Florida Gardening: My first raised bed garden for vegtables, 2 by jamibad

jamibad wrote:
Ok, here's a follow up of my raised bed garden's ! I have slowly been picking my toms, I had 14 plants in, and some of my name tags were lost in the dirt, but I can say I have harvested at least 30 lbs of tomato's, the best I've ever done. When I started I didn't know the difference between indeterminate, and determinate, now I do. I also know what a beef steak is, and roma's, but I also had a little of everything planted, so when they started to turn red, it was an amazing sight. I just didn't know what was what. I saw some of the littlest roma's ever , looked like cherry toms. I didn't plant any of those, we don't care for them, so in the picture's, what you see are my roma's. I have made sauce, paste, stewed, and also blanched whole tom's for use in my recipe's, as needed. I also gave away some to everyone who wanted a few. I had tom sandwiches for breakfast 2 weeks in a row! Made every which way I could think of. I still have some slow growing plants, some with fruit, and flowers, but I think the heat has slowed down. I cut back all damaged limbs, extra foliage, and am waiting to see what starts new growth as things die down, heat wise. I also took pieces of my best performers, dipped them in root hormone, and stuck the root to be in perculite, (sp?) and have had success with some of the transplants. They are now in pots, in shade, waiting to see what happens next.

My green beans were great producers, here again, not sure what the name is, they were bush beans from burpee, brought at lowe's. I will be sure next year to make myself note's and keep up with those note's, the only thing I did was mark in a huge desk calendar, when I planted things, when they flowered, and when I started to pick the fruits. I vow to be more concise next year! I froze them straight off the vine, no blanching, and I had my first pot of Ham and Green Beans w/ potato's, and it was the best I've ever had! My problem, I only had 12 plants, and know that next year, I need plenty more!

Pea's were a disappointment ! Burpee here again, early sweet peas, the pod's were lucky to have 5 fully grown peas inside, and for some reason, didn't produce many pods, all at once, so it was hard to get enough peas to make a side of. What I have will go into soups, or a casserole of some sort. Here again, not enough plants put in for 2 people. Same goes for the sugar snap peas I had planted. Awesome flavor, ate right from the vine. sweet, but here again , not enough planted for 2 people, plus I added seed 3 weeks after I did the first planting, and the second planting came up very thin, and really didn't produce at all. I have already pulled the beans, and pea plants, put into the compost, and started to amend the soil for this fall. I tested the soil, and it was lacking in everything, so it'll be a while till it is ready to be used again. I don't have enough homemade compost, and am off to the nursery to buy some good stuff!!!! In the mean time, I bought some N, P, and K, I think are the 3 letters, and added it to my soil as directed. Just need the compost.

Next on my list of harvest, squash, I planted yellow summer squash, and zucchini, all burpee seed again, even though I thought I planted an even amount of each, all my plants produced zucchini, I posted this in an earlier here, and so far haven't had but 1 summer squash, and the one remaining plant, that is still trying to produce, looks like the yellow summer squash. The others, I had 12 in, 6 of each, I had a good run on zucchinni, made bread, grilled it, cooked it in some casserole's, ate it raw in salads, so I'm quite pleased, but have nothing frozen for stews etc. I didn't give any away either. lol! At this time, I pulled the worst of the plants out, and put them in the compost, they were dried and plain dead, the one's that are still in are being drowned by all the rain. I have my fingers crossed, and I think next time, I'm putting them in containers, and under some kind of cover to keep the rain off, and will water as I feel they need it! I had better luck in the container garden I had, before the raised bed garden.

Cuke's, OMG, I had a great harvest so far, and still going, even though I had 10 plants to start, I have 2 left, some of the plants got powdery mildew, I fought it, the plants did give me plenty of cuke's, but than would curl up , get brown and die. I can't really say what happened to the one's that didn't get mildew, I think heat, but I have 6 jars of pickle's, gave away some, ate some raw, made cucumber salad, which my DH and all family and friends would look for when they came to visit, I didn't need snacks, they ate the cuke salad as fast as I could make it. Anyway, I'm down to 2 plants, looking a little dry, but as I type this have 4 cukes ready to come off in the next day or so, and more baby's on the vine's that still look healthy.

