Texas Gardening: New to Houston Gardening - Looking to Learn , 1 by feldon30

feldon30 wrote:
I am on 1/5 of an acre (including a large house and swimming pool) and am growing 37 tomato plants, 18 pepper plants, 21 sq ft of bush beans, squash, cantaloupes, blackberries, cucumbers, 24 sq ft of pole beans, etc. So I have to make the most use of my space. I currently have 6 garden beds, two 4' x 8', two 4' x 16', and two 3' x 16'. I have my tomatoes in 3 of the beds (and some in containers) and use 12 Texas tomato cages along with 25 cages that I made out of galvanized fencing. The Texas cages secure the other cages together.

Due to surrounding trees and the angle of the sun (my back yard faces North), I have to place things such that the tomatoes won't shadow anything else. Mixing and matching tomatoes with other crops would probably not work well for me.

i gave up picking tomatoes in late June when they all started to look like this. I still had more on the vine, but the stink bugs were an army. I use a hand-held vacuum cleaner to suck up all that I can, but it's still not enough.

This message was edited May 18, 2008 11:39 AM