1st post;1st time gardening. Made a mistake! Pics inside :)

Hi Everyone
I started my square foot garden back in mid June, and everything has grown wonderfully so far as I have Mel's Mix source here in town, and it's making it easy to grow. I've been watering more than normal in this hot sun. I have yet to make a trellis for my tomatoes (which I still need to do - and pole beans), so I'm using tomato cages for now.

I did make a boo boo however. I just realized today I had planted black beauty zucchini instead of eggplant this whole time lol; which I didn't want as I knew I couldn't dedicate 3x3 squares for it.  Now it's overtaking my other squares. I noticed a few topics down below ppl talking about containing their bush squash. Any recommendations on doing this from my pics?   


The box is only 6 inches deep so I can't get stakes inside the box but can put outside - I was thinking of getting 2 metal stakes on each side of the box a foot across outside the box, and getting string back and forth on each side of the Zuch's.  Uggh, what a mess!  I feel bad for my poor beans and peppers next to them!

Will the Zuch's overcrowd and possibly kill my other vegetables in the perimeter? How can I prune or contain them? 





 To the right of the marigolds is Kentucky bean poles. The box behind (to the left) of the Zuch's is empty. 



To the right is the Orange peppers. Behind that is the Jalepenos and then red peppers behind those.





When I realized they didn't look like Eggplant

Hi, nitsudg & welcome to the forum!

Here's a cool video of someone who stakes their squashes & grows them upright.  I can't say whether it will help your zucchini's neighbors get more sun, but it might give you ideas, especially since the plant in question is on the edge of a box. 

Good luck & keep us posted on what you decide to do!

As far as I'm concerned you dodged a bullet  - eggplant kinda sucks   Seriously though, looking good.  I don't remember my zukes having super extensive root systems. If you want to pull it out, I say get something else started in a pot, let the zuke spill outside your box and keep harvesting them in the meantime since its pretty close to producing.  They'll handle selective leaf pruning in the meantime; don't sweat snipping anything covering neighboring squares.

My 2 cents,
Brandon

What location is SLC?

My suggestion is this, once that plant starts putting out zukes and you harvest them, you can prune the leaves off that are behind where you cut the zuke from. Meaning, you can trim from the base of the plant but not ahead of the blooms or squash on the vine. The plant will grow and trail over the side of the bed. I'm sorry you won't get eggplants this year. I love eggplant. And zucchini too. Welcome to the world of gardening and the SFG Forum.

To answer previous post. I'm in Murray, a suburb of Salt Lake City.

Thanks for the quick responses from everyone. I think pruning heavily is what I'll need to do. My dad really thinks (insists almost!) I should transplant the whole entire zuch plant behind the box where we have a 3.5' strip of dirt north of the box and move it there.  Ugh. I wish I would of paid more attention to the tag when buying lol.

I'm really enjoying gardening and hope to make more boxes for Fall season. First time implementing everything from shade/bug cover to making the box was very hard at first I'll admit but I've learned a lot so far and it's become a lot easier.

I think it will die if you transplant it. It is looking fantastic right now, getting ready to put food on your table. In another 10 days you more than likely will have pruned all the older leaves off and that will open up the bed to more sunshine.

Your garden looks really green and healthy...congrats and don't fret about any mistakes.

camprn wrote:I think it will die if you transplant it. It is looking fantastic right now, getting ready to put food on your table. In another 10 days you more than likely will have pruned all the older leaves off and that will open up the bed to more sunshine.

Will do.  I never did mention what I planted. So here is my list:

Tomatoes - black from Tula, Cherokee purple, sweet 100's, celebrity hybrids
Basil - Thai Saim, Large green leaf, Sweet 
Chives
Kentucky pole beans
Orange and red peppers
Jumbo jalapeno
Marigolds
Zuchs
and a mystery plant I have no idea what it is! Just letting it grow but its not bearing buds

** Also I have a 1 lb bag of Sugar buns hybrid (se) corn kernals (mid sweet) I was planning on growing.. not sure what I'll do yet. If anyone wants some I can arrange something.

Post a photo of the mystery plant please, maybe we can help you there.

camprn wrote:Post a photo of the mystery plant please, maybe we can help you there.

 



Here it is. If it's a weed, I sure haven't seen anything like it. Should I keep or kill it?

I think it may be a sunflower........... maybe. It sure is healthy and happy! Maybe it will give you a monstrous bloom.

You can probably plant lettuce under it. 

Hi    nitsudg!  and   to the   forum.
(I'm curious about your screen name; how do you say it & what prompted it?)
I think the shape of the leaves on your mystery plant looks kind of cucurbit also. I see some spotty texture of the stem, but the leaves don't look prickly, so (hopefully) I'm wrong. Could you have dropped an extra zuke-not-eggplant seed  in that square?

Welcome!

nitsudg wrote:
Basil - Thai Saim, Large green leaf, Sweet 

Never heard of large green leaf. Though I've seen pretty large sweet basil leaves. Maybe post a picture once you get some good leaves?

Kentucky pole beans

Good luck with yours! I love watching beans climb all over the place ... makes me feel like a real gardener! Now if only they would produce some actual beans instead of leaves ...

Marigolds

I got at least 40 of them to keep away pests. They were the first thing eaten.

Hi nitsudg and welcome to the forum!  I live probably 5-10 minutes from you in West Jordan.  Your garden looks wonderful and it sounds like you started the right way!

Nitsudg,  Yes, watch the video.  I have to grow my squash vertically due to space limitations.  Go to the Search box and add "vertical squash."  Lots of pics and discussions.  You can drive a stake in the ground next to that square.  Once you have removed the lower leaves [with a sharp paring knife] it will be lighter and easier to train over to and up the trellis.  I use stretchy green tape.  Be careful not to cut a leaf stalk associated with a fruit or flower!