If you can’t brace a trellis or set it firmly enough in the ground an old Native trick is to first plant corn, then plant beans or peas or whatever near the corn so it can use the corn stalk as a trellis.
Note: do not try this with cukes or melons. They will pull down and stomp on the corn. The Natives supposedly did this with squash, too, but when I tried it the corn lost that year, too.
Ten pots flowered and 18 oregano seedlings put in the front lawn.
While putting in the oregano, I noticed one of the plants I put in last year did not get done in by the weeds. It’s still there but not spreading as much as I had hoped. Here’s hoping I get the ground coverage I’d like with these seedlings.
Correction: We put in 12 oregano seedlings and six thyme seedlings.
These are sweet peas the flowers so cornstalks would look a little strange in the front yard but it’s a great idea for future reference. Thanks.
I grew sweet peas (the flowers) two years ago on my front porch. I wanted them to hang and trail. They are just not happy like that. I didn’t get the blooms I wanted.
I don’t know how you feel about “whimsy,” but if I were to do it again, I’d either let them grow up around the old junk bicycle sitting in the garage doing nothing, or I’d find an old metal headboard and let them grow on that. Or an old kitchen chair. You could probably buy a piece of trellis and secure it to a sturdy shepherd’s hook. Depending on how many plants you have, chances are they won’t be too heavy.
A tomato cage would work as well. 
I’ve run the tiller through the mint, picked it out, and every root I saw, ran the tiller through again, picked roots again… and still there is mint. :eek: … I used to love mint. 
I only ever have good luck with tomatoes and zucchini. Since I finally sold the RV, there’s room for a bigger garden. I’ve gotten ambitious and am trying new things this year, any advice is welcome!!
What I’m growing from seed:
Watermelon (New to me.)
Zucchini
*****Wax beans (New)
*****Lima beans (New)
*****Spaghetti squash (New)
Yellow bell peppers - with any luck.
2 types of carrots - (New) and maybe not…
Bosnian tomatoes
***** I started them all in a window box shaped planter and put it outside, where it got rained on. The planter has no drainage holes, so I had to pour off the water. I don’t know… the soil must be 80% sponge; I’ve got 2 out of 10 wax beans coming up, and ALL the other seeds seem to have rotted in the soil.
I put red onion sets in the soil with the 2 types of carrots, the onions are coming up fine, but there are NO carrots. It rained pretty hard, so maybe the soil is too packed now? I’m going to give it another week, and plant turnips there if nothing else comes up.
The yellow bell peppers came from the seeds of one I bought at the store. I have no idea if it was organic, so maybe the seeds won’t start. In recent years, I’ve planted bell peppers of all varieties, both from seed packs and the nursery. I get one, maybe two peppers per plant, and they’re done. I love bell peppers, they don’t like me.
I’ve never, ever had any success with zuccini. They grow and grow. I get the pretty blooms and then. . . they die. They just shrivel up and die. I think my soil has zuccini poison in it. Really. Some sort of fungus or bacteria that loves squash.
The thing about bell peppers, for me anyway, is that they take soooooo long to fruit. And then they are very susceptible to cold damage. Still plant them every year.
I’ve amended the soil where my zucchini grows. We have a fire pit, and while I don’t overload it with wood ash, I have added a couple buckets and turned them in. (I think wood ash adds lime, so maybe your soil needs lime…?) I also make my own “worm food” and add it to my garden. I figure they’ll eat it and give me worm castings, or it’ll rot and make compost, either way it enriches my soil…
If push comes to shove, try pollinating them yourself. Click the link. The male is the one on the left, the female is the bulbous one on the right. You could try pulling off a male stamen and rubbing it on the female pistil.
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=male+and+female+zucchini+blossoms&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-003
I’ve gone online to research, and read books at the library. Freaking bell peppers!! The only thing I’ve noticed that I* don’t* do is; they tell you to pinch off the first blooms. The theory is that if you ruin their first try, they’ll redouble their efforts. Can’t bring myself to do it. If I’m only going to get one pepper, why pinch it off?
For hot peppers, when they start to bloom I spray them with an Epsom salt mixture: 2 TBS Epsom salts to 1 quart water and spray the leaves every 2 weeks or so. For bell peppers I found they need some shade in the heat of the day and LOTS of water.
:: bump ::
I was going to plant all my tomatoes and remaining peppers and cucumbers and melons outside, but it’s kind of cold. Should I wait some more? I am torn between thinking it’s too damn cold and thinking that the poor babies just need more sun than I can give them inside.
(It’s 47 degrees right now, estimated high of 57.)
I’m waiting until this next week-end to plant anything. We’re too cold, too. It’s the Three Kings time: Three Kings legend | The Gazette
Some of my mint came back in the raised bed I have for it. Some of it came back outside the raised bed 
(we’ll be lifting the black gardening cloth and transplanting the rogue ones).
