I've been growing vegetables for the last few years. I usually grow tomatoes, cucumber, various hot and sweet peppers, onions, potatoes and ive tried various other veggies but they don't seem to work well or get eaten by rodents despite attempts to deter them (i.e any leafy green types never seem to make it far).
Anyone have advice on growing high yield vegetables? For example the amount of effort it takes for me to grow 10 medium sized potatoes and 10 onions requires the same amount of effort as 100 tomatoes or peppers. I'm looking for most bang for the effort.
So far tomatoes, various peppers and cucumbers seem to be growing so fast I can hardly even think of new ways to use them.
I live in an area where growing can only happen between beginning of May to end of September before the frost kicks in.
You may get some traction here, but I would also post this in /out/'s homegrown general.
Cooper Ross
Anything you can grow vertically will have a higher yield than straight ground growing or pot growing, for example snow peas. A dug in and supported lactate fence is really all you need to do so, and you just weave the plant as it grows. You can do this with tomatoes and certain other light weight vegetables that wont simply fall off the vine due to weight, think like grapes in a vineyard.
Try to go for partial shade if you can for things like basil and other herbs so they don't burn in the sun.
Good luck.
Christopher Rivera
first year gardening, didn't realize tomatoes took forever to ripen.
William Jackson
Summer squash are similar to cucumbers in the amount of production. I get a lot of mileage out of green beans as well and they have bush varieties that don't need vertical support. English peas do great, but as another user said they need vertical support and very cool weather.
Christopher Rodriguez
are you amending the soil with compost ? Mulch reduces the amount of times you need to water an if you water too much it will change the PH of your soil. Most plants fail due to watering. Also never water at night, Bactria and fungi will disease the leaves. Try not to water leaves, water in the morning.
Don't give up on your leafy greens. We have deer and rabbit issues but they can be kept out with an enclosure cheaply constructed with a bottom of chicken wire and 1/2" netting higher up. You can sort of see it here in the pic where we rigged the enclosure up with the wire at bottom, netting and staked with some bamboo that grows on our property.
Luke Cox
I have chicken wire. The rabbits chewed through it and made a nest. They haven't eaten anything other than my garlic and some basil. Gf won't let me do anything to get rid of them. I suggested a nice rabbit stew but she didn't think it was as funny as I did.
Gavin Nelson
Most of the compost I've left there is just vegetables that over ripened and fell off. I used a bunch of compost at beginning of year as the soil base, if you will. Not having a problem with growing I just picked 4 cucumbers the size of a small baseball bat that had to have grown mainly in the last 2 or 3 days. I mainly just want to find vegetables that have a high net gain for minimal effort. Like I said no luck with potatoes and onions so next year hoping to replace with something else.
Samuel Hernandez
Make sure there are absolutely no weeds in your harden. Mulch is effective for this. Also different plants require different soil, sun, and water settings. For example tomatoes need high pH, lots of water and full sun. You can add pH with pine needles if you live south, or by just squeezing limes over the soil. For calcium, use egg shells. It's best if you make seperate compost bins with good nutrients for each type of plant you plan to grow. You may want to look for some fertilizers. Also make sure they aren't overcrowded, as this can affect the nutrients each gets. Another major factor for production is the root depth. You must make sure that the soil is fluffy and light, not hard and compact, but still tight enough for the roots to tale hold. When you water them, water them heavily in one watering. Don't water it a little bit throughout the day. Make sure you flood it, and make sure that if you stick your finger into the soil that the tip is wet. Heavy watering opens the soil beneath the plant for the roots to get into, and when the roots go deep, your plant gets access to more nutrients, thus boosting production
Jeremiah Young
Garlic grows do God damn easy it's criminal what they charge for it at the store. Zucchini also grows like a weed; i had so much last year i had do pickle most of it so it didn't go to waste.
Austin Long
I live on a drainage easement and can't dig big beds. I have a deck planter box that is supporting one monster cherry tomato plant, a selfish basil bush, lavender, rosemary and some mint I periodically hack away. It suits me
Jackson Watson
It's funny you say that I just pulled 4 zucchini from my garden that are literally 3 times the size at the market and they grew that big in a matter of days. I'm looking up all the things I can do with zucchini as we speak. Also I never even planted garlic it started growing on its own somehow.
Jordan Williams
You live in condo units in southern Ontario by chance?
Dylan Fisher
nah, a house in virginia on a weird plot. we're fortunate to have a massive deck so I could probably scale up but the stairs aren't worth it
Parker Young
>when you buy GMO seeds without realizing it
Parker Davis
No I just planted 4 of them not realizing how many they grow. They're small for a while then all the sudden they're huge. We've also had tons of rain lately so I'm sure it helps.
When I have really tenacious rabbit souls that get through my barrier they end up in the pot. This year I've live trapped 2 'coons and 2 possums that climb over any barrier and attacked my melons and fucking destroyed a beautiful batch of corn. I hunt deer, but I'll be damned if I'm going to shoot a trapped animal.
Protip: Those fuckers are vicious. Use thick leather gloves when handling the live traps. They reach a long way through the cage wire with their paws.
Carter Sanders
>there will never be an /out/diy/ck/ master board Honestly the april fool's prank was one of the coolest things to happen to this site in the 8 years I've been here. I wish it would come back as some kind of permanent feature.
Jackson Thompson
They're all babby rabbits now. The mother came by when I was picking weeds out of the garden and I threw a rock at it. Hit it in the ass and it took off like Avatar outta hell. Never came back.
Ayden Cook
Somehow "bat" was autocorrected as "avatar"
Blake Ramirez
This.
