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Growing my first vegetable garden! Need help!?

3 weeks ago I started a vegetable garden with my kids. We are growing lettuce, tomatoes, japanese eggplants and bell peppers. We were trying to keep the garden pesticide free so we've been picking bugs off, have beer out for the snails and use the dishsoap and water spray. The tomatoes seem to be holding up very well and have flowers on them but our poor little eggplant leaves are gone and have been eaten up :( will the eggplants still grow or is it pretty much done?! We didn't plant from seeds we bought and planted the vegetables as plants. Also some of the vegetables are growing little plants around them...do we pluck those off? They don't look like weeds but more like 1 leaf clovers...I hope that makes sense! Thank you!

Public Comments

1. Good luck with your garden project. I'm not certain about the eggplant, but when you grow a variety of plants, there may be some that for some reason don't have the right combination of heat, water, soil nutrients, etc., and thus won't do well. You can learn to avoid those in the future and concentrate on those that do best. I'd do regular weeding of anything that isn't what your planted.
2. First off = well done. The kids will enjoy the produce. The things around the bottom of the other plants - WEEDS. If you did not plant them they are weeds and need gently pulling up, root and all. You should wait until it is a wet day so that all the root comes out. Anything that is not where it should be is a weed. Even if a rose bush came up in the veggies, you would call it a weed and transfer it to another location. It helps to put a hay mulch around the plants that you planted, and all over the area where it is garden. The hay can be 4 inches deep and tucked in closely by the stems of the veggies. Add it as the plants grow taller and it also helps to keep the moisture in.
3. Check out this blog. It will answer most of answer on growing a vegetable garden.