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Elizabeth, I think they thinned down to about 8 or 9 squash plants, and 8 or 9 zucchini plants. I only have a small plot under cultivation, so I did basically one row of each type plant, in ascending order by height, facing the direction of the most sun.
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Ooooh I love all of the above. Do you really think I'll get a lot? I have to say I would be delighted! I still don't want to count my incubating poultry, though, so I'll reserve judgement. But you encourage me. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Somebody should probably reserve a backhoe now so we can dig her out after the zuchinni take over her yard.
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Tatiana, I plant one zucchini and one yellow squash now.
Still, they are beautiful plants. Just start planning menus like this:
Zucchini bread for breakfast Curried yellow squash soup for lunch Zucchini parmesan for dinner with a zucchini chocolate cake for dessert. (I actually have a really good recipe for this in my Joy of Gardening cookbook; it is really good)
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Hey who could resist zucchini chocolate cake? Sounds delightful!
This patch gets so little sun, though, that I'm thinking no backhoe will be needed. Still, I'd be delighted if you were right. I could give away baskets to everyone I know, as well as eating my fill. That would be awesome!
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OK, I'm gonna paste in my fall/winter gardening article here... SESE (Southern Exposure Seed Exchange) doesn't have a link up for it yet (not sure if they're done editing it yet), but here it is, I'll do separate posts to break it up:
Note: this article is written with Mid-Atlantic growers in mind. The article is based on our experience with Central Virginia climate, where our zone is 6b, it usually gets down to zero Fahrenheit sometime during the winter, and the average first fall frost is October 14th. Keep this in mind when reading the dates and temperatures below, and adjust it to your own climate!
Second note: this article is relatively short, and skips over many details about fall/winter gardening. SESE hopes to publish a longer, pamphlet-sized article about fall/winter gardening in the next few months!
So it’s July, and it’s hot as heck out there and the tomatoes are just coming on and the melons will be a while yet… and it’s time to think about the fall/winter garden!
Actually, for a few crops such as parsnips, broccoli, and cauliflower (see below), it’s probably already too late… but there’s lots of other greens and root crops that can still get planted over the next 3-4 months.
You don’t have to own a greenhouse, a hoophouse, or a cold frame to still enjoy veggies from your garden during the fall and winter. Floating row fabric cover is an excellent cheap investment for protecting crops from freezing. Generally, every layer of floating row cover adds 4° of protection. As an example, in our area it usually gets down to 0°F once or twice during the winter. That’s cold enough to kill even the most hardy greens. But it’s only for a night or two that the temperature drops that low; if the crops can be covered up and protected during that brief window of vulnerability, they’ll survive the winter and put out vigorous new growth during the spring. So kale, for example, is hardy to 12°F… if it’s getting down to zero overnight, then we add three layers of row cover; 3 layers x 4° of protection = 12° of protection = enough to protect the kale until daylight comes and warms things up again.
Veggies don’t stop growing as soon as frost sets in. Growth slows, but it still continues! Fall weather varies from year to year, but generally there’s enough sunlight and warmth that veggies continue to grow until ~Dec. 15. From Dec. 15 to Feb. 15, unless it’s exceptionally mild, plants in our area go into stasis – they stay alive but don’t put on any new growth. If you can, plant extra spinach, kale, collards, etc. so that you’ll be able to harvest more during this period when there’s no active growth! After February 15, plants put on fresh growth again, and for a couple months it gets hard to keep up with the flush of new spinach, kale, collards, parsley, etc. before the plants flower and go to seed…
Greens and roots are the main crops to plant for the fall garden. Well, there’s also broccoli and cauliflower, but unless you’ve already sown these or can pick up some seedlings from a nursery, it’s probably too late to get them started in time to head up before major frosts set in.
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ALL-WINTER GREENS If you don’t have much space available, all-winter greens are the best option for planting – greens such as spinach, kale, collards, cilantro, and parsley can be kept alive and keep producing all the way until next spring.
Spinach is the most hardy winter green. A savoy variety such as “Long Standing Bloomsdale” does well – spinach is hardy to at least 5°F. (Large leaves are good to 10°, small leaves to 5°.)
Kale and collards are a good second choice. With both kale and collards, it’s a good idea to have a summer planting be the one that overwinters. This way the plants don’t get too tall and are easier to cover up and protect if temperatures drop below 12°F. Mulch the plants deeply to help protect them from winter freezes!
“Vates” is a good winter kale. It’s a dwarf Scotch curled variety – larger varieties such as “Red Russian” are more tender and not as winter-hardy.
