• LAVA Moderator: Mysterier

Backyard Vegetable Gardening & Livestock Raising & Sustainable Living

Mehm

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Oct 13, 2005
Messages
6,456
the garden thread

Hello,
I'm planting my second garden ever this year and was wondering how many bluelighters pursue this worthwhile endeavor.

Please say where you live, your type of soil, any amendments, and what you are planting. Anything else of interest would be cool as well.

I live in the dry, hot, windy southwest and am planting into a fine sand/clay that is very alkaline. I've been double digging raised beds and amending with EM compost and horse manure. My compost has a lot of fruit rinds so I'm hoping this will balance the alkaline soil.

Right now, I have some overwintered garlic ready to go. I also have bush beans and cucumbers in the ground. Soon I'll be putting in tomatoes (an heirloom variety from 25 year old seeds!!!), tomatillos, melons, peppers (sweet and hot), corn, soy beans, lettuce, and spinach.

What do you have going?
peas
 
I love growing plants, and especially gardening. Its so relaxing to come home from a long day at work and mill around in the garden. Watching the plants grow fascinates me to no end, and whats better than fresh vegetables/flowers/spices you grew yourself?

This year is a particularly interesting to me, as its my first growing season living in the hills. Previously, I lived in prairieland in the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River Delta. There was 6-13ft of very humus-rich well drained topsoil depending on wherever I happened to be at the time. It was such a great place to grow things in the ground.

Now I'm living in very rough, hard to traverse terrain. Its on a rocky sedimentary plateau
on top of an igneous mountain range. There is a ton of limestone, dolomite, and sandstone so I also have alkaline soil to deal with. There is also very thin topsoil. Its like 3-6in here before I hit very thick solid clay.

Because I am renting, and my backyard is more of a large dog pen than a yard, I decided against raised beds. I'm technically not supposed to destroy the yard either, but they seem pretty lax about a lot of the rules. Its all weeds anyway, and the areas I'm not gardening in I've roughed up and planted turf grass. So if anything its improving the property.

Since 3-6in of topsoil over hard clay is no good for large plants, I've tilled it by hand to about 12in or so. I then mixed in generous amounts of peat to help lower the pH and keep the soil from being so solid. Then I fertilized with some bone & blood meal leftover from last year (not enough, really, so I added some 20-20-20), large amounts of composted cow & horse manure, and some bagged sandy topsoil.

Then got the soil to a more workable, spongy texture. The plants are doing pretty well, though its a PITA to water all of then since I don't have an outdoor water spigot of any sort.

So far I have a variety of heirloom tomatos popular in my state (arkansas traveler, etc), roma, early girl, beefsteak, cherry, grape, etc. I tried to stay away from the determinate varieties so I can force produce on friends all season. I have a lot of peppers as well. I love peppers, and think they are fun to grow. There is a ton of cayenne, because I eat it on everything and enjoy growing/grinding my own. They also grow very well in the high humidity and heat of the south US. Other than that I've got some tobasco, habenero, serrano, anaheim, jalapeno, sweet banana, hot banana, and a variety of bell peppers (purple, yellow, sweet, red, etc). Since I had peppers and tomatos, and access to homegrown onions and garlic I planted some cilantro so that I can have homegrown salsa all summer.

I have a variety of basil for pesto and whatnot: genovese, sweet, purple ruffled, spicy bush/globe, lemon, cinnamon. There is some st. john wort because I got a pack of free seeds, lavender, rosemary, sage, oregano, irish moss (that I figured I'd periodically harvest and offer to my homebrewing buddies as a clarifying agent), a few varieties of potted turf grass (which I need to find minature pink flamingos for), and too many packets of seeds I haven't had time to plant yet.

I've also got a number of native plants I'm growing out from wild-collected seeds/cuttings, and seed from local nurseries. I'm excitied about this. I'd like to see how they do in their natural habitat with the benefit of gardening experience. This includes things like echinacea, passionflower, virginia creeper, briar (pisses my GF off for some reason.. guess she got poked by it too many times as a kid), and a small sassafras sapling.
 
I really want a garden but can't dig up the dirt in front of where i live, and am moving in a month+. Are there any plants that would do well in buckets, or some sort of movable garden. I want to grow tomatoes and peppers and strawberries, are they hardy enough or whatever to work? what herbs grow really well? something i can make a tea of, perhaps.
 
My dad had to dump a lot of fillers in our lot because it was lower than street level, so the land is pretty much shitty unless you dig past the rocks. I’ve been stealing leaves from the surrounding neighborhoods and dumping them all over the ground to minimize drying out and so they’ll eventually decompose. I compost and redistribute all the dog doo among the plants. Our garden is more like land, with grasses and weeds naturally growing. It gets really hot (I’m in the Philippines). The land can get really tough during summer (i.e., now).

The sides of the land are what I’ve been working on. There are a couple of mature trees, and some I’ve started up like cashew, guyabano, temple tree, jackfruit, mango, mahogany, eucalyptus, neem, durian, sugar apple, coconut, dates, etc. We have spots of beans and sugarcane growing. I planted okra, as they do well without watering and during extreme heat, and have been harvesting everyday for the past month or so. I also harvest a lot of sweet potato tops, peppers, and Malabar spinach. I have small Philippine lemon trees too. It’s really too hot to do anything short of intensive bio gardening, which I can’t do, because of work. I miss gardening all day, but you gotta do what you gotta do eh?

