Small Vegetable Garden

dipat2005
dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited July 2021 in The Urban Gardener

I am getting this garden bed ready to plant. it is a strip that is quite long but less than 16inches wide. I plan to plant green beans, (peas in late July), bunching onions, swiss chard, spinach and kale. I have done many 12 inch gardens and the square foot gardening plan before. Like usual I will be using my own method of garden seed tape.

I am hoping to post a picture with this information. This is a before I put the soil down. I just emptied one bag of good soil into already good soil. First I had to remove the rocks. My Great Grandchildren like to paint rocks so I gladly gave the rocks away.

I had hoped to do a raised bed garden but in the interest of time I am opting to add soil including compost, perlite and other good stuff. My sweet granddaughter-in-law gave me some of Nature's Best and I added that to the garden I used last year where I will plant beets, bunching onions, and carrots. It has soil that is really great.

Does anyone else have a garden like this. If this picture loaded correctly it is the small dirt strip to the left of the yellow line. The box is the collector of all things trash.

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Comments

  • Lisa K
    Lisa K Posts: 1,935 ✭✭✭✭✭

    My dad had a garden running along a retaining wall at a house he used to live in. The bottom level of the yard he grew blackberries and the upper level he also grew beans and peas.

  • Monek Marie
    Monek Marie Posts: 3,539 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @dipat2005

    It will be great. I just love seeing small spaces used to their fullest potential.

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I see some beets coming up in the north garden and that is very encouraging.

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Everything seems to be coming out of the ground. Added a little bit of hydrogen peroxide to the watering jugs to see if this improves the growing process. Normally I would spray it on but decided to try something different. If you don't know the Hydrogen Peroxide adds another molecule of oxygen and seems to help.

  • Michelle D
    Michelle D Posts: 1,465 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I have a few strips like that here. I try to grow in them so far with no success. I'm thinking it has to do with how much sun they get. I'm not going to give up. I don't want it to be wasted space.

    @dipat2005 please post pictures of your success. I could use the inspiration. I love that you are making use of everything that you can!

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Michelle D I was saying to myself that I need to take pictures. Everything is coming up like gangbusters. I wanted to make sure that my stuff was getting watered enough so I asked one of my friends if they were watering twice a day (it has been really hot here) and she said morning and evening. So I have been doing that and it has helped.

  • Monek Marie
    Monek Marie Posts: 3,539 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @dipat2005 Do yuou have a mulch layer on your soil?

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Not yet! I don't have much to mulch with. I will look into that. Great idea! I often forget about what needs to be done next! Thanks @Monek Marie

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Since the temperature will be over 100 degrees the next 2 days I contacted a nursery near here and left a message. I was told that to water only once in the morning and to water deeply. I also put on an old sheet over the top to sort of shade the small seedlings.

    I had to leave some uncovered and will see how they do. I will try to take pictures next week. I didn't cover the green beans because they are growing well.

  • VermontCathy
    VermontCathy Posts: 1,987 ✭✭✭✭✭

    You can put a garden almost anywhere. Some people have even planted them in the space between the sidewalk and the street. I posted a year or so ago showing a picture of mustard coming up in the cracks of my garage floor.

    As long as you have sun and the soil can be worked, you can grow something.

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @VermontCathy that is amazing to grow yarrow in the garage! My neighbor grew garlic in the cracks of cement. Seeds are amazing! Last year I was using seeds from 2017 and had trouble with seedlings starting. This year all the seeds are current and they all came up.

    The seedlings did amazing in the heat with a slight cover over them. It got up there in temperature. They even had to postpone the track and field Olympic trials for awhile. They discovered that the track itself got up to 143 degrees.

    I need to plant bean seeds again tomorrow or maybe tonight when the sun isn't shining so brightly on the East side of my apartment.

  • VermontCathy
    VermontCathy Posts: 1,987 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @dipat2005 Some seeds hold up very well from year to year if stored properly, with 3-year old seed having high germination rates. Other seeds, particularly alliums (onions), lose viability very quickly and are hard to store.

    Even some onion multiplier bulbs, particularly red and white potato onions, lose viability so quickly that they have to be fall-planted instead of stored through the winter and spring-planted the next year.

