Vegetable Gardening

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Some of you are lucky and can amend your soil and grow great gardens. I would have to amend my soil for the rest of my life before it would be good enough to grow a tomato! I live in the rocky, forested woods area of Northern Arizona....

I have 3 raised beds in the backyard. I added some compost already earlier this year and yesterday I got to plant.

Well, we have 'no' topsoil here in our yard....just shattered shale and poor clay stuff. So either way, whether we dig it out or put in raised beds, I will have to have topsoil brought in by the truckload to put in my veggie garden, and will need to buy a truckload or two of composted manure as well. We are talking a couple of dumptrucks' worth here. Not exactly amending- more like totally replacing!
It's going to cost a lot, but over the next few years it'll be nice to know exactly what's going into some of the stuff we are eating. We do pay a lot for organic veggies around here.

Spoke- it will be nice to see pictures of your garden!

[coyote]

The nice thing about raised beds is that you don't have to make them all at once. If the cost or even the size of the project is overwhelming you, try just making 1 or 2 beds this year and a couple more next year.

I started with 2 2x4 beds, then added a 10x10, then this past year we took out the 2x4s and added another 10x10. This enviroment is way to hard on wood (2x4 beds), so we got recycled bricks and made the 10x10 raised beds.

[OakLeaf]

Don't laugh, it keeps the groundhogs out:


Gotta keep the deer out, too.


Red kale


Volunteer cilantro


Cannellini bean, in Uttanasana


Carrots! (And a little crabgrass.)


Italian Roaster


Japanese Black Trifele, which is a Russian tomato, not Japanese.


Pole beans, with pole

[Photoflygirl]

We built a raised bed garden over three years. I designed it kind of fancy, for the day when it might not be a vegetable garden but a flower garden. I'll try to post a pic soon. This year we put in a huge rectangular bed for strawberries. We grow tomatoes, lettuce (several kinds), green beans, squash, cucumbers, broccoli, sweet corn, peppers and strawberries (in a couple years). I liked the photo of cannelini bean plant! The soil is organic and we use rain barrels to water. We used city water only a couple times last year to water the garden.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Oakleaf- Just lovely closeup photos of your veggie seedlings!

Doesn't the electric fence keep the deer out in addition to the woodchucks?

[OakLeaf]

Doesn't the electric fence keep the deer out in addition to the woodchucks?

If I added a couple of strands higher up and baited them with peanut butter or something so the deer would taste it, get a little shock and learn to stay away from the area rather than jump over, then yeah. At least that's how the local arboretum protects its saplings.

But I'd need a bigger charger, for one thing; and for another, I have my doubts that the deer would really be deterred from jumping over. The enclosures at the arboretum are a lot smaller IIRC. Without that final strand of twine at the top and the shiny crinkly strips of aluminum foil, they go right over any low spots that sag below about 7.5'.

[smilingcat]

Hi Oak,

Don't feel too bad about the deer and the effort taken to keep them out. There is a book titled The $64.00 Tomato. An idiots war with nature and his folly with nature.

The man obviously has no common sense when it came to gardening. He hired an land scape artist to design his garden and things just go downhill from there.

After reading one of the reviews on Amazon, I don't think I will bother with the book; but, the idea of $64.00 tomato just makes me shake my head. His "organic garden" ended up being a DOW chemical testing site and on EPA superfund site. Figuratively speaking ofcourse.

I tried posting my pics of my garden and it didn't upload will try again when I plant my Japanese pepper tree (sansho) Zanthoxylum piperitum This specie was banned in US till 2005? don't know why. but now its legal.

Anyway, should be receiving my berry plants today. and with the pepper trees by Friday, my garden will be more or less complete in terms of perennials. . Been a work in progress for quite some time. Removed sod, removed palm trees, removed giant tree ferns, removed giant bird of paradise over 20 feet tall... removed a sprinkler system, and replaced with drip irrigation... restarted on my collection of giant dahlias. Still have another palm tree and four other trees to remove on my property and about two years from now replace my magnolia tree with a Haas avocado tree. All of this on a 4000 sq foot property.

[NoNo]

I just planted my first garden on Monday, albeit over my aunt's house with much aide from her boyfriend. But I wanted to learn the process, and in exchange for my help I get all the veggies I want. They, too, have deer issues and he's setting up an electric fence soon. But they've also hung bars of Irish Spring soap all around and it's done a decent job of keeping them away. Has to be Irish Spring, though. Now if they could just figure out what's trying to eat their chickens

[GLC1968]

Ours is coming along...here are a few photos that I took on Monday:

The 'row garden' area after planting on Memorial Day. Half of it is still covered and that'll be mostly squash varieties and additional corn. Straight down the left side are our potato plants (4 varieties) and they are growing like crazy! The black humps on the right are sweet potatoes just planted last week.


The CD's are our attempt to keep the birds away from our seed. That is garlic in the foreground and tomatoes behind it...


The boxes are almost 100% planted. There is still some room for a few more things but this is mostly complete. It looked way more impressive two weeks ago before the goats got out and leveled everything green!


Kale plant mostly recovered from the goat trimming!


Grape arbors just starting to develop leaves...


The perps.


And for good measure, one of our plum trees. It looks like we will have a bumper crop of these babies this year. They are AWESOME eating red plums that should be ripe in August. Yay!

[papaver]

I'm just growing strawberries, rhubarb, and pumpkins this year. And I will plant 15 different types of berries next fall. And a sour cherry tree.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Well I'm excited because I've now got rows of bright green baby leaf lettuce and rows of radish babies all coming up from the seed I planted last week.

I have never grown radishes before, and was flabbergasted at how quickly the seeds sprouted up into seedlings- in only 3 days there they were with sturdy leaves looking all happy and perky!!!

Can you eat radish greens? How do you prepare or eat them?

[coyote]

That is awesome!

Radishes are my favorite plant to grow, very satisfying as they come up the fastest.

[tulip]

GLC--that allee of grapes with the greenhouse at the end is going to be just gorgeous in the summer.

In France, it's traditional to grow roses at the end of every row of grapes. I don't know why, but I think the roses act as a trap crop for some sort of pest. It's very pretty.

[GLC1968]

GLC--that allee of grapes with the greenhouse at the end is going to be just gorgeous in the summer.

In France, it's traditional to grow roses at the end of every row of grapes. I don't know why, but I think the roses act as a trap crop for some sort of pest. It's very pretty.

Really? That's interesting and in some ways, it doesn't surprise me. Grapes do so well here because we have similiar climate to many parts of France (and same latitudes). Portland is known as the Rose city - there are roses everywhere. I've got quite a few types on our property, but I'd like to add a few more since they are so gorgeous and so easy to grow here. Maybe I should research putting a few at the ends of our grape rows!

[OakLeaf]

We toured some vineyards a couple of years ago and they told us that roses are a sentinel plant for diseases (pests?) that can also infect the grapevines.

Looks great! You gotta forgive those goats, that red kale is SO delicious. It's the only vegetable that my dogs ever stole directly from the grocery bag the minute I set it down to put my helmet, etc., away.

I've got basil and chard sprooters today.