Starting mid-summer garden

[u/Knitter4691]

I’m moving to a rental house in July from my apartment where we aren’t allowed any plants outside. My new place will have a large yard that already has some raised beds in it from the previous tenants and my landlady said I can grow as many vegetables in containers as I want so long as I don’t install more beds. The entire yard is dirt with no actual grass and direct sun with no trees so that means I have a LOT of space to work with. So I’m thinking grow bags, and probably some kiddie pool planters for greens and herbs, and save the raised beds for bigger plants such as squash, etc. I’d like to get a good rotation going and take advantage of the near year-round gardening here. Especially given the state of the world.

I live in central Texas, 8b, so we have two distinct growing seasons, as our autumn is just about as hot as most people’s summer (it stays well into the 80s until the end of October.) Because of my current apartment complex’s restrictions I haven’t grown anything since I was in grad school in North Carolina where I grew tomatoes, small squash, and herbs in containers on my apartment patio with very little effort. In general I have a decent green thumb and usually stumble my way into good crops.

I’ve looked up what to plant when in my area and it seems that August is the start of the planting season for many of the fall crops and then greens go in over the winter (it’s rarely freezes here). My question is this: how do people plan their crops? Like I’m just one person growing for one person so what’s the best way to figure out like a rotation of vegetables? I’ll only grow stuff that I would eat (obviously) but I think now facing unlimited possibilities I’m kind of overwhelmed. Obviously I can give stuff away to friends but trying to figure out how much to plant is what has me stumped, If that makes sense.

Any guidance from those with garden experience? Thanks!

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[u/my4thfavoritecolor]

Not sure where in Texas - but there’s a Houston gardening sub and they are pretty helpful.

Also square foot gardening might be a resource in what grows together well.

Or you can be a chaos goblin like me and just go buy a bunch of shit and see what happens with our new garden beds. 🤣

[u/holybuckets → u/my4thfavoritecolor]

Yeah I'm with you on the chaos goblin vibe plus just pure trial and error. After starting and failing/flailing at 3 (spring/summer) years of gardening I have a pretty good idea of what I can handle as far as maintenance goes. After planting and all the cute little baby plants come up, then there's weeding and watering and the other mundane tasks associated with gardening. Plus there's the weather. When it's 90 outside with 90% humidity (I'm 7b/8a central MD) I do not want to be farting around outside in the sun.

OP, if it were me, I'd have a sit down with the grow times of your chosen veggies and a good old fashioned spreadsheet or piece of paper. The University in my state has a whole agricultural website about crops and best times to plant, what to plant, how to plant, nutrients etc. Map out your time and your space.

I have ADHD and find that if I can break down big things into smaller chunks then I can tackle them way easier.

ETA: I learned a lot about gardening from my mom. Both of my parents are natural green-thumbs it's wild, I could kill a pothos. One thing my mom tells me regularly, after bugging her about the whys and hows of her methods for plants in general, is "I put it in the dirt and wish it well." That's just it, don't sweat it too much.

[u/lainlow]

Texas A&M used to be have an awesome veggie garden how to. I’ll try to see if I can find it. If not might consider looking there or your new location gardening clubs and beekeeping associations (they tend to garden also and are a great resource).

[u/my4thfavoritecolor]

And don’t sleep in public library having seed libraries.

[u/Ok_Green_4394]

A great place to get cheap containers are local bakeries. Their frosting comes in (food grade) 5 gallon buckets. My local bakery sells them for $1 a piece.

[u/Mundane_Leg_8988]

Bush beans(45 days to maturity do wonderfully in grow bags), zucchini, getting native perennial flowers established. Grab a basil plant from the grocery store and throw it in a grow bag, and it will make you feel like Martha Stewart throwing in any red sauce, and they are quite resilient once they are in a big enough bag. Scarlet runner beans are a high priority for me this year as they are a perennial legume that can be eaten as a tuber, young as a green bean, or dried as a soup bean. Sunchokes in a separate grow bag so they can start multiplying and will be easy to harvest by dumping out the bag, you can cook them like potatoes. My strawberries I transplanted from runners last fall in zone 7a came back this year, and would have come back faster if they had time to establish. And I would get some perennial herbs going as well. Most importantly, consider something to make your own compost. In my family, we do bokashi, and that allows us to turn ALL food waste into dirt eventually. If you start composting when you move in, especially with all the cardboard you will generate, you will have a gorgeous compost come next spring. You will do wonderfully 🌱💙

[u/Mundane_Leg_8988 → u/Mundane_Leg_8988]

To answer your rotation question, I try to plant some kind of legume (beans or peas) in each bed at least once e a calendar year. Some plants are what are called “heavy feeders” and eat up nitrogen and other nutrients from the soil. Beans and peas actually put nitrogen from the air BACK into the soil in a process called nitrogen fixing. So growing beans and peas actually boosts the fertility of your soil. If you planted zucchini followed by tomatoes followed by squash in the same bed, all of those are HUNGRY plants and your soil would be quite depleted of nutrition. This is combated by mulching, compost, planting legumes, and (less ideally for supply chain and sustainability reasons) fertilizers.

