British Expatriate Network

Hi everyone )

- Does anyone here grow their own vegetables?
Maybe you have just a couple of tomato plants or even your own little organic vegetable garden?

Just a few weeks ago we started off with 2 tomato plants that have really taken off. There's nothing like the smell of a home grown tomato, is there? They are ripening at different times but that's ok. This morning I counted 30 (still green) on one plant.

Any helpful tips for growing your own? I'm having visions of having my own organic vegetable garden/patch. I want to do some digging in the back yard and would like some suggestions on what's easy to grow and yields plenty to share.

Thanks! Elaine

Build yourself some raised beds for your vegies. It's easy and means you don't have to deal with the clay we have here. You can get truckloads of organic soil from U save rockery at a much more reasonable price than the big sacks.
I have beans, toms, radishes, carrots and herbs on the go. I did have lettuce but the weather is too hot one day and just right the other, and so it wilted away.
I grow calendula, just about everywhere, and it helps with the beans and toms. We have a neighbour who is worried about the West Nile virus and has zappers everywhere outside his house, which is all well and good but leaves us without beneficial insects. Will have to trim the trees back to nothing this year, got a honey dew infection.
I have my hot peppers in a basket and smokey peppers in a pot. They're all doing well. Guess it's going to get really hot next week so be ready for your toms to ripen. I put my paste ones thru the Victorio pulverizer yesterday and froze them for sauces in winter.

I have six tomato plants, nine peppers (Jalapeno and Habanero) and a bunch of strawberries growing in a raised bed. We have had a few strawberries this season and they are delicious - much better than store-bought.

There are hundreds of tomatos but they are all green at present - I hope they ripen next week as it will be great to have them in salads and other meals.

I might expand my vegetable garden next year if this year works out well.

We just have tomatoes but they are doing really well so we might expand next year and grow peppers and lettuce too. It is such a great feeling to go and pluck one fresh off the plant, give it a rinse and slice it nice and thin to go on one of my home-made bread buns! Yummy!

A few weeks ago while Mike was watering them he noticed there were several large green caterpillars on them, one having a whole load of white larvae all over it, so he took them off and then looked them up on the internet. Turns out they are tomato hornworms and the one with the larvae should have been left on the plant as they are some kind of wasp larvae that specifically feeds on the hornworms and disables and kills them so the larvae hatch and look for more hornworm hosts! o Organic insect-proofing indeed!

Debs x )

We have 2 tomato plants that are heavy with green tomatoes right now and a habenero pepper plant that as far as we can see has only one pepper sprouting at the mo. D All are in pots.
We also have a hanging basket of strawberries that appears to be doing nothing so far. (

Ah yes, this happened to me. The strawberries looked healthy and fine but never seemed to fruit. Then i found out why. Teeny tiny strawberries where being plucked and eaten by anyone and evryone but me. I wanted reasonable sized ones. :lol:

tomatos, peas, beans, corn and tomatillos.

Ah, tomatillos, green or purple?

:o Must be a very tolerant part of California you live in is all I can say :wink:

My wife and I get all our veggies from a local CSA - before that we had a garden at our bosses place (weird I know but he didn't live there any more) to grow toms, spuds, turnips, parsnips, peppers, cabbage, leeks, lots of good stuff. Now we have just a herb garden which has given us oodles of oregano, lemon thyme, sage, chives, garlic greens and a few other things so far.

Lastly, at the end of our garden next to the garage is a wild pumpkin plant. It is taking over and I'm scared that in a few months it will have grown so big that we'll have to move out. There are already around 20 pumpkins on it and they've started growing up the telephone pole, across the driveway to the neighbors. Very weird.

I live in the middle of the desert. Only things I can grow are cacti, palm trees and tumbleweed.

Not good eating.

Must be good for the bowels, no?

green

Used to grow our own veggies but got tired of feeding the local wildlife, possums,racoons, rabbits,squirrels,skunks etc -?

We grow tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce and a lot herbs right now. We usually grow a lot more but moved a few months ago to a new house and it is taking time to get the veggie garden back into full swing. We have lots of ripe tomatoes but we also have a lot of birds here and, not only do they like the birdfeeder we keep well stocked for them, they also love the tomatoes so about 8 out of every 10 tomatoes have about 1/4 to 1/2 of them nibbled away. It is becoming quite a competition to see who can get to the ripe ones first, us or them!!