starting this years garden in 2 days

[chuckwood]

I'll be hooking up the disk harrow and smoothing everything down. Hopefully I'll be putting taters in the ground in a week or two, along with cabbage and broccoli plants. I just noticed an article written about the drought situation in central California. If this continues for a few more years, the time will come when the US will loose around 1/3 of all the veggies sold in supermarkets, the part that is grown in CA. The result will be more people growing their own and new opportunities for farmers east of CA. A lot of first time gardeners may be disappointed about the learning curve involved and the work and expense in building up urban and suburban soils into good garden soil. Now is the best time to start. Here's the article I mentioned:

http://www.naturalnews.com/049013_California_water_crisis_fresh_produce.html

 

[lone wolf]

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[Fubar]

i am gonna try to get my asparagus bed made and planted tomorrow , and the wife is going to plant her strawberry's too , then it will be green beans , squash and okra next , then i will have to get some more seeds ..lol

 

[Sagetown]

Good for you chuckwood. Gardening here looks to be a wash. We keep getting so much rain, no one is able to get into their gardens to do anything, and I'm talking for the last few months. No prepping, no nothing. I plowed my last fall, and it's solid mud.

 

[Buckshot00]

Got potatoes, onions and strawberry plants in the ground. Hoping for a garden that was as good as last years.

 

[chuckwood]

Got cabbage, broccoli, spinach, romaine lettuce, onions, carrots, and peas planted. Got a hard freeze coming saturday that I'm not too happy about. Covering plants is a hassle. I've also planted some peach trees that are blooming right now, and I'll have to cover them with old sheets. The chicken wire is a trellis for the sugar snap peas to grow on. No taters in the ground yet, I do that when the moon phase is dark. It's an old wives tale that root crops go in during dark of the moon, but I've found out through experience that there is something to this, so I follow this method of planting by moon signs. I realize it may just be coincidence, but I've had more failures while planting under the wrong sign, so call me superstitious. I've got 2 more plots a bit smaller than this one, but they get planted after frost danger is gone. This year I may go a week or so past the official last frost date, I don't trust the weather.

 

[chuckwood]

Good for you chuckwood. Gardening here looks to be a wash. We keep getting so much rain, no one is able to get into their gardens to do anything, and I'm talking for the last few months. No prepping, no nothing. I plowed my last fall, and it's solid mud.

Here in TN, we're also having the usual spring rains, but there has been enough space between rain periods for things to get dry enough to till. I got my tractor stuck a couple times in a wet corner and had to pick the plow up to get out, but other than that no problems. I feel lucky for myself and badly for y'all.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

Ground frozen harder than a wedding night you know what here still.

 

[Marshy]

Our snow pack has been reduced to about a foot of icy snow. Maybe in another 4 weeks we'll see the dead grass emerge and something green in 6 weeks.

 

[chuckwood]

Here comes the hard part of my gardening operation, but once it's done, that's pretty much it. I load a trailer with last years matted down leaves, pulled by a four wheeler. The leaves I get free from the city in the fall, they deliver by the dumptruck load. They get rid of something they don't want, and I get free mulch! I straddle the rows with trailer, and spread the leaves out everywhere in the garden, covering everything except my plants with a heavy layer. It's hard work with a pitchfork but good exercise. I used to load the wagon with a small front end loader tractor, but didn't like the idea of constantly starting and shutting off the engine, that's hard on motors and starters. I also didn't like the other idea of the tractor sitting there all day long mostly at idle, burning diesel and needlessly running up the hours on the machine either. I found out that I could do it almost as fast with a pitchfork. Once the leaves are down, I do very little additional weeding or watering. The leaves keep the soil cool and wet. And after a year, they are completely composted into the soil and make it richer. When all my hours are added up, I believe I save time this way. I don't have to waste all those hours tilling in between rows, I don't need to add drip irrigation hoses, and the soil is getting rich enough to where fertilizer really isn't needed much anymore. This method works really well with potatoes. What I have planted so far is cabbage, broccoli, romaine lettuce, spinach, onions, beets, carrots, sugar snap peas, and potatoes. I have a huge cabbage crop every year that I use to make sauerkraut, that stuff keeps easily in glass canning jars for over four months. You can keep kraut longer if you store the jars in an extra refrigerator during the heat of the summer and fall. The other veggies get canned, dried, or frozen. I plant large amounts of leeks (not in the ground yet) in spring and freeze them in fall, very easy to do and they make very good soup. Going out today to buy my tomato plants, this year I'm making my own V8 juice and canning it.

 

[les-or-more]

Nice looking garden.
You suck though, ground still frozen solid here and 4" of wet snow night before last!

 

[Greenthorn]

Looks like you got a nice size garden, we have 3 different garden spots, I only managed to get 1 tilled so far, gots me spinach lettuce peas onions planted in this one. I have 300 - 350

tomato plants started in the green house.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

I end up going over to the farm next door. I don't have time to deal with a garden, much like they don't have to mess with firewood... so it's a win win.
I tried planting cukes for several years. Either it rained too much, was too cold ("summer" might touch maybe 60 sone years) or the darn moose ate them.

