What are your most hassle-free plants?

H

HoofTrimmer

Inactive
Here in South Carolina I have tried almost everything. Some traditional and some oddball. Mostly I find that the things that grow here with the least amount of insect damage or disease are:

Muscadine Grapes
Blueberries
Asian Pears/Kieffer Pears
Loquats
Irish Potatoes (isn't that weird?)
Strawberries
Cow Peas/ Black Eyed Peas
Small Tomatoes: Cherry or Pear type
Figs
Pecans
Onions
Turnips
Peanuts
Some others that I blocking on...

I want to try Jujubes and some other stuff like a semi cold hardy banana from Ty Ty Nursery in Georgia.

The jury is still out on the Pomegranate.

We have to tend to the corn, squash, and the large sized tomato plants. Fortunately, if we plant early enough we dodge most of the insect pressure in the garden. So we usually get a good harvest of the cold weather vegetables.

The tree fruit?? If I do not spray with fungicides, Mico Shield, and Malathion or such we do not get fruit. I have to start spraying at bud swell in Feb. March to almost harvest. These are the apples, peaches, nectarine, cherries, most of the pears, plums.

What do you have the best luck with?

HoofTrimmer
 
Tweakette

Tweakette

Irrelevant
It depends on which garden I'm looking at. We have one at home and one behind my husband's workplace in the community garden program.

At home broccoli and peppers do very well with little maintenance. So do the blackberries.
Peas are a problem, as are potatos. We have bad wireworms there that we're trying to eradicate organically (not easy, need to buy some parasitic nematodes next).
I also am having trouble with my peach - keep losing trees (it's Vermont, duh, I shouldn't even be growing them here :lol: ). The blueberries are inconsistent - I have 2 plants, one does very well and the other looks sick and sometimes died and I have to replace it. Not sure why.

At the community garden plot pole beans and potatos do incredibly well.
Tomatos get septoria leaf spot if even a speck of dirt touches the leaves, and the broccoli and cabbage get clubroot if I don't lime their patch well. Community garden = community diseases!

At home I might get apples this year for the first time. They're dwarf trees and 3 years old. I haven't sprayed because they're varieties Liberty and Freedom (supposedly low/no spray) so I wanted to see how they'd do without doing that first.

Tweak
 
B

booger

Inactive
What are your most hassle-free plants?
Click to expand...

Dead ones. :lol:

I've really not had many hassles with any of the basic garden veggies and herbs.

The one that most jumps to mind is tomatoes. I just can't seem to kill them. Zukes and cukes are incredible survivors for me, too.
 
B

blueberry

Inactive
My pears and figs are trouble free. I do nothing to them, and they still reward me with more fruit than I can dry, freeze, can or give away year after year.

Summer squash does well in my garden, but I do have a problem with squash bugs.

Tomatoes, okra, spinach, cucumbers, green beans are pretty hassle-free for me.
 
Pepper

Pepper

Inactive
Hooftrimmer, I live six miles from Ty Ty nursery. Small world. :)
DH and I have had a bumper crop of potatoes for the past three years now with little trouble. Corn, figs, apples, pears, okra, give us few problems. What I have a problem growing are tomatoes.
They end up Summer after Summer with wilt rot (I think that is what it is called). Thankfully there are many big veggie farms in my area and I can buy a five gallon bucket of them for five bucks.
(I have to pick them but at that price I don't mind at all!)

Pepper
 
H

HoofTrimmer

Inactive
Tomatoes always get blossom end rot here. I know what to do but what I've done isn't enough.

It is strange cause their cousins the spuds and the egg plant always fair very well.

HoofTrimmer
 
Walrus Whisperer

Walrus Whisperer

Hope in chains...
Hooftrimer, Blossom end rot is caused by either extreme heat(the plant can't get the moisture up into the fruit because its so hot)-if thats the case, mulch. Otherwise, it seems to be related to lack of calcium-lime the soil well.

My rock garden is doing very well this year.
:D
 
P

Para36

Contributing Member
rhubarb, mulberries, blackberries, black rasberries

The berries we do nothing for and there are far more than we could ever hope to pick. They grow in clearings. and at the edges of woods and along paths.
For the rhubarb we give each plant group a generous layer of compost mulch in the fall.This is rhubarb that I divided from my parents house and which they said was there when they purchased it in 1937. That's it except for the picking. My daughter gives away many rhubarb and strawberry/rhubarb pies each year and it's still hard to see where we pick any. Besides just liking the taste , rhubarb is 100 % dependable and is available in spring when little else is ready.
 
H

HoofTrimmer

Inactive
Good point Para36, I have looked very closely at what is ready to eat just after winter. Although here the fall garden option is wide open. I just planted rhubarb this spring. It is thriving.

Walrus Whisperer, I have been adding egg shells by the heaps around the plants. I didn't know that heat was also a cause. That is something that will be hard to get around. Wonder if shade cloth is a possible option.

HoofTrimmer
 
G

Gingergirl

Veteran Member
Swiss Chard.

Around here, a plant will produce spring through fall. 3' X3' plot will keep two of us supplied for 3-4 meals a week with enough left to stock the freezer. Sweet, never bitter, only pests are slugs and leaf miners. (Well, and rabbits too.) Does not have high water or fertilizer requirements.

Good cooked, fresh in salads. I like it better than spinach or collards.

Red does better in spring, but Bright Lights takes the summer heat better.
 
P

Para36

Contributing Member
Agree with swiss chard too Gingergirl. I raise a couple plants in a raised bed and the rest in discarded square 4 gallon plastic cherry buckets, one plant per container. Am bothered only by leaf miners. Although I like spinach slightly better, swiss chard produces over a much longer season and yields far more. I plant Large white rib, originally from Harris Seeds. I will usually leave a couple plants in the ground over winter under snow cover. As soon as the snow melts I pull away any of the previous years stalks and eat the new green stalks for a couple weeks. Eventually a seed stalk forms and I harvest the seed from one every other year.
 
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