I love Sugar Snap Peas and chinese cabbage.

Why not wait until after the seed swap and see what you need to add.

Not knowing what you like to eat, that is a tough question.

But if you have a crop that is done by august, i suggest broccoli, to be direct seeded around the 15th for a fall crop. A good variety is packman.Or look for a variety that is around 50-60 days to maturity. They can stand some cold temps but not a hard freeze.

Turnips is another one that does pretty good in the fall planted around the first part of Sept. There are varities that are just for the green tops also.

I'm sure you will get more suggestions.

oh yes we did have sugar snap peas,was kind of late planting but we ate every one greedily while in the garden.
i have never had chinese cabbage,sounds promising.and yes i am sure the seed swap seeds will give me inspiration so am waiting ever so patiently for them.......lol.....anyone who knows me would never accuse me of being patient :)

Leaava, Maybe late next week or soon after. I am still missing a few packages, but the basket is nice and full.

Leava, I was pleased with sweet potatoes and chinese cabbage this year, I plan to try them again.

Larry

If you have room, sweet potatoes are very productive for the space they take up. I plant them in the middle of a corn patch so they can sprawl when the corn comes out. Green beans are easy and so much more flavorful when home grown. Even potatoes which are so cheap in stores taste totally different out of the garden. Chinese cabbage is a fall crop. You will want to start the seeds about Aug 1 and put in the ground by midSept. They will withstand down to 25 without protection if it doesn't last too long. If you only have a small area you will want to get really good at succession cropping. Do a search and you will find lots about it here although exactly how it works for you will depend on your zone.

White scallop squash ran me outta house last year. I still have some in the freezer!

Sorry about the job!

The only suggestion I've not yet seen that I can think of are cukes. Pickle 'em, eat 'em fresh, dry them as chips, shred and freeze to use as.... um... I don't know since I've never actually done that one. LOL

Diane

Leava,

The best vegetable gardening advice I've ever seen is this: grow what you like to eat!

You know, I can grow eggplant, cauliflowers or brussels sprouts all over the place, but my family doesn't like them and won't eat them. (Well, I like brussels sprouts but no one else does.)

So, think about what it is that y'all really like to eat and focus on growing those things. I know some people who grow all kinds of things that they won't eat and then give those things away. I don't really understand the logic of doing that, except clearly those folks just love growing veggies.

Also, consider how much space each crop takes up and how much irrigation it requires. I'd love to grow a lot more potatoes than I do, for example, but they demand a lot of space and good soil, and I don't have either of those.

If your gardening space is limited, you can grow more crops by succession planting each bed. For example, I harvest broccoli plants in the morning and replant the broccoli bed with blackeyed peas in the afternoon. I try to not leave any bare, wasted space for any period of time in the garden. With careful succession planting and follow-on crops, you can grow an amazing amount of food every year.

Dawn

Larry and others on the sweet potatos,we love them, is there a source in the metro OKC area you can recommend?

Green beans I love them too, the dh does not so weighing that out vs my limited space.

Diane,thanx for the good wishes,I am nearly half our income so this will be a HUGE adjustment.
I forgot i did get a few cucumbers and we both love them.sheesh.....i wonder what nutrients they have, trying to focus on nutrient dense foods.even though i don't have much room i really want to plant some beans/edamame.

ezzirah maybe i should try the white scallop instead of zuchinni or yellow,esp if i can fool the svb platoon.

and dawn i totally get the plant what you like thing.i planted a couple of mini eggplants.beautiful and got several off each plant.actually they were so beautiful i loved just looking at them.......but now i don't fry much so they sat and got discouraged looking on the counter......

maybe with more time i can do the succession planting thing although it kind of hurts my head to figure out that puzzle.

i sure hope we get more rain this year.had to stop watering when the water bill went so high and that was excruciating.
not only did things die after all that work but i felt like a horrid plant mama.somehow when i raise from seed i feel very maternal over my little plants.

Leava,
Here's my experience with sweet potatoes, but your mileage may vary. Some years back I did something I came to call my E L M for Extreme Lasagna Makeover. I covered 11,000 square feet of sand 18" deep with more than 160,000 pounds of organic material, covered by leaf mulch. (I stopped writing down after I got to 80 tons.) Included in all that stuff was a box of rotting sweet potatoes. I was trying to make the OM as dense as possible so I asked DH to help me cut up the sweet potatoes. He got out the machete and got after it. A short time later we had sweet potatoes everywhere. It was fun and they have pretty blooms, so we let them grow. In the fall we harvested 7 bushels of delicious sweet potatoes and stored them in the basement. We've planted from that same stock ever since. Occasionally I read about people struggling to grow sweet potatoes. While I recognize their pain, you can understand it is a real head scratcher for me. What variety are they? Easy, delicious and long lasting. That's all I need to know.

So while I know there are lots of quality suppliers of sweet potato stock, including our own esteemed duckcreekgardens, if you were to ask me where to get sweet potatoes, I'd have to send you to the dumpster behind the grocery store.