Then we’ll plant yellow tomatoes (plum sized), cucumbers, “balloon” peppers, Stevia, and celery. Plus I have a vine to find a spot to plant (Mother’s Day gift from a son). That is here at this house.
At our old house Mistermage has planted potatoes, garlic, dill, new asparagus for next year and sunflowers.
Out at the shop Mistermage and his BFF will plant salsa stuff: tomatoes, cilantro, various types of peppers.
Don’t plant any of those outside until all danger of frost is gone because frost will kill them dead-dead-dead.
In the Chicago area, that date is generally May 31st. Don’t be deceived. You’ve got another two weeks before it’s really safe.
Provided it is not freezing during the day you can set them out to get some sun and wind but you must bring them back inside at night.
Oh, yes - they need wind, too, in order to develop strong, healthy stems. Indoors, you can use an oscillating fan to mimic some of that.
I’ve put down my sugar snaps and I’m hoping it gets a little cooler around here, but it probably won’t. Here’s hoping they fruit before the real hot of summer begins. I’m thinking of planting some garlic. Usually I plant these in late summer-early fall and let them overwinter in the ground for an early summer harvest. I read that you can put them down in the spring for a late summer harvest. We’ll see if that works.
Today is pepper and tomato day. I’ve had to wait until my son was available for heavy lifting. I dragged around the smaller bags of dirt and manure for the small bed that houses the peas and was almost instantly sorry. Also done were my 9 pots of annuals. So pretty!
Sigh…you were right. It didn’t freeze this week, but the few I planted outside last week are D-E-D. Luckily a co-worker who lives a few blocks from us decided to thin out her strawberry bed and gave me maybe 8 plants, so I put those where the eggplants were. And the wife of one of Tom Scud’s cousins grew up on a farm and has a huge backyard where she basically grows enough veggies for the whole family, and she promised me some eggplant and pepper seedlings.
Sigh…I think today will be for weeding, and for acquiring materials and building a trellis for when the cucumbers and melons can go outside. And the braising greens are basically a hedge, and I harvested the French Breakfast radishes today to put the strawberries where they were. Later tonight, perhaps there will be a round of Bengali radish curry.
The quail and the wiener dogs got into my garden and wrecked a few artichokes and zucchini plants. Bastards.
Miserable performance out of my bean crop.
The Brussels sprouts are looking good, however. The cilantro plant is still alive, which is a record.
Nope, too cold and damp for planting but not too cold and damp to send The Boy out to do the heavy lifting. He’s young. I don’t feel guilty. Much.
Put in more stuff this year since we can water without feeling too guilty. Snow peas and beans are doing well. We have three squash plants, and there are already some little patty pan squash. Five tomato plants and two Japanese eggplants. Two basil plants are holding up, and the parsley not only wintered over but is taking over some areas that used to be full of weeds. No too many snails yet, and it is all looking healthy.
But we’ve simplified and given up on lettuce, spinach, and jalapenos, which never tasted good in my soil - and are real cheap at the farmers’ market anyway.
Speaking of snails, lemme tell the story of my snails for this year.
I have big snail problems. They love my hostas and almost decimated my peppers last year. They ate all the leaves down to the stems. Incredibly the peppers came back from that devastation. But the place they really like to hang out is on and around the pots of the potted plants. Last year I saw two videos on how escargot are just garden snails. You can capture them, put them in a storage container with some air holes, feed them cornmeal and basil and, in a few months, saute them in butter and garlic. Since I have no problems eating mollusks (in fact I love 'em), I thought this was a grand idea.
Putting the annuals in the pots this year, I collected 16 of the leaf eating fuckers, put them in a large fast food container and then. . … Well, this is how I like to explain things:
Food, in its natural habitat comes wrapped in plastic from the supermarket freezer. Free range, organic food is more likely wrapped in netting and in the refrigerator section of Whole Foods. Live snails, on the other hand, are fed lettuce and dandelion leaves, given microwaved sterilized dirt, elicit a quick trip to the 99 Cent Store for a larger, better habitat and given crushed eggshells to toughen up their shells.
In other words, I now have 16 pet snails.
Honestly, they are a practically cost free and as fun to look at as fish. I’ve had mine for a week. O.K., they would be cost free if I could live with the 99 cent storage container they are now housed in. I have already ordered a terrarium from Amazon. Nothing crazy-- just 6 bucks. And maybe some decorations. And a plant. . …
Oh, Biggirl! I’m in tears laughing! That sounds like something I would do. Now I want some pet snails but we only have slugs around here. No, thanks.
The snails I’ve had weren’t bad, but not something I’d to great effort for, either. On the other hand, if I was dependent on my garden for survival and snails showed up I’d have no problems cultivating the protein.
(I had snails in France, cultivated by a gentleman who fed his on lettuce. So… very fresh, live that morning and dinner than evening.)