How does your garden grow?

Growing my first ever garden this year.Planting most the normal vegies.Any tips ,tricks or advice welcomed!

Spend five to ten dollars on soil amendments for every dollar in plants/seeds that you buy.

I plan on fertilizing the shit out of it.

No, no — you want the shit in it. :stuck_out_tongue:

Crap.

Where you at? It’s important to know location to give garden advice.

Don’t fertilize the crap out of it, either - you want just the right amount of fertilizer, not too much or too little.

I second the soil amendments, too - it’s much, much easier to amend soil before you plant than trying to do it afterwards.

Lettuce is a good starter plant, as are peas, beans, and potatoes. Tomatoes are usually pretty easy to grow, too.

I am in West\Central Michigan. Not gonna do lettuce or corn,but plan on Potato,tomato,peas,beans,radish,onion,jalapeno,habanero,summer squash,limas,cabbage,carrot and maybe sweet potato.
Can I get a good sweet potato crop in my location?

No lettuce? But leaf lettuce is awesome! You plant two plants, and eat off of it all summer long. :slight_smile:

Good question about sweet potatoes - I’ve never tried to grow them. Here’s a link for you. It looks like they grow from slips, not seeds or sprouts like regular potatoes. I’d like to give them a try - I’ll have to see about getting some slips this year.

Ok,lettuce is in.

Yay lettuce! I don’t know why I’m so enthused about lettuce - it just grows really easily, and will probably be a good starter plant.

Oh, don’t let it bolt - that’s what happens to plants like lettuce when they send up a flower stalk and go to seed. It ruins them for eating usually (they get bitter). If you keep the leaves trimmed, it should delay bolting indefinitely (I think).

Go to a bookstore or go online, and buy the Sunset Garden Western Book. It is like a Bible for gardening. Even if you are in another area it covers most of the zone types and will apply to your area.

bump

I just have to add that I love leaf lettuce in a garden. I have a little 2’x3’ patch that gives me fresh salads every day of the summer. Before dinner I can walk out to my garden with a pair of scissors and a bowl it’s way better than buying lettuce.

This is the first year I’ve tried to start from seed, and everything is looking pretty good so far. I planted a bunch of peppers from Seed Savers in early March (around March 1, IIRC.) Seedlings are looking a bit on the leggy side, but so far I’ve got plenty of Hungarian alma peppers, Portugal reds, rooster spurs, fatalii, and mustard habaneros going. I also have one Trinidad Scorpion pepper that managed to sprout, but the other dozen or so seeds look to have no activity whatsoever. I’m not going to give up on them (half are being germinated using the wet-paper-towel-in-a-Ziplock method which produced my one seedling, and the other half in coir), but I won’t be disappointed if only one grows up and bears fruit. So far, it’s working out better than I had expected.

I tried to grow cucumbers a couple of summers ago, and not a single one sprouted. I’m not sure why - maybe I should have soaked them first. I know my parents always grew cucumbers with no problem - maybe I should ask my mom what they did them.

The main advice I followed was not to buy my seeds too deep. I buried them something like 1/8-1/4 inch deep. I don’t know if peppers are different than cukes, though.

This year I’m adding collard greens, Swiss chard, and okra. I bought seeds for all three and will try to get them in, along with sugar snaps, this weekend or next week.
First, I have to pull all the weeds from the raised beds, though.

Jesus, how many acres do you have? :slight_smile:

We’ve never had any luck with radishes or onions, but they’re cheap, and unlike some other veggies, they’re just as good from the store as from the garden. We mostly do tomatoes and cucumbers, and last year we added acorn squash and eggplant.

We use cages around the tomatoes – nothing harder on an old back than bending over and picking cherry tomatoes from vines that are laying on the freaking ground.

My only advice is to mulch everything – mulch retains moisture and helps prevent weeds.