Anyone care to help a gardening novice grow some veggies?

One of the things I was really looking forward to when I purchased my own home was the ability to plant my own veggie garden. I’m depressed about what I can find in the local markets even at the best time of the year and I miss the flavor of a true home-grown tomato picked less than an hour before being eaten. To solve this problem, I really want to get a small garden going this spring.

My needs really are pretty meager. The absolute upper limit for this first year experiment is that I would try maybe half a dozen tomato plants. I don’t know enough about plant varieties to intelligently comment about which ones to get but I want them primarily for fresh eating. I’m not planning on canning them or using them to make tomato sauce. I may experiment with drying them if I can get a respectable harvest. Any suggestions on what variety or qualities to look for in my search? FWIW, my location is in the central midwest, midway between Omaha and Denver

Given my minimal, first year, plans do I really need to dig up my yard to get a few tomato plants? It seems to my uneducated, inexperienced guesstimation that I should be able to grow these few plant in containers just fine. I’ve got several clean, ten gallon, food grade buckets that I could use in a pinch (they used to hold fast food burger chain pickles) but if I need larger containers then I could probably acquire them. Maybe container growing tomatoes is a non-starter from the outset. I just don’t know.

If I get really motivated, I might try to plant a few green beans as well.

Any thoughts?

Did someone say tomato? :smiley:

For fresh eating, pretty much any variety labled “beefsteak” will work (they are the typical biggish red tomato you can make nice juicy sandwich-sized slices out of) and cherry or grape tomatoes are fun for snacks and especially if you have kids.

I grow my own tomatoes in containers and have had pretty good luck. The ones I use are lower and wider (about the size/shape of a Rubbermaid storage bin) but the pickle buckets should work if you don’t want to spend the money on planters yet. My advise would be to take a big nail or something and punch a bunch of drainage holes in the bottom, and put a couple inches of rocks or coarse gravel in the bottom so they aren’t too topheavy. Potting mix made for containers will work better than garden soil (it holds moisture better and often has fertilizer in it for an added kickstart). Tomato plants will need support, I personally like the cone-shaped tomato cages you can stick right in the soil but even a pole stuck in the soil and the plant tied to it loosely will do.

They suck up lots of water especially when fruiting and container plants dry faster than those in the ground, so be sure and check them often.

(heavy sigh) only 5 more months until I can start planting!

Tomatoes are pretty easy to grow, so it’s a good crop to start out with if you’re a novice. They’ll do all right in large containers if you keep up with their water and feeding needs.

For container tomatoes, smaller varieties are best, especially cherry tomatoes. If you want to eat them fresh, cherry varieties are excellent for eating straight off the vine or putting in salads, and they don’t suffer as many of the difficulties that larger tomatoes can, like blossom end rot. For either cherry or full sized tomatoes in your area you’ll probably want an early-ripening, indeterminate variety - that means they’ll keep producing throughout the season. The most popular of these is the “Early Girl”: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1216/is_n2_v190/ai_13540466/

Some other early varieties can be found here:
http://www.tomatogrowers.com/early.htm

Some general tomato-growing tips:

You’ll probably be best off buying plants already somewhat grown rather than starting from seed for your first try. Look for sturdy plants with dark green leaves, kind of short and stocky looking without big long stretches of stem between the leaves (referred to as “legginess”), no yellowing or brown spots, and try to get ones that haven’t already put out fruit before you transplant them. The bigger they are when you buy them, the more expensive they are, but the sooner you’ll get fruit from them - but if they’ve already got lots of flowers and fruit, they’ll take longer to recover from the stress of transplanting.

First off, make sure you’ve got a good, rich potting mixture, the more nutritious the better because tomatoes are heavy feeders. Adding compost for nutrition and water retention is recommended. Plant them deeply, all the way up to the leaves. They will put out new roots from the submerged portion of the stem. Remove the lowest leaves once the plant is a couple of feet high, that will help direct more energy to the upper portions of the plant where the fruit grows, and prevent them from picking up diseases and pests from the soil.

