Mmmmmmmmmmm...tomatoes, they're just one of the wonderful rewards of a backyard garden. This year we shared a vegetable garden with one of our neighbors. (Her back yard doesn't get nearly enough sun.) It's been a wonderful! Neither of us had any gardening experience so it's also been a learning adventure. We planted tomatoes, peppers, carrots, sugar snap peas, cucumber and basil. Here is what we learned.- tomatoes grow so tall that they shade other plants and should be planted with this in mind (not knowing this meant that no peppers grew for us this year)
- sugar snap peas have to be planted early (again, no peas)
- cucumber plants take up a lot of space
- next year we should plant some fruit too!
Surely these facts should have been common sense but I have never tried to grow my own food and literally knew nothing about it, but I love it! In addition to the tomatoes the basil we grew was fabulous. We're going to try for a fall crop too and have decided to plant; spinach, broccoli, garlic and carrots. Any advice??
Broccoli takes up a lot of space and you have to watch out for worms. We had several plants last year and the worms took over. We decided not to plant broccoli this year b/c we don't use any chemicals on the garden and didn't know of any organic options at the time. The broccoli we did get tasted very good though.
ReplyDeleteGlad your tomatoes are doing well. A raccoon or possum keeps getting my dad's tomatoes. We don't have any. My grandma's garden is doing well, except something keeps eating her tomatoes. If you have any plastic bags tie them on your tomatoe cages and they keep the birds away.
ReplyDeleteFYI: when you plant your peppers next year plant the spicy/hot ones to the south and the mild ones north. The wind blows from N to S and if the spicy/hot peppers are north they pollinate the mild ones and they all end up spicy/hot.
A good fall plants are pumpkins. The good news: You only need one pumpkin to start with (if you carve a jack-o-lantern throw the seeds by a fence in your back yard. The bad news: pumpkins take up A LOT of room. If you plant eggplants next year I'll help you with them.
ARS