I’ve always wanted to be a successful gardener, but I’ve never been good at gardening.
When we lived in California, my step-mom gave me big pots and gardening tools for Christmas one year so I could grow tomatoes in our tiny, sand-filled townhouse backyard.
Believe it or not, those tomatoes were the only successful thing I had ever grown out West. No matter how “easy” everyone said it was to grow zucchini or green onions, I could only grow tomatoes (and one variety, at that).
That’s why when we planted a summer vegetable garden, my goal was simply to keep the plants alive.
My First Summer Vegetable Garden in Georgia
February
With my black-thumb gardening history AND living in a new area, I didn’t want to take on too much with my first summer vegetable garden. I thought two types of plants would be sufficient, with a few different varieties of each so I could see which ones did best.
My two “it would be so cool” goals for my first summer vegetable garden in Georgia were this:
- Grow enough tomatoes to make homemade pizza sauce for a year (we make homemade pizza every Friday night)
- Grow enough cayenne peppers to make homemade Frank’s hot sauce for a year (my son really does put it on everything!)
But really, I just didn’t want to kill the plants.
I started with 16 tomato plants, 4 hot peppers, 4 bell peppers and zero expectation of getting any fruit whatsoever. I fully anticipated bugs, worms, squirrels and all sorts of blunders to come and devour it all.
BUT… if I had just one plant make it through the summer, it was a win in my book.
Early March
We started from seed, but my pessimistic gardening self I never really thought the seeds would actually sprout. However, just over a week later, they did. The tomatoes were first, then the peppers.
I’ll admit, watching a plant grow from nothing but a seed is pretty exciting. They got bigger, grew more leaves and started to look like actual plants!
April
And then they started to die. The leaves were turning yellow from too much water and the cups were too small for the roots to grow.
This didn’t surprise me really though. I was used to my plants dying, remember?
BUT, my goal was for SOMETHING surviving to the end of the summer, so I kept going anyway.
Gardening in Georgia’s red dirt is not easy unless you’ve spent years working the soil to increase the nutrients and such. So I went with my tried and true: pots.
Early May
I ordered my pots online and had dirt delivered from a local landscaping yard – both were MUCH cheaper than the local hardware store.
We carefully transferred the dying plants to the pots, put them out into the yard where we got the most sun, watered and waited.
And with each passing day, the plants looked worse and worse.
The leaves shriveled up. Some plants were down to just the stem. Some disappeared altogether making it look like there was never a plant there in the first place!
Late May
Then suddenly, everything turned green.
Honestly, it was a miracle. I thought they were goners, and yet they survived. Don’t ask me how, because I really don’t know!
Maybe the transfer shocked them. Maybe it was the sudden bout of heat. Or maybe that’s just the way it’s supposed to be?
In either case, over half of the plants survived the transplant. This meant there was a good chance one of them would make it to the end of the summer!
Early June
At this point, the garden is a waiting game. There isn’t much I can do to make them grow faster or bigger, so I just waited.
Weeks went by and the plants grew at a steady pace. Nothing earth-shattering going on, but they were still alive and that’s progress in my book.
However, when a couple empty pots suddenly sprouted new tomato plants, my hopes of having just one surviving plant blossomed into possibly having fruit!
Here my black-thumb self had not only grown plants from seeds, but I somehow did something right to bring them back from the dead!
Mid June
Mr. Crumbs and I had a 10-day trip planned in June. Since the plants were still growing despite me doing NOTHING to them since the initial transfer (not even watering, and I know these tricks on watering your garden for free!), I felt confident that they would survive on their own until we got back.
Besides, there was rain in the forecast and still a long ways off from the plants even flowering…
Which did concern me.
Here we were approaching the halfway point of summer and there wasn’t a single flower on any plant. What were the odds there would be fruit in time?
Well, color me surprised when we came back to find the plants not only alive, but the tomatoes had grown OVER the 54” tomato cage, half of the tomato plants had flowers AND a hot pepper had started to grow!
And then it hit me – I was actually growing a real garden!
Late June
Here’s where we are today. Everything is flourishing!
Tomatoes
Two more “dead” tomato plants have come back, for a total of 14 tomatoes.
About half of the tomatoes have fruit growing. There are flowers on all the remaining plants but one, and I have high hopes that one will produce flowers in the next week or two.
Hot Peppers
One hot pepper never sprouted, so we have 3 hot peppers. Every hot pepper plant has fruit, and it’s so neat to watch! Did you know that cayenne peppers can grow upside down?
Bell Peppers
We have 4 bell pepper plants, with fruit on 3 of them. One bell pepper is 2” big!
The fourth plant has lots of buds, so I’m anticipating fruit from that one soon.
Bugs
I’ve been inspecting the plants daily since we returned from our trip in June, and encountered two bugs: stink bugs and leafhoppers.