Deep watering plus good drainage is important, they want moist but not soaking wet soil, and don’t let them dry out completely. Lack of water leads to lack of calcium, which is the cause of blossom end rot - literally, the blossom end of the fruit turns brown and soft, and pretty much ruins the whole tomato. Adding calcium in the form of crushed eggshells or bone meal helps, but doesn’t do any good if there isn’t enough water in the soil for them to take it up. On the other hand, overwatering can make the fruit split.

When watering, make sure you don’t splash the leaves, they don’t like that, especially if the water is cold. Use tepid water if possible, and water early in the day before they get hot so the change in temperature isn’t as much of a shock. Water the soil, not the plants themselves, and try to prevent splashing upwards. It helps to have some sort of mulch on top of the soil to hold in the moisture - and apparently red light encourages more tomatoes, so some people use a red plastic sheet as a ground cover around them. You could cut circles of red plastic to go on top of the soil inside the container, or there are even red circular doughnut-shaped things you can buy, that you pour the water into and it evenly distributes it around the plant at the same time that it’s reflecting the red light upwards onto the leaves.

Tomatoes like full sun and heat (as long as they’re well watered), so put them against a south-facing wall or other light- and heat-reflecting surface, especially if your area is prone to frost or chilly summer nights. The warmer the soil, the better they’ll grow, so make sure the soil in the containers is warm before planting. Set the containers out in the sun beforehand and turn the soil to mix the warmed upper layer into the lower regions.

Don’t crowd them, they like a lot of room. One plant per large container is best, and the larger the better. They can also grow quite tall, and will need some sort of support. Wire cages work within a container, but you might also need some twine or something above that for them to climb up if they outgrow the typical wire cages you can get at the garden shops. You can tie them loosely to poles or wind them around vertically stretched twine.

Hope that helps.

I’d say you don’t have to dig up your yard, just enough of it to plant tomatoes. That way you can expand to other things when you have success. Make sure the region has enough sun, but it won’t take very long to do.

The most important thing is the soil. When I lived in NJ I lived on a former chicken ranch, and my soil was great. In California my soil started out awful, but I built it up with compost from the kitchen and especially composted horse manure. If you have barns near you, they’ll be happy to give you some - they have to pay to get it hauled away. You can buy soil test kits, and you will likely need some other additives, but the improvement to your soil will last for years.

I usually grow a bunch of different types of tomatoes. You might do that to see which type you like the best and which grows the best for you.
Good thing to do. I basically refuse to eat any tomatoes except the ones I grow any more, since store tomatoes are so inferior.

In my experience, beans (and peas) are much easier than tomatoes - less fertilizing/watering needs. You can start them from seed, too (seed packets are cheap). I usually just put them inbetween two damp paper towels for a coupla days, and as soon as you see little roots coming out, drop 'em in little holes in the ground. Situate them somewhere they get a lot of sun and either get support (fence, trellis, etc.) or look for types marked “bush variety.”

Rule of thumb for nearly anything edible is that it will need a lot of sun. I can’t think of much you’d want to put in a veggie garden that doesn’t need at least part-sun at minimum.

If you like herbs, chives are easy to grow from seed. I highly recommend them - you can even just scatter the seeds around other things you’ve already planted. Eventually, they’ll bloom with pretty little purple round flowerheads. :slight_smile:

Peppers (sweet bell, hot, banana, etc.) have similar requirements to tomatoes - lotsa sun, lotsa water - but IME are a bit less demanding. The smaller the final fruit, the hardier the plant, too. Big ol’ honking sweet bells are easy enough to grow, but a cayenne is a tough sumbich.

Green leaf veggies - spinach, lettuce etc. - are pretty easy to grow as well. Even easier is Swiss Chard, in which case, look out for the (extremely common) “Bright Lights” variety. The colors are breathtaking - saturated and almost neon - plus it’s a really healthy green. Add some of the baby leaves for color to salads, and quickly saute the mature leaves with some garlic. I find it extremely easy to grow from seed as well.