I’ve planted lavender, tarragon, coriander, chives, basil (they’re becoming invasive already actually), and many other herbs.

I can’t stress the importance of edible “weeds” or non-conventional vegetables. Some of them taste really good and have their traditional place on the table… I suggest you explore these possibilities!

Oh, and the leaves-on-the-ground works if you don’t really have time to do intensive composting. It replicates forest leave dropping down, so you're doing your land a favor
 
sounds delicious fizzacyst and Dtergent. gardening is quite interesting as every environment has tradeoffs. For me, its dry and 100 degrees all summer so certain things have trouble setting flowers or they bolt prematurely. On the other hand, disease and bugs are almost non-existent.

fizzacyst - If your sink is higher than your beds, you could plug the sink (or use a bucket) and siphon water into your garden with a long hose..just a thought :)

naton - I can tell you how do make self watering organic pots for whatever veggies you want. Just ask if you want to know.

peace
 
awesome! I was going to start a thread about gardens, but never got around to it. Can I suggest that people here who maintain one post a pic, cuz I'd like to see what they look like :)

This year will be my 3rd season for having one. I try to improve it a little bit each year. I'm going to attempt to grow everything from seeds this year.

I live in Ohio, so it stays cold at night until late spring. We got snow last year in May once. I've always been really late getting plants into the ground, but I'm determined to do it earlier this time. I'm going to start my seeds indoor in the next day or two.

I had dirt delivered last year, so that's the top portion of my main area. I mostly plant tomatoes- cherry and regular. Last year I included a row of cucumbers and a row of pepper plants, but that was a mistake, cuz the cukes got out of control and attacked everything in it's vacinity. So this year, they get their own separate garden. And for the peppers, I'm going to keep them all in large pots instead of the ground, cuz I have better luck with them that way.

I want to try lettuce; I had no luck with it last year so now I feel like I have to succeed and beat it. I also want to grow sugar snap peas, so I should probably try to get those in as soon as possible.

I'm too lazy to compost, but I use store compost/manure around all the plants. And I rototill into the ground my winter supply of ash from my woodburning stove.

yay for yummy veggies!
 
I'm bumping this up cuz I got my mantis started this evening and rototilled. My hands are blistery, but I sure am happy!
 
I'm going to dig in some earth right now. Clearing the raspberries, also got fuckloads of mint going, that shit almost took over the entire garden, which I'm obviously going to stop from doing that right now.
 
I'm starting to garden this year. I too am sowing seeds indoors, and I don't think I'm going to plant outside until at least Mother's Day.

I'm going to grow four o clocks, snapdragons, salvia, chinese lanterns, and some other fun flowering plants out front, and maybe some hollyhocks and veggies out back. Not sure yet on the veggies, I'm mostly interested in making the house look pretty first. We're also going to plant a japanese weeping cherry tree. :)

My mom grew watermelon and pumpkins last year! I don't know if I will follow in those footsteps but I might try. :D
 
blowmonkey: lucky dutchman ;) ganja and raspberries sound delicious.

randycaver: do you have to amend your soil at all? It seems like its easy to grow stuff in the midwest.
 
Mint is a hardy groweR? In the netherlands too, wow. i should grow some, i like mint tea. also, how do i grow honey? jk. i heard salvia only grows from cuttings is that true??
 
^ Mint gets to the point of being invasive. Many people use it as groundcover.
 
so far, no. it depends, some areas are a lot of clay but here the soil is great. :)
 
I have a second, smaller garden area which I planted lettuce in last year, and nothing happened with it. I think I kept it over watered, and then the lettuce was eventually choked out by cucumber plants. But I was preparing the ground there today, and guess what? LETTUCE! A whole year later! How cool is that?!
 
naton said:
Mint is a hardy groweR? In the netherlands too, wow. i should grow some, i like mint tea. also, how do i grow honey? jk. i heard salvia only grows from cuttings is that true??


When someone with a garden refers to "salvia" they are usually referring to Salvia splendens or one of the other ornamental species of salvia. They produce very bright red and purple flowers.

The magic salvia is much closer related to the sage herb (also a species of salvia).
 
I started six seedlings a week ago. I have them in 500mL containers under two 23w compact floros, in Whitney Farms premium potting soil. **cough**cough**

As for standard herbs....I have mint, "lemon balm," basil, etc....

Mint is an insane plant....make sure you keep it in a large barrel, or else it will spread to everything. Mint can easily take over your garden in a matter of weeks.
 
I bought seven lettuce plants today in vermicompost. I also collected a shitload of various seeds from walking around. I hope to get on it tomorrow!
 
coincidentally enough i caught my upstairs neighbor earlier, he told me he was going to go pick some mint on our street. i went with him, it was growing against a wall, in the crack of soil between the wall and the sidewalk. funny how i learn about how vigorous mint is, and then we wind up picking some on our own little street.

Dtergent: what seeds did you collect while walking around?
 
Top