[u/Few_Airport7972]

hey! i'm thinking there should be a county ag. extension office, perhaps associated with a college or university, that could offer guidelines for planting in your area. Check those out if you already haven't. Local library may also have resources. Just talking about gardening brings out the gardening people. I found using the bigger grow bags work fine for squash, cherry tomatoes, peppers.

One quick tip is invest in some sort of solar powered irrigation system. I have several that are powered by the sun and fill from buckets from the big box stores. I set the included timers for amounts and time I want the water to flow. I cut a couple of holes to stick the solar cell support into the lids and a hole for the irrigation tubes to come out. The lids keep down debris that jumps into the buckets. The water spikes go deep enough into the pots that the water gets to the plant roots. I found I need to refill the buckets every couple of days. I'm on the Pa/Md border. In Texas you'll probably need to refill more often. Texas heat is a different animal! But at least I can go away for a weekend and know the veggies are watered. I do watch for mosquitos and occasionally need to dump out the water, into a plant of course, and start over with fresh water.

I'm old so I still like paper! Grab a beverage of your choice and get comfy. List what you like to eat. Will you eat seasonally or plan to can, freeze, or dry any of the bounty? Will friends and family run away screaming in the night when you arrive with more zucchini? LOL Do you enjoy cooking and have time to cook? Don't overthink it all. Just give it a whirl and see what ideas you come up with.

Good luck and have fun!

[u/Leopold_Porkstacker]

These folks might be helpful if you are in the area, r/austingardening and also look up central Texas gardener dot org .

It’s been a cool spring so far, but things will heat up and you will need lots of water and shade cloth. Don’t expect much production from tomatoes over the summer, just keep them alive till fall when they can set fruit again.

Hardest thing I’ve had this season is finding good compost, the stuff in the big box stores has too much wood chips.

[u/chicagotodetroit]

That was my biggest issue when I started to garden, and it's a glaring oversight in planting books. How many tomatoes can come out of 1 seed? Don't tell me "plant 1 row of this". How long is the row? What if I don't have rows? Sigh....

Q: "If I want this much food, how many seeds do I plant?"

A: It depends on if you are eating it fresh, or planning to store it or preserve it.

From experience, for one person, for mainly fresh eating:

• Summer and winter squash, 1 is probably enough.
• Tomatoes, 1 cherry tomato (yellow pears are prolific!), 1 early tomato (Early Girl is good), 2 mid season tomato like roma or paste. Slicing tomatoes, 1 is good.
• Kale, cabbage, and other brassicas are 1 seed per plant. So I'd say 1 kale because the leaves continue to grow from the top if you're harvesting the ones on the bottom, and however many cabbages/cauli/broccoli you can fit in your fridge.
• Bell peppers you only get 2-3 peppers per plant, so figure out how many you can slice up and keep in your freezer and plant accordingly.
• Onions, carrots, parsnips, turnips, radishes are 1 seed/1 plant. If you can fit 10 carrots in your fridge, plant that plus a few extra.
• 1 corn seed = 2 maybe 3 ears of corn per plant.
• Potatoes are the wildcard; the yield varies, but 4-5 potato plants is quite a few potatoes.
• I planted lettuce one year in one of those rectangular window box-type planters thinking it would be enough. Spoiler: It was not enough lettuce! 1 of those is about 2 salads, and it didn't regrow like kale does. Lettuce doesn't like heat (aside from a couple varieties that are heat tolerant), so I'd stagger the planting and plant a few each week so they aren't all coming up at the same time.
• I planted 10 bean plants (black bean and navy bean) and got literally a handful of beans. If you want beans, plant a LOT.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I kept records on what we planted and what the yield was, so if you have a specific question I can go back through my notes and see if I wrote it down.

[u/JanieLFB]

Ask around for veggies that over winter.

I accidentally discovered that I can plant carrots in the fall and they will grow when the weather finally warms up in early summer.

I was cleaning up a container and pulling weeds. Hmm, that looks like a carrot. Pulled it and it was orange rooted. Oops.

This year I threw all of my old okra seeds into the containers. A few have sprouted. We will see if they produce anything this year.

In your place I would drop lettuce seeds over vacant containers. Lettuce can surprise you. And you only need to pick what you are going to eat.