The six on the left are party time cucumbers, the right three are costa rican hybrid peppers, the middle 9 are veranda red tomatoes. I just lowered the light on these after reading a lot of leggy posts on here. Will also ditch the peat pots when seed starting next time. Since lowering the plants haven't grown taller, but new leaves are showing. The cucumbers are a little on the yellow side, and seem pretty tall already. Keep 'em, trash 'em, or start a few more to be on the safe side?
Not pictured – I have a raised vegetable bed in my yard that gets 4-6 hours of direct sun. It seems pretty irrevocably infested with a local raspberry – or maybe the roots from a nearby laurel, if those get very small. It doesn't take much digging in there to get balls of roots. Nothing I've tried to grow there has taken at all (pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumber). This year I gave it a rough till and scattered a packet of pollinator seeds in there, as I didn't think there was much point in trying anything else. Is there anything that can grow in soil full of raspberries?
Only I've been trying to grow in the bed for 3 years, but I would call this my second 'real' year of raising veg. Zone 9, PNW.
by CharliePixie
2 Comments
The book Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades will answer your questions better than most here.
Cucumbers, squash and melons do much better when direct sown in place. They don’t take to transplanting well.
Removing the raspberry plants is your best bet. Even pulling roots. It’s a pain, yes. But if you want to have a garden…it’s either your garden or your raspberries. They don’t play well together.
You may want to consider raised beds with bottoms so that the raspberries and laurel can’t come up through. Fabric grow beds are also available. Containers and/or grow bags also work.
Tilling and amending the soil with compost, manure and worm castings for any in-ground gardens. Sometimes in-ground gardens take some time, amendments and improvements before it’s ready to support a good result garden.
But either removing or blocking the raspberries and laurel is a must.