Growing haricot verts

The beans (haricot verts and kentucky blue) are doing well growing up the teepee. We pulled plenty off before we left, and another 2 lbs when we returned.

The beans have been a great crop planted in their 3'x3' area, plus the ones that I interplanted with the corn are fruiting. They're providing several dinners worth of vegetables each week.

Untended vegetable garden

Two weeks of vacation left the vegetable garden pretty ravaged. The bunnies have had a field day munching the basil and squash flowers. The tomatoes grew 2 feet and collapsed under their own weight, taking the stakes down with them and smothering the peppers and eggplant. G built a new contraption to hold them up. (Apparently it rained a lot while we were away, plus we had the sprinkler setup on the timer to go off everyday for 30 minutes.) The blight is taking over the tomatoes. I'm hoping that having them upright and better air circulation will help with the blight, but I've lost the yellow tomato altogether.

Still, we pulled about 2 lbs of beans, buckets of grape tomatoes and a dozen cucumbers out of the garden when we returned. I pickled up the green beans with rosemary and lemon

Vegetable Garden Layout

Vegetable gardens can be laid out any number of ways. The single most important consideration is sunlight. Choose a spot that gets AT LEAST 6 hours of sunlight a day.

The size and the design will depend on how much space you have, how much space you can reasonably tend and what you want to grow. No matter how you lay out your vegetable garden, remember that you can only reach about 3 feet with your arm - remember to leave ample foot paths so you will be able to get to your veggies once they are growing.

Our vegetable garden is in the front yard - the only place where we get sufficient sunlight. It's about 14'X21'. We have a single 8'X8' raised bed in the center, surrounded by 3' deep beds, with 3' wide grass pathways (wide enough to allow the push mower and the wheelbarrow through).

Last year, we tried the Square Foot gardening method which suits our small space well. Square foot gardening lays out your vegetable garden of 4'X4' raised beds in 1 foot blocks, with different crops planted densely in each area. I found this worked well for some vegetables - carrots, lettuce and radish thrived in our square foot planting. The tomatoes, beans and cucumbers which were growing vertically using a trellis did not do so well. The tomatoes, particularly, seemed very susceptible to blight.

This year, we tried a variation on the square foot method - maintaining the principle of dense planting, but giving some of the bigger plants more room to grow. Rather than 1 square foot, each tomato enjoy abouts 15"x20". The beans (about 24 plants) climb a trellis in a 9 square foot area, another 30 plants share space with the corn. The cucumbers (about 14 plants) cover about 18 square feet. The carrots and lettuce are planted densely in 1 foot rows. I think the tomatoes are still too close together this year.

The only other consideration in layout is adding beneficial plants to the mix. Onions, garlic, basil and marigold all deter pests. In our small vegetable garden, simply having these plants somewhere in the garden helps.

Growing tomatoes

The tomatoes were struck with blight (tomato blight: Yellowing leaves with black spots). I have pruned off all the parts that were affected - huge swaths of undergrowth. The yellow tomato was pruned almost to death. All this wet weather naturally caused the spread of mold and spot diseases. I believe the blight has spread to the nearby eggplant.

Growing leeks from seed part 3

Leeks started indoors in early March. Here they are at 18 weeks. They are finally beginning to look like leeks and are a little fatter than a pencil. Onion varities are a good addition to the garden since they deter a lot of pests, but so far leeks have been slow and painful. In another 3-4 months, I think they could get there.

Growing Persian Cucumbers (part 2)

After an inauspicious beginning, the cucumbers are looking good. The marketmores that I bought as seedlings are larger, but the persian cucumbers started from seed are no less vigorous. The only effort has been keeping them growing along the trellis. A little bit of string and little bit of bending their tendrils did the trick. There are loads of flowers and many wee cucumbers already forming. The cucumbers were not growing earlier in the season.

Knee high by the 4th of July

In massachusetts the saying for corn is that it should be "knee high by the 4th of July." These stalks, planted May 21st are knee high at 6 weeks. The plentiful rain has been fueling their growth as well as every other week feeding. I've planted pole beans at the base of each stalk.