A few good tips on warm season vegetable gardening:
Peppers
Buy as transplant Must have full sun, don’t crowd them, they like a little air, but you can plant in pairs. Probably good to pair with like size bushes. Usually fall harvest is bigger than spring harvest. Beware snails, slugs, and nematodes. Encourage pollinators nearby, easy to over water. Maximize heat, dryness and ripeness.
Beans
I like bush beans, easy to sprout, you get two harvests and then you pull. Beans are very easy from seed, but are annoying to pick. Good to get a yellow variety to tell when ripe. Under ripe beans are tasty too. Best to plant in rounds, plant four week 1, and then four more week 2, and so on, extend your harvest.
Cucumber
Grow from seed in ground, simply have to go up on a trellis or a pole or something. Pick your cucumbers when small. Squash vine borers, squash bugs, spider mites solutions.
Squashes
Easy from seed. There are vines and bush varieties, need space or trellising for vine varieties, I love scallop/pattypan squash, easy to cook and eat. Squash bine borer, squash bug, spider mites, leaves sensitive to water diseases.
Eggplants
Can be a very lovely plant, very pretty flowers, Italian large varieties or Chinese long varieties, both are way less bitter than store bought eggplant. One vegetable gardening tip is to pick when underripe, yellow is ripe, and super bitter, when it’s the size you want, harvest and eat. Eggplant is best straight from the garden through your kitchen to your table. Sometimes hard to grow from seed, a good one to grow from transplant.
Okra
A southern tradition, hard to grow up north, loves our heat and clay. Yes, our clay. Once established in warm weather Okra can grow fast. And produce very heavily, eat when small, 3 inches, harvest twice a day. Root knot nematodes. Very pretty flowers. Easy to start with seed, plant exactly ½ inch.
Tomato
Loves light, consistent watering. Minerals, fertilizer make better fruit. Several caterpillars, spider mites, leaf-footed bug, birds and squirrels. Don’t water every day. Bird bath.
Vegetable Gardening Dont’s
- Don’t Set it and forget it, Spend time in garden, your shadow is the best thing you can add to your garden.
- Don’t keep vegetable gardening secrets; Encourage others to garden, tell stories
- Don’t respond to every insect as a pest, most are neutral, many are beneficial
- Don’t think rigidly, many ways to garden. A chance for creativity
- Don’t overfill your garden; veggie plants like air, esp. toms, pots, eggs, squash, and melons
- Don’t use high nitrogen fertilizer in your garden. This stuff is going inside you.
Vegetable Gardening Do’s
- Respond to every insect as a pest, most are neutral, many are beneficial. Ask questions of problems or pests, have pictures.
- Stop eating garbage. Your garden will let you eat better than you ever have.
- Pay attention to pollinators, you need the bees.
- Maximize your vegetable gardening space!
- Take risks, push the envelope, seeds are cheap, but most veggies are seasonal.
- Over Water, light but consistent. Do not forget the mulch!
- Always use good organic fertilizer.
- Step onto your garden soil; make paths. This is a lovely design element.