Next, my pepper plants! Not going well at all. When I did them in containers, I had so many I was making relish, stuffed peppers, poppers, and freezing them. I think I planted them to early in the season, the worms attacked what was growing, the leaves started falling off, looked like something was eating the leaves also, anyway, I did start more already from seed, and these are in containers, so hopefully I will have the same luck as last year, and will not be putting them into the beds next time. I can move the pots, if needed, can't move the plants if their in my beds. So far, nothing to report here other than what I wrote!

Cabbage, radish, garlic onions, basil, chive's, dill, spearmint, lettuce,( head and romaine) all did well, as of now nothing growing but my herbs I listed. I want to get some more radish in, and more herbs before it's to late, as I've been drying it, and freezing it, but I can never have enough of the fresh stuff. ( btw, I hate cilantro, as does my DH )even though we were in Thailand for a year. lol! Something about the taste, just can't acquire the taste for it!

My corn I planted, sweet, and bi colored sweet all went to the worms. I already pulled the corn from the raised bed garden, and will do the same in the side garden as soon as I can get to it. I won't ever grow corn again, too much involved.

My last planting, egg plant! ye haw!!!! I have some 9 egg plants growing out of 3 plants. I can't wait till their ready, hungry for some grilled eggplant on the grill, basted in garlic, and lots of spices, and some yummy egg plant parm!! They're about the right size to be picked, so looking forward to them any day.

And last of all, my cantaloupes, and watermelon. All doing well, I've picked about 6 loupes so far, and one watermelon, I'm not sure what I planted, went to look at the type, again by burpee, but for some dumb reason I cut the top of the package off, maybe to mark the place where I planted them, but the watermelon was white inside, with white seeds. It was sweet, but not the texture of a red one, with the black seeds. Now, I'm wondering what I bought. I have 4 more growing on the vine, and will wait till they are twice the size of the 1 i picked. These were marked to grow in a pot. As for as the cantaloupe's, omomom sweet! And I planted 4, again burpee seeds, and so far have picked 7, and have 2 more ready to come off the vine, and I see 2 baby's starting to form. I did have to treat both for the mold problem, some of the vine's look all dried up, but some of the upper leave's look good. We'll see what happens.

I think I covered everything I planted this spring, all my seeds went into seedling pots early Feb. and into the ground in March. We had some late frost, so I can see how that may have did in my peppers, I had problems with worms, and bugs, but because I had good, not great results, I'm happy, and have learned a lot from this first time raised bed planting, so I'll continue my thread, going into fall.

I'm posting the latest picture's I took, hopefully not repeats, most are of my harvest, after I brought them into the house, or on the patio table. I'll try to give a description of each picture, but most should be self explanatory!!

I hope everyone who has viewed my thread has learned something, I'm going to try to be more attentive to what I'm planting, I just received my very first seed catalog, so will start a new thread to see if any of my fellow Florida gardeners have advice for me before I order seeds from them. I won't be using a big box store seeds anymore, they did great for a novice like me, but now, I want more produce/ results, and since I learned how to do most things myself from the great DG, and other site's, I feel I'm ready to invest in some good seed! And hopefully have better results!

Thank you for following along with me, and to all those who have added to my thread, Quilter, David of Deland, Sunkissed, BonnieGardens, Plant_Thing, Wren, Shauna, georgiacat and CoastalZonePush ! You all have added your 2 cent's, haha, And I just want to give you all a big hug, and your 2 cents was worth a million dollars to me!!! I gave it my all, moved in here Jan 2. 2013. today is June 28th,2013 ! omg, 5 months, no wonder I can't move, lol, I wasn't thinking about time here, just was very busy, and another thing, my seeds were started at my town home, before we moved here, so I did have a head start in that area, but, I couldn't have done this with out those I mentioned, following their threads, David of Deland is Great with advice!!!! I know we have " stalkers" who read but never say a peep, I hope one day you share your advise on gardens, but in the meantime, I hope I've been able to help someone out there in the stalker world,(I don't mean stalker in the negative way) but sometimes we all need advice and don't always want to give up our identities, but your still learning from what we all post!I hope you have gotten the advice you were looking for!

Here are some pics!!!
#1 cucumber's, zucchini, and can' quitesee what else is in my sink
#2 bush string beans, one of many baskets
#3 another batch of harvested cuke's and Z's
#4 lettuce, I think it's my romaine
#5 a table full of different types of tom's