how is your veggie garden going?

[Melissa in Australia]

How is your veggie garden going?

 I thought it might be fun to post some pictures of veggie gardens. I will try and take one of mine tomorrow ( as it is night here at the moment) . I would love to see pictures of others veggie gardens 🙂

 

[MEmama]

We just planted our snap peas and spinach. Hopefully it isn’t still too cold for the spinach to sprout.

We ordered warm weather seedlings and will pick them up in mid May, but some (tomatoes and maybe peppers) won’t actually get planted out until around 4th of July when it’s usually warm enough. I don’t ever get seedlings so early—plant out date here is Memorial Day, but even that is weeks too early in my yard—so they’ll have to hang out in our shed/greenhouse until it warms up enough.

[Melissa in Australia]

Here it is mid autumn. I am in a rush to get all the winter veggies into the ground before it cools down and growing slows. I can grow all year round, but get frosts in the winter so need to have frost hardy things over winter

[Carrie12345]

I have indoor seedlings that are just about ready to give up on me. It’s currently 26F, and we’ve had random dusting of snow for over a week, with more expected tomorrow.  I’m frustrated!

ETA: April is notoriously unpredictable here, so it isn’t that I’m very surprised.  It’s just that our random sprinkling of 60*+ days  got my hopes up. Since we could also get snow in October (the other notoriously unpredictable month,) I never want to lose a single week.

Edited April 22, 2020 by Carrie12345

[Guest]

My garden looks how I feel: hopeless. Lol! It’s so unseasonably cold; I don’t know if that’s the reason, but my early stuff I planted (the old seeds I had hanging around in my cabinet) have only sprouted at about 20%. Maybe. I have some radishes up, some beets, zero carrots, zero radicchio and lettuce. Any herb seeds I planted in the garden have not sprouted, though most of those planted indoors have. 

My grow shelf looks good with tomato plants, some herbs and a few pepper, but several pepper plants and a couple of eggplants have not sprouted and I have pretty much counted them a loss. 

We don’t plant our summer garden until Mother’s Day for my area. Oh, I meant to say, dh planted potatoes, but they have only sprouted at about 40%. I don’t know if this is cold soil that’s the reason. But we have not had that happen before. We had frost for the last two mornings, so that isn’t helping the cause. 

[Melissa in Australia]

those seedlings look great

[Rosie_0801]

Mine is going very slowly. I can only carry home one bag of potting mix each time I go down the street. It's too hard to battle the kikuyu, so I am growing what I can in tubs, providing I can also protect those tubs from the optimistic chickens we're chook-sitting, who think we are friends. The next bag of potting mix will be devoted to a nice, new pot of chives, since those damned chooks got into my other one. I'm also watching another tub with avid interest, hoping at least some of the new growth is the freckle lettuce that I left to go to seed last season. I'll be so happy if it is!

[Ausmumof3]

Dd is doing one.  It is about 3x3 Sqm and is the only chicken proofed area we have.  Dh has been picking up horse dung from down the road and filled it up and it has gone crazy.  We’ve been eating lettuce for a bit, tomatoes and she now has potatoes. There’s a couple of cabbages coming hopefully.  This feels kind of amazing to me because I’m shocking at gardening except when we lived in a place with an automatic watering system.

[TheReader]

I will try and get pics later today. 

We have tomatoes (blooms only so far, no tomatoes yet); peppers (same); squash (doing fairly well with large blooms); melons (same); basil, and mint. 

Our fruit trees are doing well -- peaches are nearing ready-ish, and apples on one tree are starting to turn red (they are all still small, but young trees, so that is normal for these ones). The birds get to the blackberries before us unfortunately, but we grab what we can as they ripen. Our mulberry tree is the same; starting to ripen, but we're fighting the birds for it. 

Our citrus trees aren't producing yet (well, we have these teeny-tiny lemons on our new lemon tree, but I don't know if they'll mature or what; we just got the lemon tree this year so it's our first season with it and it's basically a baby still, so....). 

Oh, also cucumbers....I don't know how those are doing, I haven't been paying attention. It's really the boys' garden, not mine (DH is the gardener, and our oldest son is helping the most with it).  I'll try and take a picture today and come back to post it.  (We're on the Texas gulf coast, so here we're well into planting season; the fields around us already have roughly knee high corn, and the cotton is starting to pop up as well). 