    Everything got off to a slow start this year. My peas are only now forming pods, but none are ready to harvest. It will be July before I get any peas, which is strange for a crop that doesn't like heat. I'm hoping to get a very good pole bean crop this year.

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @VermontCathy thanks for the information. I had already planned to plant peas and onions later in July for the fall crop. Also I could plant beets (small) in a fall crop. I planted beets in the summer crop but for this zone it says to plant in fall. 8b is the planting zone.

  • VermontCathy
    VermontCathy Posts: 1,987 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @dipat2005 Peas should be a wonderful fall crop in zone 8. I have tried them as a fall crop here in zone 4, but only got a good fall harvest one year out of five. I give up on fall peas here, but I get a terrific spring/summer pea harvest. The first peas will be along any time now!

    Multiplier onions make a terrific perennial crop, whether you choose shallots, potato onions, walking onions, spring onions, etc. Commercial agriculture has promoted the annual (really biannual if you want seeds) bulbing onion because it is better suited to machine farming techniques, but after years of trying different methods, I've given up on these in the home garden.

    Lettuce, spinach, mustard, tatsoi, kale, mizuna, mibuna, and similar green leafy vegetables can be grown in both spring and fall. I do both seasons every year. It's slightly easier to grow them in fall, because you are not fighting their tendency to bolt in the heat.

    Really cold-tolerant green vegetables can be fall-started and grown right into winter. Here in zone 4 this requires cold frames or low tunnels, but in zone 8 you could do it in the open garden. These vegetables would include claytonia, giant winter spinach, mache, mibuna, and others. Mache is amazingly tolerant of cold, even freezing.

    One advantage of growing plants from fall into winter is that they will "hibernate" in the depths of winter, then start growing rapidly again as soon as conditions warm up next spring. We were eating huge salads of claytonia and giant winter spinach this spring long before the spring-planted seed lettuce was ready to eat.

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I hope these pictures come through OK. The Green Beans got really big. Earlier in the week I did a second planting of Green Beans. The white speckles all over (egg shells) keep the slugs away. It is the cheap way to make diatomaceous earth. I need to put down some mulch this week.

  • Michelle D
    Michelle D Posts: 1,465 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @dipat2005 thanks for sharing the pictures. It looks great!

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Michelle D we have been having cooler mornings with the marine air. I need to get out and mulch today.

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Once again the Eastern garden gets lots of morning sun and the Northern garden gets less sun. I took a picture of the Eastern garden with the greens in the front and the beans further away (top). It didn't seem that there was any blooming but there are definitely small beans on the plants.


  • Michelle D
    Michelle D Posts: 1,465 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @dipat2005 that's great! I'm glad that your beans are successful.

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I have a small leaf picture and want to know if it is because I am watering from the top. I try to get around the bottom of the plant but not always successful.

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I forgot the picture.

    See question in the post above. Is this from watering on the top or is it the sun.

  • vickeym
    vickeym Posts: 2,134 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I find a lot of our plant leaves are looking like this. This year has been crazy for growing. One day hot enough to melt you and the next cold and rainy. Plants are not liking the temperature swings at all. Many items bolted very quickly and others failed to thrive at all.

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @vickeym thank you for commenting. I had no idea others were having this problem also. It encourages me to keep moving forward. It is supposed to be in the high 90's by the weekend. So here we go again.

  • Michelle D
    Michelle D Posts: 1,465 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I am also having that problem with leaves that are closer to the ground. I assumed that they probably just need more pruning.

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Michelle D thank you. Good to know. I have been really tired this am so I will go out and do that right now.

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Right now the leaves are on top in the middle and there are some in the middle. I am not seeing bugs on the leaves but I am seeing some holes in the leaves (only on a few).

  • dipat2005
    dipat2005 Posts: 1,290 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Michelle D thank you. I appreciate this great site. Last year I had no bugs. I planted the greens in a different spot this year.

  • VermontCathy
    VermontCathy Posts: 1,987 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Most of the holes in vegetable leaves here are either due to snails, Japanese beetles, or slugs. I haven't found chard to be a bug magnet, but I don't grow very much of it.

    Pests can vary a lot from region to region.

  • Michelle D
    Michelle D Posts: 1,465 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @dipat2005 I also have had new bug problems this year when I started planting in a new spot. I still haven't gotten it under control but I'm not giving up! I'm glad the link helped.