Gardening - Growing Your Own.

[MasterBlaster]

So, what are the top veggies to grow? Potato's? Carrots? Lettuce?

Let's hear it.

 

[sotc]

Depends on the season. Summer.... Squash, tomatoes, peppers and corn I would say are my top 4

 

[MasterBlaster]

So, talk to me like a noob. I figure, summer you grow stuff and winter you don't.

 

[Paul B]

for us its strawberries, blueberries, spuds, chives. A few individual herb plants as well.

 

[MasterBlaster]

 

[Bodean]

In the winter you can grow winter crops. Croms, bulbs and hearty stuff. Onions.

http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/lawn_..._crops/Louisiana+Vegetable+Planting+Guide.htm

 

[Paul B]

I have 3 tomato plants also but no production yet, it takes a special summer for us to get those working at my place. Lettuce, spinach and parsly just start to bolt here, too short of a photoperiod, they think its fall already.

 

[MasterBlaster]

I still have a 1000 watt HPS hood and ballast, just no bulb. That sucker is BRIGHT!

 

[Paul B]

hm, I gave my 400W metal halide with ballast and batwing reflector to my pops in law a few years ago, I dont think he is using it though, maybe I will get it back someday. made a hella difference with my houseplants when I ran it up.

 

[SouthSoundTree]

You could grow food year round with that addition to the sun, I'll bet.

 

[Old Monkey]

My yard is filled with edibles. Strawberries on front, raspberries and grapes on the side, lettuce, peppers, corn, peas and zucchini in the back. I just planted a blackberry that should give us fruit next year. I also have a couple apple trees. Squash and beans are the easiest to start out with Butch. Cherry tomatoes are pretty fun and easy too.

 

[sotc]

Things like lettuce and beans and peas are Spring and Fall here. Winter squash comes on late fall. Check with your extension office and see if they have a local gardening book.

 

[TheTreeWiseMen]

This year we have; figs, peaches, melons, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and the usual herbs (basil, rosemary etc....) Go for it Chief! Growing stuff is easy and very enjoyable....especially harvest time!

 

[woodworkingboy]

I like potatoes a lot so that is a given for me. I also like eggplant, so I have quite a few planted as well, the smaller local variety. Tomatoes, beans, lettuce, corn, carrots, green peppers and hot peppers, and some greens that aren't much known outside of asia. I planted radishes this year for the first time, a longer variety not the shorter ones. They are quite tasty, not so hot. Also I have a few herbs going.

Butch, some things are particularly easy to grow, but if you have a sunny location and some well drained soil that has nutrient, just about anything will grow. It can take some soil preparation, but once you get into the routine, easy peasy, and something to look forward to each year. Are you close to Doc? I remember a photo of his place, and it looked like there was room for a garden. Nothing in the market tastes nearly as good as fresh picked, generally. Healthy plants are a pleasure to see.

 

[Tree Reb]

Leaf lettuce and Italian or English spinach are really easy to grow and just keep coming up if you let some go to seed.

Oak leaf lettuce last for ages, I've had them two feet tall and still picking leaves.

Too much fruit fly around here now to bother with most things I used to grow like tomatoes and capsicum.

 

[woodworkingboy]

I don't spray against disease, tomatoes will get some for sure. Leaf spot or some mildew thing, it is already in the seeds. Late in the season the disease is pretty rampant, but I still can get a lot of things to eat.

 

[stig]

In the winter you can grow winter crops. Croms, bulbs and hearty stuff. Onions.

http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/lawn_..._crops/Louisiana+Vegetable+Planting+Guide.htm

Frigging Californians

In the winter you can grow snow here. Nothing else.

Even in summers here we can only grow the hardy stuff, which is why I have a large greenhouse and an even larger polytunnel.

Outdoors we grow potatoes, mostly because they are so good when new and small.
Beans aplenty, both those kind where you eat the whole thing and broadbeans.
Several varieties of beets, bok choi, sweat peas, carrots,fennel,kale,garlic, Swiss chard and an assortment of onions.

Under glass and poly we grow tomatoes ( 42 plants of 12 varieties this year) Bell peppers and especially chilies ( Guarillo,Jalapeno and TAM mild Jalapeno) I love jalapenos and can a bunch of them to spice things up during winter.

Then there are the herbs: parsley, summer savory, oregano, merian ( which I use for canning jalapenos) lots and lots of chilantro and basil.I just sowed 40 sweet basil plants and 40 red russet.
You can't have too much basil IMO. I make pesto and freeze it for winter.

We can a lot of stuff and freeze the rest. We have 3 freezers and are lokking for a fourth to hold some of the stuff from the new polytunnel.

We don't do berries much, the deer get into them, but we have some 50 fruit trees: apples, pears, plums and 18 different varieties of cherries.
When the cherries are ripe, friends and neighbours come and pick as many as they want, that is such a fine time.

I don't know what went wrong.
I probably read too much John Seymour at a young and impressionable age

 

[SoonerFan]

In the winter you can grow snow here.

Now that's funny!

 

[Old Monkey]

Don't go disparaging the hardships of a California winter. Sometimes it gets so cold you have to wear a hooded sweatshirt.

 

[Cut4fun]

We do tomatoes, bell, banana, hot and super hot peppers. mostly. Can you say homemade salsa.

Zucchini, cantaloupe, snow pea, cherry tomatoes, etc too.

 

[woodworkingboy]

I live about twenty minutes away from a famous watermelon growing area in the country. Watermelon everywhere! It's also where I grow my taters, a friend has the use of land there. The soil is soft and rich, the color of chocolate, and yields wonderful results. With the vast majority of farmers being old and getting older, it is easy to find land for gardening, either for free or at a pittance. The owners are usually happy to have the weeds kept down. Growing professionally should be a pretty good occupation as time goes along and the suppliers become fewer. Farming has a bad rap, hard work for little return, and young people don't want to touch it. It seems like it wouldn't be all that difficult to make enough to live on, if you were set up. I guess you have to be able to get up before five too, one major drawback for me.

 

[Cut4fun]

The friend that hosted the Ohio GTG raises a 2 or more acres of garden. Then sales to the farmers market or auctions.

He said this is his way of helping to fund his kids college educations in the future.

 

[bonner1040]

"Grow your own"...Vegetables? What a disappointment.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Hey, ya gotta eat. Besides, I already know about the other product.

 

[Al Smith]

I live about 20 miles south of the famous Pandora cantalopes which in season sell relatively cheap ,damned good melons .

The little garden has around 20 tomato plants ,half dozen banana peppers and 5 cucumber plants .It won't have much until mid July early August .