing well; a sungold has even already put out fruit. peppers are catching up. my question today is about lettuce and chard.

lettuce: i planted a bunch of romaine and a bunch of red sails (frilly red lettuce). being an idiot i assumed these were loose leaf varieties that i could just keep harvesting some leaves from all summer, but it turns out they're not. so: do i just pull the whole plant out to harvest? or is there some benefit to snipping the leaves off at soil level and leaving the rest of the plant in? if i rip the entire plant out can i seed more lettuce in the same spot? or is it too late to seed new lettuce?

chard: how/when to harvest? do the leaves get bitter after some size point? and do i just snip stalks off as needed at soil level? will the plants keep sending up new leaves?

Wow. Mad props for the early Sungold. My 1-ft tall plants are just starting to flower.

It's never too late to plant lettuce (unless you live in a really hot climate). If you want to harvest leaves, forget about planting lettuce in rows for whole heads. Get a good heat-tolerant summer mix of lettuce seed (check Johnny's Select online) and seed a wide swath (like a foot wide) with sprinkled seed. When the lettuce is about 3 inches tall, you can start cutting it with scissors just above the stem. As you cut your way across the patch, the earlier cut stuff will regrow to cutting height. Sow about a 2-ft long patch every 2 weeks or so, and you can have tender little greens throughout the season. I do this with mesclun mix and arugula, too.

Never grown chard, so you're on your own there.

[Abbylovi]

Last year fantasty and I learned the hard way about fertilizer, good soil and feeding plants. We had around 20+ tomato plants which yielded perhaps five or six tomatoes.

This year we are not messing around. In fantasty's back yard garden we used composted cow manure plus Neptune's Harvest to nourish our 16 various tomato plants as well as two kinds of cucumbers, ichiban eggplants, radishes and assorted herbs. We're already seeing maturing fruit on a lot of the tomato plants.

Because I am insane, I have a second garden growing in my apartment building garden plot. There I have 5 tomato plants, 2 cukes, 2 eggplants, 4 tuscan kale plus assorted herbs. I'm hoping to do a lot of canning this year!

[StephanieL]

We've already begun harvesting the beet greens. The Jerusalem artichokes are getting tall, and finally we're seeing little strawberry plants. (The gooseberries are a wash, though.) N is going to try and grow lettuce in seed beds on our windowsill.

Our neighbors' plots are also doing quite well. One woman has so much arugula that she's letting everyone harvest some, and she's got some amazing-looking potato (!) plants and dill.

[Rail Paul]

Last year fantasty and I learned the hard way about fertilizer, good soil and feeding plants. We had around 20+ tomato plants which yielded perhaps five or six tomatoes.

This year we are not messing around. In fantasty's back yard garden we used composted cow manure plus Neptune's Harvest to nourish our 16 various tomato plants as well as two kinds of cucumbers, ichiban eggplants, radishes and assorted herbs. We're already seeing maturing fruit on a lot of the tomato plants.

Because I am insane, I have a second garden growing in my apartment building garden plot. There I have 5 tomato plants, 2 cukes, 2 eggplants, 4 tuscan kale plus assorted herbs. I'm hoping to do a lot of canning this year!

Well rotted manure is incredibly effective for tomatoes, cukes, etc. Using cow manure and Neptune's Harvest sounds like a great idea.

My father in law trained and raised horses for years. He had a corner of the property bordered by a nice stone wall where he would dump manure and rotted straw in the fall, dig it under, and produce baseball sized, incredibly juicy tomatoes every year.

[mongo_jones]

i used a lot of composted manure in my tomato beds as well; and also mixed in some peat. and i mulched with last years lawn and leaf clippings (which had all but composted down without any work on my part). but the main reason my plants are doing so well (better than at any previous 4 week mark in my short career) is that we've been having a lot of wet/humid yet sunny, and warm but not hot days of late, and night-time temperatures have been in the high 60s.

i planted three cherry tomatoes this year: a sungold, a yellow riesentraube and a black cherry. the sungold is almost 3 feet high, the riesentraube is at the 2 foot mark--but the black cherry is lagging (though it looks very healthy). i'm guessing it will catch up before anything ripens.

