Down sizing

Ok,I'm chickening out on a big garden next year. Too many problems not enough return on all the work. Now the Cantalopes are almost ripe enough to pick and the blasted birds are starting peck holes in them.

My main crop to sell are potted ornamentals but when it gets hot I start taking veggies. My best sellers are the odd ones. Black Plum tomatoes,lemon cukes,purple okra and baby round zukes so I'm going back to my little backyard garden,down size to small,gourmet type veggies so I can squeeze as much out of the space as possible. So send me some suggestions. Compact bush type squash and cukes. I've heard of okra Little Lucy so if you've grown it,let me here your thoughts.

Baker Creek has some usual things I'd like to try. Asian melon Golden Sweet looks promising and compact. Any others that vine a lot I can grow up on trellis and even arbors. I'm growing Mexican sour gerkins in a large container. I was moving a brass headboard,proped it up against the container for just a day and it took over. I have several other "containers" I'll be planting as well.

The new area I'm about bust up and till has one end in high shade so I'll be planting shade tolerant herbs for fresh cutting to take to market.

Brainstorm with me.

Old stock water container w/ Mex. sour gerkin and headboard it's holding hostage. This is how much the vine grew in just a week after I leaned the headboard against it.

P

Here's one of the gerkins...only suppose to get the size of a quarter.We're not allowed to cut anything for customers to sample but we can offer whole ones as samples so these will be prefect.

In the container are a couple of patio tomatoes and a couple of Tiny Tigers for a fall crop.

P

Haven't grown Little Lucy, but Baby Bubba is good!

I'd also recommend Miniature White Cukes. They don't take up alot of space, look cute, and taste good!

I'm having my share of gardening challenges this year, too. So not fair...

Got a seed source link?

P

It's a hybrid. My seeds were from Burpee and it was touted as the first container Okra.

I didn't find the mini white cukes on their page but I found the okra...Thanks

P

Oops! The mini-white cukes were Johnny's.

Okey dokey.

P

Oh Good Grief! I can't find all the seeds I want at one place so it looks like I'll be making 4 -5 mailorder vendors happy.'Cause ya know seeds are like Lays Potato Chips...ya can't buy just one. I'll have to hide the credit card statements again...LOL...but then they are for market sales so I can get my money back...yeah..that's the ticket...Morgan Fairchild my wife..(old SNL skit)!!

Cute little mini corn Chires Baby Sweet on Seeds of Change.


P

I've tried to buy the CBS twice, and both times they were sold out. I took it to be a sign! ~:-)

I had problems with the Asian Melons. They have a soft rind and are bug magnets!! The ants drilled holes in EVERY SINGLE one last year. So think about tellising them. A dusting of diatomaceous earth around the plant should stop any ants from crawling up the stems. Try that. You can support the melons in a "sling" of pantyhose.

Recently I read you can camophlage food plants from foraging birds by spraying it with Kanolin clay which is organic. I would imagine it will also just wash off after.

GGG

Thanks for that info GGG...by the way....long time no see...how ya doing? I plan on growing them on arbors made of cattle panels. WalMart's having their summer garden sale so I guess I need to grab some birdnetting and look for some diatomaceous earth and kanolin clay at one of the other garden centers...or on-line. I've gotten to be a pretty good armchair shopper.

I was having trouble w/ squirrels in my container garden(show on this post)earlier this year,digging it up just after I planted my lettuce and radish seeds. Couldn't find any rubber snakes localy so I just took a piece of thick white cotton line,curled it up like a snake ,propped up the "head" and "tail" w/ sticks so it looked like it was about to strike. I didn't have any more trouble w/ squirrels digging in the container. I called it my frizzy headed albino squirrel snake....LOL. Hey,if it works............

oh yeah....Seeds of Change has a mini corn "Chires Baby Sweet" that I think I'll give a try. A lot of older folks shop the market and are always on the look out for smaller veggies and melons.

OK,I've found:
Okra Little Lucy and Baby Bubba. White Velvet okra isn't dwarf but since the burgundy sell so well...I gotta try the white.Too bad there's not a blue variety. Eggplant Little Fingers,the baby corn and white mini cukes

Sounds fun! Where did you find the White Velvet Okra?

Your bed headboard and stock tank gave me an idea. I have the stock tank, and can make a headboard out of willow branches and vines for something to climb. Next year you can plant that ornamental headboard in the tank before you plant the vegies that will climb it.

Sequee,
Reimers...20 seed/$3.00 and Victory seeds..14-17 seeds/$2.85.A little pricey but I always figure,I can grow them out and save seeds for the next year. I also found it on an ebay store Heirloom Vegetable Seed Warehouse for only .99 a pkg but they were sold out.

MaryE
The headboard was intended to be in a garden bed. I leaned it against the container so my hub's could take it to his shop to wield rebar legs on it so it wouldn't keep falling over. After 2 days,the vines had a good grip so I couldn't move it. Pix shows about 8 days growth. If you look closely,I put a little wire garden boarder fence(hanging down on the side,to bottom right)to train it off the tomatoes. Apparently it was happy with overrunning just that and took over the headboard too.It has itty bitty fruits on it too.

P

Silvery Fir Tree and Polar Baby tomatoes grow real well in pots. Also Lime Green Salad for something different. Lemon cukes are really good; I don't think they taste 'lemony', but they have NO bitterness and produce heavily. I grew 'Rond de Nice' zukes all winter in rather small pots in the greenhouse and, although I don't know if you can even get seed for them there, Zephyr grows well in pots and produces really lovely zuke-like squash that's yellow with a pale green tip! Customers will probably love them and they are fairly prolific. Perfect "baby" veggie!

Potagere

potagere,
Thanks for that nice list. I'll be checking into them.I already grow Lemon cukes and they are one of my top sellers. Your right though,I can't taste anything lemony about them. I've got mini white cukes,Flying Saucer squash and Butterscotch melon coming from Johnny's any day now. They have fairly short maturity dates so I'm going to plant a few just to see if I can get a small harvest as a test run.

Zephyr is fast, too, if you find the seeds.
According to this article, http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/1188/ they can be bought at Johnny's also.
Even here in France the round zukes sell at a premium, so probably there as well. I'll start late plants in a couple of weeks.

Lemon cukes are my hubby's favorite. They just look like lemons. One plant is all a family needs, just like zucchini!