Anyone Doing a Garden ?

[ehenry]

I planted my first plants yesterday. Planning on planting some more this afternoon as long as it doenst rain. I generally plant the standard stuff....Tomatoes, pink eye purple hulls, crook neck squash, snappin beans, peppers (both hot and sweet), melons, and corn. Now, if I can keep the deer off it I'll be ahead of the game.

Who all does the garden thing and who will be doing a garden for the first time this year?

 

[rbh]

Re: Anyone Doing a Garden ?

Would love to but there is still frost in the ground, need to build a green house were I am.

 

[oddjob]

Re: Anyone Doing a Garden ?

I have a tomatoe plant I planted three years ago that is producing better than ever at this momment. Its in a pot, in the perfect spot with the root tapping into the soil. Will do the same with corn and spinage and green beans this year now that I figured out how to do it successfully. I also compost. I have a large green trash can that I load with kitchen veggie scrap and a grass compost that I sometimes throw the kitchen scrap in, directly on the ground. Growing from there is a pineapple and a potatoe plant and watermelon ( from scraps) so I will add some of the trash can compost to it and raise the bed and plant corn in. I also have serano peppers in the front. Little buy little I'm figuring out how and how much I can do in a yard garden. Love my tomatoes.....only miracle grow so far. A bird or squirrel ate half of one off the top. I just left it be and it finished it off after a few days without touching the any of the many tomatoes still getting ripe. First time I had any luck with tomatoes in florida. I grew them from hybrid seeds.

 

[aspeck]

Re: Anyone Doing a Garden ?

If I planted a garden I would NEVER have time for the boat!

 

[eavega]

Re: Anyone Doing a Garden ?

This will be the second year of doing a garden. Last year we did tomatoes, cucumber, and carrots. Cucumber was almost uncontrollable. Tomatoes grew nicely except for an extended battle with cutworms (caterpillars) which I finally won towards the end of the season. Threw away over 200 half-eaten tomatoes before I got that problem under control. This year we will do tomatoes, bell peppers, and strawberries. I chanced it and got them in the ground weekend before last. Looks like I guessed right and there will be no more freezing temps in north GA until the fall.

 

[rbh]

Re: Anyone Doing a Garden ?

I have a tomatoe plant I planted three years ago that is producing better than ever at this momment. Its in a pot, in the perfect spot with the root tapping into the soil. Will do the same with corn and spinage and green beans this year now that I figured out how to do it successfully. I also compost. I have a large green trash can that I load with kitchen veggie scrap and a grass compost that I sometimes throw the kitchen scrap in, directly on the ground. Growing from there is a pineapple and a potatoe plant and watermelon ( from scraps) so I will add some of the trash can compost to it and raise the bed and plant corn in. I also have serano peppers in the front. Little buy little I'm figuring out how and how much I can do in a yard garden. Love my tomatoes.....only miracle grow so far.

AH yes the compost garden, we compost in those black composters and one year when it was over full a couple of plants took off.
I was surprised to see cantalope and pumpkin come out of the unit, they flowered and we got a hand full of little fruit.

Not bad for 2500 ft elevation

 

[wifisher]

Re: Anyone Doing a Garden ?

I planted my first plants yesterday. Planning on planting some more this afternoon as long as it doenst rain. I generally plant the standard stuff....Tomatoes, pink eye purple hulls, crook neck squash, snappin beans, peppers (both hot and sweet), melons, and corn. Now, if I can keep the deer off it I'll be ahead of the game.

Who all does the garden thing and who will be doing a garden for the first time this year?

You can try blood meal for keeping critters out. Just spread it around the garden, and the smell of the blood will discourage some animals that eat gardens.

If they are really hungry, it won't work.

 

[j_martin]

Re: Anyone Doing a Garden ?

We have a serious deer problem here. I put an electric fence around the garden, with the highly visible yellow tape type fence and a fencer with a warning lable on it that features an upside down bull. I wait till there's tracks coming in before I put it up, and put a little peanut butter on the fence right at the trail.

Doesn't take them too long to learn that this is an unfriendly area.

The first time I did that, The fence was quite remote from the fencer, which was also keeping cattle in a different area. Of course I unplugged the fencer while I was erecting the fence. I forgot to plug it back in till just after dark. When I did, it sounded like someone was beating a goat in the sweet corn patch. In the morning I found the fence chewed up and scattered all over. Poor thing must have been eating on the peanut butter.

The deer never bothered that patch again, but the next night one tore out a couple hundred feet of bull proof wire fence avoiding the yellow tape.

On gardening, we do about a half acre of corn, spuds, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, beans, cabbage, and salad greens. We'll be plowing up a couple of acres extra and planting cover crops for weed control because I expect food will be nuts in cost by next year, and I'll be retiring from work in town.

Also going to put in a few small patches of open pollinated field corn (Minnesota 13) with pumpkins underfoot and a few brussels sprouts on the north side, all for the deer I'm fencing out of the sweet corn.

 

[puddle jumper]

Re: Anyone Doing a Garden ?

Gardening Is my wife's thing,I just get to dig the holes. We don't do the vegetable garden but do have 10 different varieties of blue berries,grapes,fig and a apple tree I grew from seed. My wife is into flowers and fountains.

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: Anyone Doing a Garden ?

We do quite a bit of gardening...with my wife doing the major choices and plantings and me doing the 'infrastructure'. We live in the city so we clearly aren't into the acreage gardening thing but fortunately we have a reasonably big city lot (1/3 acre) which allows us to have something like a dozen different gardens around the house. I'm a really big believer in high quality garden dirt to make things grow and lessen the need to constantly water...and it pays us back in spades. Whatever you do do not scrimp with cheap, quick 'top soil' type dirt. Get the good stuff or put the good stuff in it.
We are getting more and more into vegetables and herbs and a little less into flowers and plants. This year: Tomatoes (4-5 types), peas, potatoes, radishes, Cukes, carrots, yellow beans and on the herb front, sage, dill, rosemary, green onion, and a few others.
Either way.....looks great, tastes great....good evening low stress putz around passtime between other projects.
BP

 

[puddle jumper]

Re: Anyone Doing a Garden ?

As BP said good dirt is the #1 ingredient in gardening. The other thing to think about is having the correct dirt for what your growing. Ph levels and other things like ash can make or brake a good garden.

 

[not enuf toys]

Re: Anyone Doing a Garden ?

this will also be my second year (at this house) for a garden. we love picking fresh veggies daily! last year we planted about 2 weeks too early and the frost stunted most of the plants. took an extra month to recover...the clay in the soil didnt help either.

this year i am hoping to have better crops (although last year wasnt bad). i tilled all of the plants into the dirt going into fall, figured the vegitation would help the clay. this year i will be tilling in more good things before we plant and waiting until i know frost is done...which in ohio may never happen the way things are going )

i have an issue with cross polination of jalapeno's and bananna peppers...or so i tell my wife! truth is i like the taste of bananna peppers they just need a little kick!

 

[ehenry]

Re: Anyone Doing a Garden ?

I till all the leaves from the yard in to my garden (when ever I rake em) and every two years or so I put a load of slag on it. I tried something a little different this year. I put a scoop of bone meal under each tomatoe plant. I've always been told its good for them so I'm giving it a try this year. As for fertilizer, I side dress it when all my plants are up and growing good.