How do I learn to garden in Southern Louisiana?
May 16, 2013 11:29 AM   Subscribe

Resources on gardening in Southern Louisiana? It's currently me vs. bad soil, scary bugs and hot hot heat.

This shouldn't be that hard. However, I'm from Illinois where things just grow and get huge and beautiful and come back year after year.

Now, I have a yard with bad soil, insane heat, and the scariest bugs I've ever seen. I try to plant things but they die or get eaten by bugs in days. Does anyone have any resources for growing flowers and veggies in this weird place?
posted by ashtabula to opelika to Home & Garden (12 answers total)
 
The LSU Ag Center might be a place to start for some local advice. According to their website, they have offices in all 64 parishes.
posted by MadamM at 11:35 AM on May 16, 2013


The standard Mefi places to point you are the ag extension (LSU's here) and gardening club (Louisiana umbrella group here), so you can call their numbers and ask their advice.

More directly, though, what have you tried growing? What kind of soil are you dealing with, and what what've you done to it? What kinds of flowers and veggies do you want to grow?
posted by joyceanmachine at 11:38 AM on May 16, 2013


Is there a local farmer's market? Are there any community gardens? Have you noticed any great vegetable gardens in your neighborhood? Do you work with people who garden? Is there a nearby garden store?

The people around you who grow things are your best resource and they may become your new best friends.
posted by mareli at 11:52 AM on May 16, 2013


Yeah, go really local for advice. Have you stopped by your local garden centers? Checked for gardening clubs in the neighborhood? Visited any community gardens, if they exist? The answers are going to be really close by, 'cause those people are gonna know how everything works best right there.
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:52 AM on May 16, 2013


My wife has gone from 'curious about gardening' to 'pretty good grower' by visiting the local garden shop and asking for advice. Of course, YMMV depending on how helpful they are but surely there's some place in your area that will tell what grows specific to your region, what doesn't, how to troubleshoot, etc.

So yeah. Go local.
posted by Tevin at 12:12 PM on May 16, 2013


Seconding the LSU Ag Center. They have tons of stuff like this (see especially the recommended vegetable varieties--what works in one place doesn't work in others as you're finding out), free.

There are also books you can buy, like this one or this one.

Very fortunate to live in a city where someone has written this book, the single-greatest gardening book my wife and I have ever read. It may actually work for your soil and climate depending on which part of southern LA you're in...
posted by resurrexit at 1:31 PM on May 16, 2013


It's awful, isn't it? I'm in La. too and it can be a challenge. Many of my friends have had great success with container gardening- hug tubs of soul that they water daily, lined up in their yards. Your best bet for a local resource is to look around your neighborhood, find the best garden, and chat up that neighbor. Oh, and don't worry about the bugs. They aren't near as bad as the snakes. Worry about the snakes.
posted by myselfasme at 1:34 PM on May 16, 2013




Go local for advice ... but from another Born-In-Chicago person who has also ended up in the south (southeastern Texas in my case, about a six hour drive from you) you've got fun challenges ahead of you.

First, you need good soil. The only way to get good soil is container gardening or raised bed gardening. A lot of the soil in Louisiana is either clay (bad!) or has a high salt content. Also, some soil in New Orleans has a high lead content for some reason. I'm not sure why that is. But, test the soil you get or buy bagged brand-name soil from the garden center.

The second thing you need to know is that we can garden year round here, but it takes year round maintenance and consciousness of the seasons to do. Unlike Illinois, where your dead time is the winter and no gardening happens then, here your dead time is the hottest summer months (July/August) and then you have a month or two to grow a fall crop as well. The only way you're going to get any cabbage species (broccoli, kholrabi, etc.) to grow is over the winter. If you try to grow salad or spinach outdoors in the summer, it will become very bitter. Broccoli will go straight to flower. Here, we plant Kholrabi in the late fall (late October-November) once we've torn out the fall tomato plants, and harvest in February before we plant the spring tomato plants. Things like cucumbers, even though the vine is still healthy, will get bitter in the summer.

The third thing you need to do is figure out your bugs. Here in Texas, we managed to avoid too much in the way of bugs by bombing our yard pretty hard with triazicide (NOT an approach I'd normally recommend, but ... holy shit, you should see the size of the bugs that were LIVING WITH US IN OUR HOUSE), using food-grade diatomaceous earth around the plants, planting things like marigolds and chrysanthemums around the border of the garden because most of the nasty bugs here don't like the smell of those things, and spraying the plants with combinations of citrus oil and natural pyrethrins.

You must water daily. You should try NOT to use treated city water; set up rain barrels if you can. (A lot of the city water has high salinity or chemicals that will build up in your 'clean' garden soil.) DO compost -- take a composting class if you can, or get several of the barrel composters -- and mix the compost in with your soil whenever you are changing crops. DO get your soil tested annually to see where the deficiencies are.

Spend a few years making mistakes and learning. Don't worry about getting a good crop the first few years. It's a totally different way of gardening and thinking about gardening.
posted by SpecialK at 2:34 PM on May 16, 2013


I'm in NOLA, and our downstairs neighbors have a gorgeous garden... mostly ornamental plants, though. They struck out trying to grow food--the bugs ate everything, except the hot peppers. On the upside, it's really lush and rainy, and once plants get established they usually do well. Here are some of the plants I see thriving around my neighborhood:

climbing jasmine (it grows wild, basically)
passionflower
trumpet vines
ornamental sweet potatoes
hostas
elephant ears
rosemary
citrus trees
hibiscus
ferns
Bermuda/crab grass (it's a pest where I come from, but many lawns use it here)
Bald cypress (if you're up for planting a great big tree)

Hanging/fence baskets are a great option here, too. Keeps the plants up out of the bugs, and you can control the soil. They give you that nice courtyard look as well, and they drain nicely... as do large potted plants.
Good luck!
posted by Nibbly Fang at 5:55 PM on May 16, 2013


Response by poster: Thanks everyone! Huge help! I'm going to look at those books and I think I am kind of stuck with containers. AAAAAHHHH! In the meantime I still need to pull all the weed trees out of the yard and get the vines that have taken over the fence tamed.

THANK YOU!
posted by ashtabula to opelika at 9:40 AM on May 17, 2013


I thought I would add a few things. We have 2 gardens one in New Orleans and one in Washington Parish. Anyway, we use raised beds. Only way to go. Get your boards or cinder blocks, lay out some plastic or garden cloth to block the grass and weeds dump your dirt and start planting. Every fall we take the leaves and dump them in the gardens so they will break down. In the spring we turn the soil and add a bag or 2 or 3 of dirt, if needed and start planting. We don't use pesticides but we do feed the plants with Miracle Grow. Yeah, we may lose some of the plants to bugs but we have enough to make it up. One year we had a hornworm infestation on the tomatoes so we had to pick them off and squish them. If you grow banana peppers beware of the slugs.

Also, what helps is the kind of seeds and bedding plants you use. We swear by Burpee Straight 8 for the cukes, have not had a problem with them. We also end up growing an insane amount of Roma tomatoes from bedding plants.

Memail me if you have any other questions.
posted by govtdrone at 1:23 PM on May 17, 2013


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