[SamanthaCarter]

My overwintered spinach is bolting, kale already bolted. I’ve got a nice patch of spring lettuces coming along, so mostly we’ve been using spinach and some nice heads of volunteer lettuces that came up mid winter (it’s been a weird winter and spring). My peas are about six inches high, and I have chard, sprouting broccoli and carrots making their emergence. Peppers, tomatoes and basil are living indoors until May. My garlic is dying. I have no idea why. Possibly a fungal infection. 

[Pam in CT]

re intermittent spring

3 hours ago, Carrie12345 said:

I have indoor seedlings that are just about ready to give up on me. It’s currently 26F, and we’ve had random dusting of snow for over a week, with more expected tomorrow.  I’m frustrated!

ETA: April is notoriously unpredictable here, so it isn’t that I’m very surprised.  It’s just that our random sprinkling of 60*+ days  got my hopes up. Since we could also get snow in October (the other notoriously unpredictable month,) I never want to lose a single week.

This is me, too...

I don't usually do vegetables, only herbs and flowers; and I *never* do seedlings and don't have a grow light, so I'm groping in the darkness this year.

My zucchini seedlings got too big too fast for their seedpots, so I *had* to put them out.  They seem thus far to be soldiering through the episodic snow dustings. I'm nursing a bunch of lettuce along in protected rows, started a bunch of basil from seed that's still indoors, and on one of those recent 60 degree days I planted -- perhaps optimistically -- several rows of kohlrabi and radishes and pole beans; we'll see.

Overall the winter must have been mild, because several of my last-year herbs that don't usually make it -- rosemary, thyme, oregano -- seem to have survived, so I'm grateful for that.  And the mint is coming in (as it always does); and the leeks and chives are - as per usual -running over everything else.  (Rosie, the idea of carefully cultivating chives is astonishing to me.  Here, it's basically a pest -- I have to pull out seedling clumps of it every time I turn around.)

My rock star gardening neighbor, bless him, is going to give me a couple of the tomato and pepper plants he's growing under lights, so I'll put them in whenever he tells me to, LOL.

[cjzimmer1]

it's still too cold to put things out but on the warmish days, I've been out working on the beds.  I built a 8x12 raised bed a few years ago but soon realized that it's difficult to reach things with that much with plus it was only 8 inches high and as I get older, I'd like it elevated a bit more.  So I had DS cut out the middle of one end and we added a narrow path down the middle and then added a second layer so it's now 16 inches high with a gravel path down the middle.  It looks really good and should be much easier for to work in.  I've been emptying old pots of dirt that have been used for many years and need a refresher to fill up the raised bed.  And because I made a mistake when ordering the boards, we will be adding another 12x4 bed.  DS is only home on the weekends so each weekend, I have him help me build a little more.  Actual planting won't happen until the middle of May to Memorial day depending on how the weather is this year but my plants are all happily growing in the family owned greenhouse so I have no worry about those.  The tomatoes and peppers are already starting to form their flowers so will be nice and big by the time I get around to sticking them in the ground.  We've already  been munching on radishes and lettuce leaves whenever I'm out working at the greenhouse. The prep work is what always holds up each year and this year I feel like I'm a bit ahead of the game on that.

[Kebo]

I'm trying some new tomato varieties this year and have been really pleased with their growth, but don't have ripe tomatoes from any except a couple of cherries.  I've got Maglia Rosa, Power Pops and Hungarian Heart that should ripen soon.  I do have some over wintered Cherokee Purples (my favorite!) that are ready to eat -- I love these and grow them every year, but they don't produce that many tomatoes per bush. 

Not so patiently waiting on eggplants and pomegranates.  They look like they are gong to take a while.  Large and small peppers are ripening now. 

Basil, parsley, mint, and thyme are ready to use.   My grape vine doesn't look like it's producing this year -- it was hacked back for a fence repair and has not recovered.   Figs before too long, but the bird end up getting most of them.   Oranges are done for the year, but lemons and limes are coming up this summer. 

I'm also growing sprouts indoors this year, and that has been rewarding!  We've been putting them on sandwiches as soon as they are big enough.  Supposedly they are nutritional powerhouses, and they are very easy to grow. 

[cjzimmer1]

10 minutes ago, Kebo said:

I'm also growing sprouts indoors this year, and that has been rewarding!  We've been putting them on sandwiches as soon as they are big enough.  Supposedly they are nutritional powerhouses, and they are very easy to grow. 