One last easy-from-seed suggestion: radishes. They germinate very fast, and you can pull them when they’re little babies and eat them with a little bit of butter and salt, and feel very French. They can be started much, much earlier than tomatoes or other warm-weather veggies as well. (Ditto the green leafies mentioned above.)

Probably the first thing you’ll want to do is look up your last average date of frost and your historical last date of frost for your area.

If you’re risk tolerant, plant after the average, and cross your fingers. If not, plant after your historical last date.

For fresh tomatoes it’s hard to go wrong with the Celebrity variety, although I’ve never tried them in containers before.

Generally, green beans need a trellis or something to grow up. Even so-called “bush” beans seem to like to climb things.

Summer squash/zucchini are stupid easy to grow as well in the spring. They’ll eventually get squash bugs and die, but you’ll get a silly amount of squashes first.

Cucumbers are similar, except that they don’t suffer as badly from bugs, and need a LOT of water and sun.

If you can get kale started, it’s damn near indestructible here in Dallas- drought, freezes, sun, cloud, snow, etc… don’t seem to bother it at all.

Peppers seem to be easier than tomatoes in terms of fertilizer & sunlight, but require more water, I’ve found.

cherry and plum types give a good yield and are hardier than fat types. they keep longer whole and dry well. they also can cover most uses.

you want loose well drained soil in lawn or container. containers can easily provide good soil in poor land environments, though depend more on you for correct moisture (need frequent watering and drainage holes.

OK, many thanks for the replies.

Given how poor the soil is at my home, it’s going to take a lot effort to get it in any kind of shape for a vegetable garden. It’s very sandy with a fair bit of gravel and very little organic matter. That’s the main reason I want to start with container growing. Even if I wanted to put the effort into it, I doubt I could get a garden plot in shape for planting this spring. To tell you the truth, I’m tempted to bring in a loader and scrape away the top foot and a half of soil and rebuild and regrade my yard from scratch. That’s also not cheap and failing that, I’m going to have to go over any potential future garden plot with a rototiller and a healthy layer of compost several times before anything worthwhile will grow there.

I do have a great spot for a garden with full sun almost all day and into the late afternoon. My current plan is to spread out a heavy tarp that I have to block out a '15x’24 foot section of yard and weigh it down with bricks. This will trap heat in the soil and kill any weeds. As soon as the ground thaws and dries enough to permit a rototiller, I intend to spread a thick layer of compost over the area and go over it until it’s nicely broken up, removing stones as I go and replacing the tarp when I’m finished. At this time, I also collect a soil sample and have it tested so that I can correct the soil chemistry the next time. I then repeat the “add compost and fertilizer, rototill and cover with tarp” process at least once a month throughout the growing season. By the time I remove the tarp in the Spring of 2012, I should hopefully have a useful if not ideal garden bed. Do you have any noticeable issues with this plan?

As far as growing tomatoes in containers this year, it’s with tomatoes that I notice the biggest gap between home grown and market available quality. Seriously, there is simply no comparison between the pure visceral joy of biting into juicy, home grown, tomato and the pink, hard-as-a-rock, gassed into “ripe”, abominations the market stocks? I’m really hoping that the minimal required effort of this project combined with the rewards will pay off and I can be a little more ambitious and less lazy next year.

uncover and water regularly and this will help produce good dirt.

if you can get a load of manure and hay you can blend with native soil and compost and make your own good dirt. put leaves and lawn clippings on as well along with veggie waste from. Lasagna gardening or sheet mulching is a technique you could use.

Make certain the variety of 'mater you choose is anthracnose resistant (ask me how I know why this is so important :frowning: ).
Learn how to prune the plants, proper pruning gives you a healthier plant and higher yields.

CMC fnord!

I planted some in my backyard. I had a few cherry and also heirloom tomatoes.

