re: 2020 Garden Thread

I hope you enjoy those Carmens as much as I have. I eat them like candy. One year they grew large enough to stuff. I laid them on their side in the pan and cut a slit in the top. Stuffed those bad boys and cooked in red gravy. Man, were they good.

Gumbo, I do love the yard longs. I grew a bushel of those things last year in a small garden.

I'm not actually sure they'll fruit
The two light freezes we had killed all the vines almost all the way down. Sure, there's new growth coming in, but I'm unsure if they would need a whole year on established vines to produce fruit.

What did you plant them in?

Neptune's Harvest Tomato & Veg Fertilizer 2-4-2

Give that stuff a try.

That is a big arse herb garden

Damn dude you got a damn stand on the weekends? That’s a lot of mint julip

No, they don’t need fertilizer until the true leaves develop. Then u can just give em half doses of water soluble miracle gro.

Cool . I’d definitely recommend making a trellis for your cucumbers. Is that them on the bottom right? You can use a small piece of cattle panel and fix it to where it stands vertically on that end of the bed, or build a trellis out of twine. There are really a bunch of options. Google “cucumber trellis ideas” or something like that, and you’ll stay busy for awhile. Just make sure you’re not building the trellis in a location where your cucumbers will eventually shade out your other plants.

Tomatoes definitely need support. You can stake them, but just using a stake will require you to keep up with them throughout their growth cycle by continuously tying them off to the stakes. I use tomato cages for mine, and I stake the cages with a single 1x2’ for support. This has worked pretty well and it’s low maintenance. For the indeterminate varieties that get taller than the tomato cage, I take another cage, turn it upside down, and put it on top of the first/bottom cage. I attach the top cage to the bottom cage and the stake with zip ties. If this doesn’t make sense, I can take a photo. I’m at least a few weeks from having plants that tall though.

Also, you can water your transplants in with some water soluble fertilizer (fish emulsion, miracle gro, Texas tomato food, Jobes, fox farm, Neptune’s harvest, etc). I generally do. If you go chemical, like Miracle Gro, I’d do it at half strength just so you don’t unnecessarily stress the plants.

Everyone has different opinions about fertilizing, but I put a handful of granular tomato tone in the ground when I transplant, them side dress (add more around plant base) when the plants start setting fruit, then again every ~3 weeks after that. Tomato tone is an organic fertilizer so your risk of hurting the plants is slim to none. I use it on all my vegetables. I also water the plants with Texas tomato food once every 2 weeks or so. More often for my plants in containers.

Can someone tell me how much I can expect to plant in a 4x8 raised bed. I would like to plant some combination of cherry tomato, a large tomato, bell pepper, jalapeño, banana pepper, or any other easy suggestions for a beginner.

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I actually used tomato cages last year and that was probably the best idea i've had for my gardens in a while. Worked out great and ended up getting great yields.

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They work great for me. Super low maintenance and I haven't felt the need to change to anything else since I started using them. Supporting them really changed the game for me though. The cages by themselves aren't really enough to support a full grown indeterminate plant, especially in wind/rain. Learned all that the hard way.