Your 2026 Garden

[Emanuel_acrehomestead]

Im in NC so I have a long growing season. This year my goal was to have a continuous productive garden, even through winter. My winter garden had a variety of greens, cabbage, and broccoli. I had much success and it offered many meals this winter to my family and good scraps for my chickens. My goal for 2026 is to sucessfully grow things I have struggled with growing in the past. Such as onions, garlic and pumpkins. Those are staples in my kitchen but I never have luck with those. I also want to expand my wildflower garden it brought so much pollenators to my yard which I believe gave me a successful year.

 

[Echelontheory101]

So I live in a very rural very not diverse area so unfortunately a lot of the foods and ingredients that I enjoy eating are hard to find around here. Mung bean sprouts are always old and slimy that are sold here in the grocery stores so I decided I would try to grow them myself after learning you can basically do it in a colander basket in 5 days on the kitchen counter and here they are on day 3!

 

[Echelontheory101]

Im in NC so I have a long growing season. This year my goal was to have a continuous productive garden, even through winter. My winter garden had a variety of greens, cabbage, and broccoli. I had much success and it offered many meals this winter to my family and good scraps for my chickens. My goal for 2026 is to sucessfully grow things I have struggled with growing in the past. Such as onions, garlic and pumpkins. Those are staples in my kitchen but I never have luck with those. I also want to expand my wildflower garden it brought so much pollenators to my yard which I believe gave me a successful year.

I struggle with garlic as well for some reason I cannot get a bulb to form! Onions I do pretty well with, I learned when I was struggling with them, that I was planting the sets too deep and I was putting them into too packed down soil they prefer things a little sandier or at least looser. Once I started planting them with a handful of sand mixed into the soil spot and so the white part of the set was above the soil line they did so much better!

 

[Echelontheory101]

This is the first time I have tried to overwinter peppers so I will let you know how it works out. So far so good.

Also curious how this goes for you! I have five cayenne pepper plants that I dry and make my own crushed red pepper flakes and cayenne pepper powder from every year and I plant them right into the beds but I would love to be able to put them in pots and bring them inside for the winter if that has helped you with yields in the summer instead of waiting for a brand new plant every year

 

[Snowbelt]

My only concern so far is the amount of new leaves they have. I am worried they will have trouble transitioning to cooler spring temperatures before they take off. I guess I will find out.

 

[Debbie292d]

There are smaller varieties - the Silvery Fir seeds I got are only supposed to get around two feet tall, and I believe someone brought up microdwarf tomatoes a while back although I don’t remember the variety names off the top of my head. Tiny Tim maybe?

Yes, Tiny Tim is one of my four plants in the first post. It's a dwarf determinate cherry tomato.

I had to try to find determinate tomatoes due to being indoors; I couldn't have four tall, and wide tomato plants in here. Rutgers was shown a few places as indeterminate with determinate tendencies. Hmm, whatever that means lol.

I looked up the silvery fern. Those would have been a great choice for indoor too. I'll see how this goes, and if it works, next year might see about switching tomato types.

 

[Emanuel_acrehomestead]

I struggle with garlic as well for some reason I cannot get a bulb to form! Onions I do pretty well with, I learned when I was struggling with them, that I was planting the sets too deep and I was putting them into too packed down soil they prefer things a little sandier or at least looser. Once I started planting them with a handful of sand mixed into the soil spot and so the white part of the set was above the soil line they did so much better!

Thank you. I appreciate the helpful tip!

 

[Sally PB]

One tip I have about onions and garlic: The bulbs underground are not roots, but specialized leaves. Feed/fertilize them as if they were greens, not roots. They like more nitrogen than you might think. They also do not like competition from weeds, so mulch the beds or keep up with weeding.

Disclaimer: I grow great garlic, but puny onions. Part of that is the type of onion I grow -- multiplier onions, which don't make very big bulbs, but they should be bigger than I'm getting. My best performing onion is Stuttgarter.

Also, make sure you're growing the right type of onion for your latitude. Up here in Michigan, I grow "long day" onions; farther south (Mason-Dixon line-ish) "short day" onions are better at sizing up their bulbs.

It's actually not the length of the day, it's the shortness of the night that triggers the bulbing on the plant.

 

[Debbie292d]

One tip I have about onions and garlic: The bulbs underground are not roots, but specialized leaves. Feed/fertilize them as if they were greens, not roots. They like more nitrogen than you might think. They also do not like competition from weeds, so mulch the beds or keep up with weeding.

Disclaimer: I grow great garlic, but puny onions. Part of that is the type of onion I grow -- multiplier onions, which don't make very big bulbs, but they should be bigger than I'm getting. My best performing onion is Stuttgarter.

Also, make sure you're growing the right type of onion for your latitude. Up here in Michigan, I grow "long day" onions; farther south (Mason-Dixon line-ish) "short day" onions are better at sizing up their bulbs.

It's actually not the length of the day, it's the shortness of the night that triggers the bulbing on the plant.

What garlic do you buy? I want to try some. We'd be in similar zones too.

 

[Debbie292d]

Do mushrooms count?

If so, does anyone grow the kind for Italian dishes?

We must have the climate for them as our yard gets many every year. The chickens don't touch them, and we don't know enough about mushrooms to try them ourselves.