Elijah Hill
Op here. No idea what you mean.
Jeremiah Rogers
I prefer avatar out of hell.
Mason Parker
Mustard is a delicious plant that grows like a weed (because it is one). Kale can handle frost.
Benjamin Gomez
he's talking about growing food, this is the optimal board for it
Jeremiah Richardson
This board is about cooking food. So, not really.
Levi Diaz
Veeky Forums - Food and Cooking
Jacob Jones
exactly food and cooking, suck it /out/ fag, trying to scalp our food producers
Samuel Campbell
Corn wasn't worth it. Kales was easy. Tomatoes abundant.
James Hughes
there used to be lots of homegrowmen threads here in years past. Even had a traditional thread image for it.
David Richardson
I had the most amazing sweet yellow corn this weekend and now I want to grow corn, is it a pain in the butt to grow it in containers?
Nathan Hill
depends on the container, but no. I used one of those self watering containers (earthbox was the brand) last year for corn with good success. Only issue I had was the local ants made raids on the planter, the bastards...
Zachary Russell
one other thing (just in case), you won't have much success if you try to grow like a single corn stalk, the plants pollinate each other via wind wind, so it's good to have at least a few in close proximity
Henry Jenkins
Reality does not always follow what is optimal.
Brayden Scott
The drawbacks to sweet corn are it uses a shit ton of soil nutrients for 2-3 ears per plant, it needs a lot of space (minimum 2' between plants and at least 3 rows to get full pollination since it's wind pollinated instead of by insects. Each of the silks produce a kernal of corn and must receive pollen or you end up with ears missing kernals.
Wyatt Clark
Hello my corn-growing friend. I wanna grow corn, but I live in a big, scary city. Is there a variety you could recommend that would be happy taking up only a small portion of my 14X12 back garden next year? I'm particularly interested in high yield varieties because I plan to harvest the ears quite young to have as baby corn.
Right now, all I grow are zukes (for the flowers, not the zukes themselves) and some herbs including, unfortunately, perilla. The perilla was a mistake. It has choked out my lovage and now I don't know where to get more lovage to plant for next year.
Ian Bennett
I'll give it a shot next season. I can't plant in the ground due to having a weird house lot and aggressive suburban deer but maybe I'll find a big container and plant 4 for a test
Xavier Moore
Guess that answers Although there's a house a few blocks away growing corn in a 2X2 bit of soil (they tore up a concrete slab from their sidewalk and filled it with the stuff). I can't just knock on the door and ask them, though. I don't know those people and it would be a peculiar thing to do.
Asher Campbell
you can grown corn in much more concentrated space environments, especially if you are providing heavy nutrients for the plants in say a container setting. That earthbox container I was using had recommended planting of 16 corn plants (two rows of 8) in a single 30" x 14" planter box.
Thanks, but I've never had any luck growing anything from seed. I should look into remedying that, I guess. Any tips?
Aiden Torres
>16 corn plants in a 30" by 14" space
Wow. I'm the guy that posted the pic of the corn and I'd like to hear how that turned out. Even spacing 2' apart we have to amend the soil with a lot of composted manure and give it a fish emulsion boost when they're around 2' high. I don't understand how you could get enough nutrients into the soil with a heavy feeder like corn packed so close together without burning the roots of the plant.
Justin Wright
go buy a few cage traps, they cost like 10 dollars each. I need to do that to catch the squirrels and rats eating my moms pomegranates and avocados
Ryder White
Just get an outdoor cat. /an/ will be super triggered though.
Christian Morgan
>gf won't let you kill the rabbits because they're cute Dump her user. Fresh rabbit stew is delicious.
Matthew Rivera
If they know you're gardening, you totally can.
Isaac Price
I've tried growing it twice. For some reason rodents really like it.
Adrian Russell
There is a system to the planter box I was using, it creates it's own sort of micro climate. I wouldn't try that kind of concentrated spacing in just normal gardening conditions.
Results wise, I think we ended up with about half of that original 16 plants being successful, the planter came under heavy ant attack and quite a few of the plants suffered because of it. I will say this though, when I was cleaning out the planter after the growing season, I was amazed how extensive the corn's root system was, just roots everywhere, not sure if you could use that same soil again without putting together some kind if sifting device to reclaim the dirt from the root matter.
Anyhow, here's the planting instructions for that planter. Important things to take note of, you have to use a potting soil, something meant for containers. You need a granulated type of fertilizer. You need to have a plastic cover over the soil, so the water circulates within the planter in a certain way and doesn't evaporate faster than antipated.
Of course, they're trying to sell their products, so do keep that in mind.
Thomas Thomas
Thanks for the explanation. Yeah, I'm fortunate to have the land where I can grow with larger spacing and use the old style fertilizing methods. I try to focus on maintaining soil health since I have that kind of space but I figured tightly spaced container growing of heavy feeders like corn will have to have some concentrated fertilizers added. Surprises me that you can add enough without damaging the plant.
You're right that corn root system is strong and extensive. When they're done I have to dig the roots out for compost because they'll screw up my tiller when I hit them. All in all, I grow corn because I have the space, but eventhough a fresh picked ear is infinitely better than a shelved store ear, there's a lot of hassle to it. Half my yield was wiped out this year by varmints and I had to dispose of 2 live trapped possums and 2 coons. Always dangerous dealing close up with those fuckers and technically illegal removing wildlife to another area. I'll kill and eat rabbits preying on the vegetables because I eat them, but I'm not going to kill a coon or possum since I won't eat it.
