Anyone have a garden?

My brother started our first garden this year. Small but hearty.
Some lettuces, cabbages, swiss chard, spinach, beans, peas, tomatoes, broccolli, cauliflower, chillies, jalapeneos(i hope), bell peppers, plus a few others.
Doin well so far.
Nothing like fresh veggies in the back yard. Really convenient. Way better than store bought. Freshness is all the difference.
Doing the organic thing and having great results.

Hope yours is goin well....ours is just starting and we can't eat it all...while eating more than ever.

Any expertise or stories to share?

mucker wrote:

Some lettuces, cabbages, swiss chard, spinach, beans, peas, tomatoes, broccolli, cauliflower, chillies, jalapeneos(i hope), bell peppers, plus a few others.

In my book, that ain't no "small garden".

We have 6 tomato plants, a cucumber vine, and two or three little herbs of some kind or another.

I lost my peppers again this year. Have huge trouble growing peppers. I'm told by a farmer friend at work it could very well be a pH problem.

Our cucumber vine has suffered terribly this year. I think too much water is the problem. We had a pretty wet spring, but the worst problem was my neighbors in-ground sprinkler system pretty much flooded the garden daily for weeks. I finally knocked on his door and asked him to walk with me into our backyards. He was shocked at how soggy the ground was back there. He turned off the sprinklers - but I think it's just too late. My farmer friend says that typically the rule of thumb in farming is "a little too dry is better than a little too wet".


I bought my wife a composting container for Mother's Day. (Yes - she was THRILLED) So hopefully over the next few months and into the winter we can add some good nutrients to the soil. I will also get a soil testing kit this fall and try to determine my pH balance. In the late fall I also plan to hit the garden with some fertilizer once I have the pH figured out.

We've gotten some delicious tomatoes this year. That's about it.

Every year my wife asks me to expand the garden.

A couple dozen potted veggies on the side.

Ya...soggy is not good for much. Ours went under 10 inches of water the day after transplanting. Dug a drainage ditch in a panic and seemed to weather it ok. Now the ditch is there for next time.

Tried some melons but the raccoons wouldnt leave em alone, lost everything eventually.

Compost tea for food seems to be working great...and it doesnt take much compost. Cheap to make. No worries of over fertilizing. All organic.

We were hoping for some red wiggler worms but hasnt happened yet.

Everything is boomin, better than expected...kinda gettin overgrown a bit....tho hot peppers are slow and something likes the chinese cabbage.

Good year so far...

Yep, got some beefsteak tomato plants, a few hot pepper plants, cukes and texas onions. Didn't do radishes or carrots this year.

Tomatoes are finally starting to cook with the heat even tho one plant had a tomato on it when I bought it in spring (that ONE was dee-licoius!). The pepper plants have been producing for the past few weeks. The cukes are starting to wither a bit from the drought up here so I hit them with some more water. The scillions of scallions are just about eaten.

I finally beat the bunnies by fencing the garden in. No other humane solution seemed to work.

If I could grow iceberg lettuce I'd have lettuce. I pretty much hate every other kind of grassy lettuce.

Seems like a good year for the garden but a bit dry as of lately. And it tastes soooo good without any stuff on it, just God's good earth.

In my garden I have peppers, tomatoes, brussel sprouts, cabbage, kale, lettuce, broccoli, eggplant, peas, beans, cucumbers, spinach, swiss chard, strawberries, zucchini, squash. Around my yard I have blueberries, cherry and apple trees, watermelon, pumpkins, raspberries, and some egg laying chickens.

I think Wristpin wins ! Good golly !

This year the cherry tomatoes are ballistic, the squash (summer, spaghetti and zucchini) are now starting to kick in. Never had any luck with melons. ....but the guy around the corner from me had some mongo-sized watermelons.

The peach tree last year was really going off. I was giving plastic shopping bags away. Not so many this year.

Carrots don't seem to do to well (not sure if the ground is soft enough), but the blackberries, I'm filling those little baskets they come in from the store about weekly.

We had bell peppers last year as well as the beefsteak tomatoes last year and they did well.

The strawberries we have get consumed by the birds I think.

Lettuce and cilantro goes GREAT in the wintertime. More than we can eat.

The grape vines grows like no tomorrow all summer, but we rarely get any amount of grapes from it by October.

The brussel sprout plant turned into a two-year grower with no sprouts. It had some funky blue molt stuff on it.

Here by the beach in the summer we get alot of coastal fog with sun in the afternoons. Later in the summer when the ocean warms up there is less fog and there is more solar exposure.

The wild turkeys eat any berries, tomatoes, etc we try to grow.

The deer eat the tops off the carrots, lettuce, and any other veggies.

The bears come for the apples that the deer didn't get and bust the hell out of the tree branches while doing so.

Screw gardening - they can go get their own damned food. And come hunting season, some of them are going to end up being food.