Vegetable Gardening

[Owlie]

Every time we tried to grow tomatoes (or strawberries, or cukes, or pretty much anything edible) the wildlife would help itself, and we'd get maybe one fruit out of it. Same goes for...pretty much anything currently in the yard (none of which are veggies). I think we may have some kind of neon sign reading "SALAD BAR" somewhere...

[OakLeaf]

Electric fence doesn't keep the rabbits out. Netting has kept them out of my beans enough to let the beans grow, but they've broken right through the netting to get at my chard.

It's hit and miss this year ... tonight's dinner was pasta with broccoli, zucchini and arugula.

I picked the zucchini tonight just after a rain, fairly small, knowing it would be a ball-bat if I waited until morning. The blossom had closed for the night. I held the squash in my hand and felt this ... vibration ... like it was an appliance that it resembles physically. I opened the blossom and SEVEN honeybees flew out.

Last year I saw not one honeybee on my property. Not one, all year. I am soooooo happy they are back - at least for now.

[grey]

Sadly, each time my tomatoes start to ripen, critters help themselves. I think squirrels are the culprits. I had three amazing heirloom Mr. Stripey and four Bradley tomatoes that were nearly ready to pick...just one more day...but in the morning, one was across the yard half eaten, two were hanging on the vine half eaten, and the rest had disappeared completely.

My kale, however, is still going strong. But with the 100+ temps, I suspect they will soon bolt.

I have to pick mine early and let them ripen in windowsills - if I wait for them to turn red or even a good orange, some critter will take one little bite and waste the rest of it. I grow a lot of heirlooms (including Mr Stripey!) some seem to attract the critters more than others - so I grab them soon as I start to see orange developing. Have to check vines twice a day in this weather.

[QUOTE-OakLeaf]tonight's dinner was pasta with broccoli, zucchini and arugula.[/QUOTE]
Oh YUM! Can I come over?

[tulip]

My Mr. Stripeys were beautiful! Do they taste good? They do to critters. I will take your advice next year. I might still get some this year, too. We usually have tomatoes into September, even October.

[sgtiger]

Our front yard gets the most hours of sunlight in a day, so we decided to incorporate some of the veggies there.

The front yard went from this:


To this:


The herbs, carrots and radishes are grown right along with flowers in a raised bed:


Tomatoes:


The carrots we harvested today:


There's a couple of pumpkin vines and a strawberry bed too. I think planting them among accepted landscaping plants helps camouflage them a bit. At least the neighbors haven't complained yet...

[grey]

WOW sgtiger! WOW! I love it! I've wanted to do something like that myself, integrating ornamentals with produce in my front yard since it gets more sun than my backyard, but DH pooh-poohs me (and we're moving at some point anyway, might as well keep the easy-care perennials out front). Maybe if I show him your incredible pics he'll be ok with it for our next house. :-)

[badger]

here in the PNW, I've not had a good season. My beans and snow peas did really well, but none of the tomato flowers managed to bear any fruit. They've also very short, too.

My banana and acorn squash that came out of my compost have borne some fruit, but they soon turned yellow and dropped off. My basil's still only about 2" tall and my cilantro only managed to be about 6" before they started blooming. Never quite got the big leaves, just went straight to flowers. It's been rather disappointing.

[spokewench]

I held the squash in my hand and felt this ... vibration ... like it was an appliance that it resembles physically. I opened the blossom and SEVEN honeybees flew out.

Last year I saw not one honeybee on my property. Not one, all year. I am soooooo happy they are back - at least for now.

That is way cool!

[buffybike]

Our front yard gets the most hours of sunlight in a day, so we decided to incorporate some of the veggies there.

There's a couple of pumpkin vines and a strawberry bed too. I think planting them among accepted landscaping plants helps camouflage them a bit. At least the neighbors haven't complained yet...

I'm using part of my front yard to grow herbs and eggplant, as well. I've also grown beans, peppers and tomatoes because it's our sunniest spot. There's a great book called Edible Landscaping if you want more ideas.

