About thirty years ago, I spent a couple hundred dollars and a couple of days building (and working the soil of) a raised-bed garden (*). The only thing the animals around here (I live in the middle of a city of 50K) didn't eat as soon as I planted the garden were the tomatoes ... and since then, the bed has just gone to waste.
This year, I tried to grow tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets ... and a *dear* ate the *green* fruits as they began to get to a useful size.
(*) It was/is an eight-foot by sixteen-foot "E-shaped" (but with four prongs) bed, with three non-raised paths cutting into the rectangle.
2017 was a good year for tomatoes, but our bell peppers and eggplants haven't done anything since 2015. *Every* year is a good year for herbs, though. I've wondered if I shouldn't just ditch the whole vegetable thing and just grow herbs.
Wife kitteh likes the romas because she makes tomato sauce from scratch with them. Still, the peppers and eggplants will be a hard sell with me this year.
Oh, and jalapenos. Those things grow and produce like mad.
Yes, that's kind of the issue with most herbs and spices, you don't actually need very much at any given time, and so one person's herb garden could potentially provide everything needed by an entire small town. So you kind of end up planting herbs mostly for decoration, and just harvest little bits as needed.
And they do really tend to be weedy, probably because the very thing we cultivate them for (strong flavors and odors) are things that the plants evolved as defenses against being eaten. And so very few things other than ourselves actually try to eat them, and once they get out of control they just grow like crazy.
(At the moment, a substantial part of our yard has been colonized by chives, and if we walk through the swampy area north of the house, it smells like walking through a peppermint candy factory)
7 comments:
You're going to have to get cooking!
About thirty years ago, I spent a couple hundred dollars and a couple of days building (and working the soil of) a raised-bed garden (*). The only thing the animals around here (I live in the middle of a city of 50K) didn't eat as soon as I planted the garden were the tomatoes ... and since then, the bed has just gone to waste.
This year, I tried to grow tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets ... and a *dear* ate the *green* fruits as they began to get to a useful size.
(*) It was/is an eight-foot by sixteen-foot "E-shaped" (but with four prongs) bed, with three non-raised paths cutting into the rectangle.
What I'm saying is that I am jealous that you can grow a garden.
2017 was a good year for tomatoes, but our bell peppers and eggplants haven't done anything since 2015. *Every* year is a good year for herbs, though. I've wondered if I shouldn't just ditch the whole vegetable thing and just grow herbs.
Wife kitteh likes the romas because she makes tomato sauce from scratch with them. Still, the peppers and eggplants will be a hard sell with me this year.
Oh, and jalapenos. Those things grow and produce like mad.
Any helpful tips for growing peppers? I'm starting some indoors soon. The growing season isn't very long here.
Yes, that's kind of the issue with most herbs and spices, you don't actually need very much at any given time, and so one person's herb garden could potentially provide everything needed by an entire small town. So you kind of end up planting herbs mostly for decoration, and just harvest little bits as needed.
And they do really tend to be weedy, probably because the very thing we cultivate them for (strong flavors and odors) are things that the plants evolved as defenses against being eaten. And so very few things other than ourselves actually try to eat them, and once they get out of control they just grow like crazy.
(At the moment, a substantial part of our yard has been colonized by chives, and if we walk through the swampy area north of the house, it smells like walking through a peppermint candy factory)
Ivyan, I'm the last person to ask about peppers. Ours produce these tiny, deformed things. Hideous.
Tim, chives are exactly what you describe. They grow like, well, chives and we hardly ever use them.
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