Here are some of the things I did last year and some tips I learned; below are the results and conclusions.
- I bought the cheapest soil I could find because, let's face it, 5 huge beds are a lot of space to fill. I ended up spending about $100 just on soil, and that didn't even fill all the beds. I took some soil from the back of the back yard that had 10 years worth of composted leaves.
- Since I bought the junkiest soil ever, I bought some organic fertilizer. I used two full bags of it mixed into the dirt, but I really didn't see much effect from it.
- I started my seeds early, as directed, but I started them in the basement. Here's the thing about starting your plants in the basement: unless your basement has some good airflow and isn't too humid, you should be good. Also, it helps if you don't get a huge flood in your basement from an unexpectedly wild rainstorm.
- Know you are getting good seeds. I bought my seeds from a discount store, and while the prices were really great, the green onions I planted were not, in fact green onions. They were a weed that looked exactly like green onions, however, smelled like lemongrass. No, it wasn't lemongrass, either.
- I tried hanging tomato plants upside down, as seen on TV. Had 11 of them babies. See results for, well, the results.
- I bought 2 grape plants from one of the home improvement stores (don't remember which one, really) and while I was pretty confident one of them was a 2 year, I'm pretty sure after careful research it wasn't. It was way too small to be a 2 year plant. I did end up with a 2-3 year plant, the Niagara grape, so it ought to be interesting to see if it will fruit this year in it's 3rd (or fourth?) year of life.
- Growing your own cut-and-come-again lettuce was great, except it only made enough lettuce to feed two people at any given cutting.
- Starting a garden costs a lot more money than I had expected. I got a great deal on the greenhouse, it was only about $399 (and don't laugh if that was a rip-off, I couldn't find anything cheaper), but the costs of the lumber, soil, seeds, tools, etc. really added up. So if you're looking to start a garden, save some money or look for ways to be thrifty.
Here are the results and conclusions:
- As stated in a previous post, I did really well with the tomatoes.... but only the ones that were planted in the ground, not in the baskets. I read half and half reviews of people doing well and doing poor with the tomatoes in hanging baskets. I won't be doing that again this year. The ones that did produce well, I didn't know about pulling sucker plants. For those of you who are unfamiliar with suckers, check out my post on suckers.
- Cucumbers also produced a lot. I had about 8 really super healthy plants, and between the 8 of them we had constant cucumbers all season long. I had some to play with pickling, but they were so good they never made it to the can.
- Herbs grew really well in my garden, but because I planted them so close together, watering them without getting water on the plants was impossible. What do wet plants do? They attract mildew and mold and other unlovely things. While I had a lot of great oregano plants, most of them fell short to disease.
- Eggplants grew well, although the flower would form and then die. What I mean is, the flower would die, not the plant. While I had super healthy plants, they never produced one eggplant. I later found that there were beetles that were chilling on the plants, it was more than a beetle killing the flowers.
- Corn sucks in greenhouses. It just does. I had poor success with it, and while it grew 3 nice corns, the plant ended up shriveling and dying due to corn worms that snuck in before I could catch them.
- I didn't realize that in order to grow really nice green beans, don't let them flower until the plant vine has grown a little bit. I got about 12 beans the whole season.
- Squash should be trellised and kept away from squash bugs.
- The carrots did not grow very well in the soil, mostly because the top of the ground dried out from lack of covering.
- Super Important: Watch who goes into the garden! If you are vacationing or leaving your garden up to someone else for a couple days, make sure they don't go in and pluck out all the parsley and onions because they looked like "weeds". Thanks, dad.
- Which leads me to say this, I didn't do a whole lot of weeding, mostly because I couldn't tell what was a weed and what was onions. Weeding is important, however, this I learned.
- Spinach grew well, although I didn't realize you had to pick them to keep them growing. Seems like an oxymoron to pluck them to make them grow... but apparently that is what you should do. Still, though, will not be planting them again. They're just too cheap to buy.
- The peas did not grow that well, but I've chalked it up to poor seeds. Some of them grew fantastic, and others didn't make it out of the ground. I ended up with 3 plants in a 12 foot space. This year, though, I won't plant them only because It's a little too late in the season for me to plant them.
- I didn't have good success with the brussels sprouts, only because I couldn't tell what was a brussels sprout and what was a weed. This year, though, I won't plant them only because I want to use the space for something else. I just eat way to many of them to grow them, and there's a great farmer's market nearby that sells organic ones cheap, so it's better for me just to outsource.
I do realize a lot of this is a little bit of me not using common sense, (ahem, obviously you should not water the plant itself) but I did learn from it. This year I won't buy from the discount store, I'm ordering my seeds offline and buying some at a more reliable store. But before I ramble another long list... I'll save my plan for a future post. Until then, I'm signing off on this post. Cheers!
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