2014 gardening now that snow and cold is finally going away

[Eden]

Wow… you must have a big yard. I've got broccoli, chinese broccoli, baby bok choy, radishes, lettuce, snow peas (they are about an inch high and just about ready to start climbing the string trellises I've made for them) and swiss chard planted. I've got kale and raddichio from the fall still in and am waiting to plant bush beans.

[smilingcat]

We grow dark colored kale, rainbow colored chard, terragon, shishito pepper, wintergreen, garlic, spinach, some of the blueberries in the front flower bed. All mixed with peonies, iris, lilies, shasta daisies, and many more. There are also two Rainier cherry trees in the front yard. We'll probably remove all of the grass in the front yard over next two years. Our property is around 1/3 of an acre or 14,700sq feet.

We don't bother with tomato cage. tomato plants are vining so we used to have a horizontal pole 8 feet off the ground and we would drop a tomato line and used tomato clips to train the vine up. Tomato plants easily grew to the pole. Spacing of the tomato plants were 1 feet. Vertical gardening. Underneath it, we grew some lettuce and garlic. Garlic should be harvested around July so you can plant new seedling in its place. go down about a 1/4 page or so on this web site and you can see the technique http://www.heirloomtomatoplants.com/...o%20_seeds.htm

We do the same with cucumber, melons, certain varieties of zucchini.

If you want to learn intensive growing method, check out vertical gardening in Amazon or view them in Youtube.

John Kohl(sp) on youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/growingyourgreens has lot of good advice on how to grow intensively. His front yard is a jungle of veggies.

And if you want solid advice on plant nutrients NPK primary Ca, Mg, S are the macro secondary nutrients and Fe, Mn, Molydenum (sp), Cl are some of the micronutrients check out Bright Agrotech http://www.youtube.com/user/BrightAgrotechLLC. It's about aquaponic but its also very relevant to growing in soil. look for his video on plant nutrients.

[Crankin]

Meh, I support my small, local farmers! Seriously, kudos to anyone who does their own gardening. For me, it's kind of like mountain biking. I like the *idea* of it, but I really don't want to do it!
Although my mom was an avid gardener, I really dislike any working in the yard. Not sure how someone who loves to sweat and work on the bike can hate the outdoor work that has to do with planting and growing.

[Eden]

I have raised beds - now that they are in, aside from turning them over once in the spring and once in the fall, they really aren't too much work, and the soil is loose here. It's not like where I grew up where it was back breaking if you didn't have a rototiller, because there was a lot of clay.