Gardening!

[Holly]

Ive heard good results from doing that!
I usually throw in my kitchen scraps all winter, along with all used horse bedding and manure. I also throw in a bag of alfalfa cubes ( 50 lbs) right before the final till.
We use a lot of DE also I find it helps a lot.
I have all my seeds bought, and already got my tomatoes. A bit more top do and we will be planting ready.

Turns out we didnt harvest the broccoli in time... it all went wonky in a few days, but we did learn something!

[Ryan]

Would never have thought to add some alfalfa to the soil. Guessing it adds good drainage to the soil ?

Sorry to hear about the broccoli. Similar story, I grew some lettuces a couple of years ago and they were the most amazing looking lettuces I had ever seen. I kept thinking , ill just leave them for one more day and the day I decided to go out and pick them they went from lettuces to arugula , I was devastated

So until I can enclose one of the beds , i cant grow anything that the ducks like 

There is nothing better than a homegrown tomato Holly, are you trying different varieties ? 

[Holly]

Alfalfa adds calcium and makes a nice rich organic compost. Calcium Helps keep tomatoes from splitting.
We have so much clay that I add as much organic compost as I possibly can each season. Thankfully horse poo is abundant as well as leaves. Lol
I am doing celebrity tomatoes again, (12) and I am trying the better boys (12) also. 2 grape tomatoes also.  I may add some heat tolerant variety when temps really warm up.
What type of tomato do you like?
We have a really hard time growing green pepper plants, not sure why. My neighbors do too. Yet jalapeno grows fine.

[Holly]

Tilled the garden yesterday, having another 10 yards of soil brought in today, going to have to spread and til in again. Super excited because planting season is almost here!!

[Ryan]

Looks good Holly , I am extra impressed with the fencing , hope it keeps the unwanted pests out.

I grew grape tomatoes last year but only because they self seeded from the year before. The ones I like ( or like to grow) are the big ones. I think they were heirloom ones and they grew wonderfully. The only problem I had were some split, so thanks for giving me the answer

One I did try that didnt grow very well at all were the Russian purple tomatoes. They were slow growing and did not cope is the aussie heat.

Peppers/ capsicums I didnt have any luck with last year. Im not sure why, maybe we had the same problem.?

Love hearing about your garden Holly , Its giving me great inspiration come September

[dcwolcott]

What a pretty garden, Holly!!!  I'm envious of that fencing!!

[Silver City Heritage Farm]

Just a quick post, will update in a bit. Something about Holly's post re: alfalfa adding calcium bothered me, so I did a brief search and came up with this:

http://www.dummies.com/home-garden/gardening/organic-gardening/fertilizing-your-organic-garden/

Check it out, I'll be back.....  

Approximately 0835 returned to edit

As far as what I'm planning this year.....ROSES!! BWAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAAA!!!

My husband told me yesterday, during a conversation with a group of friends, that I could put roses "anywhere." Boy, did I do the happy dance!! Of course, I know anywhere isn't...really. I have to keep any gardens out of possible (unknown to me) travel paths for projects.

So, our garden will be Heritage tomatoes like last year. They did do well in the cinder blocks BUT I think they had a bit too much shade. So I'll be moving them. We'll have regular and grape types. A couple of squash plants. Watermelon and cantaloupe. Corn...lots and LOTS of corn. I LOVE corn. CORNY, CORN CORN!!    Cilantro. Herbs. Haven't decided what else.

I'll also be planting my scads and scads of flower seeds that I didn't feel safe planting last year. I have quite a few morning glories (and maybe a couple other climbers, won't know until I dig them out of storage. Ooopss...a pun!!  ) that I'm going to plant on the south side of the trailers for beauty and shade.

I'm also doing an experiment. Lucky (the Jack Russell Terrier) likes to hunt white grubs. She finds them, digs them up and plays with them. This year, I'm going to see if I can teach her to hunt tobacco worms. These are a type of hornworm that like to munch tomatoes. One grub can just about strip a tomato plant of leaves in about 8 hours. They start out very small, around a 1/2" and maybe the diameter of spaghetti. They grow grossly quickly though! The chickens like to eat them, Lucky likes to hunt. I don't mind hand-picking them. If Lucky can help me find them more quickly and accurately I'll be very happy! I'll let y'all know how it goes.

One last question for Holly. Did you put landscaping cloth down under your raised bed? If no, why? If yes, what did you use?

