Need some Gardening help

lovemywig

Tue, Feb 23 2010, 10:13 pm

I live in brooklyn and would like to make a floral patch with some veggies as in peppers cucumbers and maybe grape tomatoes.
I want to start the seeds at home and then replant in the garden.

My questions are as follows

When do I start planting the seeds?

Are cucumbers, peppers and grape tomatoes a good option for brooklyn?

Do I need a certain size pot?

Does grape tomatoes bring insects?

Can I plant the flowers with the veggies?

Thank you for taking the time and helping me out.

reed

Tue, Feb 23 2010, 10:57 pm

While I can't answer all of your questions, I can tell you what we did in our Brooklyn backyard.

Cucumbers, peppers and grape tomatoes all sound like good options for a home garden. I generally found that we did better with smaller varieties, especially tomatoes and peppers, as they were more likely to make it to maturity. The larger varieties were often eaten by various insects before they fully ripened.

Make sure you have a really sunny spot, as these all do best with lots of sunshine. We saw quite a difference when we planted in different locations .

We weren't particularly successful with starting seed indoors. Perhaps we were doing something wrong. Besides, these plants seemed to attract little flies. We were more successful with the vegetable plants that we purchased. We also did quite well planting cucumber seed directly in the ground around the end of May or later - when it was warm enough to put plants outdoors.

Regarding flowers with veggies - some flowers, I think marigolds are one example, are said to be beneficial near tomato plants. They either attract the insects they need, or repel the ones they don't. I don't remember which...

I don't know what your goals are with planting. Even though we didn't always end up saving much on our food bills by the time we were done, I found it to be a marvelous teaching tool for our children. For starters, they see the miracles of putting seed into the ground, and watching it grow. They learn that it grows from the ground, not at the supermarket. They learn to take care of something, and take great pride in sharing their accomplishments when they pick the produce. And there's nothing like enjoying a fresh salad with fresh vine ripened vegetables. Enjoy!

lovemywig

Wed, Feb 24 2010, 7:53 pm

Can we get more answeres.

Last edited by lovemywig on Thu, Feb 25 2010, 1:28 pm; edited 1 time in total

skcomputer

Wed, Feb 24 2010, 8:59 pm

lovemywig wrote:

I live in brooklyn and would like to make a floral patch with some veggies as in peppers cucumbers and maybe grape tomatoes.
I want to start the seeds at home and then replant in the garden.
My questions are as follows
When do I start planting the seeds?
Are cucumbers, peppers and grape tomatoes a good option for brooklyn?
Do I need a certain size pot?
Does grape tomatoes bring insects?
Can I plant the flowers with the veggies?
Thank you for taking the time and helping me out.

Not in Brooklyn, but I'll try to help. You definitely need to pick a location with a lot of sun for tomatoes and cukes. Peppers can do with some filtered sun or not a full day of sun. All will be fine in Brooklyn - plant outside early to mid-May, but listen to the overnight forecast until Memorial day and cover the plants if it will be 34ish or below.

Starting plants from seed is actually quite tricky, esp for getting a thick tomato started, so I always buy started plants. Last year, I tracked the price versus yield and it was still a good deal to buy seedlings. If you start seeds in the house, they need full sun during the day, cold at night and you start about a month before they're ready to go outside. When you transplant the tomato seedlings bury the plant into the dirt up to the first real leaves (deep is good).

Due to heavily lead soil, I have to do all gardening in containers with new soil. I use large pots and put them on the stairs of my front porch. The pots hold about the size of a cubic square foot of soil. The pots need a drainage hole in the bottom. As a matter of fact, you can get a book from the library or Google square-foot gardening which tells you exactly what plants you can grow in 1 foot of garden or container. Use fertilizer that matches that plant you're growing, which will give a better yield (you can find natural/organic fertilizers). Manure and peet moss are good mix-ins for the soil. Container plants need A LOT of water - every day in the heat of the summer. On really hot days, I watered twice. It helped to cut the bottom off a 2 liter soda bottle and put it upside down into the dirt and let the water seep in during the day.

Both tomatoes and pepper will need stakes to keep them growing upright. Cukes will trail along the ground or you can train them to a trellis. None of these veggies will naturally attract bugs.

If you're using a container, don't also plant flowers in the same container - too much stress on the soil. If you want the look, intersperse smaller containers with flowers along with the veggie containers. If you're growing in the ground, use flowers about a foot away from the veggie plants.

You can also try peas (which are an early crop and will finish mid-summer), green beans, and zucchini, if you like them. You can also try lettuce, radish (both early crops), herbs, parsley. If you have very curious animals (squirrels, birds) in your neighborhood, you can get a mesh netting in a store like Home Depot and they won't be able to figure out how to get to the veggies.

Good luck! Post if you have more questions.

skcomputer

Wed, Feb 24 2010, 9:03 pm

One more thing you should know. Certain trees give off chemicals into the ground (a black walnut tree is one example) that cause tomato plants not to grow well. Google for juglone.

sky

Wed, Feb 24 2010, 9:05 pm

I'm in NJ.
I buy the plants planted small from a Green house. Its cheaper then Lowe's and I find the plants hartier then when I grow the seeds. I did seeds last year but don't remember when I started. The plants gre but I didn't get too much fruit compared to the plants I bought already planted

Cucumbers, zuchhini, tomatoes, baby tomatoes, peppers, eggplant are all easy to grow.

