What Was Your Favorite Thing To Grow

Looking back on the last year, I would have to say that although I loved the fresh corn and tomatoes and herbs, my favorite thing was growing potatoes.

I thought fresh potatoes were the greatest thing and I really enjoyed the process of learning how they grow and how to make a riser so I could add more mix as the plants grew almost faster then I could keep up with them. And there is something very tender about a fresh potato that you just do not get in the longer stored samples.

My first potatoes - just grown from supermarket leftovers:

I don't know if I could pick just one thing! I agree potatoes were great! So much fun, so satisfying to harvest. Really a very cool crop.

I also loved my sunflowers. They shot up out of the ground teasing be with height and green foliage. The blossom was perfectly formed and just waiting to open. And for what seemed like forever they tracked the sky like perfect little satellites. I would get up in the morning and they would be facing due East...I would come home in the afternoon and they would be pointing straight up...and by sundown they were due West...waiting to start the process all over again. Once they bloomed the joy and smiles they gave me was endless. I just really loved them. I'm planting double this year...making a fence out of them. Gonna try some of those 12 foot high, 1 foot across the bloom kind this year.

Chopper wrote:...I thought fresh potatoes were the greatest thing ...

This post made me smile as I vividly recalled my first potatoes six years ago that were to die for. Yellow Finns, they were unbelievably creamy, smooth, and buttery tasting after boiling them about 8 minutes. We ate them plain, or occasionally with a little fresh ground pepper. They just didn't need anything else.

And we haven't had such a good crop since. Fresh is still better than store bought, but tasting the first potatoes of the season is becoming a disappointing tradition. We just can't duplicate the quality of that first year.

I hope your next harvest is as good as your first.


The most favorite thing I grow is corn.

Sugar Snap Peas that I could pick off the trellis and pop right in my mouth. No need to cook, just that really sweet crunchy bite.

My potato harvest failed last year but they did grow nicely, but I am hoping to try again sometime . Same thing with the corn. If either of those had succeeded.... I might have a different answer, but as it goes, hard to say what my favorite was. The rampicante is way up there, of course. It was amazing to watch just how fast it, and the pole beans, grew. I think it was the cucumbers, though. You could do a thorough search in the morning, find nothing, and come home and there'd be this huge fully mature cuke just hanging there, laughing at you.

My little hot peppers... and I mean little, like pinkie nail size. I didn't think the buggers were going to grow at all and then suddenly I had a whole bunch of tiny colorful peppers. My carrots were fun, especially since I kept pulling them up to see if they were done yet. It wasn't until I tired of huge fronds and itty bitty carrot and ignored them for three months they finally grew.

My favorite... hmmm... probably the banana peppers that I absolutely did NOT expect to flourish, that gave me a wonderful harvest. My husband would definitely say the Poona Kheera (thank you, Megan!), and I also loved my sunflower bed, just as I love watching the birds pick the seeds from the heads that I tied to the fence, now that it's cold and they're looking for food.

What kind of sunflowers did you grow, miinva? I am looking for good ideas to flower up my front-yard beds this year. I was thinking about a few (fairly short) sunflowers like the Mexican torches, among other things. (And I'm so glad the Poonas did so well for you! )

Moon and Stars watermelon, absolutely our favorite this year. I loved the spotted plants, and watching our granddaughters find them in the patch and then happily munch right through them was priceless.

I enjoyed growing broccoli, too, even if we did have to harvest a bit early because of the weather.

And even though it's an old faithful workhorse in the garden, I never get over the enjoyment of plucking a handful of cherry tomatoes and popping them in my mouth as I work in the garden. If I could only grow one plant, it would have to be cherry tomatoes.

I grew one Mammoth, and the rest were from a seed packet that was a variety, some shot, some tall, and one beauty that had multiple small pale yellow blooms. I think this year I'm going to try the Sunflower Collection from the Seed Savers Exchange, and I also have a few seeds that I saved from last year, and a few from seed packets left over. I can get a little... what's the word I'm searching for... extreme?... about growing sunflowers because I think they're so beautiful

I forgot to mention carrots! I really loved the carrots we got from our garden and I'm excited about growing more this year.

I agree, Ander, cherry tomatoes may be a workhouse but they're such a delight! I LOVED the currant cherry tomatoes that I grew and there are few things as wonderful as tasting the slight differences between the varieties. This year I'll have a bed dedicated to my cherry tomatoes because I like to grow lots of varieties. Last year I grew five, and this year I'm hoping to grow seven.

My favourite had to be the eggplant. It turned out that my SFG was in a bad spot and didn't get as much sun as I thought it would. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to harvest 3 eggplants off of my one plant. I'll be planting more eggplants this year. Yummy!

I tried fairy tale eggplant because I absolutely love them, but so do the flea beetles! I don't know if I'll try them again this year, but if I do I'll be doing a LOT of companion planting to try to battle those little buggers.

miinva wrote:I tried fairy tale eggplant because I absolutely love them, but so do the flea beetles! I don't know if I'll try them again this year, but if I do I'll be doing a LOT of companion planting to try to battle those little buggers.