Parsley – curly-leaf varieties are the most cold hardy, usually down to 15°F.
Cilantro is hardy to 15°F. Younger plantings make it through the winter in better shape, so a good strategy is to plant a main crop early for fall harvest, and have a second, smaller planting that’s not quite mature by mid-December. In our area, that means 9/15 for the main planting, 10/1 for the secondary planting.
Broad leaf sorrel is a great winter crop. If you do have to resort to buying greens during the winter, it’s nice to perk up a salad with some home-grown sorrel. Smaller leaves overwinter better than large leaves; large leaves get damaged around 15°F, small leaves around 5°. It’s a perennial, easily cultivated from seed or from dividing older plants. (Note: broad leaf sorrel is different from wild sheep sorrel. They have a similar lemony flavor, but sheep sorrel has small leaves and is very tender, dieing soon after frosts start.)
Burnet (aka salad burnet) has leaves with a strong cucumber-like flavor, great for winter salads. Hardy to at least 5°F. It’s a perennial that actually deals better with cold than heat – try to give it shade during the summer!
FALL GREENS Some greens are good for the fall, but don’t plan on having them past December unless the winter is unusually mild.
Lettuce does well until December; usually by mid-December its quality starts going downhill fast – rot sets in when lettuce has to deal with too many cold nights. Plant red varieties – cold weather brings out their colors vividly, whereas regular green varieties become an anemic yellow-green in late fall cold weather. Lettuce is hardy to at least 25°F – small lettuce leaves will be even more cold hardy.
Chard is hardy to 25°F (though this varies somewhat with the variety). Chard is such a vigorous grower that it’s worth keeping alive for a while in the fall, but usually by the time it’s too hard to keep alive any longer the fall spinach crop is happily ready to take over. Chinese cabbage does well as a fall crop – it holds better than it does in the heat of early summer. Sow during July. Usually hardy to 25°F.
Cabbage – smaller heads (spring type) such as “Early Jersey Wakefield” will head up in time for fall harvest. But at this point, unless you can get hold of seedlings for the big head cabbages, it’ll be too late to sow seeds for big head cabbages. Cabbage is hardy to at least 25°F.
Mustard greens do well during the fall, and the cold weather sweetens them. Frilly-leaved varieties such as “Mizuna” are less cold-hardy. The most cold-hardy mustard is “Tat soi,” it’s hardy to 22°F.
Arugula is hardy to 25°F. There’s a wild version of arugula – “Sylvetta” – that’s supposed to be smaller and more cold-hardy. If you try “Sylvetta,” start it in a seedling container and transplant it – it has difficulty germinating when directly sown.
Dill is only hardy to 25°F.
Basil: for those who haven’t already experienced the sadness of seeing slimy dead basil in the fall, basil is NOT at all cold hardy. It dies with the first fall frost, and usually its quality goes downhill fast in the last couple weeks leading up to frost.
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ROOT CROPS Most root crops can be left in the ground until December. Some are more tender than others, so keep an eye on temperatures to help you decide how long to keep the crops in!
Root crops are somewhat tender, so most should be harvested by the end of December. Carrots and parsnips can be left in the ground if insulated by snow or by floating row cover, but check to make sure that voles or other critters aren’t munching their way through your crop where you can’t see it.
It you’ve got a good root cellar setup, store your root crops in it! If you don’t, root crops will keep for a few months refrigerated – even longer if packed in moist sand.
Parsnips are the ultimate winter root crop, only parsnips don’t germinate in hot weather – they need to get seeded by late spring in order to germinate. If you’ve got a patch, wait until at least December to start harvesting them – they really sweeten up in cold weather.
Carrots: fall carrots are a great root crop. Spring-planted carrots are often bitter when maturing in hot weather, but carrots planted mid-summer for maturing in the fall’s cool temperatures are mild and sweet. Carrots are hardy to 12°F. “Danvers” is a good fall variety.
Radishes, daikons, rutabagas, and turnips are all hardy to 20°F. Keep mulch up around the sides of the roots to protect them. The greens themselves are hardy to 15°.
Beets can be hard to do for the fall. It’s usually difficult to get them to germinate in the summer heat. Well, germinating’s not really the problem – they germinate just fine, but then the seedlings rot and disappear within a few weeks of appearing. You can try sowing them in early-mid September for a batch of small 2” beets… but if you want to make sure you’ll have beets in the fall, a more reliable strategy is to plant extra beets in the spring and wait until fall to harvest them. “Chioggia” and “Lutz Green Leaf Storage” are good fall beets. As with radishes and all, the roots are hardy to 20°F, the leaves to 15°.