Since I started with organic dirt, I wanted to keep the dirt as “clean” as possible. For pest control, I chose neem oil.
According to Wikipedia, neem oil is a vegetable oil pressed from the fruits and seeds of the neem. This articles explains how neem oil is considered a safe, naturally occurring insecticide.
I diluted it appropriately, sprayed it on the leaves of the bell peppers one early morning (those were the only plants that had the leafhoppers) and that did the trick! I’ll keep checking daily, and follow-up every 7-10 days with more spray if necessary.
Supplies
We sold all of our gardening supplies when we moved, so I was starting from scratch. After much research, here’s where I bought my supplies:
Dirt: 50/50 Organic Foothills Compost and Organic Top Soil from a local landscaping yard
This was recommended to me by a local friend who has successfully grown gardens in North Carolina and Georgia. I recommend asking local gardeners for recommendations if your yard isn’t immediately suitable for gardening. Also, call around for the best price. Buying in bulk from the landscaping yard cost 1/3 of the price over buying bags of dirt from Costco!
As the summer goes on, I’ll be using these free fertilizing ideas to help build the soil in a couple areas I’m eyeing to build on next year.
Pots: 20 gallon and 5 gallon pots from Zenhydro.com
I priced one pot at Home Depot or Costco at $18 on average. Times 16 tomatoes is nearly $300! Zenhydro.com had pots for a fraction of the price.
Shipping wasn’t quite as fast as I would have liked, but now I know. The size and quality of the pots though, has been perfect.
Seeds: organic seeds from Home Depot
I researched the best varieties of tomatoes to grow in Georgia first, and lucked out when I saw 4 varieties in the seed section at Home Depot. Since it’s my first year, I wasn’t too concerned about the variety. I picked 2 cherry tomatoes, one slicing tomato and one heirloom – all organic needs. Each packet was no more than $2, and we planted half of each packet.
Next year I’d like to plant roma tomatoes for sure, and others depending on how this season turns out. If I use up the rest of the seeds in the packet, it would cost me just $8 in seeds for two seasons. Compare this to $15 per starter plant!
I’m also going to look more into incorporating companion gardening as I plan out next year’s garden.
Cages: 54″ steel cages from ALDI + leftovers from previous owners
I had priced out tomato cages online and at Home Depot and they ranged $5-6 each. Then one week ALDI had them on sale for under $2 each! I bought 16 and ended up using two for the peppers too. Previous owners left some cages as well, so those went to the other pepper plants.
Pest Management: my own fingers and neem oil from Home Depot
I flicked off bugs until I had the chance to buy this neem oil. I have the concentrate, and have used only 1/2 tablespoon for one quart so far. The first application used about one cup’s worth, so this one batch will last me about a month. At the rate I’m going, that one 16 ounce bottle of neem oil will last me 64 months worth of gardening. Well worth the $9 investment!
Harvesting
We haven’t harvested anything yet, but there’s lots of green!
I weighed my harvest the last summer I gardened in California. Five plants yielded 222 pounds of tomatoes!
I’ll do the same again this year, weighing as I harvest, so I can track how well the plants perform. This will let me adjust my plans for next year’s garden.
Yes, my first summer vegetable garden in Georgia isn’t over yet and I’m already planning for next year! I want to build some inexpensive raised beds with this tutorial, and plant strawberries along our back patio. I have my eyes on some blackberries and blueberries too.
Even a small harvest is so exciting because every little bit I can save on groceries helps us stay within our budget. I talk about that a lot in Grocery Budget Bootcamp where I teach my techniques to keep our budget at $330/month.
Hi Tiffany…..great looking garden you’ve got there….you and your family will enjoy those veggies so much.
I too buy seeds that are ‘made’ for where we live and I only buy heirloom varieties as that way I can let a few fruits mature on the plant and then harvest the seeds for next year. I’m even going to try to do that with the carrots.
I had 36 paste tomato plants started and we put them out in the garden and for some reason every single one died…..I was heartbroken and also confused as it’s never happened before, still not too sure what went on there so we had to buy tomato starts. I was upset at having to spend $2 each, but when I read $15 for starts I’m ok now……lol.
Sounds like you have been bitten by the gardening bug……soon you’ll be looking through the seed catalogues and making wish lists right after Christmas….or maybe FOR Christmas as you’re living much further south than I am and can start much earlier in the season.
Happy planting.
Thanks so much Kate! I’m sorry to hear about your paste tomato plants – how weird that they all died! I’m already looking around my yard, wondering what should go where and how to maximize the shady spots I have. Who knew you only needed a bit of heat to make it work, LOL!
