Re: Garden Geeks thread
Thinking about starting tomato seeds soon, for the temperate northeast. When first transplanting the seedlings outdoors, those translucent gallon jugs that milk comes in can be handy, just cut off the bottom and stick one over each of the plants in the evening.
Oops, forgot a preliminary step. We cover our beds in black plastic in the fall, so that in the early spring the sun on the black warms the ground underneath, while the plastic keeps weeds from growing. By digging fallen leaves into the soil in the fall, the heat generated from covering the beds really hastens decomposition and replenishes the soil.
Growing multiple tomato plants vertically works really well for us. If you look carefully, at each leaf junction with the stem, a new side stem also starts to grow. If you faithfully pinch off every one of those side stems, you can get a plant to grow about 12 feet high or so, making it really easy to harvest. In good years we cannot even eat all the tomatoes we grow this way, and have gallons of sauce left over, without taking up too much ground. In a 2' x 12' bed you can fit 10 or 11 plants this way. On hot summer days they will grow more than an inch each day!
For green beans, strongly recommend a bush bean variety called "haricot vert" (which is French for "green bean"!). Plant them in sets a week apart or so and harvest half every other week, you can get recurring sustainable weekly yield for around eight weeks total.
Thinking about starting tomato seeds soon, for the temperate northeast. When first transplanting the seedlings outdoors, those translucent gallon jugs that milk comes in can be handy, just cut off the bottom and stick one over each of the plants in the evening.
Oops, forgot a preliminary step. We cover our beds in black plastic in the fall, so that in the early spring the sun on the black warms the ground underneath, while the plastic keeps weeds from growing. By digging fallen leaves into the soil in the fall, the heat generated from covering the beds really hastens decomposition and replenishes the soil.
Growing multiple tomato plants vertically works really well for us. If you look carefully, at each leaf junction with the stem, a new side stem also starts to grow. If you faithfully pinch off every one of those side stems, you can get a plant to grow about 12 feet high or so, making it really easy to harvest. In good years we cannot even eat all the tomatoes we grow this way, and have gallons of sauce left over, without taking up too much ground. In a 2' x 12' bed you can fit 10 or 11 plants this way. On hot summer days they will grow more than an inch each day!
For green beans, strongly recommend a bush bean variety called "haricot vert" (which is French for "green bean"!). Plant them in sets a week apart or so and harvest half every other week, you can get recurring sustainable weekly yield for around eight weeks total.
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