MISCELLANEOUS: broccoli, cauliflower, peas, onions, and garlic Broccoli and cauliflower, as mentioned above, are great crops for early fall. They make even larger heads than in the spring, but they need to get started on time (early June in our area) in order to head up before hard frosts damage the heads. Broccoli is a bit more cold hardy, while cauliflower gets damaged at 30°F.
Peas can be grown as a crop for early fall – grow the short varieties, and seed them so that they start flowering 2 weeks before first frost. Since you can still be getting green beans that late though, most folks skip growing peas as a fall crop… but it’s a neat trick to pull off, worth trying sometime!
Green onions (scallions) get damaged around 25°F.
Multiplier onions can get planted in the fall; once established, they can be harvested every spring and fall.
Garlic is best planted in the fall – fall-planted garlic makes the largest heads. (Exception being for truly cold northern climates, where the cold can damage topgrowth, and where it really is better to wait until spring to plant.)
Happy growing! And happy eating!!
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You know, you can water your garden all day, but when it rains, I swear everything grows two inches. It is pouring right now, and I can feel the garden growing from here.
I almost killed this beautiful caterpillar today for the offense of eating my dill. It was a monarch butterfly caterpillar!
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I harvested my second squash yesterday. The third one was sitting in water during the Cindy flooding and rotted. I should have picked it when it was smaller, alas. There are some finger sized zucchini out there too.
How do you decide when is the best time to pick? Won't they taste best if they're ripened on the vine? But then are you gambling that the bugs, bunnies, or bacteria will eat them first? What's the right trade off?
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I sure miss not having a garden this year! It is usually the highlight of my spring and summer.
But just couldn't do it this year because of still cleaning up from the ice storm, and so much else going on. It was probably a good year to rest the ground, though -- since our weather really hasn't cooperated with area gardeners at all this year.
Hopefully next year I will be back in the produce business
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Are raspberries and strawberries very hard to grow?
Because the backyard here seems to grow a lot of plants, and those ones would be worth having i think.
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Raspberries are pretty mellow, the most important thing being to make sure to prune them on time every year.
Strawberries tend to be a lot of work -- they need a LOT of weeding. They also tend to have problems with diseases, and often patches need to get renewed every 2-3 years with fresh plants.
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I'm seeing a few more chile peppers, and the cucumber vines have started flowering. No more bell peppers yet, though, and still just the one tiny tomato. I need to get some organic fertilizer mix from my neighbor-cum-gardening-mentor, that should help speed things along.
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Stry, i usually don;t get peppers until the emd of the season.
As for chiles, they will keep going as long as they are cvered. if it gets to the end of the season, and you know you are going to have a hard frost, just pull up the whole plants of chiles and tomatoes, and hang them in the garage(if you have one) upside down. They will continue to ripen for quite some time.
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I love gardening threads. We ate from our garden tonight. Operaetta and I picked a bunch of peas and green beans this afternoon, and we also had some zucchini. Our strawberries (first years) have stopped producing, and so have the raspberries.
Still growing is corn, onions, squash (1 in the fridge so far), and tomatoes. Some kind of rot got to the radishes, alas. The cucumbers were smothered to death by the peas, which grew to mammoth proportions while we were gone for a week on vacation. The guy at the hardware store said they were the kind that didn't climb, and obviously he was wrong.
Strangely enough, I haven't had any problems with rabbits. They did shear off the tops of half of my bean plants one day, but have pretty much left them alone since. No issues with deer yet either. What I'm worried about is raccoons. I only recently found out that they love corn, and we have an issue with coons getting on our front porch and making off with entire jugs of cat food accidently left out! I put a bucket of old acquarium stuff out there to be stored and didn't realize till the next morning that I had left fish food in the bucket. A coon had actually unscrewed the lid and eaten it all. I read to plant vines (such as pumpkins, etc.) around your corn but it's too late for that now.
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An extreme protective measure I've read about (but never tried) = before the corn ears finish ripening, use strapping tape to fasten the ears to the stalks...
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Elizabeth -- yeah, in theory the spiny leaves discourage the raccoons.
I tried using squash vines as a barrier around corn one year. It didn't work, but that might've been because I had to leave a gap in the patch in order to be able to get to the corn.