We just started with sprouts too because produce has been so hit or miss at the grocery stores.  It's been a fun way to get fresh food but I wish I had the space to grow more.  With my large family, we use 2 jars full at a time.  I'd love to have them every day but no space and not enough lids so we are settling for having them twice a week.

[MEmama]

1 hour ago, TheReader said:

I will try and get pics later today. 

We have tomatoes (blooms only so far, no tomatoes yet); peppers (same); squash (doing fairly well with large blooms); melons (same); basil, and mint. 

Our fruit trees are doing well -- peaches are nearing ready-ish, and apples on one tree are starting to turn red (they are all still small, but young trees, so that is normal for these ones). The birds get to the blackberries before us unfortunately, but we grab what we can as they ripen. Our mulberry tree is the same; starting to ripen, but we're fighting the birds for it. 

Our citrus trees aren't producing yet (well, we have these teeny-tiny lemons on our new lemon tree, but I don't know if they'll mature or what; we just got the lemon tree this year so it's our first season with it and it's basically a baby still, so....). 

Oh, also cucumbers....I don't know how those are doing, I haven't been paying attention. It's really the boys' garden, not mine (DH is the gardener, and our oldest son is helping the most with it).  I'll try and take a picture today and come back to post it.  (We're on the Texas gulf coast, so here we're well into planting season; the fields around us already have roughly knee high corn, and the cotton is starting to pop up as well). 

I can’t imagine peaches in April!
It's 33 without the much colder windchill off the ocean, and there were snow flurries here this morning. My gardening dreams are months away and you are enjoying fresh fruit! Amazing! 🙂

 

[TheReader]

5 minutes ago, MEmama said:

I can’t imagine peaches in April!
It's 33 without the much colder windchill off the ocean, and there were snow flurries here this morning. My gardening dreams are months away and you are enjoying fresh fruit! Amazing! 🙂

 

well, soon they'll be ready. I think the ones we have mature in May...? But we're already into the part of the year when it's 80s every day, and soon will be into the 90s. 

I have a friend in Illinois who farms corn, and she's always amazed at our growing season here being so much earlier. I remember going to my dad's house in St. Louis, when he lived there, and the nearby large "pick your own" orchard had peaches in August usually. 

[Spy Car]

My approx 9ft oval of spring lettuces (Romaine, Alpine, Mesclun mixes) and kales (Russian and dinosaur/Lacinato/Tuscan) is thriving. Densely planted. My plan is to gently harvest exterior leaves and to allow the plants to replenish themselves.

The weather has been cooperative thus far. 

I have 22 tomato plants in thus far. I intend to grow them as "cordons," meaning pruning them down from the outset to a single main vine and then growing them up. I'd hoped to find 12 ft stakes, but the cost was unreasonable to have them milled at local lumber yards. So, instead, I got creative using free stuff that I had on hand to provide supports. Happy with the results so far. Plants are small but growing well.

Peppers and basil are in.

3 persian cucumbers are in (with more to plant).

Two raised beds have been built (employing Hügeculture to compensate for limited compost/soil) that are now linked by a trellis/arbor fashioned from free stuff. Looks cool. Wife and son thought I was going insane when I started assembling the ""junk" used to build the trellis/arbor--but they now conceded it is pretty cool. Still need to plant it out with zucchini, cukes, and perhaps more tomatoes.

Plus other do-dads.

And tending and gently harvesting the profusion of dandelions that came up this year to to our rare bounty of rain this year in SoCal. Dandelion salads (and Nasturtium & rose petal) salads have been and unexpected blessing. Delicious. The dandelion salads inspired the rest of the plantings.

 

Bill

 

 

 

[Arcadia]

The only vegetable that I am successful in is scallions 😂 My mint and parsley are doing well but my pepper plant has a bacteria infection (rust spots). 

Edited April 22, 2020 by Arcadia

[Arcadia]

Earth Day (four photos posted on twitter link)

https://mobile.twitter.com/LevisStadium/status/1253025581098139650?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet

“22m

Home of the @49ers and the first-ever rooftop farm at a professional sports venue

Happy #EarthDay from the @nrgenergy Solar Terrace at #LevisStadium”

[KungFuPanda]

OMG, my garden is the only thing keeping me sane right now.  I have so much to do that I haven't had a chance to get bored.  My cabbages/kale/ brussels sprouts bed is in.  I've been able to use green onions, oregano, parsley, and sage for a few weeks now.  My annual herbs have been transplanted so my herb garden is all planted out now.  My potatoes are in the ground.  I planted up some hanging baskets today with pansies, lobelia, and alyssum.  I have peas and lettuce and swiss chard up.  My strawberries and blueberries are flowering.  I'll be potting up tomatoes, peppers, and more flowers soon.  I have two kinds of millkweek that's looking good and will probably need to be potted up before it goes into the ground.