I had flea beetle problems last spring and HawaiiAl posted to mix neem oil and Ivory soap and spray the eggplants to get rid of the flea beetles. I couldn't find neem oil so I didn't try it, but I'm looking for it early this year.

Here is the thread:

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t1876-flea-beetles-on-my-eggplants

ander217 wrote:I had flea beetle problems last spring and HawaiiAl posted to mix neem oil and Ivory soap and spray the eggplants to get rid of the flea beetles. I couldn't find neem oil so I didn't try it, but I'm looking for it early this year.

Here is the thread:

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t1876-flea-beetles-on-my-eggplants

Thanks ander! I will keep that in mind if I have a flea beatle problem this year. I didn't have that problem last year, so I guess I was lucky. I'll be doing some companion planting this year as well. Hopefully that will help.

Good luck, Blackrose. I tried companion planting and honestly, I don't think it helped with the flea beetles. (Then again... I didn't have a NON-companion planted bed to compare to, so who knows??? :?: ) What I had planned for this spring, before the HOA weighed in, was to plant a big band of Japanese Giant Mustard down the side of the walk to use as a trap crop, as apparently flea beetles love the stuff. Don't know if I'll be able to make enough new boxes this year to try it out back, though. (Hm... or plant the mustard out front as a trap crop for the BACK... now there's a keen idea!)

I think I need to companion plant more aggressively. I saw it have an influence in the couple of places where the marigolds went crazy and there were profuse flowers, so I'm going to give it another shot. It seems like intensive gardening would be a good place for it to work if it's going to.

Wow! So many good things, disappointments and also surprising things!

I guess I would say Rattlesnake Pole Beans (like 2009 Fall), Black Plum Tomatoes (Surprise- did nothing until this fall and wham! We even had some New Year's Day that ripened inside - still a bad year here for tomatoes), Pink-Eyed Purple Hull Peas, Lima Beans, Okra, Poblano and Sweet Green Peppers.

Disappointments were tomatoes in general and squash .

Jane

Oh my gosh, speaking of beans, calico crowder cowpeas are beautiful! They look like pinto horses with their mixture of beautiful creamy skin and chocolate brown markings. This year I plan to grow some calypso or yin yang beans, which are white and black, to go with them

tomatoes, aubergine, peppers, shallots

My Christmas pole limas were really pretty, too. This is the total yield from 3 plants. I didn't get any fresh ones because they were buried under the rampicante! I couldn't reach enough pods to make a meal of them, so I let them all dry out on the vine. I did crack open one pod, though, just to see what they looked like. Fresh, they are a beautiful delicate pink-maroon and white.

I don't know if I would have gotten more if the rampicante wasn't trying to strangle them, but it seems like a pretty good payback on 3 seeds. Each pod held only 2 beans (3, in a few) but that seemed normal for this plant. It wasn't like the pod was half-empty. (I've never grown any kind of limas before.)

If anyone tries this variety, be advised: The pods fill out VERY late.

I had flea beetle problems last spring and HawaiiAl posted to mix neem oil and Ivory soap and spray the eggplants to get rid of the flea beetles. I couldn't find neem oil so I didn't try it, but I'm looking for it early this year.

Here is the thread:

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t1876-flea-beetles-on-my-eggplants[/quote]

Howdy: I found Neem oil at the local Lowe's.

Tomatoes, I just loved my 'Maters' this year.

God Bless, Ward and Mary.

Tomatoes are on the top of my favorite list. No garden is complete without a tomato plant.

2nd Squash
3rd Eggplant
4th Okra
5th Super Heavyweight Bell pepper
6th Okra
7th Corn
8th mini cantaloupes(ohhh so sweet)
9th green beans


Growing the Atlantic Giant Pumpkin was the most wasteful fun I have
ever had. I had a wonderful time trying to grow a giant pumpkin in the past 4 years. I was not successful in growing a record size pumpkin but it really was fun. They have extremely large blooms and an addictive aroma. It's not a strong aroma but its one you won't forget. Its not one of those rosy perfumes ==but its ===hard to explain.
Every year I say I am not growing another giant pumpkin plant===but as soon as the ground warms up , I am poking a pumpkin seed in the soil. Growing a giant pumpkin is not SFG but it is Square Foot Fun. About 500 square feet of fun. But its not a total waste----I do eat the young culls ---sliced and fried like summer squash. The largest I have grown is 310 pounds. This past summer the SVB (squash vine borer) killed the prettiest plant i ever grew and it had great potential. So sad.
An expert giant pumpkin grower told me that svb did not live this far south. I believed him cause I had never seen one around here so i did not cover my vines this past year. One day I went out to measure my pretty little baby giant and I saw a SVB.. I went that day and bought 20 bags of compost to cover my vines. A week later---it was over with----She did her damage already.

Poor punkin and poor Carolyn.

How you been doing, seems like it has been a bit. How did your winter tomatoes do. I was off and on over Christmas so if you posted, I missed it. Hope they were and are great.

I most enjoyed the sugar snap peas. Never expected to like them as much as I did. Growing up I hated peas, so I did it more for the pretty blossoms than for the food.

Definitely going to grow them again this year.