I posted this in my new blog, as well, but thought this seemed like the appropriate place to solicit feedback. I have one bed I prepared in the spring, and 16 varieties of vegetables to play with. Five peppers, four tomatoes, one eggplant, one summer squash, one cucumber, three beans, and one cowpea masquerading as a yardlong bean. There's a full list in my first blog post if that helps at all. The marks along the bottom are for each foot - I know this all ends up closely packed, but I'm hoping that without rows it'll be OK. This bed lines my western fence, and gets full sun nearly all day. What do those of you with a little more experience say?
I say, wow, you're going to have a lot of tomatoes. Hopefully the tomatoes won't shade the peppers. The cukes tend to take up a lot of room, too. It might help if you tried posting in a veggie garden area, cause I'm sure there's lots of people out there with tons of experience in getting the most out of a smaller space. Best of luck!
Just a comment about the tomatos. If you defoliate up to the top third of the plant, the peppers will do fine. Mine are right beneath mine too and are producing. It sounds as if you should get a nice crop. I really packed mine too. Gardengater
You will have to make a trellis for the cukes, they grow very long and will do well growing up trellis...
Oh, yay, replies! I may only end up with two of each variety of tomatoes - I'm determined to grow a single plant of each tomato and pepper in containers elsewhere to play around with seed saving. I'm glad to hear that squeezing in the tomatoes and peppers might work out OK - my husband is a *huge* pepper fan, and I was a little worried for those poor pepper plants in the back. I'll lurk around here for some defoliating instructions. As for trellis, I've actually got some wide linked chicken wire stapled up to my fence, and a few decorative trellissy things to help out my beans and cukes. I'm really hopeful - the only thing I've ever been truly successful at growing was my asparagus beans. They climbed right up my fence and spit great big beautiful beans at me right up till October last year. I'm starting late, but this might be just the right time for a late summer planting here in FL.
A good suggestion that I got this year when it comes to peppers...Plant them in seashell compost..it works great! I have more peppers then I know what to do with...Over 25 on 6 plants! Also use epsom salt on them every other week...most packages of epsom salt have directions to use on plants. It helps the peppers hold on to their flowers. My pepper plants are about 2 feet tall and doing great!
