Need Suggestions for Garden

[ninnymary]

DigitS - You are scaring me with all of your faith in me!

I love baby bok choy but I didn't think I could grow it yet. Remember, I want easy to grow and fail proof.

I wanted to do pole beans because they take up less space. But I see that 2 people have recommended I plant them.:/

I thought onions were only planted at certain times? You mean I can plant them in the spring?

As far as more greens, I am assuming I can plant seeds directly into the ground?

Mary

 

[Beekissed]

tomatoes - 6 plants - 2 early girl, 2 hillbilly, sungold, sweet 100's
herbs - cilantro, basil, fennel, thyme, parsley,
peppers - 2 jalapeno, 2 orange and 2 red bell peppers
eggplant - 2 plants
lettuce
spinach
carrots
radishes
pole green beans - 2 tipis
squash - 2 yellow
sugar snap peas
english peas

I've read (Carrots Love Tomatoes by Louise Riotte) that most plants do not like fennel and it should be planted well away from veggies. It is said to have an inhibiting effect on the bush beans and tomatoes.

This book also says:

Plant your sweet peppers with your basil, as they like the same soils.

If you plant radishes around your squash, it will repel the striped cucumber beetle, so leave some radishes there and let them even go to seed. You will need to plant them earlier than the squash, as the squash grows quicker and will shade the seedlings.

If you plant radishes next to your leaf lettuce, it will make your radishes more tender.

Parsley mixed with carrots repels carrot flies.

Tomatoes do not do well with any brassicas, tomatoes are inhibited by kohlrabi and fennel.

Radishes and pole beans derive a mutual effect. Pole beans do not do well with sunflowers and fennel. They also dislike onions.

 

[digitS']

DigitS - You are scaring me with all of your faith in me!

I love baby bok choy but I didn't think I could grow it yet. Remember, I want easy to grow and fail proof.

I wanted to do pole beans because they take up less space. But I see that 2 people have recommended I plant them.:/

I thought onions were only planted at certain times? You mean I can plant them in the spring?

As far as more greens, I am assuming I can plant seeds directly into the ground?

Mary

Pole beans are fine - they will give you a longer season. The bush beans can fit in as a 2nd crop and lots of gardeners find that if you have the choice of putting up a trellis or not - well, it's easier to not . There are advantages to each.

Lettuce and bok choy are easy to transplant and to move around but that's not usually necessary, just an option. Perfectly okay to just sow the seed right where they will grow.

Onion sets are the little bulbs in mesh bags you can buy at the garden center. They were grown from seed last year. By plunking them down in the ground, you awaken them from their dormancy and they grow into green onions. If you allow them to stay for the season, they will form bulbs and make nice keeper onions.

Gardening is probably more art than science. You develop a feel for what the plants need. It helps to get down real close to them a lot. It comes with experience, Mary, and there's only 1 way to get that -- by having fun in the garden !

Steve

 

[ducks4you]

Beekissed reminded me of this article (w/chart) from the Old Farmer's Almanac (.com)
http://www.almanac.com/content/plant-companions-list-ten-common-vegetables
It's entitled, "Plant Companions: List for Ten Common Vegetables", and lists plants that compliment each other by growing side by side, and those that don't like each other, so you DON'T plant them next to each other.

 

[ninnymary]

Oh Beekissed and Ducks4you,

I didn't even know about such things like planting or not planting certain plants together. Things just got more complicated!:/ I thought I was getting all this gardening stuff down packed.

I will try to make a list of this and now I have to go back to the drawing board and refigure my design.

It's hard trying to figure where to put what. Luckly my border is south facing so everything gets sun all day. I will plant my tomatoes and pole beans in the back and my greens in the front. Still trying to figure out where I should plant the fennel. Maybe in a pot? I really want to plant it since I have an easy recipe for it using scallops.

I do nothing but think of my garden all day!

mary

 

[ducks4you]

I do nothing but think of my garden all day!

mary

...me, too.....

 

[digitS']

Mary, you don't need to turn your garden into "a complex of variable elements and factors to be considered from every angle and possibility." Unless, you want to . . .

As an example: I've grown fennel a few times. Once, it was right beside some much shorter herbs. It flopped over. Other than that, I've couldn't see how it was interfering with their growth compared to the same plants growing nearby.

Plants compete for nutrients, sunlight, water etc. As far as allelopathy, don't plant a black walnut tree in your vegetable garden .

And at the other end of the spectrum: I think that most of this "love" is simply an absence of competition. Even the building of nitrogen that something like a bean plant does, requires the death of the bean plant to make the nitrogen available to any other plant.

Dying for love is a little too much to expect from a bean plant.

Steve

 

[vfem]

I am yet to screw up a root crop or lettuce! Cool weather plants do well for me organically because I'm not worried about pests as much in the fall and spring. (Other then cabbage moths... evil things!)

But if Digit's says to give something a try and feels good about it... give it a try!

 

[Beekissed]

Mary, you don't need to turn your garden into "a complex of variable elements and factors to be considered from every angle and possibility." Unless, you want to . . .

As an example: I've grown fennel a few times. Once, it was right beside some much shorter herbs. It flopped over. Other than that, I've couldn't see how it was interfering with their growth compared to the same plants growing nearby.

Plants compete for nutrients, sunlight, water etc. As far as allelopathy, don't plant a black walnut tree in your vegetable garden .

And at the other end of the spectrum: I think that most of this "love" is simply an absence of competition. Even the building of nitrogen that something like a bean plant does, requires the death of the bean plant to make the nitrogen available to any other plant.

Dying for love is a little too much to expect from a bean plant.

Steve

From what I've read and understand, it's a little more complicated than that when it comes to nitrogen-fixers. They don't die to provide nitrogen, although it does when they do.

This article explains it somewhat, if you can sort through the scientific mumbo jumbo~in short, the legumes have rhizomes that attract a certain type of fungi that actually produces nitrogen as a by-product of their metabolism...or something like that. It's one of those symbiotic relationship thingies. As you can tell, I am not all that knowledgable about the process myself.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Out+o...nitrogen+fixers+with+an+aim+to...-a0178189227

nitrogen fixer
Some plants (notably many legumes such as clover, peas, beans, and alfalfa) have the ability to transform nitrogen from the air into a form of nitrogen that plants can use. As nitrogen is a key nutrient that often limits growth, nitrogen fixers can influence the fertility of the surrounding soil and the growth of neighboring plants. The actual "fixing" or chemical transformation is performed by bacteria that live in nodules on the roots of the host plant.

In the Carrots Love Tomatoes book I just read, the fennel roots actually secret a substance that inhibits growth of some plants...similar to the black walnut tree action.

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Grow-Fennel&id=365070

Found a real handy site for beginning gardeners:

http://www.lesslawn.com/pages/glossary.html

 

[ninnymary]

DigitS and Beekissed,

Now this gardening "stuff" is going way over my head! I don't really get it about the black walnut tree and nitrogen stuff.

I did get a list from the Old Farmer's Almanac that I will try to use. I will try to keep my garden simple and enjoy.

(p.s. How do you do the boxes with the quote inside? I've played with the quote button but I just get the box and can't seem to get the text inside?):/

Mary