Who is planting a garden this year?

I have been container gardening for several years, each year experimenting with new vegetables. With food prices sky-rocketing, we are going to be expanding our efforts this summer. In addition to container gardening (for tomatoes, pepper, squash, and herbs), we are going to dig up a large patch of our front lawn and put in potatoes, carrots, dry bush beans, and possible more squash. As always, I have some neat heirloom varieties I am looking forward to trying! I also bought a book on canning/preserving in hopes of learning how to store food that way come Fall.

Wish I could get started now, though putting plants outside/planting seeds outdoors is months away. We're still under 1.5 feet of snow.

Is anyone else putting in a garden this year? What kinds of things will you be growing? What gardening methods are your favorites? (e.g., container gardening, hydroponics, lasagna gardening, etc)

I am. I did gardening all of last year in the city but since have moved to 6000 feet elevation. I have the same problem (about 2 feet of snow in the back yard). I have started a herb garden and am doing a bit of container gardening in the meantime.

I'm still researching what I can and can't grow here. Apparently, there's a decent list of both and everything that does grow requires special methods not known to people at lower elevations.

--sjkted

Was planning on having it again this year but unfortunately our mild Mediterranean climate has significantly changed over last 6 months. All the flora is confused. Some trees didn't know whether to keep or do drop their leaves, plants are blooming in winter because they thought it was spring then a week after they die due to severe below zero temp drop. The soil is cracking and becoming as concrete because it hasn't rained in months. Sun is so harsh that all the plants in greenhouses get burned

I am really worried about it and don't know what to do. It's March and I should be starting with planting some seeds.

I've been out pulling weeds in the garden today. We've got square foot gardening here which I am new to so I get to learn. I still need to learn what all will grow way up here in Washington.

romina wrote:Was planning on having it again this year but unfortunately our mild Mediterranean climate has significantly changed over last 6 months. All the flora is confused. Some trees didn't know whether to keep or do drop their leaves, plants are blooming in winter because they thought it was spring then a week after they die due to severe below zero temp drop. The soil is cracking and becoming as concrete because it hasn't rained in months. Sun is so harsh that all the plants in greenhouses get burned

I am really worried about it and don't know what to do. It's March and I should be starting with planting some seeds.

Romina have you heard of Hydroponics ?

http://www.themistsofavalon.net/t1760-mygroponics-sm-gardening-system#33127

This system allows for plants to be grown in water without soil and one can easily do it indoors .

Love from me
mudra

Hydroponics is very, very difficult to do. I've done some experimentation with it, but it is best done under an extremely controlled environment.

I also tried out square foot gardening a while ago. It's kind of a Western make it easy type method. Last year, I was in a community garden and was doing square foot gardening. My neighbor was a native of the Amazon rainforest and was accustomed to growing all of his food all the time. He joked about how wierd it was for him to go to the supermarket and how we lived in a "concrete forest". Anyways, I learned a lot of "native" methods from him that were extremely well thought out.

I ended up abandoning the square foot method because my garden always looked so anemic compared to his which looked like magazine-quality photoshoots. I would however recommend it if you have very little space and time for gardening.

--sjkted

aquaponics is much easier. Take a look at our friends place. www.friendlyaquaponics.com

We have a combination of several different methods. Container for the deck. Lasagna for the enclosed raised beds. 6 by 3 foot enclosed raised beds for potatoes and pineapple. I needed to prepare some area for other sweet potatoes. The tomatoes took off from volunteer seeds and the squash plant is taking over but no squash yet. I'm redoing the beds (pitch fork and new soil, some dirt, minerals, etc) and did transplant some strawberries. I need to spend a few days out there just catching up. I have lettuce seedlings to get in the containers for the deck. There is a lot to do.

hi Romina
wondered if you had heard of global buckets or earth boxes .
They supposedly used an 8th of the water and can be made with recycled materials
also whiting out your green house windows with opaque paint might help some !

http://www.globalbuckets.org/
I have not tried this but it caught my eye ( lack of water isnt usually a problem in scotland but who knows !)
I am also choosing the varieties of plants that are best for short season so if weather is not what we expect or need there is a chance they will have matured enough .
Last year my tomatoes all got blight but am enjoying the green tomatoe chutney they made
silver*

I'm also building some big raised beds; 8 x 4 using 1by 12 lumber. I have room to put in ten at this size but I think I will start off with four.