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Me too! Especially the baby ones. I'm tempted to try to adopt them as pets, since they are getting so tame, but Dr. George says they're immune carriers of rabies so I'm not allowed. I really do like animals too much! I could never care about a plant enough to want to harm an animal over it. I know people think deer are terrible pests but I would be enchanted if any deer came to my garden. We don't have enough woods here for deer, I don't think. I've never seen one in this area.
I've planted all non-starchy vegetables, so that should help keep the racoons away, I hope. But since I put out food for wildlife on the back deck, I'm pretty sure they'll eventually find the garden out front and think "Yum, more food! What a nice human!" Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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This thread makes me want to start a garden when I move. Hmmm...there's nothing better then fresh green beans from the garden. Mmmmm. Yum! And zucchini. *dies*
Yeah, I'll have to start a garden.
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Tatiana, if all of your squash grows, you will be begging the racoons to come!
Raccoons are rabies-laden, especially in urban/suburban areas.
Interesting thing that we learned is that bobcats don't get rabies. Since we have one that frequents our yard, that was a good thing to know.
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Cool! Tatiana, definitely keep those pics in a slideshow over the course of the summer and fall, and keep taking pics of veggies in the same basket.
As for bobcats, I hesitate to tell you the whole story, as you are a cats-inside cat owner.
However, we have a cat window, and our cats come in and out.
So has "Bob." I have caught him eating cat food a couple of times. He just stopped, looked over at me in utter disdain, and bounded back outside.
He and the cats have a sort of love-hate relationship. He might even be a she, for that matter. He looks like a big housecat, but hen he runs across the yard, you can see his rabbitlike hind legs and bobbed tail, and he is lightning quick. We have some pictures, but all of the "Bigfoot" variety, when he is moving off into the woods, or the picture is blurry, or he is just sitting there, looking like a fat housecat.
Apparently, bobcats make excellent pets when raised from kittens. They become so attached to their owners that they often stop eating if separated from them.
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Elizabeth, I'm glad the bobcat doesn't consider your cats competition. I've heard that they can even cross-breed with house cats upon occasion. They're supposed to live here too but I've never seen one, so perhaps they've been driven out long ago.
It would be awesome to get one to trust you enough to have a litter of kittens in a spot where you can see them and be around them from an early age. My cat Mouse was rather wildish (I'm guessing she was a barncat) and she taught her kittens to be afraid of humans, too (except for me -- I don't count as human). So I wonder if they would still be wild, given the wild genes and the wild mom, even if you raised them from kittens. It would be so cool, though, to have pet bobcats!
As for vegetables, I cooked that bunch and had them for supper last night. The green beans were truly scrumptious. The squash and zucchini tasted good but no better than regular grocery store squash and zucchini, I guess. It made a really good meal, though. I'm eager for more to be ready to pick. My tiny little bell pepper is very cute.
How do you know when it's time to pick onions? Do you have to start digging them up before you can tell? No eggplants showing so far or tomatoes.
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I have not botheres to grow onions for a few years because I can get them at farms stnds for next to nothing. You can really harvest them at any time, but I think they are officially "ready" when the foliage starts to flop over.
Did you ever see Cats: Caressing the Tiger? It was a PBS special that was so amazing. I remember thm saying that, basically, cats are cats. A feral "domestic" cat acts the same as a wild tiger, and a tiger will act like a domesticated cat, except that, obviously, its play is quite a bit more dangerous. It was ana amazing show. Also, have you read Life of Pi?? A tiger is featured in the story.
Some poeple who have seen Bob think he(she) is a half bobcat. Others, one a seasoned hunter, said it was a babcat for sure. I would sure love to see its kittens!!
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That's good to know about onions, thanks. I will watch for floppy foliage.
I never saw that PBS show but it sounds great. I've had my tame cats play with me in ways that drew blood, even when they were just being friendly, so I don't think I'd want a pet tiger. A pet bobcat, though, sounds awesome.
No I haven't read life of Pi but BunnV is reading it and I was planning maybe to read it after he's done, if he likes it. Should I?
I think for next year I'm going to cut down these 2 pine trees in the front yard to give the garden more sun, plus I think I'll skip the onions and maybe eggplant too in favor of something that performs better.
Do you actually try to save money by gardening? I guess that possibility hasn't really sunk in yet for me. So far it's just for fun, and I don't even hope to make back my investment in seeds, plant food, stakes, seedling cups, potting soil, and certainly not in time. You're right that onions are super cheap at the store. They must be easy to grow for someone somewhere or that wouldn't be true!