I like baby tomatoes the best because they grow fast and don't take too long for animals (namely the racoon who lives under our porch) to eat them. Its also fun for the kids to pick. I did not have a bug problem

(don't plant corn - that grew unbelievable from seeds, but uses a lot of room, and was infested with bugs)

To plant seeds check out Lowe's. They have starter kits to allow you to plant the seeds. I found the paper ones grew more mold then the plastic (if you spray with Hydrogen Poroxide it killed the growth).

Use Miracle Grow. It really does make the plants grow bigger and better.

The only flowers I planted were sunflowers from seeds.

sky

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 11:57 am

I wanted to say that my sqaushes (zuchhini, acorn, etc) from seeds did grow well. Just not the tomatoes.

DefyGravity

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 12:06 pm

If you decide to grow tomatoes from seed, you should start growing them inside 6-8 weeks before you put them outside, so you'd need to do this very soon. We always buy plants and plant them in the beginning of May. We've grown several different types of tomatoes and have finally settled on Roma tomatoes because they're a nice medium size and we don't have to wait for them all summer.

We grow cucumbers from seeds.

We always plant marigolds around the perimeter of the garden because we've found that they keep away insects. We also grow lots of herbs and think that keeps the bugs away as well. The bees also LOVE the basil, so that's great for us!

lovemywig

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 12:51 pm

[quote="skcomputer"]

lovemywig wrote:

Both tomatoes and pepper will need stakes to keep them growing upright. Cukes will trail along the ground or you can train them to a trellis. None of these veggies will naturally attract bugs.

.

Can you explain what do you mean with train them in a trellis?

lovemywig

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 12:55 pm

So can I use marigolds with the veggies or not? Also I want to do cherry tomatoes, can I get a little bush with it or how else does that grow?

I want to order my seeds from burpee bcz I like the diff variety from sunflowers. I want to do the traditional 6ft tall ones and fuzzy smaller ones too.

DefyGravity

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 12:56 pm

You plant the seeds next to a trellis or you can use tomato stakes

When the cucumber plants come up, you tie them so they attach to the stake or trellis. After a little bit, they'll grab on themselves. Oftentimes you don't need to tie them at all.

DefyGravity

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 1:00 pm

lovemywig wrote:

Yes, you should plant marigolds. When you plant the tomato plant, you need to put it inside a tomato cage (shown in the picture in my post above), they get very tall, and if they're not supported by a cage or attached to a stake, they fall over. If you're growing it from seeds in the house, you don't need the cage until you transplant it outside.

My best advice to you is to get books from the library. Gardening is ALL trial and error, but you'll be helped by reading books. When DH first started the garden, he knew nothing at all about gardening, but he read books and now we're on our 4th garden and we get tons of veggies from it.

lovemywig

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 4:31 pm

DefyGravity wrote:

You plant the seeds next to a trellis or you can use tomato stakes

When the cucumber plants come up, you tie them so they attach to the stake or trellis. After a little bit, they'll grab on themselves. Oftentimes you don't need to tie them at all.

Your pic is very helpfull thanks.

I will get a book from barns n nobles do u know of a great book.

do the peppers also need this trellis?

lovemywig

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 4:47 pm

Defygravity what Herbs are you planting? Dont I have to worry about worms? I would love to do parsley, rosemary and sweet leaf stevia. Can herbs be planted in pots?

DefyGravity

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 4:55 pm

Bell peppers also need cages or stakes.

Are you worried about worms killing the herbs or checking for insects when you use the herbs? You do have to check the herbs for bugs, but we've never had problems with bugs killing the herbs. Herbs are very resilient. We plant Italian parsley, rosemary, sage (comes back every year), oregano (also perennial), thyme. I stopped planting dill and cilantro because it was too annoying to check.

You can definitely plant herbs in pots. You can plant most vegetables in pots. My uncle has a huge garden full of mostly eggplant and zucchini, and he grows nearly all of them out of pots.

reed

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 7:02 pm

sky wrote:

I wanted to say that my sqaushes (zuchhini, acorn, etc) from seeds did grow well. Just not the tomatoes.

My squash grew nicely from seeds, but got some powder-like fungus by the time the first ones started ripening. Ultimately it killed the plants. Has anyone ever had that? Any suggestions to prevent / deal with this?

skcomputer

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 7:20 pm

lovemywig wrote:

Both tomatoes and pepper will need stakes to keep them growing upright. Cukes will trail along the ground or you can train them to a trellis. None of these veggies will naturally attract bugs.

Can you explain what do you mean with train them in a trellis?

You can get a tomato cage or a trellis (flat) from a place like Home Depot. As the shoots of the cuke grow, you can weave them up into the cage or trellis. They put out little tendrils and grip on and you can save space that way. Google for tomato cage and you can see some pictures, but you can improvise any way you want. Maybe a chain link fence if you have that in your yard

skcomputer

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 7:22 pm

If you grow marigolds, save the seeds at the end of the season from the dead flower heads and you can use them next year!

sky

Thu, Feb 25 2010, 7:39 pm

reed wrote:

sky wrote:

I wanted to say that my sqaushes (zuchhini, acorn, etc) from seeds did grow well. Just not the tomatoes.

My plants last year grew a fungus before I transplanted them outside (I don't know if it was fungus, but it was something growing.) I read online to shpritz it with diluted hydrogen peroxide and that seemed to clear it up.