Texas Veggie Gardeners!! Stories, Tips and ADVICE!

[texas75563]

I made 14 day sun dill pickles last year with a clove of garlic in each jar. Normally I throw the garlic in the trash. I decided I would plant 1. I thought no way after being soaked in salt and vinegar solution for 5 months it would ever come up.
Today I noticed it is about 3 inches tall. I would of bet against it.

 

[ChristyAnneCobb]

In ya'lls opinion, what are the hardest veggies to kill for a newbie? I am in North Texas. I'm thinking tomatoes...but what else?

 

[katsdar]

living in Texas you should be able to grow peppers of any kind nicely in your sandy soil

 

[yinepu]

living in Texas you should be able to grow peppers of any kind nicely in your sandy soil

I wish we had sandy soil here where I live.. lots of limestone and big ol rocks.....

 

[katsdar]

oh, so you have low acidity level so do not fertilize it will harm your plants, the lime and fertilizer will actually cancel each other out you need to fertlize in the fall and let it work into the ground through the winter, your lettuce type plants will do well, turnips, beets cabbage etc love the low acidity but your lettuce won't grow well in the heat, unless you plant now and harvest before it gets too hot, I would suggest you use a raised garden until you can treat your soil, get a ph soil test kit walmart or any garden center will sell them and they aren't too expensive and see what the levels are.

 

[yinepu]

oh, so you have low acidity level so do not fertilize it will harm your plants, the lime and fertilizer will actually cancel each other out you need to fertlize in the fall and let it work into the ground through the winter, your lettuce type plants will do well, turnips, beets cabbage etc love the low acidity but your lettuce won't grow well in the heat, unless you plant now and harvest before it gets too hot, I would suggest you use a raised garden until you can treat your soil, get a ph soil test kit walmart or any garden center will sell them and they aren't too expensive and see what the levels are.

We had corn doing great (planted it back in the horses old dry lot where there was plenty of manure).. I was almost ready to harvest when the neighbor's cows decided that fresh corn would taste wonderful.. they destroyed every bit of that along with the swiss chard (which was also doing great).
The deer destroyed everything else.
What we have been doing is amending the soil every year with lots of organic material (rabbit, horse and chicken manure) plus peatmoss and compost.
The high limestone content blocks the nitrogen.. so in order to get it to work and play nice we have to acidify the soil. I've tried adding sulphur (at the suggestion of county ag).. but the amendments of organic material has been giving us the best results. Our well water is full of limestone though.. so I have to watch the leaves for signs of yellowing and switch over to rain water if I have any stored

 

[yinepu]

In ya'lls opinion, what are the hardest veggies to kill for a newbie? I am in North Texas. I'm thinking tomatoes...but what else?

I'm thinking you're pretty much out of the limestone in your area (I could be wrong)... but what did the best for us was swiss chard, corn, garlic & onions and potatoes.. the peppers had a rough go at it.. so did the tomatoes.. but the tomato plants were good indicators of nitrogen binding (the leaves would yellow with green veins when they couldn't get enough nitrogen).
What's your soil like up there?

 

[bnjrob]

Honestly, I dont' think it's that difficult to grow anything here even for a newbie gardener - biggest problem always seems to be lack of water and the unrelenting sun and heat in the summertime that kills things (along with insect hordes like grasshoppers).

 

[yinepu]

Honestly, I dont' think it's that difficult to grow anything here even for a newbie gardener - biggest problem always seems to be lack of water and the unrelenting sun and heat in the summertime that kills things (along with insect hordes like grasshoppers).

It really depends on your soil.. A friend of ours lives on a big limestone slab. It's not individual rocks.. it's a giant slab of limestone. They have around 8 inches of soil on top. When they first moved in she tried to get her husband to dig her a duck pond.. He hit the slab with the first shovel of dirt. He spent over a month trying to find somewhere in their yard that didn't have the slab under it. After all that work he ended up getting her a kiddie pool from Walmart for her ducks. They tried a garden the first year they lived there.. After that first year gave up trying to plant anything unless it's in a pot. The plant roots just couldn't dig down far enough to stay cool and hydrated.

I try to plant my garden where ever it will get shade for part of the day.. that's the only way I have found (short of putting up shade cloth) to get garden plants to survive the Texas sun

 

[katsdar]

See you know what to do, fence in the plot so cows and deer can't get to it, though I use marigolds around mine, the deer and rabbits eat that and they don't go any further, don't know about cows though