Plants grew and got almost no fruit. I’d see a tomato start growing and it would never ripen. It stayed green for weeks until it rotted. I only got maybe 6 off three plants the whole summer. none would ripen on the vine.

The cherry tomato did a little better. they ripened. I got maybe 20 from 3 plants. Still, a very low yield.

I’ve wondered if they weren’t getting enough sun? Any ideas?

Did the plants get green and lush but never flower? Did they flower and fruit well but not ripen? I can’t quite tell from your post if you got many many tomatoes that never ripened or not very many that never ripened. 2 very different senarios.

OP why plant in the ground? Much eaiser to build raised beds and put perfect soil in there, than doing a bunch of work to amend imperfect soil.

My wife, the lifelong organic gardener, suggests you go purchase this month’s edition of Mother Earth News. This would be a beneficial primer for your endeavors.

Half a dozen plants? Wow, for how many people? I grow a single Roma tomato plant in a large pot every year and end up with more tomatoes than I can possibly eat. We used to grow tomatoes completely by accident in my garden as a kid. They would just appear and take over! I live in SoCal, however, so YMMV. The main problem I’ve had with my tomatoes is blight. You can get a spray-on antifungal enzyme solution from gardening stores to combat it.

The first (and only) time I ever tried tomatoes in a container was a dismal failure. I don’t know how ya’ll can keep the plants from toppling the containers. If you insist on containers, be sure to get a “determinate” variety (one that reaches a mature height and doesn’t continue to grow).

You can also prune the plants by removing the center branch…hold your hand out, imagine your forefinger as the main stem of the plant and your thumb a branch. If you pinch out the new growth that grows between the two, your fruit should be more robust.

I’m a huge advocate of raised bed gardening. It’s simply perfect for everything. There’s lots of resources on the net for creating and tending raised beds. Good luck and welcome to the club! :slight_smile:

ETA: I also thought you were crazy to grow 6 tomato plants. You mention canning and sauces in your OP so you may be OK but 6 plants will feed a small army.

Sadly, not very many that never ripened. The plants did get very tall and pretty. but, no fruit.

The sunny part of my yard is the front yard. I can’t plant anything tempting there. :smiley: So, I picked a semi-shaded area in the back yard.

This year, I may try on container tomatoes. Home Depot has one with the climbing wire, plants, and pot all in one package.

To much nitrogen, lack of phosphorous and/or potassium can be the cause of big, green plants with sparse blooms.

In containers you have to be especially careful about your watering. They dry out faster than raised beds or planting in the ground. And you have to be careful to water properly. Better to water for an hour once a week than for 15 min 3 X a week. Long, deep soaks so the water gets really far down into the soil. I let my tomatoes dry for at least a day in between waterings once they are well established, but I’m in beds, not containers.

P.S. I agree with a few people above, 6 plants for a single person is a lot of tomatoes. Better to do 2 tomatoes (one cherry, one heirloom) and some other stuff, like summer squash or zucchini, herbs like basil to go with the tomatoes, and maybe bush beans (yum!)

A local nursery should be able to give you advice on which varieties of tomato do well in your area. In general, I’ve found that cherry tomatoes are more forgiving than full-sized varieties, so you might want to plant at least one cherry variety.

There are varieties of tomato that are bred for container growing. These types aren’t as deep-rooted as regular varieties, nor do they grow as tall. The Burpee web site has a whole section of container tomatoes.

If you decide to use your food-grade buckets, be sure to punch holes in their bottoms. Containers need drainage.

You may be entirely correct. I’m certainly no expert on the subject of tomato production. The plants in my mother’s garden didn’t seem that prolific but that was twenty five years ago. Still, I can scarcely imagine a less troubling problem than having too many garden fresh tomatoes. Absolute worst case scenario is that I cut them up into my compost bin or I give them to my aunt Roberta so she can give them back to me in her home-made tomato jam (weird sounding but goood!)

Perhaps no good reason whatsoever. I never really gave much thought to raised bed gardening. How tall would you make your beds? Can you suggest a few good resources for me to investigate?