I'm SOOOO glad I got into Winter Sowing (i.e. milkjug "greenhouses" that sit out all winter and sprout when they're ready.)  This method is the only reason I bought my seeds early and had them planted by mid March.  It's the only reason I now have access to all of the transplants I need right now.  Our last frost date was the 15th and we had a frost warning last night, so I still have to watch those nighttime temps.  I covered my milk jugs and newly planted herb garden last night. 

I should go check on my community garden plot today or tomorrow.  That's new this year and where I will put my full sun crops.  It's still a bit early to put tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, corn, and beans in the ground.  I have a little time to get that space prepped.  The only thing it has right now is potatoes and a borage plant.  I have a bed prepped for tomatoes and peppers but I need to dig up a spot for my 4 sisters garden.

I'll have to get y'all some photos later.  

[RootAnn]

We had several inches of snow last week. I think I posted a picture in "a view out your window" thread. 

Garden started going in today. It is a salsa year, so tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, bell peppers, etc. Carrots for one of my kids. Surprise addition:  Cabbage from the neighbors. Still need to find some cayenne peppers for DH.

We just have a little raised area next to the house.

 

 

Edited April 24, 2020 by RootAnn
Edited to remove pictures

[City Mouse]

It is still to early to plant vegetables here. Tomatoes, squash, and peppers have to wait until the end of May unless I want to cover them at night. My strawberries have just started coming back, and my ornamentals and wild flower patch are greening up. we are supposed to have a warm spell next week, so I may plant some carrots. I am hoping my seeds from last year will still work.

[mathnerd]

I harvested the first strawberries today. I have 4 varieties of sweet peppers, 3 varieties of hot peppers, 2 types of eggplant, 5 types of tomatoes and squash started as seedlings in pots and am building new beds for them. I am using hugelkultur technique as well so as to utilize what is in my yard rather than heading outside to buy compost and soil. I planted a new batch of radishes in window box planters because the slugs ate all the radish seedlings in my garden bed. The slugs have still not figured out how to climb to my window boxes, but the squirrels have, so I am installing chicken wire on all my newly planted containers. Blueberries and cherry tree looking good so far with fruits set on them.

My oranges, kumquat, lemons and lime are producing, but they do so all year long here. The veggie beds still have winter vegetables like kale, mustard etc which have all bolted. My parsley bolted today but all the other herbs like sage, thyme and oregano overwintered and are alive! I am starting seeds 2 basil varieties, spring onions and 3 different amaranth greens today.

[Melissa in Australia]

Hope this works, photo of inside of Polly tunnel. We usually only use it for  germinating seeds as we don’t have enough water to keep it up, but with the current world situation we are going to use it for the winter at least.

[Melissa in Australia]

In the Polly tunnel I have cherry tomatoes and capsicum  that I shifted out of the veggie garden in tubs, I have dwarf green beans, lots of rows at differing ages, some lettuce seedlings and will shortly plant some zucchini 

[Melissa in Australia]

The veggie garden

[Melissa in Australia]

It was a big job netting it all. 

[Pen]

Fruit trees are in blossom.  I’ll try for a picture tomorrow if heavy rains don’t mess that up. 

There have been below freezing nights which took a toll on some things I tried to plant.

 

Some things are doing okay, some not...

We are still in very cool weather planting time of spring, plus are having late freezes that are causing some difficulties.  

I thought my mints were wiped out by ice storm, but they are valiantly returning now.

I planted all of my personally collected kale seeds from several years back, not expecting anywhere near as high germination as I got, so I hope I will be able thin them for baby greens, and then grow some out to bigger greens and finally for more seeds.  

I am chitting out potatoes.  

Started peas, and onions and some herbs, but they are having some troubles.  