Ohhh, green tomatoe chutney. Would you post the recipe?

I also bought some of those bags to grow potatoes in. Sweet potatoes in one bag and those little Hawaiian purple potatoes in another bag. We also have some raised beds for another variety of potatoes and for pineapples.

Then we built raised beds for other veggies (tomatoes, green peppers, butternut squash, eggplant, basil, strawberries, beets, leeks, asparagas, chili peppers, bush beas.. the chickens got into that and I have to redo that section, lettuce that I let go to seed that is now resprouting, spinach, dill and other herbs. I've still got a long ways to go but at least we are now into our second season getting things into the ground. The banana trees are finally producing and there are plums, apples, fig, lemons and oranges staring on or small orchard. The poor lemon tree has no leaves due to the Japanese beetle but lots of lemons. It reminds me of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree - poor thing. It's taken about 4 years to get these trees going. Our avacado tree lost a lot of the starting avacodos due to high winds. We did put in 2 macnut trees and one caoco (coco) tree that the horse ate. sigh I'll probably replace it and get a couple of breadfruit trees as well. Anything that goes into the ground has to produce food these days. Even now I really need to continue to learn about how to get the soil right for growing conditions. I probably should plant a neem tree next to the poor infested lemon tree. The slugs tend to beat me to the strawberries.

I like to make a quich with the eggs, tomatoes and basil.

Preheat over to 400 degrees. Bake for 50 -60 minutes

10 eggs
2 fist fulls of basil (chopped or throw in blender with egg mixture)
2 or 3 tomatos chopped up
1 cup cream
2 cups grated cheese (chedder works)
1/4 tsp cayanne pepper

Beat eggs in blender with cayanne pepper, cream and basil. Add to cheese and chopped tomates. Mix and pour into 2 inch deep 9 inch pie or quich dish. I never make crusts anymore.

Romain salad with chopped green chives, madarine orange slices, sesame seeds, walnuts or slivered almonds and a balsmic/olive oil vingarette.

I add the juice from the madarine oranges to this dressing instead of water and maybe add a teaspoon of honey or sugar. Put in blender for a minute or two.

Sounds wonderful Carol. Do you have a pic?

sorry carol I dont have a recipe as such for green tomatoe chutney
I am one of those folk who use a recipe as a base for quantities
but then do my own thing which is a pest if I ever want to repeat it
I remember using up some dried dates and dark sugar to get a good rich flavour
onions
green tomatoes
spices
chillies
cider vinegar
saltanas
lots of mustard seeds
gets a bit vague after that sorry just watch as a lot of recipies have alot of vinegar which takes ages to reduce !
simmer for 2-3 hours
things like dates,onions or saltanas can be chopped in a blender before simmering so the chutney is smoother or chunkey to your taste

hoping to get some ripe tomatoes this year !I have also invested in potatoe bags which i have started to plant up . they are so easy and loads of places selling this kind of stuff now .
using kids toy boxes as planters much cheaper. Have also made a raised bed in front garden using empty wine bottles .
My daughter got asked at school the other day
"what is your mum planting wine bottles for ?" she said the girl was really angry .just wait till I get out all the milk cartons I have saved for a vertical garden for the strawberries
silver*

Nenuphar wrote:I have been container gardening for several years, each year experimenting with new vegetables. With food prices sky-rocketing, we are going to be expanding our efforts this summer. In addition to container gardening (for tomatoes, pepper, squash, and herbs), we are going to dig up a large patch of our front lawn and put in potatoes, carrots, dry bush beans, and possible more squash. As always, I have some neat heirloom varieties I am looking forward to trying! I also bought a book on canning/preserving in hopes of learning how to store food that way come Fall.

