I have a flower garden approx 4' x 20'. We have previously planted zinnias and other various flowers. We would like to plant vegetables...but every year the flowers come back. They don't do great and look ugly. How can we get rid of them and enrich the soil to grow some vegetables.
Also what is wrong when tomato plants grow really large and have fruit, but the fruit stays green and never ripens?
Anonymous
Favorite Answer
Cover the whole bed with black plastic for 2 weeks and let it bake in the sun. The heat and lack of sun will kill every kind of seed, root, stems, etc. and it will also "sterilize" the soil of pests. If the sun does not get that hot (depends on where you live), you just need to leave it on longer. How long would depend on how hot it gets there.
For the tomatoes, I believe you just need the let them "fruit" much longer. I have never had tomatoes that stayed green. However, different types of tomatoes have different lengths of fruiting period.
Anonymous
Dig in as much compost as you can get to improve the soil structure. Vegetables mostly require at least 6 hours of sun (so do zinnias), so if this is a shady spot, plant shade tolerant flowers there and move the veggie garden elsewhere.
As far as any stray seedlings coming up -- just hand weed. Easy and simple.
Tomatoes with green fruit at the end of the season sounds like either the cultivars chosen had too long a growing season for the area (check the "days" on the tags -- cherry tomatoes are generally short season, Romas and similar very long season).
or you gave them a lot of nitrogen at the beginning of the season and the plants didn't flower until late.
A good soils test before you put a veggie garden in an area that previously had problems with "easy flowers" is definitely in order.
Rosa
Most lawn grasses are perennial, that means they'll come back. Till it under, cover it with several layers of newspaper or large sheets of cardboard, and cover that with mulch. By next spring, you'll be able to plant right through holes in the paper/cardboard, and the lack of sunlight will smother out the grass and keep seeds in the soil beneath from germinating. Be warned, taking care of a garden, especially in a big yard, is lots more work than mowing it is, although it's a different kind of work. You can't just plonk the seeds in the ground in the spring and not do anything more to it. Try putting in a small garden next spring, see how much attention it takes, and figure out from there how much garden you can handle. There's nothing more dispiriting than starting a large garden and getting worn out by May and seeing the whole thing becoming weeds by August. Another option would be installing a patio area and having low-maintenance plants in a garden around the edge of the yard to reduce mowing.
Anonymous
Cover the whole garden with newspaper. Hold it down with rocks and wet it. Put enough down so it will help keep your soil moist and keep the various flowers from coming up. If the flowers are perennials, dig them up and put the on Craig's list. Cut holes in paper where you want to plant the veggies. Good luck!
Rob T
tomatoes are technically vegetables by the way, what you do is you pull out all the flowers, get one of those metal rake things thats like a metal claw and soften all the soil, pull out the weeds so its just nice rich soil, water the soil later that night, claw it up again the next day, insert the seeds, water it, and it should work. Also dont forget about throwing fertilizer on the soil once theyre planted. Once the tomato plants start growing big, you might want to make some kind of metal rod support system and tie the stem to the metal rod to support it so that it doesnt just fall over and break