How many people here know anything about growing a vegetable garden?

I am working one with tomatoes, snap beans, squash, and cucumbers (small plot of land). Everything seems to really healthy, just growing slow. I have side dressed all my plants, get plenty of water and sunlight, and weed everyday.

What would be causing the plants to grow so slow?

I planted before some people planted their gardens, and they are already harvesting.

 

May be the type of fertilizer you are using? My dad always piled cow pies on the garden during the off months and tilled it all up real good before planting. Rough soil conditions might be slowing you down too. I don't know what you did but getting a good 8 inch deep tilling in before planting helps. If you have real hard soil you might even want to get a little deeper than that. If it is a tilling problem about the only suggestion I could give you is to areate the soil by taking long thin spikes and poking the ground around all over. I suppose you could take a board and drive some really long nails through it. This will break up the soil a bit. You might also want to get some bulk manuer and spread it around.

 

Just leave it to the growing experts and support your local farmers.
They need your support. Go buy your vegetables in the store.

 

What do you mean with side dressed ?

 

While working in the greenhouse taking care of my tomatoes, I thought about your problem.

You said, your crops are growing slow but maybe they are in excellent condition and it needs time for the tomatoes and cucumbers to grow to their final size.
Maybe the other crops are in a bad condition and that's why they harvest sooner.
How much sooner is that?
It means, your tomatoes and cucumbers will only be bigger than the rest of your neighbours.

What kind of water are you giving them, not to salty I hope.
Also make sure the soil is moisture enough 2 spades (25 inches) deep.
I see you are from Texas, pretty warm out there.
Try to water your plants early in the morning or late in the evening when it's cooled off.
Otherwise you might get a root problem.
Pythium and Phytophtera are root problems.
Look at the root where it goes into the soil.
They look ok, no black or brown spots going to the center of the stem or something.
You said, your crops look healthy so it may be not a root problem.

When it's hot and your crops are under a strain and you have lots of vegetables hanging from a plant, you easly can get this root problem. Also use fresh water to water your plants.

It usually takes 60 days for me to pick the first tomatoes.
I will upload some pictures tonight.

*****
I was wondering, you are growing vegetables just for fun or to save some bucks?
You happen to know the going price for tomatoes in the store.
Growers here are getting $.75 per kilo. (1 kilo=2.2 Lbs)

 

http://www.miraclegro.com/

 

Our garden loves my neighbors horse crap. (Aged a bit though.) Unfortunately, the weeds love it too.

 

Absolutely wonderful input.

I forgot to mention that the tomatoes are doing great. they are almost about chest tall and FULL of tomatoes. I actually picked a couple last night.

What I mean by side dress is fertiziling the plants by digging a hole (3-4 inches deep) next to the plant and putting 1 table spoon of fertilizer in the hole and covering it up.

I am guessing that the side dress is finally kicking in too. My squash looks great. Plants are more full, leaves are huge and I have a couple of blooms. All of these changes have taken place in the last 24 hours.

I have it saved in my favorites...thanks


Where's the fun in that?

 

Thanks for clearing that up.

Before I am cultivating the soil, a laboratry is taking a sample of the soil and they tell me exactely what fertilizer to use and how much.
Later on, about 5 weeks. I am watering the plants with fertilizer solved (Gr? Sp?) in it.

So how did they taste, your homegrown tomatoes?

Phock the , we need a :tomatoe: here.

 

Juicy, and firm. They were great.

Once they start putting out more fruit, maybe I'll send ya some

 

What a difference a few miles make. I just got some starter tomatoes last night and am going to plant today. Our growing season is quite a bit shorter than yours. I have read a little on which plants do not like each other and will do better away from them. Tomatoes do not like potatoes. Did you plant some nearby? You will find more on the net about which ones like each other. They will do better surrounded by plants they like. Sounds strange but does seem to work.

 

Good tip.

I have my tomatoes next to my bell peppers. They work well together. Potatoes do take alot of the nutrients that tomatoes need, actually, I cant think of any plant that would grow good next to potatoes.

Also, I had my squash a lil too close together. I thinned them out (20-24 inches apart now) so they would not be fighting for the nutrients. Makes for a stronger plant, and a better harvest

 

Speaking of potatoes; I plant a potato plant and throw a tire over it. When it gets high I throw another tire on top of the first and fill it with dirt, and so on until the season nears an end. I usually get about 4 tires high. It takes up very little room and to pick them you just throw the tire aside. You only have to dig up the biggest ones at the bottom. The top ones are the size of a golf ball or a little bigger. Just don't cover all the leaves when you add a tire. If you have limited space it works great and it stops the potato bugs from climbing the plant. Anyone else do this?

 

You know what Thad, I have heard of that, but never actually tried it. So, it does work?

 

A couple of pics I took this afternoon.
These tomatoeplants had been seeded on March 31st.
On Friday May 24th I took delivery of them.
Early Saturday morning at 05:00 we planted them.



Today we just finished hanging ropes and started to tie the plants.




As you can see from the pics, we are using 2 plants on one root.
It saves money on plantmaterial and labor, etc...
These plants are crafted, it means the tomatoeplants don't use their original root but one from another plant.
Growing strength is a lot bigger and it's resistent against all kind of diseases/pests.
It's crafted the Japanese way, they seed both the crafted roots and the tomatoeplants.
Then they use the crafted root only, on top of that the tomatoeplant without it's original root, keep it moisture for some time and the stems will grow together. Pretty amazing heh!!
Then these guys do a magic trick and from one head you get two heads suddenly but that's to difficult for me to explain. lol



As you can see, the blossom is already out. It grows pretty fast these days.
Tomorrow I will take delivery of bumble bees who take care of the pollination.
Takes about 50 days from now before picking.
Will post some more pics next week or so.