Pulsegleaner
Garden Master
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2014
- Messages
- 3,552
- Reaction score
- 6,986
- Points
- 306
- Location
- Lower Hudson Valley, New York
Not quite city. I'm suburban, but it is pretty urban suburban. Oh and I'm 6b.
You are right that there is little room, still less if you factor in the fact most veggies need full sun, which there is virtually NONE of on the property because of the trees (and we live somewhere where it is not permitted to take down trees for ANY reason without village approval, which is hard and slow to get. That also removes any chance of a frame or greenhouse; there is no where to put one
Those trees also make the soil an issue, since the fact that most are hemlock and oak means our humus is so acidic you could run a battery on it. There is a grand total of 10'x10' of actual ground that gets some degree of sun (the house and patios get some sun as well, and they get used HARD but everything there has to go in pots) and that 100 square feet needs 4-5 whole bags of lime a YEAR to be neutral enough to grow anything but acid loving weeds. Worse, now that the hemlocks are dying off, they are being replaced by black walnuts, so the soil in some spots is LOADED with jugulone.
The real critical issue is my seasons. It isn't a matter of them being unduly harsh as being dramatically inconsistent; inconsistent enough that I literally do not have a clue what the year is going to bring, and things swing wildly enough from year to year that that which works OK for me this year probably will NOT work the next year. Add on that, when the seasons change they tend not to do it in a reasonable gradient but to bounce up and down between extremes for most of the time (so in order to survive, plants have to be pretty tough since two or three weeks of 90 followed by a full freeze is pretty common now as is that kind of stuff going on for months on end (it's a week from July and we are JUST beginning to get consistent "spring" weather, which will probably go bye-bye by Mid August.
As for whether what I grow is really exotic or just unsuited, bit of both. I'll TRY almost anything so a lot of what goes in is actually probably tropical. Going down your lists, Lettuce-no I don't grow that, or indeed any leaf (or, for that matter root) crops. The soil is too rocky to get good results with those. I do sometimes plant carrots, but that isn't so much for roots as to give the swallowtail caterpillars something to eat (I prefer to use dill or fennel for that, but when I get freebie carrot seeds as part of a seed order I see no reason not to make use of them.
I DO grow tomatoes and beans, but only in pots, they don't do well in the soil here (and in the case of the beans, putting them anywhere but in a pot on a pedestal on the patio basically guarantees the squirrels and chipmunks eating every last one of them. I usually go for cherry or smaller tomatoes for preference since a lot of the big fruited ones really don't like life in a little pot, and tend to go into quick ditch mode for me (make 1 small fruit and then drop dead)
Mostly, my spece is filled with "alternate legumes" I grow some rice beans or adzuki beans most years (this year, I have both) since I can toss those out in numbers greater than the critters can eat them. I have some Lablab (hyacinth) beans in a big pot this year; though based on last year it is quite likey they will all prove too long season to make mature seed in he time I have.
This year I also have some peas, both "real" (i.e. pisum) and Southern (i.e. cow). But I usually don't do real peas since we really don't have the condtions for them. We tend to go from "too cold to sprout" to "too hot for peas" fairly quickly. I can sometimes get around that by using a special mix of my own called "Triple P" which consists of peas that still have the genes of the truly tiny peas of ancient times and the wild. The pods are no longer than my thumbnail, but those tiny plants tend to also have tiny grow times (30-45 days from seed to seed) so they can squeeze in (cont.)
You are right that there is little room, still less if you factor in the fact most veggies need full sun, which there is virtually NONE of on the property because of the trees (and we live somewhere where it is not permitted to take down trees for ANY reason without village approval, which is hard and slow to get. That also removes any chance of a frame or greenhouse; there is no where to put one
Those trees also make the soil an issue, since the fact that most are hemlock and oak means our humus is so acidic you could run a battery on it. There is a grand total of 10'x10' of actual ground that gets some degree of sun (the house and patios get some sun as well, and they get used HARD but everything there has to go in pots) and that 100 square feet needs 4-5 whole bags of lime a YEAR to be neutral enough to grow anything but acid loving weeds. Worse, now that the hemlocks are dying off, they are being replaced by black walnuts, so the soil in some spots is LOADED with jugulone.
The real critical issue is my seasons. It isn't a matter of them being unduly harsh as being dramatically inconsistent; inconsistent enough that I literally do not have a clue what the year is going to bring, and things swing wildly enough from year to year that that which works OK for me this year probably will NOT work the next year. Add on that, when the seasons change they tend not to do it in a reasonable gradient but to bounce up and down between extremes for most of the time (so in order to survive, plants have to be pretty tough since two or three weeks of 90 followed by a full freeze is pretty common now as is that kind of stuff going on for months on end (it's a week from July and we are JUST beginning to get consistent "spring" weather, which will probably go bye-bye by Mid August.
As for whether what I grow is really exotic or just unsuited, bit of both. I'll TRY almost anything so a lot of what goes in is actually probably tropical. Going down your lists, Lettuce-no I don't grow that, or indeed any leaf (or, for that matter root) crops. The soil is too rocky to get good results with those. I do sometimes plant carrots, but that isn't so much for roots as to give the swallowtail caterpillars something to eat (I prefer to use dill or fennel for that, but when I get freebie carrot seeds as part of a seed order I see no reason not to make use of them.
I DO grow tomatoes and beans, but only in pots, they don't do well in the soil here (and in the case of the beans, putting them anywhere but in a pot on a pedestal on the patio basically guarantees the squirrels and chipmunks eating every last one of them. I usually go for cherry or smaller tomatoes for preference since a lot of the big fruited ones really don't like life in a little pot, and tend to go into quick ditch mode for me (make 1 small fruit and then drop dead)
Mostly, my spece is filled with "alternate legumes" I grow some rice beans or adzuki beans most years (this year, I have both) since I can toss those out in numbers greater than the critters can eat them. I have some Lablab (hyacinth) beans in a big pot this year; though based on last year it is quite likey they will all prove too long season to make mature seed in he time I have.
This year I also have some peas, both "real" (i.e. pisum) and Southern (i.e. cow). But I usually don't do real peas since we really don't have the condtions for them. We tend to go from "too cold to sprout" to "too hot for peas" fairly quickly. I can sometimes get around that by using a special mix of my own called "Triple P" which consists of peas that still have the genes of the truly tiny peas of ancient times and the wild. The pods are no longer than my thumbnail, but those tiny plants tend to also have tiny grow times (30-45 days from seed to seed) so they can squeeze in (cont.)