Vegtable Gardening in Olathe Kansas (Overland Park, Lawrence: neighborhood, to buy, college)

[cyerby]

Hey y'all,
I recently moved to Olathe, KS from SC. I would love to hear your experiences with growing vegetables here. What have you had luck with, what vegetables don't do so well, etc. Also...I would really like to know your favorite places to buy seeds and plants. I'm not a big fan of the big box stores for this.

Thanks!

[Mercator Projection]

I'm a very amateur gardener, so I look forward to other responses.

But I have never had a problem with anything. I admit that I stick to the old standards - tomatoes, beans, peppers, and herbs. And I don't have any good advice about what varieties are better than others.

The soil here (just down the road in Lawrence) is heavy in clay. This causes drainage issues for me and I see a lot of standing water after a storm - sometimes it lasts a couple of days. So mixing in some garden soil would be helpful.

Another problem is late summer dryness. I have to keep up with the watering during the hot months.

Best of luck!

[luzianne]

You could try Suburban Lawn and Garden. There is one at 106th and Roe and one at 135th and Holmes???? Or the Grass Pad (high on grass for 50 years!) but I'm not sure if they have vegetables or just lawn, flowers and trees.

Tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, green onions, green beans, lettuce, watermelon.

[GraniteStater]

You need to examine the soil first. Clay soils are not the best, especially if you are south of the Kansas River Valley. Along and north of that area the soils are EXCELLENT due to the last ice age. If the soils are heavily tilted toward clay I would reccommend adding some garden soil.

[TinaMcG]

I'm a hort person and landscape designer -- I'm also a soil wonk. Soil science was my favorite subject in college, so imagine how happy I was to find out our next door neighbor is a soil scientist!

Anyway, the soil in Olathe is awful. There's no way to sugarcoat it. It's silty clay, which means you have a lot of heavy clay and also enough powdery silt to erode away at the first heavy rain. We moved here from Chicago, and I have never worked in soil that was so terrible.

That's the bad news. The good news is, you can improve the soil with the addition of organic material like manure, compost, kitchen scraps, leaves, etc. If you add plain garden soil (whatever that is...?), that won't do anything except break up the texture a bit. You need to change the structure of the soil as well, and organic materials are the ojnly thing that will do this. I use leaves, leaves, and more leaves, imported to our tree-less neighborhood from a friend's neighborhood in Overland Park. If you want to improve the soil faster, try MaxMix from the Grass Pad. Many people will tell you to get cotton burr compost, but I've used that and I don't like it. It isn't composted enough, IMO, and all my new plants turned yellow. (In other words, the composting cotton burr was tying up the nitrogen in the soil and not getting to the plants.) It also stinks to high heaven.

MaxMix is the very best soil amendment I've ever used. Clay is a good thing because it holds so many nutrients, but you have to have organic material to release those nutrients from the clay -- and MaxMix is a wonderful blend of several types of cokpost and other organic materials. I know I sound like an ad for the product, but I really do love it and buy 100 bags at a time!

I've not grown vegetables in Kansas yet, but until you amend your soil to the point where it's nice and friable and has really good drainage, I wouldn't do root vegetables. They really don't like growing in heavy clay.

[cyerby]

Thanks for all the replies. It sounds allot like home. From what I've seen though, it won't be so bad. We had nothing but nasty red clay to work with. I guess I'll just try the same kinds of things I used in SC. I think the hardest part will be getting enough sun. We have lots of shade from all the trees in the neighborhood. BTW, TinaMcG..I'll give you a yell next fall and you can come get all the leaves you want. Maybe that way I won't have so much racking to do!

[Samantha S]

I agree - do not use cotton burr compost - I got the same results as Tina.

Our soil (in Shawnee) is also terrible. Plus, there used to be a road running through our back yard that they basically broke up and then covered over - so we have trouble even getting the grass to grow back there. Two years ago, we put in raised vegetable beds and put in about 8 inches of a combo of vermiculite (holds water in) and peat hummus and just a little bit of garden soil. That worked very well. We had a wonderful spring crop of broccoli, tomatoes did well, cucumbers, peppers. Carrots did well, but did not grow long since they were stunted by the shallow bed. Lettuce and cauliflower did not do so well. Romain lettuce was much better than the leaf lettuce. Zuccinni (however you spell it) did okay, green beans did okay.

[TinaMcG]

Originally Posted by cyerby

Thanks for all the replies. It sounds allot like home. From what I've seen though, it won't be so bad. We had nothing but nasty red clay to work with. I guess I'll just try the same kinds of things I used in SC. I think the hardest part will be getting enough sun. We have lots of shade from all the trees in the neighborhood. BTW, TinaMcG..I'll give you a yell next fall and you can come get all the leaves you want. Maybe that way I won't have so much racking to do!

Sure, that sounds great, and I'm serious about that. It would be easier for me to get my leaves from someone in Olathe than driving all the way up to 97th and Roe from 183rd and 169Hwy!

Will you help with the raking if I haul them all away for you?

[cyerby]

I usually just run over them with the lawn mower. I would bet you can get more than you need just by picking up the bags people set by the road. If you remind me next year, I can use the lawn mower and bag instead of mulch. All you would have to do is supply bags for me to put them in until you can come get them.

[RebRock22]

Cyerby - welcome to town. I echo Tina McG. We've worked very, very hard here in Olathe to get to a point where our soil is actually good now. Every year, for 12ish years, we add compost (our own), leaves, hay, etc. We also add soil that we buy from American Topsoil. Tina's right about the nitrogen level too. We fight that as well. I have lots of yellow leaves and veggies. As for what we've had luck with. Tomatos have been tough the past couple of years, but that's a weather fight - too wet, too cool, etc. Believe it or not, we have had AMAZING cantalope. We tried it on a whim and it's done better than anything else. I've tried cucumbers, blueberry plants, strawberries, zuchini, green beans, lettuce, onions, just to name a few. The cantaloupe have done great three years in a row. The other items I mentioned is just so so. I lost all three blueberry bushes :-(. We find if we plant several of anything, and lose some to weather or insects, we get just enough to harvest. We have a HUGE bunny problem too. We've fenced off the gardens (we have two) with chicken wire. Seems to work pretty well. It's fun to experiment. Let's keep this post going to share each other's progress.