Wish I could get started now, though putting plants outside/planting seeds outdoors is months away. We're still under 1.5 feet of snow.

Is anyone else putting in a garden this year? What kinds of things will you be growing? What gardening methods are your favorites? (e.g., container gardening, hydroponics, lasagna gardening, etc)

well the spuds (potatoes) onions, salad, carrots etc went in today..I just make it up as I go along. Around the spring equinox is a good time to sow.
If anyone trys to steal my spuds im going to blame TRANC and JESTER as I I think they both plan to elope and live in the south of France on the strength of my superlative vegetable growing skills, where they will feast on my radish. Unknown to them, they will be implanted (the radish) with anti vegetable stealing tracking devices that will make them flatulant prone and force them to visit the WC at least 108 times a day!

We still have a foot of snow on the ground, but the days are getting longer and milder. Yay! Sweet relief! I started a few seeds indoors in late March. Possibly too early to be doing so, seeing as they can't be moved outside until June, but it was an inexpensive, sanity-saving measure! I now have cabbage, nasturtiums, and three kinds of tomatoes that have sprouted. It does a heart good to see them.

I also will rejoin the seed exchange list I participated in last year: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the-grandkids-seed-exchange/ It was a fun and inexpensive way to collect a wide variety of seeds.

.

I also am working on a garden this year. Along with my boys. One of which is trying to earn his gardening badge in scouts.
My brother tilled it for me a couple weeks ago, and it's 125 feet by about 28 feet garden. Hoping to grow nearly everything we'll need. So far I have potatoes, onions, beets, spinach, brocolli, and lettuce in. Have few more cold crop stuff to plant yet in the next week or so.
Hoping when it comes time to harvest, the raccoons and bugs leave us some to eat though. lol

Congratulations Lady. I recently planted some potatoes in the growing bags and decided to try on out for some cucumbers. I'd like to know how do you keep those white moths off the broccoli. I've never gotten it going with the little buggers constantly laying eggs and eating the new growth. What do you use to keep it pest free?

I also planted some spinach that didn't come up and am now thinking I put the seed to far down into the ground. sigh.. I'm thinking about starting some more spinach seeds off as srouts and then plant them or try again in the dirt but more shallow this time around. How deep did you plant your spinach seeds?

I did take some lettuce that was bolting and let the seeds fall down into an area I wanted to grow more lettuce in. They seem to have sprouted nicely. And I had picked up some of those little hawaiian purple potatoes.. let them grow some eyes and put them in the grow bag so they seem happy now too. My squash is all over the place but the flowers are not germinating.. I'm now wondering what's wrong with them as they are taking up a lot of my garden space. However, I've finally learned the trick with asparagas and it only took me 4 years to figure it out. Just keep them cut.

All tips are welcome. Mahalo

There is something satisfying about planting and watching the seedlings appear. I have procured a growing seedbank and am ensuring there is a good mixture of root vegetables, (presumably staple diet), salad and other vegetables with some fruit in the soil. The Uk's climate can be quintessentially odd sometimes but this year has been great so far and things are looking up.
So they have gone in, tomatoes, peppers and so on, potatoes in the grow tubes, strawberries. The tomatoes and lettuce are expressing themselves rather rapidly.

The next thing to do will be to collect seeds from fruit and veg, dry them out and store in a suitable manner as well as attempt to grow from non packet seeds.

Happy growing everyone!

Unfortunately I have yet to get brocolli planted and grown to full harvest. Last year I planted it too late in the spring, and the heat of summer stopped it's growth, then in fall when it cooled off, it started growing again, but it froze and died before I could get anything to harvest.
But, for most everything I try to use organic means to keep bugs out. Such as Diatomaceous earth, or pepper mix for a sprayer.
I find that usually I have a good year and there are hardly any bugs to complain about, or I'm swarmed with them and loose the entire crop. During those times I return to chemical means.
I have spring fever so bad, I actually planted few things too early. I hear we might get a freeze this week. Bummer.
I have my corn seed, and need to get it in the ground. One of my neighbors promised to show me how to tell the difference between Johnson Grass sprouting up and corn sprouting up, as last time I grew corn, I evidently pulled all the corn and left the Johnson grass. At about 10 to 12 inches tall, they look exactly alike. lol.
I bought some more seed, and compost so I can start a carrot bed. (my garden is clay. lol) Hopefully in a couple of years, I'll have a nice garden that's easy to tend. lol
Right now I don't have enough boards, and compost and such to make all raised beds. But I'm planting in 4 foot wide blocks/rows. Eventually those will become raised beds 4 foot wide, full length of the garden.

