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Square Foot Gardening

New to veggie gardening

16 years ago

I started my first vegetable garden this spring and I'm not off to a good start.

I have two raised garden beds filled with a growers mix. I planted peas, carrots, and lettuce. Peas never grew past 2 inches. Carrots are still trying to grow past 1/4" diameter even though the maturity date was 3 weeks ago. Lettuce tastes bitter.

So I then planted tomatoes, eggplant and peppers as transplants on 3/15, Peppers and eggplant have not grown. Tomatoes are doing good though - yeah! I put black plastic down and some black cow composted manure before I planted them to warm up the soil and just took it off last weekend. I used fish emulsion when I planted the transplants.

Anyone have any ideas as to my inability to grow veggies?

Also, I have soaker hoses down in the bedsand covered the entire bed with organic compost. I have them set for 2 days a week at 30 min each time. Is that two much or too little?

Do I need more fertilizer? I'm trying to stay organic.

Thanks!

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Comments (3)

arjo_reich
16 years ago
Regarding your lettuce, what are you temperatures like and what type of lettuce are you growing. Many cultivars of lettuce bitter when grown in warm climates.
timewind
16 years ago
Wow, it is just about time for me to plant carrots and lettuce. I suspect that your compost, as is often the case with compost from mainly animal sources is long on Nitrogen and short on other nutrients, particularly phosphorus and probably potassium. After problems much like yours with root crops in particular, I have gotten some bone meal to add to my beds along with fresh compost this spring. I would look at adding materials like bone-meal, blood-meal, ashes, etc. to add the "macro" and "micro" nutrients your plants need to your compost. The P(hosphorus) and K (Potassium) ratings you seen on garden supplements, both organic and chemical are the "big three" but there are other things your plants can use. I have included a link to a page with better information than I can quickly provide.

Here is a link that might be useful: Helpful page about plant nutrients.
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