My Garden was just planted in NY

Hi, I've done a little bit of gardening before. I had a raised bed last year and this year I added 2 more, which may be the most I will be able to fit. I live in central New York and we usually get summers for June through August then its pretty cold otherwise. My property borders a large creek--more like a river, but it's up a steep hill. I have about 8 acres around me, but it's all wooded. I am surrounded with very tall pine and maple trees and I'm sort of in the middle, so I get no early or late sun, about 6 or seven hours in the center of the yard. I have maybe an acre total of cleared land. The back and side of the house by the creek, gets no sun and had a ton of moles. The front is a large patch getting about 5 hours of sun, but its not really practical to put a garden directly out my front door. Plus the septic tank is there as well as thats where we play when we do outdoor games since balls are less likely to go down the hill and get lost.

The driveway comes in and does a loop and the center grassy area is where I put the garden. I would rather have put it off to the side, but it would be closer to the woods and away from the sun so this is where it went. It also helps because, although the driveway is mostly crusher stone, it was paved a long time ago and the underground animals don't go near the center circle.

Last year I planted in rows and wasted a ton of space. I didn't fence anything in and my acorn squash kept being eaten. There are tons of deer. Tomatoes did well though. Peppers, I left the first green one on to turn red so I ended up with like 4 peppers total and the few onions weren't bigger than a quarter (planted from those bunches of green scallion looking ones). This year I made a better plan and got everything planted then found this site the other day...oops...I made some mistakes and will probably take the beds and move them for next year, using the dirt to level the ground (a slight slope).

So I started seeds this year inside and almost all died. I put too much water in the greenhouses...started them way too late and then brought the ones that did come up outside during the first hot spell when they were about 2 inches tall. So I have a few hot and sweet peppers that survived out of about 50 squares. So this weekend I just went looking for plants to transplant. I found that some places had 6-packs of stuff (all the same) for less money than single round plants at other places. So for $2.00 I got 6 tomato plants of the same kind instead of $3.50 for one plant in a round container. I ended up with 6 cherry tomato plants, 6 other tomatoes, 12 broccoli, 6 cauliflower, 6 cabbage, 6 cherry pepper, 6 other hot pepper, 6 sweet pepper...and a few singles of cucumber and eggplant and other tomato varieties. Plus a few other random things.

So I had no choice than to not put in rows. I put roofing nails and string on my new beds and planted everything I could and a bunch in pots. I'm looking for advice from here and possibly I may need to move things since I just planted Sunday. Especially the ones that are in the dissoluble pots are still movable.

The sun comes up in the corner, so I'd have to have my beds diagonal. I'll probably move them next year depending on how they do.

For dirt I used a mix of soil from the yard. (We also are in process of digging around the house to plant shrubs and mulch on sidewalks. I mixed it with about 4 bags of bagged compost from Walmart and 3 cubic feet of Miracle grow garden soil and about 2 cubic feet of peat moss. Then I added some organic fertilizer and plant food. Each bed is 4 ft by 8ft and 8 inches deep. My soil is pretty average, a little clay like, but there are tons of farms around here and many people garden right in the ground. Next year when I move the beds, I will probably just level out the soil to level the ground and use this Mels Mix, it sounds awesome. I wish I researched better sooner.

Wow, so if you are still reading, here are my maps. I will post actual pictures next. I am very worried about the tomatoes not having enough space. Last year I had them in rows and had 3 in a row, now I have 4...

Sorry for not putting north on top, its way easier to read for me this way since the house is on the bottom of this angle.

The easiest way to show the real pictures is to list this link of what I put on facebook for my friends. If it doesn't work, I will upload a few.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1859733247101.97776.1053995045&l=7bbcec9f53

This picture was about 6 or 7 pm, the sun is moving towards the top of the picture.



North is towards the top right of the picture. The tomato cages won't fit in each spot. I'm planing to mulch around them and put up a fence, but haven't yet.

showard, how nice to have you join us.

Too bad you did not get a chance to read ALL NEW SQUARE FOOT GARDENING before you started filling and planting your beds.
Hope you get the opportunity to change over to Mel's Mix next spring, or even this fall after you finish harvesting your crops. You would not believe how good this stuff is.

Your garden plan shows a nice selection of veggies. If you ahve a problem with deer, you might want to consider a simple fence using posts and deer netting. It also kept the neighbors cats out of my garden.

I hope you don't mind my making suggestions for changes, but, since your transplants were just done, perhaps it would be a good idea to move a few things around. I know you said you were willing, but it is a pretty big job.

Most often indeterminate tomatoes and other tall plants, such as trellised cucumbers are planted on the North side of the garden to avoid shading your other plants. I would suggest the NorthWest side of the box you numbered 3. That would give you 8 spaces for tall or vining plants.

Corn is another crop that grows tall, and is usually better if planted in a block instead of a row, to allow for better pollination. This could be put in the Northern corner of either of the two remaining boxes.

Are those bush beans? If so you could plant even more, up to 9 per square.

Those three boxes are sure to produce some really nice crops.

Enjoy your harvest!

Thanks for your suggestions. Box 3 was actually planted about a month ago so that one I can't move around, although I added a grid and squeezed many more onions and garlic in it this week. Wouldn't putting tall veggies on the south side have the same effect as the north? Thats why I chose those ends for the tomatoes and cucks. I guess I will see how it does. It got very hot for a couple days and I was worried about the eggplant and spinach but after the heat they seem to be "alive" again.