[buffybike]

WOW sgtiger! WOW! I love it! I've wanted to do something like that myself, integrating ornamentals with produce in my front yard since it gets more sun than my backyard, but DH pooh-poohs me (and we're moving at some point anyway, might as well keep the easy-care perennials out front). Maybe if I show him your incredible pics he'll be ok with it for our next house. :-)

Google "edible landscaping" and you'd be amazed at how beautiful your front yard can be with some vegetables/fruits thrown in! I'm a huge fan of growing veggies/herbs/fruits in available space. When it comes to landscaping, if I can't eat it, I'm not real motivated to take care of it.

[Serendipity]

WOW sgtiger! WOW! I love it! I've wanted to do something like that myself, integrating ornamentals with produce in my front yard since it gets more sun than my backyard, but DH pooh-poohs me (and we're moving at some point anyway, might as well keep the easy-care perennials out front). Maybe if I show him your incredible pics he'll be ok with it for our next house. :-)

Grey, we've been gradually replacing ornamentals with vegetables. As my DH says, it takes just as much work to look after the ornamentals as the vegetables so why not have the fresh veggies. Last fall we added two raised beds to our front yard and planted carrots, beets, onions, swiss chard, peas, and random dill in the beds. That's my DH picking swiss chard in the rain!

So far, the neighbours have been intrigued more than anything else by the gardens in the front yard. My goal eventually is to replace all of the lawn with a mix of vegetables & ornamentals - but one year at a time!

[smilingcat]

I haven't had any complaints from my neighbors when I turned my front yard into a veggie garden. But that was California.

We now live in very progressive area of Oregon. So I don't expect to have any complaints from my neighbors when I turn the ugly lawn into a veggie garden mixed with native berry plants and evergreen.

In retrospect, maybe having an ugly lawn to start off was the key. Anything else was better than a ugly burnt, weed infested lawn. Lesser of two evils to some

[jobob]

We have 7 (was 8) heirloom tomato plants growing in what used to be our backyard. Most of the tomatoes are finally ripening, here's our first large haul from a few days ago.

We'll be canning crushed tomatoes and making lots of ketchup & tomato jam soon.

from L to R: Brandywine Black, Aunt Ginny's Orange, Texas Star (that's the single tomato), Amazon Chocolate, Hawaiian Pineapple. Still to come: Hugh's, Love Apple.

RIP: Black from Tula (it suddenly started to shrivel up badly so we cut our losses and dug it out; we'll figure out what to do with the dozen or so green tomatoes we salvaged).

[skhill]

A nasty groundhog has been destroying my garden this summer. Any ideas on how to get rid of him? I think he's living in my neighbor's shed.... I've tried scattering some used kitty litter along the fence, but it's not working. In the past, my dog kept the back yard well marked, but he's retired these days, as he can't manage the stairs from the back door.

Luckily, my squash/pumpkin patch is in the side yard, and the @#$%@# groundhog hasn't found it yet. There's also a single, volunteer tomato plant there...

Lots of folk have vegetable gardens in their front yards in my neighborhood-- but then I live on the edge of a really poor neighborhood. On some streets, the yards are really small, and the best light may be in front. There's even one family that's planted okra in the strip between sidewalk and street!

[spokewench]

Well, doesn't look like anyone has posted this year re their garden. I will have to send out a picture. I was a bit worried yesterday since we had a big thunderstorm and some parts of Flag got about 1/2 foot of hail. We were lucky, looks like it rained well, but not too hard and not too much hail. I lost my garden to hail damage completely last year.

So, I'm all happy that there is no hail damage this morning when my cat goes racing out the back door (before being fed, really weird) all slunk down low and moving fast. I thought that my husband left the gate open and that the neighbor's dog might be in the year which happens some times. Well, then the cat goes around the house and comes racing right back in his cat door and back to the back door. He is real low slung and I think wow, there really is something back there.

So, I go back there and two big havelinas are running around in my back yard! It is completely fenced.

I go down to my garden and thankfully, they only ate two squash plants in a pot that I have down there; the rest they have left alone! Thank goodness.

I chase them slowly out the gate and close it. They were pretty cool!

It wasn't too long ago that havelinas did not come up this high, 7,000 feet, but in the last 10 years they have been coming up higher and higher.