re: 2023 Spring Garden Thread

Started these from suckers. Stuck them in the dirt about 3 weeks ago and made sure to keep moist.

IDK if I'm going to plant them or not because I'm tired of tomatoes. We put up 4 gallons of sauce already. I also have 3 Amish Paste plants started from seed. I'll feel bad throwing them away, though.

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I usually do broccoli, cauliflower, mustard greens, collards, cabbage, carrots, onions, and garlic.

This year I'll probably just do cabbage, mustard greens, carrots, and onions. Maybe garlic, too.

Other good fall veggies are brussel sprouts, swiss chard, turnips, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, beets, radishes, spinach....to name a few.

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I usually do broccoli, cauliflower, mustard greens, collards, cabbage, carrots, onions, and garlic.

This year I'll probably just do cabbage, mustard greens, carrots, and onions. Maybe garlic, too.

Other good fall veggies are brussel sprouts, swiss chard, turnips, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, beets, radishes, spinach....to name a few.

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do you start from seeds or seedlings from the store? and when to plant the seeds? now?

wildflowers (zinnias, sunflowers, black eyed Susan’s) planted in may, blooming in July

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do you start from seeds or seedlings from the store? and when to plant the seeds? now?

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Either/or on all of the above with a couple exceptions (carrots and turnips should be direct seeded). Look at the LSU ag center guide linked in the OP for timing. Those are all cool season crops. Fall planting is tricky: too early and you have this damn heat, too late and you have short days with low sun angle. Most of those cool season crops do fine (or are even enhanced) with a light frost, so as long as you have enough Oct/Nov sunlight, I would not rush fall planting.

Last year (in SETX at least) we hadn't had anything close to freezing, then all of a sudden the day before Christmas eve it was 16 degrees. That's a much different thing than 30 degrees for 2 hours (i.e. light frost).

Okra looking pretty good. Cajun delight in the foreground and Clemson spineless in the row behind it.

One thing I'd like to add as a "lesson learned" is landscape cloth. It's a game changer. Not the cheap shite you get from Lowe's but the good stuff. I bought a 500ft roll off of Zon and it absolutely changed my garden this year.

Keeps weeds to a minimum and has great moisture retention. I bought all the stuff to do drip irrigation and made all the leads up but didn't need it. I mulched with a good hay from the local co-op but I honestly don't think I needed the high dollar stuff. Any old hay will work as a mulch.

All of my peppers, maters, cukes, squash, zukes, and cabbage were planted in the cloth and the yields were the best I ever had.

Highly recommend the high end landscape cloth.

I think a heavy mulch layer is more beneficial than the cloth. I use it on several of my rows. But the row I skimped on the pine straw has had the poorest results. All the rows have irrigation to the plants.

Did whack a SVB on my butternut plant this morning. Doesn’t seem to matter what bed I put them in, they find the plants. Trying one last time for an okra crop. Hopefully these take off so I can get some in freezer before duck season. Peppers and eggplants are on a tear. But sun scald has been an issue with the peppers.

Did black beans a few years ago. Just wasn’t worth the squeeze for me. Too much space and TLC for a couple lbs of dried beans. Got purple hulls loaded with blooms right now.

50% Sun Shade sold by Lowes is the ticket.