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Vegetable Gardening

I think I should be amused...'hardy' vegetable plants

14 years ago

Ok, so I offered to winter-sow veggie gardens for people at work. Two people have stated that they'd like "hardy" plants. I think I'm amused...I'm in Z5, and, well, unless you do the early leafy things or some late stuff, there's really no such thing as a "hardy" vegetable plant.

On tomato choices: "Sow me anything you like; just as long as it's hardy"

On veggies in general: "Please start me some hardy vegetables."

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Comments (10)

bomber095
14 years ago
My response wouldve been "ok, specifically which type of leafy green do you want?" :-D
skeip
14 years ago
Do you suppose they mean " hearty" rather than "hardy"? Hearty to me implies a certain amount of vigor with a minimal amount of care.

Steve
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What you say is possible as they were packed close together. Root balls and plant size for the identical species plants were similar and they had thin layer of foam separating the roots from each other. Looks more to me like they pulled plants from seedling benches that were of similar size and packed them together. This is completely open and straight up, no subterfuge. I hate it when you get a cat with 6 pbulbs and on repotting it, which is what I do with all new plants, you find 2 plants growing in the same pot, neither blooming size. In that situation I will complain to the vendor. I gave these people positive feedback as the plants are healthy with strong root balls and the numbers are great. It's just I have to wait for blooms longer than I hoped for. Another plant I received earlier from another vendor is a strong mother plant with 2 new ones about 1/2 size which were connected by long, thin stalks which looked like they were not meant to be there permanently. I think that plant will do exactly what you mentioned. Nick
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Potatoes are very fun to harvest with the kids. And they are super easy. Just use ones from the grocery store that have begun sprouting. Lots of mulch over them. Lots. I second the beans. They are about the easiest crop to grow. And zuchini is legendary for growing in abundance. Corn can be a bit tricky, as the varmits like it as much as you do. But fresh corn is wonderful! And the kids can help make a scare-crow/squirrrel/coon to help protect it. (Can you tell I like to garden with kids?) The leafy veggies are also very easy, as GrannyMarsh said. Swiss Chard comes in beautiful colors, spinach, lettuces are all good. Beets, grown just for the greens would be another choice. (I eat the beet roots too, but no one else in my house likes them. But we all like the greens. And our pet bunnies love beet greens as a treat.) As for involving the kids, mine like to help plant, and harvest. They will water as well. But we mulch (used to use grass clippings, now I have a huge supply of straw,)everything, so no one is out there pulling weeds in the hot summer sun. No one likes pulling weeds ;-) Wait, no one except Ginger-the-wonder-dog. She likes to be fed the roots of the quack grass when we pull it. I even have gotten my neighbor kids to pull a few pieces of quack grass, just so they could feed her. Funny dog!! Marigold flowers are a wonderful companion for the tomatoes, as they help deter nematodes. Marigolds are very easy too. Alyssum is another flower that is so willing to grow. Have fun with it! If you are wanting to get a bit more involved in gardening as the years go on (I do hope so, it is a wonderful hobby,) I would suggest you keep a very simple garden journal. I use a simple theme notebook. My notes really help me learn more about my garden. Jean
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Comments (25)
Prairiemoon, thanks for your kind words! I actually didn't start my plants from seed this year, but I do hope to do so next year.. This year, I bought plants early, potted them up and grew them inside my "fake greenhouse"... later, I did the schlepping them in and out on nice days thing. This was my original plan -- THEN I discovered the planters you could wrap, but it was all sort of an afterthought. Anyway, even though the weather has been similar both years (and to be fair, we've had unusually warm/sunny weather for our region), it's astonishing the difference from last year. Last year, I just threw the plants out there in April - and didn't harvest cherries till almost August. So I agree, I must be doing something right - and I owe it all to this forum! And, to Tomatoville. Well, also to the guy with the cool planters :-) Next year, I would like to grow starts that are ready to go out between Mar 15 and April 1. Then I will put them out at the "correct" size (rather than huge like I did this year) and put them in WOWs and wraps. (I did figure out how to use the WOW inside my caged planters, despite what I wrote earlier on another thread.) Growing inside the WOW and wrap should simulate a greenhouse like my back porch did. I am hoping by doing this that I will have earlier earlies, and decent production from late season varieties, which I used to completely avoid. Re: Alaska Fish and Morbloom... I have used both in the past, but no longer prefer this brand. The original is 5-1-1 and is good for leafy plants, but not so much for flowering ones. The Morbloom is interesting. It is made with fish, but I believe the 0-10-10 is acheived by them adding synthetic salts, so it's not actually certified organic (although it has an organic component). Of course, that is also true of the TTF, as I mentioned above. Nothing really wrong with that, but it's good to keep in mind. (This is actually true of Earth Juice, Foxfarm, and a lot of others). I remember the smell of original formula Alaska being horrible (far worse than Neptune's), but I can't remember how the Morbloom compared. Sey, I think what you are doing to combine the two fertilizers is very reasonable. I will be interested to see if you notice an increase in the number of flowers soon, or if you see more than in past seasons. In case fish doesn't turn out to be your thing, I have also used a Miracle Gro bloom formula in the past that seemed to work well.
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I've never grown apple trees, but from what I've read they have to be sprayed a lot to prevent their many diseases: "Among deciduous fruit crops grown in North America, apples are perhaps the most pesticide spray intensive of any orchard crop. A multitude of fungal pathogens such as powdery mildew, bitter rot, black rot, and apple scab (to name a few) can cause injury to foliage, fruit and woody tissue. Application of conventional fungicides and insecticides is common among commercial growers, and non-commercial growers in more humid regions of Texas will struggle to grow clean fruit without spraying." Agrilife I have grown persimmons and they were easy to grow and had no diseases at all, but possums getting the fruit were sometimes a problem. Also I dearly love the wonderful sweet 'tangerines' I get on my Satsuma citrus tree. No spraying required and nothing bothers the fruit.
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nygardener
14 years ago
Or, "Sure, these tomatoes are super hardy. They'll go like gangbusters right up until frost."
denninmi
14 years ago
Well, many plants are hardy in the sense that self-sown or "winter sown" seeds will germinate at roughly the right time for each species and will generally make it. I have seen some things like cherry tomatoes and squash self-sow and get zapped, but some of them always survive and grow, and often are faster to produce than those we plant ourselves.

