Garden tips

[dfranksmith]

I'm as ignorant as they come about gardening, but I'd be suprised to see a vine supporting pumpkins or watermelons above the ground. Anway in my case it's a moot point as Wen already convinced me to put in a bigger garden.

 

[dfranksmith]

Bird,

I was only half joking about the Black and Decker leaf vac, you know. Leave the leaf colletion bag at home, but be careful not to spray grasshopper mulch into your boots. My biggest worry would be about the machine gumming up.

Good luck with them anyhow.

 

[Thomas]

Re: Garden tips...Pumpkins.

My brother inlaw grows some great looking pumpkins.

He uses a mixture of whole milk and little sugar,and feeds the pumpkins from old I V bottles and insert the needles at the stem.

Little strange to see about 20 or so I V bottles in his garden feeding pumpkins,all most like something from sci-fi movies....yikes.

Just goes to show us guys up here in the northeast are still amazing....mmmm ??

Thomas..NH

 

[Bird]

Dfelgar, I feel pretty sure that pumpkins and watermelons couldn't be supported above ground, and I really don't even think cantaloupe could be. My father-in-law in West Virginia used to grow his cucumbers on the back fence, and my wife's brother does that here, but I just let those vines spread, too.

Bird

 

[Bird]

Re: Garden tips...Pumpkins.

Thomas, I've thought several times about a book I read when I was a kid that mentioned feeding a pumpkin like that. I can't remember what the book was, but it was a fictional kids' novel of some kind, so I've wondered whether that was actually ever done or not, but I've never seen it done.

There are so many varieties of every fruit and vegetable nowadays that I don't know how to decide which seed to buy. I think every year for the past 4 years, I've planted a different variety of cantaloupe, watermelon, and pumpkin. Sometimes I have fairly large ones and sometimes very small ones. This year I planted some "Big Max" pumpkins on 3/13/00 and at least 3 of them are basketball size so far.

Bird

 

[W5FL]

The cantalope is called SUGAR QUEEN from Wilhite Seed Company. The cost of the seeds is a staggering $25 per ounce. I can remember when that would buy GOLD. The cantalopes are the best I have ever eaten and they are very prolific. Not at all unusual to go out and pick a dozen or so that will weigh OVER 100 pounds for the lot or over 8 - 9 pounds each. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[gordon]

Just remember bigger is not always better in a garden. If you start off with a large garden its easy to be over whelmed once the weeding starts and your left with a weed garden before you know it. Start small and plant a few different things and then branch out from there.
There is another way to garden different than the straight row garden. Its called a square foot garden where plants are pretty much planted on top of each other and the great thing about it is LESS weeding.
Good luck with your garden
Gordon

 

[gordon]

I use a concrete wire to cage my tomatos works great and the same for the cukes takes less space and less bugs from the ground when in the air. Also much easier to pick standing up rather than kneeling.
Gordon

 

[W5FL]

I really like the concrete wire tomato cages.

Bird and I have to plant enough for the grasshoppers, too. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[TomG]

Another way to use a small space is called inter-cropping. The idea is to plant late maturing crops right next to early crops. The early crop is harvested, the plants taken out, and the late crop takes over.

A friend perfected inter-cropping. He presented his garden at a meeting, and a government guy wouldn't believe he could get that much production from his sized plot. It does takes a bit of research to figure which crops will inter-crop. I can't remember much, but I think peas (on poles) were one of the early crops.

My friend also harvested Jalipano and Big Jim peppers in Ontario, Canada by starting the seeds indoors during January. Starting seeds indoors is a way of growing crops in areas where the growing season isn't long enough. The idea also can get more production out of a small plot. Start and early crop indoors, harvest it, and plant another early crop. However, sometimes the second crop won't taste real good if the weather gets hot.

My friend and his wife did spend a lot of time gardening, and it's surprising what can be gotten from a small plot--sometimes even surprising the gardener. He reportedly stormed out of the house one evening after dinner and ripped out all the zucchini plants. Said that he had eaten zucchini in some form two meals a day for several weeks, and there was 20 lbs. or so in the freezer. The plants just wouldn't stop, and he couldn't take it any more.