Hey BooFoo?...

Can you post some pics of your herb and veggie garden and a list of them? I want to see what you got. I remember a thread where you were standing next to a pretty big tomato plant.

I want to get an idea of what to grow next year. I know a lot of things wont do as well here in Bama but some things will do a hell of a lot better then SoCal.

I know I'm going to do a ton of different peppers and okra grows insanely good here.

I actually grabbed a few watermelon plants earlier this year and just planted them to see what would happen. I now have a massive spiderweb of watermelon vines growing in my 10yrd by 5yrd garden area with about 10 good melons growing. I really didn't think they would last because I haven't done much except water them a few times when it hadn't rained in over a week or two. I can't grow these next year because they will overtake every thing.

Give me some ideas please? :D

I'm not boofoo, but I fancy myself as a good horticulturalist. I'm in northern Virginia, so it's pretty close to Alabama. Our soil ph's might be a little different, but you can control that. So we should be able to grow a lot of the same stuff.

If you want to make your own pickles, and it's pretty easy to do, cucumbers are great for new soil. A lot of stuff will have trouble in a garden where you just turned the grass over, but cucumbers can be very aggressive.

Zucchini are great too, the plant isn't as wild as cucumber and a lot of the other melons, and you'll get a lot of fruit as well. Zucchini bread is also delicious, you can get two small loaves out of a medium sized zucchini.

Green beans are easy to grow, but you'll have to put up a fence or something. In my experience greenbeans are the no. 1 go to for deer and rabbits. They'll eat the plants, not just the beans themselves.

Sarrano peppers will grow very well where you live, they're like jalapenos but a little bit more hot. I like them becuase once they come in they stay green for a long time, and you can eat them green as well. So you don't have to pick them and worry about them drying out.

I tried kung pao peppers this year. They have a beautiful color and taste great. It pretty much takes care of the asian side of any pepper needs I have.

I tried banana peppers, they're good picked too, but I didn't get much fruit, kind of disapointed with these. Same with bell peppers, only got 1 or 2 all season.

Cherry tomatoes are the best tomatoes if you want something you can fire and forget about. I had really good luck with these this year. They're still susceptible to rain like regular tomatoes, so pick them right after a rain to keep them from splitting.


When preparing my garden I till everything so it's nice and broken up. Then I take the grass clippings which are all stored away in a compost pile and dump them on top. I till that in then let it sit for about 2 weeks. For tomato cages I find a post hole digger works a lot better than trying to drive the wires into the ground without bending them. Once you put the fill dirt back on them they're not going anywhere. For viney plants I like to set up steaks with holes drilled in them. Then I run twine through the holes and it creates a lattice for plants to grow on (this works great for cucumbers).

Oh yea, for almost everything I start growing them in little planters first, then I transfer the plant to the garden. It lets me set everything up in easy to manage rows. I don't really do this for melons or zucchini though, I find they like to grow in mound, so I just build up mounds of soil for them and toss in 3 or 5 seeds.

truth be told I purchase the majority of my herbs, can't grow for shit here the soil is all clay :mecry:

but this year I did grow some real good heirloom tomatoes that turned out well (that's the pic you saw). There are much better gardeners on here (lucius for example) I'd listen to them not to me :)

Thanks Lu. :D