[Chanda]

I have a black thumb, so don't garden, and I don't can, but my MIL does both (she ran a small greenhouse til last year); from her I know corn on the cob freezes beautifully.   I'm pretty sure you just blanch and bag for freezing, but I'm sure you could look it up.

[Ryan]

Sounds like your going to have quite the crop this year Julie. Thanks for the link, didnt realize half of the things on there could be used as  fertilizers.

I too love corn and will try some again next year. had a problem with aphids last year so not all were edible, but geeee they were nice and sweet

Cilantro or coriander as its known here hates frost, so its one thing i tend to plant a little further into the hotter months

When i redo the soil in my beds i have newspaper ready to go to lay the bottom of the beds, the cloth works great too, My SIL has done her beds with that.

[Holly]

I have always tried to add natural compost as fertilizer, though I do add some non organic vegetable with added calcium from mericle grow.
Don't forget Diotomatious Earth. (DE) it adds so much to your soil.
I like to add brown and green organic compost...Really helps .
I don't put anything under my raised garden, it has a few inches of solid clay when we started the garden a few years ago, so it has a stable base. I like using the natural edge boards so the extra water has a place to go, remember I have heavy rains here as well as a creek that likes to overflow, so when I build it has to be raised, and I would rather water more frequently than to have a garden that can't drain.

[Holly]

I also wanted to add, I like worms( not grubs) in my garden, I don't know if laying anything under the raised bed will prohibit them from coming in?
How many of y'all compost? I tried a barrel to compost in a few years ago but didn't work out, I do have an old chicken coop I am thinking would make a great place to compost,it's also not to close to house or barn lol.

[paintponylvr]

Soooo....  I've been watching lots of Utubes, reading lots of blogs, reading books and studying as much as I can get my hands on.  Everything printed says start "small" but when we've started small, that's when I've killed everything.  So this year, working on going bigger.  WE'll see how it goes.  Just got my first order of seeds. 

Working on garden beds.  Though the timing is a bit wrong, will be starting seeds while setting up some of the beds.  Incorporating beds into our yard fence for the dogs - hoping having a solid fence 3' fence w/ a 2' wide section of earth 18-24" deep - will stop the dogs from getting out of the yard.  Doing the whole yard, will almost quadruple the dog area and again, HOPEFULLY, stop them from digging holes under the fences and leaving.  In the meantime, the gardens will grow...  Right???

Most of the raised beds are/will be pony manure.  Then compost from the chicken coops - manure, hay, pony manure, kitchen scraps, leaves, pine straw...  Oh, and compost from the DLM under the penned rabbits.

Holly - don't you find that the DE kills your "good bugs" in the gardens?  I know that we have a lot of sand and I'm working towards amending that to a better quality soil.  I want good worms and bugs, so need to encourage them to come in/up.  I was working with DE and have a very large bag, but have stopped using it except for minimal parasite assistance (seems dealing with equine lice is a regular thing on this property, too) and in the dust boxes for the chickens mixed with dirt and wood ash from our fireplace.

[Holly]

Yes any exoskeleton bug can be killed by DE. I do not keep DE on my plants at all times, but more of an as needed. I don't add it to the soil, however there's no EXO skeleton bugs I want in my soil.
I also plant flowers around my garden to bring in bees. I kind of have a save the bees thing going on so I try to do my part in keeping them with a food supply.
I got my tomatoes planted, zucchini, summer squash and green beans. Hopefully cucumbers today.

[Ryan]

Even though i didn't plant anything in the beds this year, I still have my fruit trees to enjoy.

The larger apples are "Granny Smith" , Planted 6 years ago, the smaller ones on the other side are "Royal Gala" they were planted 3 years ago.

And my favorite , in the middle are "Nashi Pears" They are the juiciest fruit ive ever tried. Its like having a pear and a glass of juice at the same time.

I have one pear tree that has fruited but the fruit is still growing !!

Now dont suppose anyone would have a good recipe for "Chutney" ?

[Chanda]

Love apples, but Shayne is allergic, so I don't do much with apples.  I've made myself applesauce, apple crisp (which I then eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner), and then just eat them plain or with caramel dip.  [Speaking of applesauce, that sounds good, think I'll take a pint out of the freezer.  Made some and froze it last fall.]
I don't even know what chutney is, so can't help you.