So, I guess my question in reading the original post is, if you offered to winter-sow things for them, I think many plants would qualify as "hardy" -- those that probably wouldn't work this way would be mostly the most tropical of species -- probably peppers and eggplants, okra, and probably those things with large seeds prone to rotting, like beans.
hosenemesis
14 years ago
Many of us don't know that "hardy" has a special meaning in gardening, and we use the word to mean "tough to kill."
Renee
twc015
14 years ago
They must mean that the plants are easy to grow.

I don't usually hear people say it in that context in gardening though.
booberry85
14 years ago
Hardy to me means tough to kill and doesn't need a lot of care once planted. Hardy to me are: most beans (except Chinese Red Noodle & Chinese Green Noodle - they need temps that are higher than we could give them the past two years) Azoychka Tomatoes, Black Cherry Tomatoes, Lemon Boy Tomatoes, Marmande Tomatoes, Rutgers, Celebrity, Jet Star, Super Sweet 100's, most peppers that take under 85 days to produce, Butternut squash, Zucchini, summer squash, lettuce, broccoli, Swiss Chard, Kale, Radishes, Peas, oregano, parsley. I'm sure there's more. These have all done well in my garden, have needed minimal care, held up to disease and pests and produced well. You're right though only some of your greens and things like broccoli are going to hold up to frost.
susan2010
14 years ago
Isn't that just code for "needs no attention from me to thrive"?
mmqchdygg
Original Author
14 years ago
Well, that's what I'm starting to wonder.
Other than last year's "issues" with cucumbers (that I understand was VERY widespread in the gardening community), I've never really met a vegetable that was finicky...but then again, I'm a gardener, and what I don't see as "work" might seem like a major crisis-situation to a non-gardener.
grandad_2003
14 years ago
I was ready to provide my reply but kept reading. Looks like Susan2010 beat me to it.

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