Maybe the best crops for kitchen gardens are those that have high handling costs, delicate things like bell peppers. Also things that taste much better when vine ripened, like tomatoes. If I get many bell peppers they will certainly save me some money. Those things are expensive! Especially the red and yellow and orange ones which I love particularly, because they're so pretty as well as being tasty.
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Tatiana, Read Life of Pi! It was fascinating. I kept thinking it was boring, while I could neither put it down nor stop thinking about it.
As for saving money, you can save money by gardening, but I don't really try to anymore. In fact, it usually costs money, because I have been too lazy(and don;t have the space or time) to start my own seeds anymore. Oh, for a greeenhouse!
With a small garden, though, you really could grow enough to store for the winter.
The things I grow these days are mostly things I cannot find in the stores at all, like heirloom tomatoes and certain varieites of chile peppers. Well, that isn;t even true, since I have not started chile seeds. But I just like to have a load of them at hand.
Growing and preserving herbs definitely saves money, though. Yowza, I am always amazed at how expensive they are to buy.
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Oooh! We're putting in a gigantic herb garden next spring; I'm so excited. I'm not sure I save any money by gardening, but I like it so much I don't care. There's just something really cool about going out and picking your own corn, putting it on the grill, and eating it for dinner.
One book I think many of you would really enjoy is from the people who make the little Storey Books and is full of practical gardening, herbal, and crafty knowledge. It's called Country Wisdom and Know-How: Everything You Need to Know to Live Off the Land. I just got a copy and am fascinated with it. It's basically a compilation of everything from how to make a braided rag rug to building a flower press.
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That sounds a lot like one of my old favorites, Space Opera: One Acre and Security, and old 70's book, from the days of Euell Gibbons.
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My first bell pepper is starting to change color from green to orange! Unfortunately it's been through many cycles of too dry/too wet, and it's as wrinkled as an old man's behind. The plant that produced it isn't looking so hot, either.
Oh well. Even if it croaks, there are lots of others. And it's finally raining here, for the first time in a month! As (I think) another poster said elsewhere in the thread, no amount of hand-watering can match a good rain. I swear the cucumber vines grew six inches last night.
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I think I'm the only one in North Carolina that actually waters their garden. I water everything. I suppose being born in Tucson has something to do with this.
If there's rain in the forcast, I wait. If no rain is called for, I water.
My neighbor doesn't water at all, that I can see, and his crop is growing just fine. Posts: 3771 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Tammy, my tomatoes are still green as well. There are something like 20 of them on the two plants waiting to ripen.
Stray, I'm glad for the rain too. Though now I'm worried that we'll get too much dumped on us and that it will end up hurting the garden in the long run. Yesterday the forecast said rain every day this week.
we are concerned that the zucchini has attacked you. Please report.
(I will be gone for a week, and facing a similar attack when I return. But I only have two plants!!!)
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Oooh, we had tropical storm Cindy come through, then hurricane Dennis, and yes my tomato plants grew about a foot from all that. No tomatoes on them yet, though. I haven't seen them flowering, even. (Tomato plants flower too? So far it seems that all these things I had been calling vegetables are biologically-speaking fruits, right?)
Am I supposed to tie these green bean plants to these stakes? I thought since they were vine-type plants they would grab on themselves (and I've been trying to encourage them to do that) but they aren't doing it. Should I tie the tomato plants to the stakes too?
No more squash or zucchini yet has ripened, but I picked about 10 more green beans today. Wow, if only mimosas were a cash crop! I've got about a million of those guys sprouting. I'm pulling them out as fast as I can manage, but not keeping up with them.
Sammy, the neighbors' cat, helps me with the gardening (by doing the leg-rubbing, purring, and lying-in-the-sun duties while I tend to the weeding, of course.) He's a cool cat with huge green eyes. He likes to look you right in the eyes aand search your face as if to say "Are you the one? My true human?"
There are lots more flowers on the squash and zucchini plants, but so far the only other fruits are tiny. The leaves have gotten spotted with white, and some of them have yellowed and withered. No doubt it's some sort of zucchini blight.
The green bean plants had lots of ants on them this time when I went to pick them. Do ants like green beans?
Elizabeth, hope your zucchini grows big old bats to attack you with, and being super-Elizabeth, you disarm them before they manage it. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Are the green beans pole beans or bush beans? If they're pole beans, they should be able to climb by themselves; if they're bush beans (i.e., short), then they'll never get tall and viney -- they'll keep themselves upright.
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You'll need more than one wheelbarrow.
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I should have picked it when it was smaller, alas. There are some finger sized zucchini out there too.![[Cry]](graemlins/cry.gif)
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