North Carolina garden

[Amyh]

I've been gardening for several years, but I have young children, so my dreams are not quite aligned with my actual time frames for gardening.

I'd like to grow some things I haven't tried before, but I don't have too much time to devote to tending.....

What type of variety of onions and garlic should I try? I'm also interested in some Winter squash... any good ideas on what variety I should try?

 

[vfem]

Hi and welcome neighbor!

Gardening with kids is fun, my daughter and I have a GREAT time.

I planted my onions and garlic in the fall, we have strange weather here and onions and garlic require long cool periods. If I were you, either plant now if you can... or don't plant until mid fall.

You still have until July/August for winter squash here... and you have lots of choices. Acorn squash and butternut did well for me.

Feb-March is a good time to get in root veggies, greens & potatoes! I'm ready to start getting mine out any time now

Good luck.. and

 

[Greenthumb18]

Hi Amyh

Their are lots of varieties of onions and garlic. Garlic is usually planted in the fall so you'll want to plant those next fall. For garlic their's softneck and hardneck varieties. Softneck garlic would be the regular Italian garlic and hardneck garlic would be elephant garlic, they grow to be very large garlic with a mild flavor.

For onions, you can grow them either from seed, plants, or sets,
it depends what kind of onions you want to grow to chose how you want to grow them.
Winter Squash, their are also lots of varieties to chose from and you can even grow varieties that don't take up so much space, those are bush varieties.

Hope this helps!

 

[Amyh]

Hi and welcome neighbor!

Gardening with kids is fun, my daughter and I have a GREAT time.

I planted my onions and garlic in the fall, we have strange weather here and onions and garlic require long cool periods. If I were you, either plant now if you can... or don't plant until mid fall.

You still have until July/August for winter squash here... and you have lots of choices. Acorn squash and butternut did well for me.

Feb-March is a good time to get in root veggies, greens & potatoes! I'm ready to start getting mine out any time now

Good luck.. and

Ahhh... you are about one hour East of me... I thought I could still put the onions in for this Spring, but I guess I will wait until Fall. I was wondering what varieties would be a good bet in our lovely soil. I put in onion sets last Spring and they did nothing... I also put in Spinach, and several types of lettuce and only the Romaine did well. Is this a user error, or is our soil not suited for most lettuce?

I'm planning to do some cabbage, peas and broccoli again because they did so well last year. What are you putting in your Spring garden?

 

[i_am2bz]

Welcome, Amyh!

vfem is definitely your expert for growing things in our neck of the woods. What I would add is, I have had to use raised beds with trucked-in landscaping soil to grow anything besides weeds (& even they struggle sometimes) in this rock-hard red clay.

I have had great success with lettuce, especially Romaine, but Grand Rapids grew really well, too. It grew all summer, no matter how hot it was, & seemed to be only limited by my laziness in growing a fall crop.

I haven't grown globe onions, but my "bunching" onions (what I would call green onions) also did great; there's a lot still out there! I just snip off the green tops & have had them in my salads & what-not all winter.

 

[journey11]

Hi and !

 

[vfem]

Hi and welcome neighbor!

Gardening with kids is fun, my daughter and I have a GREAT time.

I planted my onions and garlic in the fall, we have strange weather here and onions and garlic require long cool periods. If I were you, either plant now if you can... or don't plant until mid fall.

You still have until July/August for winter squash here... and you have lots of choices. Acorn squash and butternut did well for me.

Feb-March is a good time to get in root veggies, greens & potatoes! I'm ready to start getting mine out any time now

Good luck.. and

Ahhh... you are about one hour East of me... I thought I could still put the onions in for this Spring, but I guess I will wait until Fall. I was wondering what varieties would be a good bet in our lovely soil. I put in onion sets last Spring and they did nothing... I also put in Spinach, and several types of lettuce and only the Romaine did well. Is this a user error, or is our soil not suited for most lettuce?

I'm planning to do some cabbage, peas and broccoli again because they did so well last year. What are you putting in your Spring garden?

My spinach, radish, shelling peas and snow peas do great. I have amended most of my in ground soil to do all this. In the fall I layer leaves, compost and the chicken coops used shavings and turn in in the late winter (like in the next couple of weeks).

The rest of my garden is raised beds, and that is where I plant my garlic & yellow onion sets in the fall. They really need that super soft soil or they just fail for me.

My cabbage does great directly in the ground... but I get cabbage moth worms that wreck everything everytime! ARGH!