What did you plant in your garden this year?

[Pelado]

The main reason I even do a garden (when I do a garden) is for the fresh green beans. I like to be able to come home in the evening, pick a handful of fresh green beans, and cook them up for dinner each night. So of course I have green beans in the garden. Frustratingly, they have not yet produced anything this season.

I've also got some tomatoes, green and red bell peppers, spaghetti squash, and cucumbers in the main vegetable garden. Off in another corner near the raspberries, I planted some asparagus starts this season. They told me not to expect much from them this year, but that they should produce pretty well next year. I'm glad my expectations were low. The asparagus has come up but doesn't exactly have my mouth watering yet.

Oh, I also planted a bunch of radish seed early in the season that we harvested when planting everything else.

Though I don't really think of these as "garden" plants - around Mother's Day I planted some geraniums and impatients in the front flower beds interspersed with the existing rose bushes. They look a lot better than the flowers have in the past. First, I finally installed a soaker hose system so they get good, consistent but not overpowering water (unlike the previous sprinkler setup). Second, I finally started using bark for ground cover around the flowers which has drastically cut back on weed growth.

So what did you plant this year? Any of it growing?

[Bo Diddley]

My favorite part of the garden is basil and roma tomatoes. I love to make a caprese sandwich, throw it on a pizza, in a pasta dish, in a salad, pretty much everything. I had a few before I left, but now I'm gone for the rest of the summer.

[hostile]

Roma and San Marzano tomotoes - fresh salads and for canning / sauce over the winter
Basil, arugula, rosemary
Lettuce, spinach
Green/red peppers; cucumbers
Apples/plums.

[Pelado]

Roma and San Marzano tomotoes - fresh salads and for canning / sauce over the winter
Basil, arugula, rosemary
Lettuce, spinach
Green/red peppers; cucumbers
Apples/plums.

New apple/plum trees?

[hostile]

New apple/plum trees?

No. We've had them for several years. The plums produce every other year so this year we'll be doing plum jelly

[Jeff Lebowski]

A pluot tree.


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[Applejack]

This is a thread I can dig!

Greens (lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, kale) were planted and harvested.
Snap peas too.
I have tomatoes that are close to being ready.
I planted green beans at the end of June, so we'll see how those do. Also planted watermelons, cantelope and butternut squash in June.
Also planted raspberry bushes, but they take at least a year to bear fruit.

I have strawberry plants which have grown like crazy, but have given me no fruit. It's the second year for them so I've been waiting patiently for my fresh strawberries. Bummer. Anyone have experience growing strawberries?

,,
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[hostile]

This is a thread I can dig!

Greens (lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, kale) were planted and harvested.
Snap peas too.
I have tomatoes that are close to being ready.
I planted green beans at the end of June, so we'll see how those do. Also planted watermelons, cantelope and butternut squash in June.
Also planted raspberry bushes, but they take at least a year to bear fruit.

I have strawberry plants which have grown like crazy, but have given me no fruit. It's the second year for them so I've been waiting patiently for my fresh strawberries. Bummer. Anyone have experience growing strawberries?

,,
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I've tried strawberries but they take quite a bit of water and effort. Results were always disappointing. Few, small berries. My parents have converted about half their garden to raspberries and Concord grapes. Now that no kids are at home they ask the grandkids to come over and pick. We usually get about 1 gallon of raspberries/week when they are in full production

[BigFatMeanie]

Strawberries are difficult to grow, especially in Utah.

Things I plant yearly/permanently:

• Green beans - Easy to grow, we also bottle them and eat them throughout the year.
• Corn - Fresh picked sweet corn is the best. Corn sugar turns to starch as soon as you start picking so sweet corn, like tomatoes, are always better home-grown. The main downside with corn is that it requires a lot of space and is pretty hard on the soil so it's best to rotate it and use fertilizer.
• Tomatoes - Anyone that thinks a store-bought tomato is better than a home-grown one is crazy. 16 plants, 4 varieties. I used to try heirloom varieties but they're harder to grow and are more susceptible to disease and insect. So now I stick with hybrid and just buy seeds each year and start them indoors. Utah is pretty hot for tomatoes so I keep mine under a 40% shade cloth and it helps prevent blossom drop.
• Pumpkins - for Halloween, the great big 100+ lb kind.
• Raspberries do fairly well in Utah when they're planted on a north-facing side so they don't get too much heat and when you prune them properly, which is relatively easy. I'm getting loads and loads of raspberries from my canes right now, enough to make a fresh raspberry pie every other day.

