Vegetable Gardening

[Xrayted]

So what Kit didn't mention is she used a linen shoe rack, an unused lean-against-the-wall type of bike rack, a small piece of pvc, a few U bolts, a small 1x3 board, duct tape (cuz there had to be some duct tape in there somewhere, right?) and made a vertical garden. Then she took a 2 liter pop bottle and made an upside down cherry tomato holder. A "recycled garden". Even the water run off gets recycled.

[spokewench]

I finally got into my backyard yesterday, 5 hours later, my garden beds are all cleaned out and I raked a bunch of pine needles and bagged them to be picked up by bulk pickup. My aching back!

Now, manure, compost and I'll be ready to plant soon.

Last week, my front beds all cleaned out, planted some pansies for color; and got lucky at the nursery. They had overwintered gallon plants (perennials) mostly all around $20 plants, for $5. Of course, most of them had not sprouted yet, but that's okay. I planted a bunch of bleeding hearts and a thing called rodgerisia in my shade garden; a campanula bellflower and some type of ground cover in a sunny spot; and a couple of nice alaskan burdette (that's not right) supposed to be cold hardy. ANyway, i'll look up hte name again for you, but it has beautiful foliage. What a find!

[smilingcat]

Kit,

Love your vertical garden. You should submit your idea to Mother Earth, Organic Gardening magazine as a short article.

It's fantastic!!

[FlyingScot]

Do any of you have a Mantis tiller? I'm thinking of getting one because I can't really hand-turn my Ohio clay due to my left-sided weakness. They have an electric one which intrigues me as I hate doing the gas oil mixture thing and I suck at pull-starting anything. I've rented tillers before but who wants to put a filthy, oily think inside their car...definitely not me.

[Kitsune06]

Well, X gives me too much credit. I'd seen the idea of using a shoe rack somewhere, the biggest thing was just figuring out the execution. It's lurking on instructables.com somewhere.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

This morning I saw teeny baby sprouts poking up from the soil of some of the seeds I planted last week- Swiss chard, kohlrabi, lettuces, and radishes. It's always so exciting to see the newborn babies push up through the earth!

[tulip]

Do any of you have a Mantis tiller? I'm thinking of getting one because I can't really hand-turn my Ohio clay due to my left-sided weakness. They have an electric one which intrigues me as I hate doing the gas oil mixture thing and I suck at pull-starting anything. I've rented tillers before but who wants to put a filthy, oily think inside their car...definitely not me.

Yes. It's great, but you cannot till with one finger like in the ads. It takes some doing, but it's much easier than the huge tillers. I find it very useful for planting perennial plants and shrubs. Digging the hole with the tiller is much easier and than with a shovel. I also plant my bulbs with an auger bit on my electric drill. I can plant about 100 bulbs in about 15 minutes that way.

But the best way that I've found is to build up, not down. Lay down newspaper--lots--and pile on soil and compost--lots. I add a few wheelbarrowsful of compost to each bed every season, and things grow wonderfully. I've found that adding a cup or two of dehydrated chicken manure really kickstarts the plants.

Kitsune, I love your vertical garden!! That would be a great way to do herbs near the kitchen.

I've taken some photos of my garden, but I'll have to download the photos and that ain't happening tonight.

[FlyingScot]

Thanks for the info Tulip. I think I'm going to go ahead and get one. As for the newspapers. I have stacks of them just waiting for the purpose you described. In fact, I used them this winter/spring to kill the grass where I'm planning to garden. Worked like a charm! Now I just have to dig the area out deep enough to add some good soil and compost.

[tulip]

If you build up, you don't have to dig down at all. My raised beds are 3'x6' that I made with some posts that the previous owner of my house had left in the yard. I just put down the paper and then filled up the box with compost and soil. No digging, no tilling.

The Mantis is still alot of work, but it's quieter and lighter than the gasoline tillers. Still alot of work, though, especially for large areas like gardens. Great for digging holes for shrubs, though.

[NbyNW]

I ate my one asparagus spear this morning with my breakfast. Tasty!

[FlyingScot]

If you build up, you don't have to dig down at all. My raised beds are 3'x6' that I made with some posts that the previous owner of my house had left in the yard. I just put down the paper and then filled up the box with compost and soil. No digging, no tilling.

The Mantis is still alot of work, but it's quieter and lighter than the gasoline tillers. Still alot of work, though, especially for large areas like gardens. Great for digging holes for shrubs, though.

Good point. I hadn't thought of doing raised beds but I bet they'd be more successful than the poor plants struggling in clay. Plus my senior citizen father likes projects (lucky me). However, he tends to overbuild things so I'd probably end up with a self-watering, self-weeding monstrosity that actually picks and cooks the veggies automatically :-)

[spokewench]

Good point. I hadn't thought of doing raised beds but I bet they'd be more successful than the poor plants struggling in clay. Plus my senior citizen father likes projects (lucky me). However, he tends to overbuild things so I'd probably end up with a self-watering, self-weeding monstrosity that actually picks and cooks the veggies automatically :-)

Oooh, send your senior citizen father my way! My hubby will do projects, but he hates garden projects, so I have to do them all by myself! I'd love a father-built raised bed!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

i ate my one asparagus spear this morning with my breakfast. Tasty!

=8-)

[skhill]

It looks like my lettuce has drowned in all the rain of the last few weeks (we had 13 inches in April, and 1.75 inches so far in May). But those mustard greens seem to be indestructible.

Homegrown asparagus, yum! I got some at the farmers market last Saturday, and it was wonderful. Someday I might just have to put in an asparagus patch...

[Koronin]

Do blueberry bushes and strawberry bushes count? That's all we're getting this year. Actually moving into our new home this weekend. The blueberry and strawberry bushes are planted already. Hubby wants to build a raised garden and that is one of his projects for this summer/fall. The main project before moving in was painting kitchen (now tan, was hot pink) one bedroom (was light green, now light blue) and the bonus room (was two tone green, now bottom carmel and top a lighter shade that has a bit of an italian type feel to it). The bedroom color was ok, but having been a kid's room was pretty scuffed up, so it got repainted. The other major project was making two rain barrels which are awesome.