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Garden
I can't remember if I posted last year or not, but we recently started our 2nd year of a vegetable garden. We had some lessons learned from last year and already seeing better results this year. Here are some pictures of the beginning configuration.
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Modified the layout a bit from the original and marked up where I added in some herbs. I surrounded all the cukes and squash with nasturtium and spread some mairgold in any areas I had a little space. I addition, added four half-circle pots to the outside of four of the boxes for more herb/companion plant space.
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that's quite a setup, okie. you've planted a bunch of different things. i've never tried growing potatoes, green beans, carrots...alot of what you planted. sounds yummy.
have you ever heard of neem oil? a friend told my wife about it. it's an organic alternative to pesticide.
this is the garden we made a few years ago. it's been dormant for the past 2 years. both my wife and i have been too busy with work. i miss the goodies, store bought veggies have no flavor. we've been meaning to plant tomatoes and peppers (hot) this year but haven't gotten around to it yet. my dogs love the garden too. they pick the tomatoes off the vine when we're not looking and couldn't care less about ripeness.
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I like your set up. Maybe you need to make some time to grow again...LOL! I have some additional work to mine that will end up being a good structure for vertical growth and allow me to do some shading and weather protection as needed. I should be doing that in the next couple weeks and I'll post some pics. I've heard of neem oil, but haven't tried it. Last year, our local nursery got me started with an organic pesticide that has spinosad in it, which is a byproduct of compost piles of spent sugar cane...kind of cool. I like the idea of being as organic as possible, trying to do some companion planting and use natural methods for fertilizing and insects.
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Wow, got some crazy weather this week. Thunderstorms followed by sub-freezing temperatures. We had to figure out a way to cover and protect everything, so we covered the entire area with some tarps. So far so good...we have another night of freezing then it warms up.
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A bit of an update...
We took a pretty good hit from hail recently and it took a while for things to recover. We replaced a few of the young plants and others have worked their way back. We were able to have our first salad out of the garden Saturday and everything seems to be growing well.
We've built a structure for allowing the area to be fenced in and the ability to use welded wire as trellis for tall and climbing items. This idea should work well for if we wanted to cover the area for hail, install shade material for the hot part of summer, and it does hold the potential for putting clear plastic over to create a greenhouse. As you can see in the pictures, the fencing around the outside is up as are all the structural supports. I put the first piece of welded wire up on the back of the box against the fence for the green beans and cucumbers to climb on.
So far, so good...hopefully we will continue to see good growth.
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That's quite a fort. Looks stout, I like the hanging baskets.
Looks like grass between the planters? Mine's that way. I need to do something about that. Tired of weed eating it and getting grass clippings in the beds.
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Yeah, once I started figuring out what I was wanting to do with it, I realized it needs to be pretty stout. That is grass in between...I'm not going to remove it since we'll probably only be in this house for another couple years and I'll need to replace any grass I "damage". The weed eating isn't a whole lot of fun, but grass clippings in the garden aren't a bad thing...natural mulch and fertilizer.
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Some more pictures of the progress. The turnips have been harvested...ate some this weekend in a medley of roasted root veggies. The spinach has also been removed since it started to bolt. I've planted eggplant, okra and a couple sunflowers in the place of those items. All the welded wire mesh has been installed and ready for the climbers and tall plants to be tied off to.
Broccoli, carrots, peppers.
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Lettuce, onion, green beans, cucumber, tomatoes. This box had spinach and now has sunflower in the empty square.
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Basically the same with different lettuce and cucumbers. Both of these had spinach in them and now have the eggplant and sunflowers. One tomatillo plant is in this box, as well.
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Cauliflower, carrots, squash, peppers.
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Update. Some of the maters are starting to turn red and things are growing well. We harvested quite a bit of lettuce and spinach and really enjoyed that. The cauliflower didn't do too well in the garden...never seemed to want to grow heads, just leaves. I had a couple in pots that got some decent heads started and they got hit pretty hard with worms. We've planted some sunflowers and okra in a couple of the empty squares until we plant something for fall. All in all, things are going well and we are seeing some good growth of the summer crops.
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I decided I would plant some melons in the area I had the garden boxes in the fall. Here's a few pictures of the two spots I planted them. Also, you can kind of get an idea of how the tomatoes and tomatillos are growing. Most of the plants are around 3-4' tall.
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Here are some new pictures of the garden. We harvested the rest of the carrots and all the onions and garlic. The onions were all a little on the small side. We chopped the onions and carrots and put them in vacuum seal bags in the freezer. We have about 8 cups of each for cooking...not bad. The onions and garlic were both on the smaller side and I've been reading about planting them in September and letting them grow through winter to get better yields. I plan to give that a try this fall. The potatoes got really wet with all the rain and ended up starting to wilt really bad, then died. I've been digging out the box and only found a few potatoes. I think I'm going to plant more since we still have enough time left in the season. Everything else is doing well and we've had a steady supply of tomatoes. The squashes are just now starting to produce some, although our zuchinni is still really small...not sure if we're going to have any luck with that one. The sunflowers, okra and eggplant I planted late are doing pretty good. All in all, things are progressing well.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Okie Boarder
feed me Seymour
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...2B4Xlxk-GOezQg
garden looks awesome!
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We live at 5000 feet, so are a little behind your "lowland" gardens, but here's a photo of the boss and her garden before sprouting and last week:
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That's looking good. In addition to elevation, I'd imagine you're in a much different zone than us. My MIL lives in WY and they're about as far long in growth as you.
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Where in Wyoming? Cheyenne is about 45 minute drive from here (heading up to Glendo in about 30 minutes)
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Garden
Pretty far north from here
Todd
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Yup...they may be far enough that they are one or two zones lower than you.
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Awesome!!
I'm a big fan of the "square foot gardner". Even though I do have a large yard, I still use the 4 x 4 and the 4 x 8 cedar boxes.
Our planting season starts late August (central florida).
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Yeah, the square foot method seems to work well. Why is your planting season so late? Seems like it should be earlier than mine.
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The cantaloupe is really starting to vine out...watermelon is doing OK. We're finally getting some squash producing, which I'm really happy about. We bought a couple praying mantis egg pods a few weeks ago and I saw our first one the other day.
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planting here is in late August because the cooler weather begins in late October (mid 70's).
Too damn hot during the summer except for things like beans, peas and cherry tomatoes.
During the summer months( May thru August), I cover my gardens with black plastic and "solarize" the soil. Kills the pests without using chemicals.
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So, here's the latest. We cleared out several areas to plant more stuff for a fall harvest...in addition, things are growing well. We've had some issues with the pole green beans so we pulled out half of them and replaced with bush beans to see if we have better luck. The eggplant and okra are doing well and the sunflowers did good. We now have 3 cantaloupe growing, but the watermelon seems to be lagging behind. The tomatillos are starting to produce...we have about 20 "lanterns" formed up with tomatillos growing inside. The patty pan squash has gotten huge and almost taking over that box. I think next year the squash are going to get their own space.
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