Growing Carrots & Plant Suggestions for our Garden?
Today we went out and bought some additional plant starts for our garden. This is only our second year :) so we have yet to start our own from seeds. I saw no carrot starts. I was wondering if carrots are always brought up from seeds or perhaps it is too early in the season for carrot starts? What’s up??
Also we have the following plants for our garden and still quite a bit of space. What additional plants would you recommend (it is a vegetable garden)?
Bell Peppers (2 kinds), Tomatoes (3 kinds), Broccoli, Zucchini, Onion, Lemon cucumber, Mint, and Oregano. (It is too small a space for any large melons or squashes).
I apologize in advance if these are silly questions but like I said this is only our second year and we are going at it alone without any gardening mentorship. BTW the first year turned out fantastic.
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Whenever we plant carrots (every year) we just plant the seeds and they seem to do fine. I’ve never actually seen a carrot start, now that I think about it. Potatoes grow fairly easily too, have you thought about those?
@DrasticDreamer When do you plant your carrot seeds. Do you start them indoors first or do you just seed them outside?
Thanx for the potato suggestion. Maybe I’ll save those for next year. Someone before us grew potatoes and we still find them buried in the dirt, lol. Thanx.
We start them about this time, and we just put them straight in the ground. They grow just fine every time. :)
Dill is nice and will reseed every year. Basel, radishes, lettuces and berry bushes (will have to be netted due to birds, but highbush blueberries and raspberries are wonderful.)
What is a lemon cucumber? It sounds delicious. And do you end up sharing bushel baskets of produce with your neighbors?
@gailcalled We grow lemon cucumbers, too.
“This versatile cucumber is sweet and flavorful, and doesn’t have much of the chemical that makes other cucumbers bitter and hard to digest. Though it’s often served raw, it’s also a good pickling cucumber.”
They’re actually not too different in taste. They just look more like a lemon, compared to the typical cucumber.
@gailcalled Lemon Cucumbers are my favorite. They are little round yellow cucumbers. The taste is not too different but there is a difference. I really enjoy them.
Last year we could have shared some produce but didn’t end up sharing much. Maybe this year! That’d be neat.
We did buy a huckleberry bush. I just remembered that. We haven’t planted that yet because we are putting it somewhere different. Thanx for the suggestions! :)
What do you use dill for in cooking??
@DrasticDreamer Thank you very much for the carrot advice.
Dill snipped on new potatoes (boiled), cooked carrots, grilled salmon, tuna salad, in every vinaigrette I make. Add after cooking; in little sprigs or snip with a scissors. It also dries nicely for winter use.
My sister is an alpha gardener and says you need two huckleberry bushes – something about crossbreeding. But she plants all her berry bushes in multiples.
@gailcalled Oh they should have told us that! Dag nabbit. Well they were only 2.00 so I suppose we can go get another. Do they need to be “male” and “female” plants or any two is fine?
Thanx for the dill suggestions, I’m thinking I might do that one now.
Sow your carrott seeds right now. Radishes are good and can be sown now. it is a good time to put in onion sets. For the radises and carrots, They do not have to be in nice neat little rows. They can be broadcast over an area as long as you can reach across to pull weeds. You will find you can put more in a smaller area.
I would check the growing tips for huckleberries on one of the University Aggie sites (google it.) My sis is out of town until Monday but I will ask her then. We go out and eat raspberries off her bushes, but she must have twenty of them.
If you have an area about 6 foot square or so you can plant some potatoes. Just dig up the ground lay the potatoe eyes right on top the dirt, cover it with about a foot of straw, Old if you can find it otherwise new is fine. water it very heavy. Towards late summer or early fall, carefully pull the straw back around the plant and you can pick new potatoes for your supper. When you have enough push the straw back in place untill the next time you want some. They will keep growing untill a hard freeze does them in. They should have already been planted but with this method you should still get some.
How about some corn? You don’t need very many stalks. And if you stagger planting you will have a bummer crop. It is easy to grow and good to eat.
Another favorite in our family is artichokes. I like to let a couple flower cause the flower is so cool.
@basp: I hope you mean a bumper crop.
Corn needs a longer growing season that we can manage in zone four, but it grows beautifully (only one planting per season, however) closer to the Hudson river, where it is zone 5 or even 6.
Ha! Yes, Gailcalled, I meant bumper crop!!!
It may be a “bummer” crop if you stagger while planting.
Don’t give up on squash—it comes in bush varieties and is really easy to grow. Also I always grow basil to go with sliced tomatoes. Root vegetable like carrots are never started as plants—they grow too deep for the pots. I’ve found carrots hard to grow though because I’ve always had clay soil rather than sandy and root vegetables don’t like dense ground.
I have a vegetable garden, too. When I was a gardening newbie, I learned a lot online. One site in particular helped me a lot. I learned a lot of valuable and useful information there. I learned that we should start with easy vegetables and after applying the advice, I agree completely. You may want to start with beets, lettuce, broad beans, french beans and radishes. If you are starting with a bigger space then you can also try courgettes, outdoor ridge cucumbers and tomatoes which are very easy to grow.
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