Fresh from the garden

[Aeolius]

Think I'd have a problem growing a garden in my backyard?

 

[Warrior Poet]

When I lived on a farm in Maine, we used to harvest vegetables and make a salad out of them that very night. In addition to the taste, which is so fresh, there's something so gratifying about eating vegetables you've planted yourself, and raised, and cared for. Good luck with the gardens!

Think I'd have a problem growing a garden in my backyard?

Venison!

Warrior Poet

 

[Xath]

I miss the garden at home. It's not easy to have one when you live in the dorms.

When I make pasta from scratch, I like to get fresh herbs from the garden, chop them, and mix them into the dough.

...sigh...I miss cooking.

 

[der_kluge]

Aeolius, a garden might be a problem, but you certainly have a steady supply of venison chili!

I had an apple tree at my house in Kansas City. I'll have to plant a new one when I buy a new house. It ended up growing like 4 apples, but they never got very big. I ended up not eating any of them. One fell off, I promised the neighbor boy he could have one, my parent's foster child took one without asking (he's MR) and my wife ate one before she moved to Virginia to be with me. Oh well. Apparently they were really good.

I'm not a big fan of most vegetables. The previous owners of my house in Arkansas had a miniature little garden with squash and I think tomatos. I like tomato sauce ok, but am not a fan of tomatos, or squash. This garden was in like a wooden box, and I think they basically filled it with fertilizer, not dirt. So things just grew out of control in it. I kept meaning to plant watermelons in it, but I never did.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

I've been contemplating starting my own little garden in the back yard. Any tips on how to have one with not much space available?

Get the book I recommended. It's all based on 4'x4' squares, either raised beds or in the ground. I've got two squares, in a small yard.

This garden was in like a wooden box, and I think they basically filled it with fertilizer, not dirt.

That would be a raised bed. It's probably not straight fertilizer, as that would most likely burn the plant roots and they would start fast then die fast, if they sprouted at all. I filled mine with a mix of 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 vermiculite, with a few coffecans of home mixed fertilizer (bone meal, blood meal, wood ash, and a few other organic things). Chances are they filled it with something similar to this. The reason stuff grew so well in yours was probably because of a combination of the richness of the soil and the great drainage a raised bed gives you.

Did it look something like this? This is not my garden, just a pic I found online.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Get the book I recommended. It's all based on 4'x4' squares, either raised beds or in the ground. I've got two squares, in a small yard.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[der_kluge]

That would be a raised bed. It's probably not straight fertilizer, as that would most likely burn the plant roots and they would start fast then die fast, if they sprouted at all. I filled mine with a mix of 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 vermiculite, with a few coffecans of home mixed fertilizer (bone meal, blood meal, wood ash, and a few other organic things). Chances are they filled it with something similar to this. The reason stuff grew so well in yours was probably because of a combination of the richness of the soil and the great drainage a raised bed gives you.

Did it look something like this? This is not my garden, just a pic I found online.

Yea, basically. They used like fence post boards or something, much thicker than in the picture. Whatever they had in it, weeds would grow to like 2 feet tall in a week's time. I ended up having to put a tarp over it to keep everything in it dead, because I sure couldn't mow it very easily.

 

[Pielorinho]

Gardening is RIDICULOUSLY exciting. I am constantly thrilled by seeing what new crop is springing up.

This year's garden for us is pretty good: it's two 9x3 beds (approximately) in which we're growing:
-Mixed lettuce
-Other mixed greens, plus arugula (kind of like rotten-skunk-in-a-leaf)
-Green onions
-Parsley and cilantro
-Carrots
-Green beans (which are absurdly good when fresh: they've got a deep rich flavor almost reminiscent of coffee or chocolate)
-Sweet peas (gone now, replaced by cucumbers and squash last week)
-Three varieties of tomatoes
-Basil
-Strawberries (which won't fruit till next year, but which are going wild in the bed we gave them out back)

Lettuce is very very easy to grow, in my experience, and a couple square feet of it will produce more salad than you ever want to eat, except that the salad is delicious. The tomato plants are bowed down by the weight of their fruit, but they're all green right now, due to the cold spring we had; by the end of July, I think we'll be making tons of sauce. The basil plants are about three or four feet tall, and I just had some of our first batch of pesto this year; come September or so, we'll cut down all the basil and spend a day filling the freezer with cubes of pesto to last us all winter.

We rely on The Vegetable Gardener's Bible as our main resource. Its philosophy is:
-Wide beds
-Dug very deep
-Filled with organic material (mostly compost)

it works very well: we're able to get a tremendous amount of material out of our relatively small spot, and the close planting shades out weeds so much that we only need to weed every couple of weeks.

Daniel

 

[KB9JMQ]

I have 12 tomato plants in individual big plastic totes growing and I can't wait till they are ready. I have had gardens in the past but this year just doing the tomato thing.
Love fresh garden tomatoes like nothing else.

 

[der_kluge]

I think if I had a garden, I might grow eggplant, lettuce, and probably tomatos and cucumbers since my wife would eat those. And corn would be good. Maybe a strawberry patch as well.