Things I used to plant but don't anymore

• Peas - easy to grow but not worth the space/effort. You plant them and water them and then you pick and pick and pick and pick, and then you shell and shell and shell and shell, and at the end of your efforts you have a bowl of peas that don't taste any better than the $0.99 bag of frozen peas you get at the grocery store. It's just not worth the garden space for me.
• Onions - same as the peas, a homegrown onion doesn't taste any better or add any more value than onions at the store. Not worth the space. Yeah, yeah, people plant them for salsa gardens. I make salsa too but I just buy the onions, no need waste space on them.
• Potatoes - utter waste of space. You can buy a 10lb bag of potatoes for cheap.
• Broccoli - Took a little practice but it's not too hard to grow if you plant early. Susceptible to cutworms in Utah. I'm not sure why I don't plant this anymore. Lazy, mainly.
• Carrots - not worth the space.
• Strawberries - Hard to grow. I suck at them. I've just never had good luck with strawberries.
• Blackberries - Harder to prune correctly than raspberries and not as useful. I took them out.
• Radishes - Easy to grow but don't add much value and not worth the space. Who eats radishes that often anyway?
• Asparagus - The problem is they need a permanent location and I like to rotate stuff.

Things I grow occasionally when I'm going to can them

• Cucumbers - for pickling using Wuap's recipe. We got enough a couple years ago that we're still not through them so we only plant these on an as-needed basis.
• Jalapenos - for canning. We only plant these on an as-needed basis. Still working through our supply from past years

Things I will never plant in my garden under any circumstances

• Zucchini - Vile weed. Has no flavor. Is a garbage vegetable used as a fiber filler in recipes. Might as well just eat wood cellulose.
• Squash of any variety - There is a reason everyone is giving away zucchini and squash from their gardens each year but very few people are giving away tomatoes or corn from their gardens. Squash sucks. Only geriatric fogeys eat squash. Like that old geezer on the Chuck-a-Rama commercial on the radio where he says, "I go back 2 or 3 times for the squash". Gag
• Beets - Gross. I don't know what is worse, beets or squash.

[Lost Student]

[*]Beets - Gross. I don't know what is worse, beets or squash.[/LIST]

You just made Dwight Schr-ute's shit list, buddy.
dwight-feature-1.jpg

[Pelado]

Took the kids to the garden a couple of times this last week for a weeding party. It was sorely needed. Was starting to look like a rainforest in there. Had to really look carefully to distinguish some of the plants from all the weeds. Put down some landscape fabric between the rows to try and prevent future weed growth. We'll see how effective it is.

I've started harvesting the green beans. They taste pretty good. The tomato plants are large and in charge. Lots of tomato growth, but nothing very ripe yet. The spaghetti squash plant seems to be doing pretty well. I've seen lots of flowers on it lately, so I'm expecting it to start producing squash soon. The cucumber plant has not flourished as I expected, perhaps because of all the weeds crowding it out. The bell pepper plants seem to just be hanging on through all this heat. Not much in the way of production or flowering for the bell peppers.

[Pelado]

No. We've had them for several years. The plums produce every other year so this year we'll be doing plum jelly

We had apple trees and a plum tree growing up. The apples were a small green variety and always had worm holes and such. The plums were quite delicious. One year, we harvested most all of the plums in early August.

My older sister was having her wedding reception in our back yard. As such, we did a lot to try to pretty up the place. All the plums on the tree were weighing down the branches right where people were going to be walking to get into the back yard. My dad had us wait until the morning of the wedding/reception to harvest the plums so they could get as ripe as possible without impeding the guests from making it to the back yard. My 10-year-old self was pretty surprised at how much higher the branches were after the plums had been picked.

We also had peach, pear, cherry, and walnut trees. We had seeded and seedless grape vines. We had a huge raspberry patch. And a lot of other garden space for corn, carrots, asparagus (one of my favorites), etc. Most of our garden space, including the raspberries, got converted to grass as I got older. Then, after my mom sold the place, the area that had housed our shed (with potato cellar), garden, apple trees, plum tree, and cherry tree was subdivided off into a small home lot.

[Pelado]

Who knows what they're planting in the garden this season?

I have a question for the CS vegetation experts. Who can identify this flower? I noticed a few of them popping up in one of our flower beds. It's possible that they are perennials that we planted a couple of seasons ago, but I don't remember any of these coming up last year.

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[mtnbiker]

Aster.
scroll down to item 5. https://www.thespruce.com/plants-wit...lowers-2539985

[Pelado]

Aster.
scroll down to item 5. https://www.thespruce.com/plants-wit...lowers-2539985

Thank you. This seems odd, given that they are popping up before most anything else in my yard:

Plan on late season blooms from asters, balancing out a garden of early blooming flowers.

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