Your devilishly delightful dumpster-diving diva,
Seedmama

Leava,

The watering issue always will be with us so I try not to stress over it when I have to stop watering and let plants die, which generally happens about 1 out of 3 years here. Unfortunately, it often happens 2 or 3 years in a row, but then after that, I know it likely won't happen for a while again. It is excrutiating to leave our lovingly-raised plants to suffer, but that's just how it is when you live and garden in an area prone to drought. It is a shame that some years we have way too much water and other years we have way too little, but we sure can't do anything about it.

Succession planting sounds harder than it is.

If you know you're planting broccoli, for example, and it matures in 60 days from transplant, just look at the calendar 60 days out from your transplant date and ask yourself what grows well if planted in that month. I usually start seeds of succession crops in tiny bathroom-sized paper cups with the bottoms cut out about 5-7 days before I expect to harvest the in-ground plants. Then, with harvest in the morning and transplanting the new crop (cups and all to lessen transplant shock) in the afternoon (or evening if the weather is very hot), that bed doesn't stay out of production long.

You also can plant many succession crops by direct-sowing the seed in the ground, but with each crop you have to know your soil temps and air temps and make sure it isn't too hot for the succession crop to sprout. I just like starting mine inside in cups so I'll have an "instant replacement" and fill up that space and put it to work right away. I hate sowing seed in summer, waiting a week or two for it to sprout, and then having to thin or replant in areas as needed. I'd rather have the sure think of plugging in a growing plant into each bit of available space.

Really, if you're replacing cool season crops, you have to replace them with a warm season crop so that narrows down your choices a lot, and it shouldn't be tomatoes or peppers (unless they're a new batch for fall) since they already should be in the ground before you're harvesting something like broccoli or cabbage.

It can be harder to decide on succession crops for fall because you can choose from both some shorter-season warm-season crops or some of the cool-season crops. For fall, I try to plant more of whatever we have put up the least of or whatever we like the best.

I don't necessarily succession crop after mid-summer if it is a very dry summer because there's no point in planting something that will struggle with a lack of water.

Dawn

A friend, of one of my friends, planted sweet potatoes this year. My friend gave me a few and I mentioned that they were really good. He said, "How many more do you want?" He brought me a big bag full, maybe 30-35 pounds.

Seems this guy planted a few Beurguard sweets for he and his wife, and grew 2,000 pounds. He had no idea what to do with them. The night before I had the conversation with my friend, he had taken about a 100 pounds off a wagon, and shared some with me, but the wagon was then just left out to freeze because they didn't have anywhere to get it inside. I heard the story the day AFTER the first hard freeze.

I guess he plants every year, but had never had this kind of crop before. I should be so lucky.

Seedmama, I simply have to know where you found enough crap to pile on 18" thick over 11000 square feet! Was there a huge amount from grocery store dumpsters?

I'm looking for inspiration to get this depleted soil back up to par. I can, of course, get huge amounts of cardboard from Walmart and other stores and a bit of odds and ends from the nearest town's "yard waste" dump. Other than that, I'm still trying to come up with a good plan of attack.

Diane

Leava - sorry to hear about the perspective loss of income. We encountered that 2 years ago and it's actually turned out to be a great learning experience. Also, that year we had the BEST garden ever because someone was home to stay on top of the watering, weeding, harvesting, etc. In fact, I really mourned the loss of my "gardener" when he found a contract job last year. I got over that when the paychecks started coming in..ha!

Remember to start small too. It's horribly dissappointing to have grand plans only to watch them get out of hand if/when you don't loose your job. Besides, by July 1 - the heat will be setting in. I'd bet you could supplement with some of your soaps, etc.?! Grow your own basil and make basil soap!

Leava,

Two years ago the company I worked for went under. It was extremely sad for me at the time as it was the best company, best job, best salary, etc. I had ever had. I truly understand some of what you're going through. If worse comes, you can and will survive and be astounded by your resourcefulness as you reflect back on this time a little later down the road. This is what threw me into gardening in the first place.

You mentioned your limited space as a concern. I have a very small backyard so I can totally relate. My answer... vertical gardening. You can dramatically increase your garden area & harvest by planting any and everything that will grow on some type of support. Only a few inches of ground is used leaving almost all your original space available for everything else. Beans, peas, cuc's, squash, melons (I'm sure I'm forgetting plenty) will all do well with this method. Get creative with what you already have that could serve as a support.

Succession planting will increase your harvest as well as dual purpose beds meaning growing root crops with above ground crops. Tuck rows of lettuce between larger plants that will offer shade. Grow a few extra of the types of food that will freeze well so you can enjoy them again during the winter.

Consider getting a couple of rain barrels in place very soon before the rainy season starts. I was surprised how many times I could water the garden using just the collected rainwater rather than costly city water. Large, industrial size barrels are fairly easy to find.

If you have other family or friends who also garden, consider swapping veggies that way you won't have to grow everything yourself.

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. Just wanted to pass along some encouragement and applaud your quest for a healthier you.

Lynn