New member

[Carol Dee]

@Gardening girl from the east coast of Iowa where the Mississippi River runs east to west!

 

[thistlebloom]

Welcome Gardening Girl!

 

[ninnymary]

Welcome! Hope you enjoy it here.

Mary

 

[ducks4you]

!! ...from East Central Illinois. Agreed on contacting a University Extension Agent and ask what grows well in your neck of the woods. You are WAAAYYYY past cold weather crops, so focus on tomatoes and peppers. It's a little too late to start any seeds and you need to babysit them, anyway, so buy your plants this year. One Zucchini produces really well, but you may have to start that late bc of squash bugs and squash vine borers. Still garden centers will probably still have some in July and that is after the bugs have multiplied and moved on.
You can buy summer vegetables EVERYWHERE pretty cheap, and they will do well for you. Learn how to mulch and how to amend your soil. Try digging a hole and then leave it for a week. Is it like cement? Mine, too...LOTS of clay here, so amending is a must. Just imagine that your purchased vegetables and flowers have to fight through the hard as cement soil and you will feel pity on them. You can purchase good soil. Start with a 4 x 4 raised bed for vegetables. It can sit on top of the ground, you put together the wood frame and add the soil in the middle. Mulching between your plants will keep your soil from drying out. Fall in love with Preen, a pre-emergent herbicide. It lasts about 3 months and then you reapply and you MUST apply it around plants that are over 3 inches high, or you will kill them too. I replanted irises that were growing in a poison ivy bed. I applied Preen and no poison ivy is growing in their new bed.
You will still have to do some weeding and it is best to do that by hand.
We ALL (except @ninnymary ) overplant, but there are no gardening police. ENJOY spending the time digging in the dirt and harvesting vegetables. DO NOT PANIC if you find that insects are eating on your vegetables (or fruit if you have fruit trees.) A little hole here or there doesn't hurt the harvest. Insects gravitate to plants that are poorly, so buy healthy plants, water them well initially and check on them if it's dry. Best to water (where you live) in the evening and try to not spray the leaves, but soak by the roots. They will absorb the watering and then absorb the sunshine the next day.
Weed for short periods, like 10-15 minutes/day so gardening isn't a chore and get them while they are small. I have many weeds on my 5 acre property (4 is horse turnout) and most of them pull out easily when small, but are son of a gun deep rooted nasty things if I let them grow for the next month. Weeds are successful bc they put down DEEP roots.
MAKE SURE that you dispose of the weeds OUTSIDE of the bed. Many will rehydrate after a rain and go back to growing in your bed and that means you have to weed twice. Counterproductive. ( I listen to Mid American Gardener, a weekly University of Illinois AG dept program and I have learned from THEIR mistakes. )
This is BY FAR the nicest group of people who Forum on the Internet. We all support each other and nobody judges your gardening skills, but some people here are far more expert than me and I have learned a LOT here.

 

[ninnymary]

Ducks, I think I overplant too! Is putting 6 plants of kale in a 4x4 bed overplanting? Or a zucchini in a 4x4 bed? But like most of you I don't have weeds!

Mary

 

[Gardening girl]

Thanks everyone!! I have a tomato plant that is 5 feet tall!! With lots of tomatoes on it!