What are you planting in your garden this year?

[Mike Nolan]

We're going to have a fairly small vegetable garden this year, a few tomatoes, a few herbs and that's about it.

The area where we normally do tomatoes hasn't produced well the last year, though a fair part of that was probably weather-related, so we're going to put a cover crop in it this year, or maybe two of them--buckwheat now (if I can find seed locally or get around to ordering it online) and alfalfa later on. Both would be tilled under before they go to seed.

Buckwheat helps extract phosphorus from the soil, alfalfa rebuilds nitrogen.

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[BakerAunt]

I'm looking forward to having a garden once we retire and move to Indiana. My husband always does a winter garden here with lettuce and spinach and carrots. The lettuce and spinach have now gone to seed, and he is harvesting the carrots.

[S_Wirth]

We were worried about our tomato plants we planted last weekend as we got down to 38F Sat. morning. Really cold for this time of year. I counted 57 plants yesterday when I went out to check on them. One has the top nipped off by a rabbit but it will recover. We'd planned to plant some other things but we have had constant rains for weeks and it is just too wet for things to thrive. One neighbor said his green bean seeds rotted in the ground. Just too wet.

[Rascals1]

So far thyme basil leaf celery parsley and a few other herbs, but I put them in pots so with this cool spell I did bring them in.

[Nina Beyt]

Our herbs winter over so no need to replant, except the sage, which is really hurting for some reason, and basil. Maybe because it's been there for up to 15-20 years? So there are tomatoes, leeks, shallots, okra (failed every year so he's trying again), peppers, I may try a new thing or two. Several years ago I grew specialty pumpkins, mainly white/Australian, stunning in October. I might try to track down some sorrel. I was given two multiple herb pot plants so there's a tumult of several kinds of thyme, plus oregano and lavender. We just went shopping to replace our lawn and a shade tree. What a surprise is the Pakistani mulberry. They are at least two inches long and sweet even when having little color, looking disconcertingly like a caterpillar. They have a core, though, and while they would make a good jam or for snacking, I don't think I want a mulberry tree.

[Mike Nolan]

It’s probably a good thing we weren’t planning on doing a big tomato garden this year, we’ve had about 6 inches of rain in the last two weeks and more is forecast for this weekend, so the garden area is way too wet to plant in. We'll be lucky to have it dried out by Memorial Day.

Also, we had about 45 minutes of hail the other day, many of the plants my wife was getting ready to put in her flower beds look like they were run through a shredder, and any tomatoes in the garden would have suffered, too.

We consider mulberry little more than a noxious weed!

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[mitzimuffins]

It's a little early here to plant but I have tomato plants ready to go and my batch of seeds to plant. I have just completed a major garden re-do and I am looking forward to getting things started.
June first is my target date because of frost. I usually can pickles and make homemade tomato sauce that I freeze, plus jams using things from my garden and the local farmers market. I am so looking forward to warmer weather and getting things in the ground.

[RiversideLen]

The back of my yard floods very easily in recent years so I have gone from in ground planting to containers. I'm only doing tomatoes and parsley, some basil maybe. I bought some self watering containers from Gardeners Supply and have been using them for several years. It works pretty good. The keys are (a) do smaller type tomatoes - I wouldn't do beefsteaks in them, (b) make sure it is always watered, especially when the plants get big and the weather is hot, (c) give it plenty of fertilizer. Right now I have them set up and they are just waiting for the plants. I have the plants and am hardening them off right now. I plan to plant in the next several days. I'll try to post pics as I get things going.

[yakturn]

My tomatoes are blooming and just waiting for the little bees to come in and do their jobs. My apricot trees are overloaded this year. We have had a very early spring in Cali. My sister lives in Omaha and lost all of their garden to the hail storm.

[BevM]

I don't do a lot of edible gardening, but I planted grape tomatoes and bell peppers along with some green onions. I also have several herbs both in pots and in the ground scattered around the yard some for cooking some just for fragrance. It's wonderful to walk around and brush my hand across them to smell the fragrance in the air. And my three blueberry bushes are loaded this year along with a good crop of lemons. All the rain we've had this year has certainly been beneficial.

[RiversideLen]

My tomatoes are doing well. I have 2 "self watering" containers with 2 plants plus parsley in each. There are tomatoes on the vines.

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[BakerAunt]

Len: Those tomato plants are looking great!

[Mike Nolan]

They had a big tub planter out at Sams that was kind of tempting. We wound up putting just 5 tomato plants in this year (2 brandywine, 2 roma and 1 that I think was either early girl or better boy) rather than my usual 25. I see a few tiny tomatoes on them, but I don't expect any ripe ones for another month. The farmer's market tomatoes have been pretty good though.

We did get the cover crop (buckwheat and alfalfa) seeded in the tomato garden bed last week, we've got lots of tiny plants coming up. The plan is to let them grow until they bloom, then till it under and possibly put in a second buckwheat planting in September. Alfalfa is a perennial, but farmers have been rotating grain crops with alfalfa for years, so I don't expect major carryover problems if we do it right.

The birds got most of our black raspberry crop this year, it wasn't going to be a bumper crop anyway, though.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Mike Nolan.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[BakerAunt]

We always get to Indiana too late for the black raspberries. However, a friend has permission to pick them, and she usually gives us a jar of the jam she makes. I'm looking forward to our move there so that we will be there when they ripen. However, it may require a full suit of armor to keep off mosquitos. In addition to my husband's woodlands, we have them growing on the lakefront, but between the chipmunks and the birds we are unlikely to see any of those!

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

We arrived in Indiana to find that the blackberry bushes my husband took from his woods and planted on our lakefront are yielding a nice supply of berries. My husband also found some black raspberries in his woods. I expect to be making jam sometime next week, but I want to go to the blueberry picking place first, so that I can use them for any shortage on the amount of fruit.

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