Interesting article. We have found that Home Depot is one of the more expensive places for seeds and plants. They do have some good sales if you can catch them. Look around for farm or feed stores. They usually have good prices on seeds. We prefer heirlooms since we can harvest seeds from the plants to use the next year. With hybrids, you never know what you might get from the seeds.
My son actually plans the garden and starts seeds in late February or early March in the house. This is our 8th year and have 5 in-ground and 6 raised beds now. Some of the beds are established herb beds while the rest are used for vegetables. It’s taken quite a while to get the red clay turned into good garden soil. Through amendments of rock dust, compost, composted manure, and some topsoil, the beds are really taking shape. We’ve stayed away from commercial chemical fertilizers and opted to go as organic as possible.
We harvested nearly 16 pounds of green peas this year thanks to the cooler spring. The green beans didn’t do much and are already turning brown. We did put up 7 quarts though. We got green peppers coming in and tomatoes aren’t far behind. We’ve got a good crop of carrots, onions and potatoes coming in. They were an experiment this year since we’ve never grown them before. Another experiment is celery. On a whim, I put the end piece of some store bought celery in water and it started growing. After roots appeared, we put it in soil and then the garden. Now we’ve got a nice big celery plant that is about ready for harvest.
We try to plant things that have a use or can be eaten. With less than a half acre to work with, we are somewhat selective about what we plant. Even our cactus can be eaten. The fronds can be sliced into what is commonly called Mexican green beans and the prickly pear fruit is rich in vitamin C. We’re trying to make our yard like my Dad had. One where you can walk around and have a banquet of fruits and vegetables.
Thanks for all the tips Linda, and for sharing your garden story! 7 quarts of green beans would go far in our family, LOL!! We plant with a similar mindset. Our plant-able land isn’t big, so my goal is to use the garden as landscaping too, maximizing the space we have!
This is my second year doing container gardening. I get a late start, since I get my plants marked down at the store that I work at. It also limits my choices. But this year, I have one lemon grape tomato (they are so prolific, you only need one or two), 2 regular cherry tomatoes, 2 pineapple heirloom tomatoes, a couple habanero pepper plants, and 3 hot banana pepper. I also am trying broccoli for the first time, 3 plants (we will see how they do since they like the cooler weather). One thing that I do, and it is a bit more costly, but I strictly use a good quality potting soil. I did a lot of research, and this was the one thing that I saw over and over. But you seem to have had success with the soil you purchased. I’m up north, so the plants are just starting to blossom and fruit. It is exciting! When I owned my own home, I had a ‘biggish’ garden every year, so doing the container thing has been a semi successful experiment for me so far.
That’s kind of neat that your garden is a surprise, depending on what plants are on sale. That can be pretty fun! I’ve heard the same thing about soil too, which is why I started with the compost. Gardening is very exciting!
Thanks for your gardening article, Tiffany. I really enjoyed it!
Home Depot is a great place to buy seed packets simply because they have such a great variety. It was the only place I could find dill seeds which I hope to harvest when the cucumbers come in for some homemade fermented dill pickles.
Check your local old-fashioned hardware store (independently owned) for another source for seeds. I buy them by the ounce, half-ounce, or quarter-ounce for literally pennies.
Happy gardening! I love your website and enjoy your weekly emails. Thanks for all the work you put into this!
What a great tip Janie! Thanks for sharing with me, and for being a loyal reader! 🙂
Loved hearing about your garden process! As a newbie vegetable gardener, I’m always interested in ways to cut costs, increase production, eliminate pests, etc.
It’s been almost a year since your post and I’m curious to know the results of your experiment. Is a follow up posted on your website? If not, please don’t keep your readers in suspense any longer… we have gardens to grow;-)
Thanks so much!
Hi Brenda! Sometime between late June and July the plants went bonkers!! The tomatoes grew to over 7 feet tall! I struggles with end blossom rot (due to inconsistent watering… we got lots of rain early on, then no rain while we went on two separate one-week trips) and some bugs (again, inconsistent spraying with neem oil). I ended up harvesting 7-8 gallons of tomatoes, not including the ones we ate every week in various dishes (and at least 32 ounces worth in our pizza sauce). I harvested roughly 2 quarts of hot peppers, but the bell peppers didn’t do so well – less than 10 total, mostly on the small side. I think if I were home for July (since that’s when they really took off) and could keep up with watering and spraying, it would have been an even better harvest. But for my first year, it wasn’t too bad! I’d look at getting a different breed of bell peppers for sure though, and probably wouldn’t grow cherry tomatoes or the heirloom tomatoes again. The cherry were very cumbersome to harvest and we didn’t eat them as-is anyway. The heirloom didn’t produce enough to make it worth the effort, LOL. I’d specifically try roma tomatoes next, since I found we most often use tomatoes in pizza sauce, on tacos, and diced in dishes – in that order!