Hello gardeners!
Location, location, location! Where have you heard that before?
I used to have the perfect area to grow vegetables. It was a quaint, cozy corner where the sun shone brightly in the morning, but this year, one of our beautiful River Birch trees decided it was the perfect spot too. It completely shaded the entire space in a matter of months. My husband did some pruning but to no avail. The tree won, and I had to find a new location in my backyard to grow my sun-loving vegetables. My potted ginger root and romaine lettuce do well in the shade, so they stayed, but the rest needed to move.
Why are Shady Areas Not Ideal?
Shady areas are not ideal for growing plants that require full sun to produce fruits and vegetables. If left in a shaded space, the vegetables will grow much slower and produce leaves but no fruit. It’s best to follow the packet labels’ directions to ensure a good harvest.
Why The New Location?
After observing the sun’s habits, my brilliant husband purchased an enclosed raised garden kit, cleared the sunniest location in the backyard, which gets at least 8 hours of direct sun, and built a beautiful, enclosed vegetable garden for me.
I successfully transferred six vegetables without issue from my old, raised beds to the new, deeper raised beds, and after a few weeks, each plant started producing more flowers and some fruit.
How I Transferred the Plants:
After the new beds were completed, I dug enough holes in the new beds and added a handful of bonemeal to each hole. There was good soil in the bed already, but the bonemeal increases phosphorus which is essential for strong root formation. Then one by one, I dug a one-inch trench around each plant, secured it in burlap and moved it to its new home. Once I transferred the plant to the new garden bed, I removed the burlap before putting it in the previously dug hole. I watered each plant thoroughly and added straw to the entire space. For the first two weeks after relocating the six vegetables, I fertilized them with a water mixture of soaked banana peels, eggshells, and coffee grinds.
My Fertilizer
To make this mixture, I added three cut-up pieces of banana skin, three crushed eggshells, and coffee grinds from my morning coffee, and I filled a large pot with boiling water and let it sit until the water was cool. I strained the liquid into a container and poured about half of a cup at the base of each plant.
There is no comparison between the shaded area and the sunny area. In the shaded area, the plants grew normally with leaves, but there was no flower production, and no flowers meant no fruit! The plants continued to grow in the new location, but this time, flowers formed, and fruit eventually appeared. All thanks to the sun, this is why the location of growing vegetables is important.
My Transferred Vegetables
Here are the 6 vegetables I successfully relocated mid-season:
- Early Jalapeno Peppers – All 4 plants produce lots of peppers. I have cleaned and frozen about 20 peppers so far.
2. Calabrian Chilies – All 4 plants have lots of flowers.
3. Tomatoes – I have 4 different varieties of plants, Tomato Hybrid Celebrity, Heirloom Rainbow Blend, and Roma plant, and they all have tomatoes growing. The Sweet Million tomato plant produces a bowl full of fruit each day.
4. Homemade Pickled Cucumbers – The two plants took slightly longer to adjust to the new location but are now producing cukes.
5. Sweet peppers – I planted red, green, and yellow peppers. Currently, each plant has several peppers.
6. Eggplant – This plant doubled in size and now has several flowers, and an eggplant is finally forming.
