Gardening (varrus: post before ban)Follow

Last year the watermelons and canteloupes and corn were a complete disaster. This year all I'm sticking with is okra, tomatoes, lots of different kinds of peppers (bell, jalepeno, and keyenne mostly), squash, and probably a few other things as things progress. Our families main goal this year is finishing the greenhouse before fall. Plus we're seriously considering taking 4 rows and planting appletrees. We won't plant until mid april because we may get another cold snap in the next couple of weeks. Also I'm going back to drip irrigation with soaker hoses. I think that's probably less expensive than the sprinkler system we used last year. If I still have an account in a couple of weeks i'll post pictures of a tilled up garden.

It's a shame the govn won't let me grow what I know how to grow best.

This will be our second full summer/spring in our new house. Last year I planted just a small kitchen herb garden. It did ok, but not great. I'm determined to plant a full-blown veggie garden, but I just can't decide the right spot. We're in the woods. The places that get the best sun are either over the septic system or smack in the middle of our rather smallish backyard - and even there I don't get FULL sun, but mostly full.

So...I dunno yet. Still have a good 3 feet of snow on the lawn so I got a bit to figure it out. I do have 8 tomato plants started inside. They just peeking thru the peet.

Yoyo, what you gonna do with all them avocados?

Anyone ever tried growing tomatoes with the upside down method?

Edited, Mar 12th 2009 11:46pm by Elinda

The government won't let me grow what I want to either...

The back yard is in the shade, so I'll be planting some bush beans, radishes and other vegetables that don't need a lot of space in the front yard, with more herbs once soil is warm enough. I'm thinking of adding some containers on porch, as well since once one gets past a few inches deep, there is a foot of clay to try to work with.

Wish I could just have someone dig down 2 feet and remove all but the top soil, then fill in yard with good garden soil. I been meaning to make a compose pile out back, but need a wood chipper for the branches and vines that need clearing from the back, before I can create a shade garden there, for my altar.

Just wish I still had all the gardening equipment from when I was married. Ex let all the shovels, turning fork and seed trays, go with house he foreclosed on, soon after marriage ended. I was smart and didn't help him buy house or sign papers knowing he was most likely to fall behind on bills the first time he decided to buy himself a new toy. Still he blamed me for his not being unable to budget his money.

This isn't lolCanada tundra. We can actually grow plants here. Live a little!

I can't grow anything.

True, I loved driving to grandparents and passing miles of fields with signs saying they used seeds from different companies. Then Grandma would take us along to buy corn and the ingredient for her home made potato salad and bake ham for dinner, served with some sliced tomatoes from her or a neighbors garden. Most of the corn around here is sweet corn and just doesn't taste as good as the yellow corn of my childhood.

Best corn I ever had was at great uncles farm that was picked a minute before it was put in pot of boiling water. My great aunts kitchen garden was bigger then our yard back home and she used the same breading on the paddy pan squash as the pork chops we had for dinner.

Darn thinking of paddy pan squash that I can only get for about one week at local stores, I need to buy some yellow string beans for garden. Can't even find them in farmers markets around here, as they all seem to go into the cans of Amish 3 bean salads.

I have a strip that's easily 50' and I could probably get 70'+ out of it if I wanted. Even if I only go out 3' or so on the 50' measurement, that's 150sq ft of gardening space. More than enough to meet my modest needs. Even with the tiny plot we've done previously we're swimming in tomatos all summer long.

Aquarium plants. I have an extensive local network of plant exchange set up with about 20 people into planted aquariums that I know, so it keeps the costs down.

My mom has gone crazy over african violets this year, she's going to end up needing to offload about 500 plants quickly at some point, so if anyone is into those and wants to trade, let me know in about a month.

The only thing I can manage to grow are strawberries. Mostly because they are so ridiculously easy to grow. You basically stick them in the ground a wait a few years. My four original plants have grown to cover an area of about twenty square feet and supplies me with more berries than I know what to do with.

I am thinking about putting in some raspberries this year. They grow wild around here pretty much everywhere, but it can be a pain to get a reasonable number of them, since they tend to grow in small patches.

Edited, Mar 13th 2009 1:59am by TurinAlexander

Last weekend I threw a potato in the ground.



I'm not much of a green thumb though :(

It's pretty simple. Dig a hole, plant a seed. Keep fruit away from vegetables, and water.

Oh and wait.

My wife's parents have a garden that's equivalent to a half lot on their block, which is rather large. He plants at least 30 tomato plants, squash, cucumber, peppers, corn, carrots, rhubarb, lettuce, pumpkin, radishes, onions, etc. I'm entertaining the notion of starting a garden in our back yard this year, we have the perfect spot for it.

My grandpa can find wild asparagus up where he lives growing wild in the ditch, tastes much better than what you find in the grocery store too