Garden thread. (Vegetable 2)

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Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

I didn't want to necro THIS thread from April, but I was wondering how your gardens are progressing.

Here are some pics of mine. (They are large pictures, so I will send the link)

http://imgur.com/TQGBq.jpg

http://imgur.com/CEyAN.jpg

http://imgur.com/Dec29.jpg

http://imgur.com/uGfZa.jpg

http://imgur.com/m0DZx.jpg

Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 2:09 am

I only do 3 things in my 'garden' - mow it, spray it or pave it.

I tried planting vegies once, but 3 years supply came up all at once.

Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 2:33 am

Oh, how I wish I could have a garden that size...

I'm currently an apartment dweller, and my garden is entirely what I can do in pots and topsy-turvies on my balcony (you know, they really are kind of cool)--tomatoes, eggplant, jalapenos, zucchini (I know it shouldn't be potted, but I can get a few off the plants before they outgrow their space), cucumbers and herbs.

I actually picked my first two ripe tomatoes this past week--but now I have nothing but green again--they were just unusually advanced. One of my plants is a black tomato plant (the tomatoes, not the plant, are black Very Happy

)--I am really hoping that one does well as I really want to see those tomatoes!

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 11:43 am

As you all know, I'm into flowers. Wink

But, I did help lovey plant these and look at the prize that I just pulled.
Front: Cool

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm155/eater_photos/100_1074.jpg

Back: Cool

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm155/eater_photos/100_1075.jpg

Pastor, Amen brother! Very Happy

More veggies!
http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/1373/1001095.jpg
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/2556/1001094.jpg
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/1782/1001093v.jpg
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/2061/1001092z.jpg

More flowers! Very Happy

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3482/1001101.jpg
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/2034/1001099.jpg
http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/4929/1001091.jpg
http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/904/1001076m.jpg
http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/1306/1001083o.jpg
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/5455/1001104.jpg
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/3307/1001085.jpg
http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/4010/1001080.jpg
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/1994/1001090v.jpg

_________________

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 1:38 pm

Lovely garden PF! Sadly with the drought, rabbit explosion in Nordeast and new baby, ours is pathetic this year. However mr. bohigal did rototill half the front yard for next year's veggies.

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 4:08 pm

I started a small container garden this spring, against the protests of my wife. We started a few 'tumbling tom' cherry tomato plants. My wife got the bug, and now have watermelons, cantaloupe, squash, eggplant, peppers, pumpkins, cukes, and some unidentified things a friend mailed her seeds for....growing in inadequately prepared patches along our fence line.
One of the unidentified things she planted are some sort of leek, and the other things I have no idea.....little green twig things.
It's chaos. She's asian, and eats the pumpkin, and pepper plant leaves.
The pumpkins would take over the yard except she harvests the leaves frequently.
Where we planted the soil seems pretty good, but hard, and has lots of roots from ornamental plants gone wild. This winter I'll rent a rototiller and try to clear it out better.

Hard to take pics, since the 'garden' is spread out in strip about 125 feet long.
I haven't done any gardening since I was a kid, and I'm enjoying it, and the veggies are so much better than the store.

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 6:00 pm

Pastor - Just out of curiosity, about how many square feet do you have planted?

I am contemplating a garden next year for a household of 3, and trying to get a handle on how big to make it -- as you can probably figure out, I will be a totally clueless newbie to gardening.

Bruin

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 9:23 pm

@Bruin

What you have( in terms of area) makes your choices as to what you grow. PF looks to have room for loads of spuds and just about anything he fancies. With a smaller plot I would recommend a) what you and the family like to eat , b) plants that take less room or that you don't needs loads of and c) stuff that costs lots when you buy it from the store ( peppers, tomatoes,beetroots etc)

Sit down and look at what you are buying and how much you are paying for it. Then see if you have room to grow some of it. i doubt that you will ever be self-sufficient but every little helps! Very Happy

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 9:56 pm

Well, if I do it next year (and this is a major if), I would be thinking in terms of perhaps 150 square feet for starters....

Bruin

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 12:23 am

Ah, a garden topic. Nice pics, PF and Corona. Here's some pics I took @The Dutch residence last Sunday.
No veggies, but there is some fruit though.

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 2:22 am

^^^

Awe Dutch, that is lovely and yummy. Very Happy

BRUIN, our veg garden is about 12x5 foot. 2 tomatoes, 4 green pepper, 4 squash and 4 cucumbers. It can as big as you want it. As a new gardener, I suggest container gardening. Wink

Pastor, I have a confession, I did not take a pic of my veg garden cause it had some yellow leaves and some weeds.
Surprised

If anyone is dying to see, I'll clean her up and take a shot. Smile

Juan's stalker Joined: 28 Aug 2008 Posts: 1423

^^^Well at least you can grow veggies. The only thing that will grow for me vegetable wise is bell peppers.
So it's a good thing I love those. Laughing

Dutch and Corona your flowers are lovely!

