I've enjoyed this thread. Some of our 2013 hits and misses from first time items were: Hits Mizuna: Comes up quickly from seed, produces abundantly and is a cut and come again veggie. Tokyo Bekana Grew very well here from seed in the spring and fall. We love it raw in salads as an alternative to lettuce. Fingerling potatoes: we grew five varieties and all did well and were DELICIOUS. Did very well at the farmers' market. Zephyr summer squash. These are very delicious and showed good disease resistance and yield. Safari zuchinni. It wasn't a good year for zukes for us, but these kept coming even after the others bit the dust. Red Russian kale. Produced very well. Tasty and tender. Moon and Stars Yellow Fleshed watermelons. We really enjoyed these. Not as sweet as Crimson Sweet, of course, but crispy and delicious. Fails Lemon cucumbers. Produced poorly. They taste fine but not worth the space they take up. Won't plant again. Burgundy okra. The problem with this is that the wildlife couldn't resist it. Deer and groundhogs destroyed it, while hardly bothering the Clemson Spineless. If you can keep the critters away, this would be a good choice. But we won't bother with it again. Creasy Greens (upland cress). This didn't come up at all. Surprising since it grows wild here. We won't bother trying again. Here is a link that might be useful: White Flint Farm

Thank you so much, zeedman! Amazing amount of info. Since we have a 17x20 community garden half-plot, I won't have room for huge winter squash or chayote. The summer squash/cukes/melons we're looking at growing don't root at nodes, so it's OK to send them up up, I think. Last season they got about 6 feet long along the center runner at the longest point, so straight up is not an option -- heavy fruit+over my head = concussion, if the amount of Blue Lake beans I consistently pulled off the brim of my hat is any indication. Also, the plot is not oriented N-S so vertical staking would be...problematic in my 4' wide raised beds. I'll have to think about your other suggestions - maybe when we get our own yard? Have been looking for example pictures, haven't found any yet. You'd think SOMEBODY on Flickr would snap something in front of the demonstration garden!

My back yard is about 10 x 80 feet, so i am trying to use space carefully. I have not grown pumpkin. One time years ago i planted one butternut squash. Just one. It grew two vines, one 10 feet long and the other 20 feet. I pkayed bumblebee with a paintbrush, and it set many squash that got huge, far more than we could use. Still, it is too much of one thing, so though though yield is good it does not serm to be the best use of my limited space. When the drought is over i might put one in my front lawn to duke it out with the bermuda grass. For value per sf, i felt that shallots were a great deal. For nutrients, just 6 each of cut-and-come-again lettuce, kale and spinach fed us a handfull leaves every day all winter, so i sm planting twice as much, and it takes hardly any space.

Hi Bruce, Welcome to the forum. We have a great time here and all of us learn a great deal from one another. It's quite simple really. In a hill, you start with 4 to 6 sprouts, let's say, and they all are competing with one another for water and nutrients. As you thin the plants and keep only the 3 plants...and then thin to 2, they still are competing for whatever their roots can pull up out of the soil. Since you leave 2 plants in a hill, the competition for nutrients and water never really stops so the two plants will tend to be ever so slightly less productive than a single plant on one hill would be. When you plant single plants in single rows, they do not have to compete with any other plant from Day 1, and really they do not have to compete for a long time.....not until their massive roots are competing with the massive roots from the next closest plants. However, because Squash Vine Borers are so good at taking out plants, it is smart to plant 2 plants together using your in-row spacing so that you'll end up with at least 1. When I do in-row spacing (which I did this year), I don't remove the second plant until I have blooms forming. As far as whether to plant on hills or not, in our climate it is mostly a matter of soil drainage that should drive your decision. --If you have well-drained soil, you should get equal production from plants on hills or in rows. --If you have heavy, slow-draining clay soil, you'll likely get better growth and production from plants on hills, assuming you loosened up the hilled-up soil and amended it with compost or other organic material. Even if the soil is not improved, though, you'll still get better drainage from a hill. In colder climates than ours where the soil stays very cold much later in the spring, the gardeners "need" to hill up the soil because it will warm up faster and that helps get their plants off to a good start. They also usually cover the garden beds with black plastic several weeks before their plant-out date in order to warm up soil, and also start seeds inside and transplant out, so they can start with 2 to 3 week transplants and get "ahead" that way too. In general, gardeners in colder parts of the country have temperature issues in the spring and fall that make it difficult to ripen squash and melons that have long days-to-maturity. For example, if you're in a zone where the last spring freeze falls around Memorial Day, and the first autumn freeze occurs in September, you have to push your melons and squash hard to get edible melons and squash from them. So, planting on a raised mound (hill) gives you slightly warmer soil and that gets you earlier sprouts. I've grown melons and squash both ways. I tended to use hills when my current garden was "young" and the soil (which started out as thick, dense Red River clay) was not as well-amended and, therefore, drained more slowly. Now that we're in our 11th year here, the top 8-10" of our formerly red clay soil is a brown loamy soil that does drain well, so I tend to go with in-row planting. And, I haven't even addressed what I'd do if I had very, very, very fast-draining sandy soil or sandy loam soil in a hot climate. If that were the case, I'd probably do waffle beds to help retain water and reduce wind and slow down moisture loss. I hope that answered your question. With any veggie I grow, I tend to experiment with growing it several different ways, and then "permanently" use whichever method worked best for me. What works best for one person is not always what works best for other people----so much depends on your soil type and climate. Some people on this forum routinely get 50-60" of rain per year, and others are lucky to get 15-20", so we all have to adapt and do what works in our specific locations. Dawn