Ladyfreedom wrote:
Right now I don't have enough boards, and compost and such to make all raised beds. But I'm planting in 4 foot wide blocks/rows. Eventually those will become raised beds 4 foot wide, full length of the garden.

You can use recycle bags from the super market like this one

to grow things like carrots in. Once they have appeared from seedling just transplant them into several of these bags full of compost. The good thing is that it gives them an element of protection and they are portable so you can move them into the best positions and raise them up onto a bench or table if need be. They are quite good for drainage to but of course you can make extra holes in the bottom. They are also fairly deep so good for deep roots.

I have posted loads of self sufficient, permaculture, growing and wild food videos and ebooks on this preparedness website and will be posting more over the coming weeks. Its all downloadable for free of course.

I find I am happiest when outside. Yesterday I got some seedlings to plant and put them in the greenhouse. Today I cut back dead limbs on trees, sort of a pedicure for the forest. Its a safety thing because pine burns fast and hot.

The deer fence around the new garden is almost done, then he will put one up around the old garden and no more worries about deer eating our food!

Edit: I will never have to cut down a tree because enough falls down naturally.

Nice thread, practically all I am doing now is gardening. Wish I knew more about permaculture , have the books but learn better from humans .

I am a bit sad to see some things are doing better sheltered in the greenhouse than out in the soil, same as last year, certain plants seem to really suffer from the chemtrails.

Anyhow, found a source of high quality horsepoop nearby, so that's good.

How do we add photos?

Floyd, love your bug out bag o'carrots idea.

I just discovered this in my email this morning and am passing it on.


f you're space challenged, or even lack a green thumb and have despaired of ever growing anything edible, take heart.

Sprouting is your new hobby!

This whole activity is so relatively easy, and within 3 to 7 days (unlike your friends in their gardens who will wait 2 to 3 months for produce), you'll have edible greens that will infuse your body with all the vitamins, minerals, enzymes, phytonutrients, proteins, and amino acids that your body can stand! And you'll be sprouting seed from many of the same types of crops that they'll be growing--broccoli, radish, peas, and beans, for example.

If you can rake enough stuff off a kitchen counter, a coffee or end table, (or anywhere else for that matter), you can grow your own nutritionally-dense foods. You'll need the appropriate seed, a Mason jar, some type of drain board, a mesh lid for the jar, and water.

You can even sprout in a towel or hemp bag!

Sprouts are considered a "living food." The health benefits of this "living food" cannot be overstated. For example, alfalfa is one of the most commonly sprouted seed, and it's believed to be the most nutritious food in the world. Once those roots begin to emerge, your alfalfa sprout is full of protein, chlorophyll, calcium, potassium, and vitamins A and K.

The research on sprouts has brought us wonderful and encouraging news as well. For example, just eating 2 ½ ounces of broccoli sprouts inhibits the growth of prostate cancer for up to six hours after ingestion! Two ounces of broccoli sprouts a day appears to eradicate H. pylori infections, the ones that cause ulcers, in as little as seven days!

A Japanese study on brown rice sprouts shows a correlation between them and the prevention of Alzheimer's disease associated with Abeta, a peptide that is responsible for the plaque deposits found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

An Italian study found that sprouted legumes--mainly soybeans rich in phytoestrogens--play a significant role in preventing arthritis, building bone density, and reducing the risk of breast and prostate cancers, hardening of the arteries, and stroke.

An Egyptian study found that bean sprouts helped reduce the total cholesterol of lab rats and significantly impacted the weight gain of the animals. An Asian study found that buckwheat sprouts resulted in the same type of cholesterol reduction and weight loss in hamsters.

