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 Post subject: Gardening
PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 11:12 pm 
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Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2012 5:22 pm
Posts: 8837
It has been so gorgeous here. Our trees are budding, our daffodils are 8" tall, our grass may need mowed soon. AND... we're planning the garden. Dh has always done our garden but he's a bit burned out on it - he wants to go fishing instead of gardening, go figure! :lol: And I'm a little excited about trying my hand at it. I pretty much have a brown thumb, sigh.

I have the list of what I want to plant. Now I'm figuring out when and how to plant each thing and reading up on ways to keep the animals out of stuff.

All opinions and advice welcome. :)


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 Post subject: Re: Gardening
PostPosted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 12:03 am 
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Till an area bigger than you think you'll need. I had a garden last year for the first time in many years and I ended up wishing I had more space to plant things.
The things I did plant grew and were on top of each other before the Summer's end.

I did a small garden and loved it.
I didn't furtilize the soil first though. I didn't get as much crop as I would have. Once I finally DID put down plant food, things grew much better.

:)


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 Post subject: Re: Gardening
PostPosted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 1:27 am 
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Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2012 5:22 pm
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What did you plant and is there anything you'd plant differently?


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 Post subject: Re: Gardening
PostPosted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 9:59 am 
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Joined: Sun Jul 01, 2012 5:16 pm
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Location: Sunshine State
One of my most successful plantings was a 12 x 12 plot with 3 rows of beef steak tomatoes and two rows of basil in between them. I forget what I had on the periphery, flowers or root crops. That was years ago, the houses there were built on cow pasture, good soil. Where we are at now had been farmland, cultivated for over 100yrs. My kitchen herbs are doing well. A farmer told me they grow like weeds here. The trees we have planted are doing well.

I like root crops, particularly turnips, you get a turnip plus greens. With beets its the same. I so miss my lettuce patch. I put down some potato, folks around here say they do well.

_________________
"...with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26


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 Post subject: Re: Gardening
PostPosted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 4:15 pm 
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Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2012 6:58 pm
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Sis wrote:
What did you plant and is there anything you'd plant differently?


I planted yellow squash, zucchini, tomatoes (two varieties), green beans, bell pepper, and scallions.

I tried to think of what we'd actually eat and also not wanting to overwhelm myself for the first time gardening by myself (My dh and I always planted a large garden but he was here to help with a lot of the work, so I wasn't sure what all I could handle on my own.)

Anyway.. what would I do differently. I'd plant more squash. They didn't produce as much as I was wanting. I ended up buying from the store to add to what I was growing.. THAT was disappointing.
The bell pepper never did grow correctly and honestly, not something we eat a lot of ... so I'd skip that. We will eat maybe one bell pepper a month, lol! But ds wanted to grow some so we tried it. They didn't produce like we thought. We grew the red kind but they never did turn red.. they'd go bad on the bush before then.

The tomatoes, wow.. I planted too much! They grew like crazy and I'm the only one here that eats them.....

The scallions were the easiest and I used them a lot in cooking and in salads. I was very pleased with how they grew. I'll do them again this year.
Funny because I NEVER buy them from the store.. but I do buy regular onions.. with the scallions I didn't have to buy any onions at all and I honestly cooked with the ones from the garden nearly every day.
:)

The zucchini didn't grow well... I think I got 2 or 3 over the entire Summer. I thought it was "me" but when I visited my cousin who had a HUGE garden (Put me to shame, :lol: ...) she said she wasn't getting and zucchini's from her garden either.. so I just chalked it up to a bad year for them and I will try again this year.

Blueberries... I have bushes that dh planted many years ago that are producing. I cleaned out some of the underbrush and I was able to pick almost 2 cups of blueberries but had to leave a lot that I couldn't reach... SO.. this year I will make sure they are taken care of properly so I can pick and freeze the crop.

Funny story... I was picking the blueberries and the entire time worried about a snake crawling out from under there.. I'm REACHING in as far as I dare to pick them... and the entire time trying to be careful where I put my feet because I really couldn't see from all the underbrush that had grown...
then I feel this weird thing run across my feet and hear a scurrying sound!! I screamed and jumped back only to find out it was my stupid dog!!
One of the kids had let her out and SHE wasn't afraid of what was in those bushes!!! :lol: :lol: :shock:


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 Post subject: Re: Gardening
PostPosted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 4:23 pm 
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I forgot to mention the green beans. I planted the bush kind and they really grew a lot.
I had some going bad on the vine just because I coudn't keep up with picking them!
SO I was pretty happy with them and how easy they were to grow.


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 Post subject: Re: Gardening
PostPosted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 2:33 pm 
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Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2012 3:28 pm
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We had lots of beans also. Also peppers, lots of peppers. We froze and dehydrated a lot and are enjoying them this winter. Was hoping for tomatoes but they didn't produce at all. Got quite a bit of yellow squash and cucumbers. Zucchini didn't do too much but we were late planting it. Potatoes usually do pretty well but they didn't do much last year either. Beans and peppers we had though ;)

We had broccoli in a fall garden. We don't do it in the spring because worms are too bad then.

Tory, so glad you mentioned scallions. We tried regular onions a few years ago and they wouldn't grow here. I'm going to plant scallions and they should be easier to grow in our soil. Why have I never thought of that?! I would like some blueberry bushes too. I'd really love some nut trees too.

Our soil is bad here so we use raised beds and some "global buckets" containers made out of 5 gallon buckets. Our peppers grew in those buckets until frost killed them and were still loaded with peppers.

I have the garden itch already too.


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 Post subject: Re: Gardening
PostPosted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 7:55 pm 
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With blueberries you need to plant several varieties. You can't plant 10 of one variety for some reason or they won't produce fruit.
I don't know much about them, but I DO remember dh telling me that little tidbit, lol!


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 Post subject: Re: Gardening
PostPosted: Fri Mar 27, 2015 10:37 pm 
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Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2012 5:22 pm
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The garden space we have available to us is 28'x33' :o I think that's quite large, isn't it?! It's broken up into 3 sections. One is 16'x16', one is 20'x12, and one is 31'x17. Besides that, there is a space along the south wall that is well-suited for tomatoes!

We also have a couple of big box planters - big as in tallish - probably 4' deep but only 18" or so across.

I've been reading about novice mistakes and now I'm quite intimidated! I tho't I could just get the ground tilled up with some good soil thrown in and that's that but no, different plants take different types of soil? puh


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 Post subject: Re: Gardening
PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2015 9:27 pm 
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I just planted, lol! I didn't even THINK about what kind of soil it is.
I should have fertilized first but that's my only real regret.

Just plant something... NOT that entire area you have unless you have a ton of time and energy.


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