Nandy
Commander
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2004
- Messages
- 2,145
We started a similar thread in another forum I go, I'm sure we have quite a few home gardeners here....
I like to do the garden not so much to save (which is a plus if it happened) but more as a therapy. Seeing something grown that you planted and then get the success of harvesting anything close to edible is grand!!! I get up every morning and the first thing I do after getting dressed is go and check the garden. It is hard to describe, but I enjoy it much. I had a tomato sandwich the other day, haven't eat one in a long time but this home grown tomatoes have a great flavor which is the secondary reason for me to have a garden, the taste of the harvest... The next picture will illustrate how low in priority the "price" of my garden vegetables is.
I don't think a vegetable garden needs all that in the area I live. Yes, weed control and mulching is important but I could have done without it. I really enjoyed building this garden, next year it will be about double, then I might use straw or other cheaper mulching/weed control media.
First row is the carrots, 3 different types.
Second row, eggplants, crooked squash then the cucumbers.
Third row is a roma tomato plant then the red, yellow and green peppers.
Last row is a roma tomato, beef tomato (i really cant remember, indeterminate tomato plant), another roma tomato and then the peas vine.
The onions was a perpendicular patch to the left of all these rows and it was a disaster...
I also lost all my berries and the bush peas. I had an indeterminate tomato pulled as it was crawling with aphids... One of the yellow pepper plant got attack by that worm that eats the stalk, i cant remember the name but I put a stopped to that bug and stalked the plant and it is still alive and is producing. Y'all can see how small the plants are. That compost I got this year seems it was not too well balanced. It served well to amend the soil. I also have a subsoil pan of very compact clay around 4 to 6 inches due to the house construction. I used mounds strips for the tomatoes as they are the most demanding deep root plant I have to try to compensate for the shallow of the topsoil, everything else is pretty much leveled. This might have also affect the grow but I put my money in the compost. As soon as I started fertilizing the plants took off.
For next year garden I plan to start tilling earlier (as soon as my plants stop giving crops) and try to get that subsoil pan deeper and amend more soil. This year I made some "ditches" on the lower end of the subsoil pan to keep the water from puddling in it. It has seem to work well. I will keep that for next year too. I will also use dirt mounds rows for all of the plants. Watering method is still on the air. Right now I just manually water it and have a weeper hose for those times I have to run and cant water it manually. No timer for watering (I learned my lesson) it just water too often and at unneeded times.
A farm or at least a house with lots of land has been my dream, someday....
Thanks for listening..
I like to do the garden not so much to save (which is a plus if it happened) but more as a therapy. Seeing something grown that you planted and then get the success of harvesting anything close to edible is grand!!! I get up every morning and the first thing I do after getting dressed is go and check the garden. It is hard to describe, but I enjoy it much. I had a tomato sandwich the other day, haven't eat one in a long time but this home grown tomatoes have a great flavor which is the secondary reason for me to have a garden, the taste of the harvest... The next picture will illustrate how low in priority the "price" of my garden vegetables is.
I don't think a vegetable garden needs all that in the area I live. Yes, weed control and mulching is important but I could have done without it. I really enjoyed building this garden, next year it will be about double, then I might use straw or other cheaper mulching/weed control media.
First row is the carrots, 3 different types.
Second row, eggplants, crooked squash then the cucumbers.
Third row is a roma tomato plant then the red, yellow and green peppers.
Last row is a roma tomato, beef tomato (i really cant remember, indeterminate tomato plant), another roma tomato and then the peas vine.
The onions was a perpendicular patch to the left of all these rows and it was a disaster...
I also lost all my berries and the bush peas. I had an indeterminate tomato pulled as it was crawling with aphids... One of the yellow pepper plant got attack by that worm that eats the stalk, i cant remember the name but I put a stopped to that bug and stalked the plant and it is still alive and is producing. Y'all can see how small the plants are. That compost I got this year seems it was not too well balanced. It served well to amend the soil. I also have a subsoil pan of very compact clay around 4 to 6 inches due to the house construction. I used mounds strips for the tomatoes as they are the most demanding deep root plant I have to try to compensate for the shallow of the topsoil, everything else is pretty much leveled. This might have also affect the grow but I put my money in the compost. As soon as I started fertilizing the plants took off.
For next year garden I plan to start tilling earlier (as soon as my plants stop giving crops) and try to get that subsoil pan deeper and amend more soil. This year I made some "ditches" on the lower end of the subsoil pan to keep the water from puddling in it. It has seem to work well. I will keep that for next year too. I will also use dirt mounds rows for all of the plants. Watering method is still on the air. Right now I just manually water it and have a weeper hose for those times I have to run and cant water it manually. No timer for watering (I learned my lesson) it just water too often and at unneeded times.
A farm or at least a house with lots of land has been my dream, someday....
Thanks for listening..