I am for sure going to move these for next year but for now I guess this will do. I'm thinking diagonal rows so I have a square end facing north and south. It will look nice like that too I think.

My yard has tons of bugs. The mosquitoes get real bad and the black flies are bad this year. Theres a small swamp where the creek bends behind our house from the flooding every year, and this year it was bad. Plus the woods around my house is covered in ferns, some areas 4 feet high. Its like a mosquito breeding ground and I think I have about 50 bites on me already this year from having to work in the garden late everyday (I'm at work until almost 7pm).

So I noticed there were a TON of small brown ants all over the beds. All three of the beds, not just one. And I mean A LOT, 20 of them grouped together in each square or so. And my pole beans have been being chewed real bad. I didn't notice anything on the beans so I took pictures:



One of them has no leaves at all. I didn't picture it since thats pretty easy to picture, its just a stem! And this nasty brown color is on them...



I ended up pulling those 2 plants out since I needed to take them out anyways and they were the worst ones. Then last night I went out at about midnight and found EARWIGS on them! Could they be eating them??



I mixed some sugar and borax with a dab of water and placed globs near the corners of the garden and I didn't see anymore ants so it looked like that worked.

Some of my other plants, broccoli, califlauer, and cabbage seem to be eaten a bit too but I haven't seen any bugs on them yet.









I am going to put up potato boxes tonight after work.

The tomatoes look good. And peppers look alright with some very minor bites on the leaves. I will probably be asking about help with pruning them to grow upwards soon!

oh, and only 1 corn has come up since I planted a month ago so I'm probably just going to re plant something else there. It's not really worth it since you only get a few anyways.

showard

Earwigs can cause that biting damage see this link EARWIG DAMAGE

The brown spots on your bean leaves could be from water sitting on the leaves. Are you able to water the ground without getting much water on the leaves of plants. That can be very helpful with beans, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.

Do you have slugs or cabbage worms in your area? I had a lot of trouble with both on my cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli last year.

I am glad you were able to take care of the ants.

Enjoyed your facebook pictures. Your lilies are beautiful as well as the hydrangea.

thanks! I planted those this year. Hopefully they will live through the winter. I don't know about cabbage worms. I havent seen any slugs. I saw a few white grubs under the grass when I was digging the grass up around the beds to lay mulch, maybe those got in there. I will just keep an eye on them for now. I cut the real bad ones off hoping that it wasn't something that would spread.

I will read up about the earwigs. I usually water the leaves, I thought that was good...I will stop doing that.

showard, hydrangea are pretty hardy. As long as they don't get strong afternoon sun and have good soil they are hard to kill.
Now the color is another thing!
Blue flowers will be produced in acidic soil (pH 5.5 and lower),
whereas neutral to alkaline soils (pH 6.5 and higher) will usually produce pink flowers.
Between
pH 5.5 and pH 6.5, the flowers will be purple or a mixture of blue and pink flowers will be
found on the same plant.
I would suggest a soil test to find out your pH and then you can adjust for color if you want to.

The thing that concerned me most was the fact that you have 12 tomato plants grouped 4 across and 3 in front.
How will you be able to tend and harvest the ones all jammed together like that?

At least you made a start but you'll need to make some changes. When the crops get going, they are going to fill up a lot of space.

Thats what I was worried about, the tomatoes. I thought if they were one plant per square, it seemed like they were okay to plant that way according to how I understood SFG, and I had to train them up...but I know they grow real wide sometimes...I guess, if I planted every other square, what would be good to plant in-between that would be okay to shade and live near them? I'm not planting anything new this year, except maybe lettuce later this summer, but I may take some tomatoes out and put them in pots, like every-other one. Two of them aren't doing well and may not live, they were very small when I bought them and I may just pull them out and see how they do in pots and leave the spaces empty.

Maybe take out every other one and add some lettuce in between?

CindiLou wrote:showard, hydrangea are pretty hardy. As long as they don't get strong afternoon sun and have good soil they are hard to kill.
Now the color is another thing!
Blue flowers will be produced in acidic soil (pH 5.5 and lower),
whereas neutral to alkaline soils (pH 6.5 and higher) will usually produce pink flowers.
Between
pH 5.5 and pH 6.5, the flowers will be purple or a mixture of blue and pink flowers will be
found on the same plant.
I would suggest a soil test to find out your pH and then you can adjust for color if you want to.

I used a cheap kit and it tested between alkaline and neutral...but I planted this pot with a bag of miracle grow acid loving potting soil around it, so we'll see! Probably will stay blue this year and turn pink next year...the blue is so much prettier I think. Besides, blue adds nice color to the yard because shades of pink are so common!

I personally like to have all my tomatoes on the north side along one row. Or if you only have a northwest side, than one row of tomatoes the whole length. In a single row. No tomatoes in front of that row. That would be too much of a jungle to try to find the fruits.

Plant crops that are a bit shorter than tomatoes in front, like maybe peppers or eggplant or broccoli and cauliflower, then things shorter in front of those.

If you have only one row of toms on the north, you can always harvest fruits from the north side of the box.

It'll be difficult to get to the plants in between if there are big plants in front.