[TheReader]

Okay, coming back with some pics -- the tomatoes, the melon that was a volunteer from who knows what (we had one like this pop up last year, and turned out to be pretty good; somewhat cantelope-ish/honeydew-ish....we'll see what this one is), and the baby peaches on the peach tree. They have a bit further to go than I thought. Still, this gives an idea what we have going on here 🙂

[Tanaqui]

My family wanted to get seeds in the ground a month ago rather than starting indoors. I told them to wait for me to get as many weed roots and rocks up as I could first, and it's a good thing I did - the weather abruptly turned seasonable again, and most of what we want to plant is peppers and tomatoes, which hate seasonable weather in April.

Also, everybody is strangely reluctant to let me move the bulbs out of my planned vegetable beds, so right now daffodils are scattered willy-nilly. I'm going to have to sneak out at night just to divide them. "Wait until they die down!" Does it matter? You can't kill daffodils by neglect or outright murder, and don't think I haven't tried.

Quote

I thought my mints were wiped out by ice storm, but they are valiantly returning now.

 

A nuclear winter couldn't kill mint, much less a little bitty ice storm.

Edited April 23, 2020 by Tanaqui

[kbutton]

It's unusually cool here for April (US zone 6), but not really frosty. Snap peas are coming up, and beets are planted. I suspect things will grow slow and steady unless it warms up, but I am voting for a nice cool spring so that I can spend time in the yard without getting blazing hot. We've had three years of really hot spring and fall with endless rains, so a very normal year with slightly cool temps is really welcome.

I need to plant carrots, onions, chard, and turnips, but have had mixed luck with pots, so I've been putting it off. Our garden is a mix of a few things in the ground and a lot of pots--eventually we'll make real beds.

It's too early to plant pole beans, tomatoes (which we buy as plants), cucumbers, and potatoes (new for us). We'll plant a few bush beans in front of the pole beans in June --that's kind of late, but we find they mature after the buggiest part of the season. The leaves will be a bit holey, but the beans will not have bites all over them.

Various kinds of raspberries, blackberries, and black raspberries are coming back. My DH's fig tree is looking alive (no leaves yet), and the blueberries (very sad bushes we bought for next to nothing at the end of last year) look like they made it with some signs of green and new growth. We had mint in a pot from our old house that we thought didn't make it--it's happy this year, and we'll have to figure a way to contain it.

My herbs came back exuberantly. I potted the thyme, but I gave away the sage and oregano (I get pseudo-anaphylaxis handling the plants directly or brushing up against them while working with my other plants, but I can eat the herbs if someone else processes and dries them). 

[ScoutTN]

Well, I mostly have herbs and flowers. The herbs planted as seedlings are about 8" high now. The ones sown are about 1/2" up, mostly. My zinnias, cutting flower mix, and wildflower mix are up and about 1" high.

Lettuce is the only veggie so far, also about 1/2" high. Tomatoes go in next week. We get a CSA box from a local farmer bc our summer is usually too busy for me to do a larger garden. Probably not true this year, but I didn't want to drop my farmer! 

 

[itsheresomewhere]

Cold weather crops are doing well.  The butter crunch, and red leaf, salad mix lettuces are happy and growing well.  Broccoli is planted and good. They are dealing with the mood swings of Mother Nature.  The celery is in the ground and hoops are over it.  The strawberries flowering already and so are the apples trees.   Everything else has to wait until Mother’s Day weekend as it is usually safe to plant the rest then. 
As long a watch the freeze warnings and cover somethings, we should have a good amount of cool weather veggies. 

Edited April 24, 2020 by itsheresomewhere

[Pen]

 

6 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

A nuclear winter couldn't kill mint, much less a little bitty ice storm.

 

It’s the first time I can recall that their tops were wiped out, so that they looked like they were gone.   Now my lemon balm is returning too.  I am glad as I really like my lemon balm, obviously a type of mint but not always as rugged as regular mint.

 I am wondering now if any other herbs will reappear.  

[Arcadia]

9 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

A nuclear winter couldn't kill mint, much less a little bitty ice storm.

My mint in previous years was burnt by California’s summer heat. 

[Melissa in Australia]

8 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

My mint in previous years was burnt by California’s summer heat. 

Yes it doesn’t like dry

[Melissa in Australia]

planted out the main crop brown onions today. we are meant to get some rain next week which will be terrific

[Tanaqui]

14 hours ago, Arcadia said:

My mint in previous years was burnt by California’s summer heat. 

 

That's not a condition I know anything about where I live!

[Pen]

Apple blossoms seem to be holding despite freezing and heavy rains.  Good news for commercial USA apple crop too, probably.