 

[Fubar]

Here comes the hard part of my gardening operation, but once it's done, that's pretty much it. I load a trailer with last years matted down leaves, pulled by a four wheeler. The leaves I get free from the city in the fall, they deliver by the dumptruck load. They get rid of something they don't want, and I get free mulch! I straddle the rows with trailer, and spread the leaves out everywhere in the garden, covering everything except my plants with a heavy layer. It's hard work with a pitchfork but good exercise. I used to load the wagon with a small front end loader tractor, but didn't like the idea of constantly starting and shutting off the engine, that's hard on motors and starters. I also didn't like the other idea of the tractor sitting there all day long mostly at idle, burning diesel and needlessly running up the hours on the machine either. I found out that I could do it almost as fast with a pitchfork. Once the leaves are down, I do very little additional weeding or watering. The leaves keep the soil cool and wet. And after a year, they are completely composted into the soil and make it richer. When all my hours are added up, I believe I save time this way. I don't have to waste all those hours tilling in between rows, I don't need to add drip irrigation hoses, and the soil is getting rich enough to where fertilizer really isn't needed much anymore. This method works really well with potatoes. What I have planted so far is cabbage, broccoli, romaine lettuce, spinach, onions, beets, carrots, sugar snap peas, and potatoes. I have a huge cabbage crop every year that I use to make sauerkraut, that stuff keeps easily in glass canning jars for over four months. You can keep kraut longer if you store the jars in an extra refrigerator during the heat of the summer and fall. The other veggies get canned, dried, or frozen. I plant large amounts of leeks (not in the ground yet) in spring and freeze them in fall, very easy to do and they make very good soup. Going out today to buy my tomato plants, this year I'm making my own V8 juice and canning it.

View attachment 418566 View attachment 418567 View attachment 418568

nice setup Chuck , it looks like you got it going on .

 

[chuckwood]

Looks like you got a nice size garden, we have 3 different garden spots, I only managed to get 1 tilled so far, gots me spinach lettuce peas onions planted in this one. I have 300 - 350View attachment 418579 tomato plants started in the green house.

I notice that you have a fence around yours. That would cause problems with my leaf mulching method, but through the years, I've seriously thought about doing it due to all the damage I get from groundhogs. They did a lot of damage this year right after I planted my cabbage and broccoli. What really burns me up about what they do is they go down the row eating maybe just half of each plant, taking only the very best tasting parts I guess. But this year my golden retriever has killed four of them, and I think she's got 'em all. When I let her out, she has a route she goes on and routinely checks each groundhog burrow to see if she can get anymore. Hunting is what she prefers to do before anything else.

 

[Greenthorn]

Yeah, the fence is only around our leafy lettuce and spinach garden...its to keep the rabbits from devouring all of it. I have serious groundhog problems now also, I think the .22 is coming out this year. They really love my squash n gourds. They even took bites out of our tomatoes, wifey says that's it...kill em!

 

[Marshy]

Here comes the hard part of my gardening operation, but once it's done, that's pretty much it. I load a trailer with last years matted down leaves, pulled by a four wheeler. The leaves I get free from the city in the fall, they deliver by the dumptruck load. They get rid of something they don't want, and I get free mulch! I straddle the rows with trailer, and spread the leaves out everywhere in the garden, covering everything except my plants with a heavy layer. It's hard work with a pitchfork but good exercise. I used to load the wagon with a small front end loader tractor, but didn't like the idea of constantly starting and shutting off the engine, that's hard on motors and starters. I also didn't like the other idea of the tractor sitting there all day long mostly at idle, burning diesel and needlessly running up the hours on the machine either. I found out that I could do it almost as fast with a pitchfork. Once the leaves are down, I do very little additional weeding or watering. The leaves keep the soil cool and wet. And after a year, they are completely composted into the soil and make it richer. When all my hours are added up, I believe I save time this way. I don't have to waste all those hours tilling in between rows, I don't need to add drip irrigation hoses, and the soil is getting rich enough to where fertilizer really isn't needed much anymore. This method works really well with potatoes. What I have planted so far is cabbage, broccoli, romaine lettuce, spinach, onions, beets, carrots, sugar snap peas, and potatoes. I have a huge cabbage crop every year that I use to make sauerkraut, that stuff keeps easily in glass canning jars for over four months. You can keep kraut longer if you store the jars in an extra refrigerator during the heat of the summer and fall. The other veggies get canned, dried, or frozen. I plant large amounts of leeks (not in the ground yet) in spring and freeze them in fall, very easy to do and they make very good soup. Going out today to buy my tomato plants, this year I'm making my own V8 juice and canning it.

View attachment 418566 View attachment 418567 View attachment 418568

With all that green compost matter added to your garden year after year so you find it throws off the PH balance of the soil? Do you add brown compost matter too? What about lye, do you use it? Too many leaves will make it acidic I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) which the tomatoes love but other plants like peppers not so much...

 

[chuckwood]

With all that green compost matter added to your garden year after year so you find it throws off the PH balance of the soil? Do you add brown compost matter too? What about lye, do you use it? Too many leaves will make it acidic I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) which the tomatoes love but other plants like peppers not so much...

Yes, leaves will make it more acidic, particularly if there are pine needles mixed in. However, I also apply ashes from my wood burning stove to my garden. That, and the ashes from two other wood burning households keeps my PH balance at around 6.5 to 7. Wood ashes are rich in Potassium and other minerals that plants like. Potatoes and tomatoes like acid soil. All my kitchen scraps get composted and go back into the garden.

 

[Marshy]

I need the ground to dry out a little so I can control burn the weeds in my garden from not planting anything last year. I let it grow in because I was too busy. :/

 

[Perry pioneer]

Some nice looking gardens here good job. I got my first tomato the size of a marble on my plant right now! Update three tomatoes plants still growing from last year.