All in all, the implications and resulting outcomes of scientific studies related to including sprouts in our diets are amazing. Truly, sprouts are one of God's "superfoods"!

And because sprouting increases the seed volume by up to six times the original seed, your sprout garden will give you plentiful nutrition with just four tablespoons of seed to a quart jar. They're available 24/7, anytime you want a snack. You can eat them straight from the jar, mix them into salads, use them to replace lettuce in sandwiches, or even bake sprout bread with them! The possibilities are endless!

Solutions From Science has put together a wonderful sprouting kit, complete with 55 pounds of the ten most commonly grown, nutritionally-dense seeds available. In addition to the seeds, their Survival Sprout Bank includes:

Three (3) 1/2 gallon wide-mouth glass jars (for sprouting seeds)
Three (3) sprout jar lids (so you can drain out the water in the sprouts)
Two (2) shallow trays (to collect drained water)
One (1) bottle brush (to clean jars)
Four (4) white 100% cotton towels (also for sprouting seeds)
Two (2) 5-gallon buckets with lids (to safely store your seeds)
The Survival Sprout Bank is truly a survival garden that anyone can grow, anywhere, and at anytime. It doesn't matter if you lack garden space, lack living space, are in the middle of winter or the drought of summer. You can grow the food you need to survive on extremely limited resources. And the food you grow will be far superior to anything you could buy in the grocery store or attempt to get out of a vitamin bottle.

Also included in the Survival Sprout Bank is the 69-page eBook, Survival Sprouting for Vitamins and Health. This handy guide will provide you with the history of sprouting, how-to instructions, and the nutritional benefits of eating different types of sprouts.

Don't let rising food costs and lack of space box you into a corner of eating dead food that is not able to supply your body with the nutrition it needs. With a balanced mix of seed that will provide you vitamins and minerals, high protein content, and high fiber and enzymes to keep your system healthy, the Survival Sprout Bank is one way for you to take control of your dietary needs.

So rake those kitchen counters clean, move aside a soap dish in the bathroom, or clean off a coffee or end table and feed your body the food it needs to ward off disease and maintain health. To order your Survival Sprout Bank today, click HERE. http://www.survivalsproutbank.com/?utm_source=OTG_Advertorial_Apr13_Text5&utm_medium=OTG_Advertorial_Apr13_Text5&utm_term=OTG_Advertorial_Apr13_Text5&utm_content=OTG_Advertorial_Apr13_Text5&utm_campaign=OTG_Advertorial_Apr13_Text5


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Thomson, IL 61285
Email us at info@solutionsfromscience.com

Floyd wrote:

Ladyfreedom wrote:
Right now I don't have enough boards, and compost and such to make all raised beds. But I'm planting in 4 foot wide blocks/rows. Eventually those will become raised beds 4 foot wide, full length of the garden.

You can use recycle bags from the super market like this one

to grow things like carrots in. Once they have appeared from seedling just transplant them into several of these bags full of compost. The good thing is that it gives them an element of protection and they are portable so you can move them into the best positions and raise them up onto a bench or table if need be. They are quite good for drainage to but of course you can make extra holes in the bottom. They are also fairly deep so good for deep roots.

I have posted loads of self sufficient, permaculture, growing and wild food videos and ebooks on this preparedness website and will be posting more over the coming weeks. Its all downloadable for free of course.

What a brilliant idea floyd. I just started using the grow bags for the taters but this would be great for carrots.

anomalous cowherd wrote:
How do we add photos?

Use the host an image icon which is second left from the 'link' icon in the posting box.
either upload your photos to your oc or enter the url of an image from a website. To do that right click on image and select view image then you will see a page showing only the image. Copy and paste the URL for that image in the 'host an image' feature.
Put your underpants on your head, then run down the street singing staying alive whilst dodging the motor cars. Eat your neighbours goldfish and throw eggs at the postman. Put your socks on your hands and your gloves on your feet and bounce up and down on your mattress.
This should see the image posted without any proplems