I have always wandered whether it is better to have a single plant like cucumber, bitter gourd, tomatoes, chili, etcetera - veggies that bear fruit kind of plant or to plant them in pairs. At the moment I'm planting them in pairs and it is always too much for both of us. Now if planting only a single is ok, I'll have more space and can have more varieties of plant growing in my very limited spaced garden. My concern is that having one plant only will the pollination of the flowers be effective or would it be the same. Any comments?
depends on what you are growing. tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are self fertile. they don't have to have a pollinator, just wind movement to displace the pollen from the anthers to the stigma. some cukes and some zucchinis have been developed to not need cross pollinated either, but you need to buy specific ones if you only want to plant one plant. otherwise you need two for pollination. corn needs to be planted in blocks for pollination.
First time ever, I set out some spindly, straggler tomato plants clumped very close together, sure that they would serve only as green manure. My daughter had simply tossed tomato seeds around, Willy Nilly, for years and had beautiful tomatoes. I figured, what do I have to lose. About a dozen tall, skinny tomato plants in a space of about 6 foot square. They grew like a house afire, put out lovely tomatoes. Still green and frost coming soon, so out they came this morning. You can bet 2018 will have me planting an entire bed of crowded tomato plants.
I have limited sun in my shady gardens, so I only plant one tomato, one green pepper, Basil. and Rosemary. They all do great. Growingpains- I just pulled my tomato out this morning, it was finished, but had a good season!
Kay, from curiosity, did you count the tomatoes on the one plant? I would really like to know. Were they mainly for eating, not for freezing or canning? I must have had at least 30 tomato plants. No canning, some freezing, lots of juice and plenty for eating. I have several green laid out to ripen.
I didn’t count them, but I’ll estimate I picked around 60-70 . We shared, and ate them every day . I did make one big batch of salsa. I have one tomato left that I picked green and has since ripened. Bittersweet to have the season end. I had great tomato growing weather this year! Not always the case.
Kay, wow, that is great from one plant. Imagine you with a dozen plants. You could feed the neighborhood.
It was a very good plant this year. Years ago, I grew many more tomato plants, but no more. Limited sun here. Wish there were veggies that grew in shade LOL
Not a big fan of celery. If I need some, I’ll buy it at the market, but it’s interesting that it can grow in shade.
Thank you all for the feed back, I think I'll go with one tomato plant from now and experiment with the rest. I think arugula is a good candidate to grow in shade. I used to plant them in direct sunlight and it was bitter. I tried planting them in the shade it was nice. Those planted in direct sunlight is very dark green and those in the shade is light green. I think the chlorophyll could cause the strong bitterness.
I like to plant my summer lettuces between my aubergines and capsicums and tomatoes, that way they get sun and shade. my spring and winter lettuces, I plant in full sun. It is good to plant lettuces in a place that has shade during the hottest part of the day. Also choose different varieties of lettuce depending on your season.