The Garden Thread

[rwh11385]

Nice work! We put in a garden every year, small but the kids really get into it. Nothing like eating stuff you picked 20 minutes before from your own garden.

Thanks, my favorite was putting some chicken on the grill, then walking over and picking an ear of corn or two and then throwing it too.





I have a chick roommate who loves cucumbers... for eating. And had a bunch so I actually had some friends come over and pick some up. My mom liked tomatoes I'd bring - said they taste a lot better than store bought ones.

[z31maniac]

Excellent work heetar. The girl and I have been talking about doing this since all of our backyard gets sun all day.

I'm lazy fucker though, how much work would you say you put in per week once you had all your planters and stuff put together?

[rwh11385]

Excellent work heetar. The girl and I have been talking about doing this since all of our backyard gets sun all day.

I'm lazy fucker though, how much work would you say you put in per week once you had all your planters and stuff put together?

Go for it! It's laughable how little work is involved. I barely pulled any weeds at all, put some fertilizer on once in a while for most things, and rigged up an automatic watering system. During a week during growth... it may take like 2 hours per. Averaging out watering, fertilizing, checking... no real weeding done. If you have a water timer and a system, it's easy.


A quick summary of my lessons from the first year:

Read Mel's book - this is vital. There's a lot of good stuff in it.

Use some Y-hose connectors with on/off switch, some lead hose, and 25ft (in 4x8 beds) to make an automatic watering system. You can wind it through the bed, buried in the soil and make your life really easy.

Corn: Do not overpopulate. I put 3 seeds in one hole to make sure I had germination, times 3-4 per square foot. I had to thin down a lot which was not fun, and it was too dense on the bigger bed of corn. The ears did not develop enough and I missed out on a lot of potential. 1-2 per square foot is good. Be sure to fertilize when they are about to your knees. 12-12-12 helps, but they really want nitrogen... since corn is a grass the scott's for your lawn works fine. Maybe 2 times overall. But the other big mistake besides overpopulation was being too late to fertilize and not going to heavy N soon enough.


All of the corn in the cooler was underdeveloped / worthless. Plant less, yield more.

Tomatoes: They really needed 12-12-12 and I watered them daily with Miracle Gro. Not a big burden really. They were the only ones I needed to do this for. Blight was real bad this year...

Pumpkin: Mega carving ones are a pain to keep under control in a lawn, and are problematic. Crickets loved to eat them, and mildew / disease hurt the plant majorly. Mildew still affected the pie pumpkins but you can train these where to go if you are along a fence which is pretty cool. (A lot of the nation's pumpkin crop was lost - may have noticed around Thanksgiving signs about it). Also benefited from some 12-12-12.

Lettuce: Watch for slugs, etc. Big pain and I didn't do anything about insects this year. I will be using companion plants and red pepper sprinkled about to try to decrease their presence. Nothing makes you less happy about a salad than a green inch worm in it.

Cucumbers: GROW VERTICAL! These got out of hand. But was very productive. 12-12-12 helped but should have applied earlier. Pick the crop before it turns overly ripe and yellow or the whole vine will stop growing.

Since you use brand new material in the mix, weeds are not a big issue. And in the beds with a square foot to look at at one time, it's easy. Insects are bothersome for lettuce, but not really much else. Japanese beetles on corn maybe. DISEASE was the biggest burden. Affected cucumbers, tomatoes, and pumpkins, but it was bad state-wide.


I'm going to be using companion plants within the beds or in the corners to help with pests.

From wiki... what plants help the following crops

Corn: Tansey, Sunflower
Cucumber: Tansey, Marigold, Petunia, Nasturtium
Roses : Tansey, Gerniums
Tomatoes: Marigold, Gerniums, Nasturtium
Peppers: Peppers, Gerniums
Melons: Nasturtium

Tansey on the corners of corn, and a row of sunflower in the middle
Tansey on the corner of cucumbers and marigold on some sides
Tansey and Gerniums in the flower garden
Marigold around the tomato tires
Gerniums around the outside of the peppers
Nasturium on the corners by the melons

[e34john]

Sweet. I need to find a few locally (shouldn't be that hard) to make a compost bin out of.

Go steal them out of the back or a home depot or something. Or ask them to save you the ones that sod comes in, those are free and they don't have chemicals in the wood. I live in San Diego so Sod is year round, not sure about where you are. I have good plans for one made out of 1x6s and 2x2s, cost about 25 bucks to make, but this year I have to finish my worm bin and I'm going to vermicompost.



Where do you guys get your seeds?

[b*saint]

When is the optimum time to plant weed?

[e34john]

When is the optimum time to plant weed?

November, indoors then you can have 2 harvests by the time the outdoor growers start.

[Farbin Kaiber]

http://www.victoryseeds.com/

[rwh11385]

Where do you guys get your seeds?

Honestly, my friend's husband works with the FFA and had a lot of left overs from Ag people. And I got some stuff at Lowes. (Planted tomatoes from plants, not grown from seed)