Awesome garden PF. Very Happy

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 11:17 am

We have an almost completely paved back garden with a load of potted plants. Zillions of heirloom tomatoes of various kinds, a few dozen plants with about 70-80 fruits so far, just about ready to start colouring if they can have just a little bit of sun. I am inexperienced but love to grow tomatoes because they seem easy to deal with.

Courgettes (zucchini) - despite my experience in the midwest where plants grew huge and we all got sick of eating them, no luck here. I know they need room, but I planted a few in huge pots, and they have been eaten almost completely by slugs and snails despite various countermeasures (slug pubs being the main ones). We have a few in small pots that have just about come to the end of their lives, although we've had a bunch of nice flowers to eat (this is now my philosophy - harvest a load of flowers from the small pots, then abandon once they get feeble due to the limited growing space).

I half-heartedly put in some pots of lettuce and spinach but these have been highly nibbled as well. I know where the nasty buggers are coming from, but can't do anything about it as it's not on our teeny patch of space.

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 3:31 pm

Ok, the biting bugs weren't too bad in the backyard today, and the sun was shining...

This is what we started with in late april, some hanging planters on a bamboo rack we made out of bamboo from our yard.

And a few plants thrown in larger plastic containers...

This is a marketmore cuke that shouldn't be in this hanging pot, I think there are two plants crammed in there, recently trimmed back quite a bit.

It rained a lot in May, so the plants took off. As some outgrew the hanging pots, they were stuck in the ground, as well as a few other plants.

(above) 9'0clock....'Hansel' eggplants, 10, some sort of bell pepper, 3 oclock, a straightneck squash thinned out yesterday, about a month old...
6'oclock, some sort of purple bell pepper.

Below, 'Hansel' eggplant. Growing well, you can eat them from 2-3 inches, up to ten inches in length.

And my favorite, (no racial jokes, please) one of the watermelons....

the bees are big around here...

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 4:36 pm

Wow, I am getting inspired for next summer. What I am thinking of is using a roughly 12 x 12 area that I have. Any suggestions of what is "easy" for a beginner? Is 12 x 12 too ambitious?

Bruin

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 5:13 pm

We don't know WTF we are doing, and our 'garden' is mostly an afterthought.

Grow stuff you want to eat, and is appropriate for your location. Buy plants/seeds from at least a grower in your region, if possible.

We've had lots of problems with bugs eating the leaves of most of our plants, I've been afraid to spray since some plants are still flowering and I see the honey bees at work, often.

We didn't prepare our soil at all. You've got a lot of time to research, drool over seed catalogs, and do some prep on your garden patch.

Smile

Our neighbor has two maybe 5x8 raised beds, and has more tomatoes, cukes, and peppers than she can handle.

Suggestions? What do you like to eat?

(can't find an ice cream plant yet....)
Wink

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 5:56 pm

No ice cream plant???? There goes that idea. I was going to raise some spaghetti also . . . .

No, I eat just about anything, and am not afraid to try something new.

Bruin

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 6:22 pm

^^ A good idea is to look at what your neighbours are successful at growing.

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 7:57 pm

There is 'spaghetti squash'.

Laughing

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

A standard UK allotment was designed to support a family of four at a full self-sufficiency level. It's 300 sq yards. But you can't handle that unless you can put some serious time in, like a few hours, a few times a week. The crops that never go wrong for us are onions, leeks and runner beans. Those are easy to grow and easy to crop. We have difficulties raising a crop of brasicas, for which netting is an absolute necessity. Two bags of seed potatoes will give you enough to last a good fraction of the year, but they require effort planting, earthing up and even more harvesting, and are rather slug-eaten. You don't save much money on them either.

There's a lot to be said for growing the stuff that is expensive in the shops, but it's good just to be eating stuff that you've grown yourself.

So for day-in-day-out eating for the weekend gardener, I'd go for one bag of onion sets, 6-10 runner beans and as many leaks as you have room for. Onions and leaks require about half a square foot each, the beans about one square foot or a bit more. The onions keep well, and the leaks can stay in the ground until you want them. Harvest the runner beans week by week and immediately freeze what you can't eat.

Another plant that's cost effective and dead easy to grow and harvest is rhubarb. You only need one plant, but it will probably have to be in the ground for at least a year before it starts cropping.

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 9:32 pm

Thanks!! I can see that I have a lot to learn....

Bruin

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

@Bruin, My garden is 60x35 feet.The left half are my row crops and the right side is for vine crops. By fall the vine crops will have that entire space covered. I just dug up my first batch of potatoes today and they are currently roasting (cubed in approx 1 inch chunks) in the oven with garlic, onions, olive oil, sea salt and rosemary.

I highly recommend this book as a good primer on gardening in small spaces.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Grow-More-Vegetables-Possible/dp/0913668982

@everyone else, great pictures.

Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2009 2:48 am

I make refrigerator pickle with the squash, cucs and pepper. I also dice up the green pepper, put in ziplock bags and freeze for cooking Very Happy

I'm going to try some new recipes with the tomatoes and I may try salsa. Wink

Our garden is a perfect size for our need. Plus, I have plenty to give. Cool

Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2009 4:05 pm

Thanks all!

Bruin

Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 3:03 am

Love the eggplant, Stepan Very Happy

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