other tomatoes: 1 black krim (i had two last year, and we drowned in the fruit); 1 red brandywine; 1 pineapple; 1 garden peach; 3 san marzanos; 1 moskovich; 1 stupice; 2 green zebras (i had one to begin with but smartly snapped of its main stem while transplanting; got a replacement but planted the mutilated one anyway, and lo, it's thriving*); 1 mystery tomato--the brat went with me to get the starts and we came back with one more than i'd put in the box, and no tag (i hope i paid for it). also one tomatillo. i'd wanted to plant some of those jaune flammes mora raves about, but the nursery didn't have any this year.

peppers: one each of thai dragon (this plant has barely grown in height, but seems to already getting ready to put out flowers/fruit), habanero, sweet banana, cubanelle, and a red bell pepper variety.

a bunch of herbs: the perennials are all thriving (mint, kyrgyz oregano, english thyme, common sage); three genovese basil, chives, french tarragon, lemon verbena and lemongrass. the french tarragon should survive as a perennial, but i doubt the verbena will.

lettuce, chard.

a row of peas planted too late to get a harvest from; but we'll eat the greens and that bed should be good for tomatoes next year.

*as an experiment i've decided to let the green zebra survivor grow without support--i'm curious to see how it'll do. of all the non-cherry tomatoes the un-mutilated green zebra is the one that's growing most robustly; however, i've read the zebras are not very disease resistant, so this experiment may end badly.

[tsquare]

Haven't planted green zebras in years, but never had any problems with them despite the terror of growing in the wet PNW. But, my tomatoes were one of my best crops when I had a p-patch.

I cut chard as needed. I think you can just twist them off at the base, but I tend to use a clipper or scissor so I don't pull the root out, especially when the plants are still young. I still haven't pulled the plants out from last year - there is another possible harvest there, but the plants have finally started to bolt (send up seed heads.) Around here, chard and kale are left as long as you want - they actually are sweeter after a light frost, if they don't get black and slimy. Fine line there.

I stared pepper seeds inside - from dried peppers from Morelia (hi Cristina!) I doubt we'll get peppers, but we have a dozen healthy starts! We also have two local purchased starts that are in the kitchen window - and flowering. Anyone know if they need to be pollinated to bear fruit? I guess I could get out a paintbrush...

[Eatmywords]

I’ve got beefsteak, supersonics and a couple hybrid cherries growing in large pots (my tiny backyard is covered in concrete). They’re doing well, 1 ½ to 2ft and flowering. One of the cherries sprouted 3 babies a couple days ago. Banana peppers, basil and parsley too. Sage, chives, mint, oregano and thyme have come back for the 2nd yr. Amazing how tough they are.

[GG Mora]

I've learned to keep my tomatoes simple. Big beefsteak types are just too much a crapshoot in our short season, so I only grow cherries (2 Sungold plants), my darling mid-sized Jaune Flammee (6 plants), and San Marzanos (16 plants). The Sungolds and Jaune Flammee are all I need for eating fresh, plus the Jaune Flammee make excellent salsa, and both are great for oven-roasting then freezing. The San Marzanos are strictly for canning – whole and sauce, though I may try sun-drying some if I have a good crop.

I have about 40 ft. of shelling peas about to come ready. I hope they either hurry up or stall, since I'm going away the week of July 4th. It would suck to have all those lovely peas languish on the vine in my absence.

And I've got the usual array of garlic, salad greens, cabbage, onions, peppers, potatoes, root crops, beans, and herbs.

We also put in the first of our orchard last week (after a major excavating project to open up and flatten out the site). 4 hazelbert bushes (a cold tolerant hazelnut / filbert hybrid), a Cortland apple, a Montmorency cherry, and a Garnet Beauty peach. We should be able to fit about 8 more trees in the coming years; I want to plant plums, a quince, and a bunch of cider apples for makin hootch. We were also given a bare-root elderberry which we stuffed in the dirt down towards the river. Apparently, I'll need a second one, of a different variety, in order for them to produce. Which should be interesting since I have no clue what variety the first one is.

ETA: I'd post some pictures, but I don't want to send Dr. Jones on a crying jag.