Chronicles of a Noob Garden and Gardener

[flowerbug]

I love gardening, raising our own food and preserving it. I'll be glad to help you any way I can.

ditto. i also go for very simple methods. a lot of people end up spending a lot of $ and efforts not noticing that they're likely going to be changing their mind in the future once they have more experience.

early on, avoid hardscape if you can. it makes much more work later. tell me how i know...

 

[flowerbug]

Busy day today:

1. Put a bunch more pavers in place
2. Spread the soil acidifier in the blueberry area
3. Covered the blueberry bed with pine straw

(Attached pic shows the current status.)

Also, while on the way back from picking up the pine straw at a location I'd never been before, I passed a small nursery, so I pulled in there to check it out. Locally owned and operated place, and the owner was the only person there, and super talkative. I told him what I did last year, what I'm doing now, etc., and he offered lots of advice, and he also had a bunch of leftover seed packets from spring 2018 and is about to get his 2019 shipment in. He sold the 2018s to me for 25 cents a packet! Several of them were specific varieties that I wanted and already had in shopping carts on a couple of web sites. Score! (And special thanks to those in the thread about seeds I started who assured me that last year's seeds are fine to use.)

it's early and i'm in a bit of a rambly mood so i'm just going to write what comes to mind...

i like having larger spaces to work with. that is much more flexible than a bunch of small spaces. we are consolidating gardens here as i get time for them. i hate wasting space on pathways. you can use the rows between plants as pathways well enough. if it gets too wet and muddy that is usually a good sign to stay out of a garden anyways if you can help it (to avoid compacting the soil). the following seasons you can change your layouts without having to deal with moving a hardscape pathway.

plus every edge is maintenance one way or another. if you don't do them well it ends up costing you work later. but there is also no free lunch.

each season i try to plan a few projects for the start and the end of the season where it is cooler and i'm more able to work harder (heat stroke or heat exhaustion is no fun, make sure you have enough water in your system ). i may not get them done, but at least i can make progress.

it may not always work perfectly in all gardens and crops, that is why diversity in plantings is important. failures can teach a lot more than success. etc. etc. if that is true i must also be a genius... haha...

grow things you like to eat, and then try a few new crops here or there too, but not too much because it can be rather sad to see a large space essentially wasted because nobody will eat them.

don't be afraid to take things out that aren't working as soon as you decide you have a better crop to put in. peas/beans are great crops for us. buckwheat is a great cover crop if you are not using a space for a month. winter cover crops are nice and they can keep weeds down and help hold nutrients for the coming season and also add more value (free energy from the sun, free worm food, etc.). yep, they can cost a little to put in and need turning under in the spring, but that's better than having bare dirt all winter.

 

[ninnymary]

it's early and i'm in a bit of a rambly mood so i'm just going to write what comes to mind...

i like having larger spaces to work with. that is much more flexible than a bunch of small spaces. we are consolidating gardens here as i get time for them. i hate wasting space on pathways. you can use the rows between plants as pathways well enough. if it gets too wet and muddy that is usually a good sign to stay out of a garden anyways if you can help it (to avoid compacting the soil). the following seasons you can change your layouts without having to deal with moving a hardscape pathway.

plus every edge is maintenance one way or another. if you don't do them well it ends up costing you work later. but there is also no free lunch.

each season i try to plan a few projects for the start and the end of the season where it is cooler and i'm more able to work harder (heat stroke or heat exhaustion is no fun, make sure you have enough water in your system ). i may not get them done, but at least i can make progress.

it may not always work perfectly in all gardens and crops, that is why diversity in plantings is important. failures can teach a lot more than success. etc. etc. if that is true i must also be a genius... haha...

grow things you like to eat, and then try a few new crops here or there too, but not too much because it can be rather sad to see a large space essentially wasted because nobody will eat them.

don't be afraid to take things out that aren't working as soon as you decide you have a better crop to put in. peas/beans are great crops for us. buckwheat is a great cover crop if you are not using a space for a month. winter cover crops are nice and they can keep weeds down and help hold nutrients for the coming season and also add more value (free energy from the sun, free worm food, etc.). yep, they can cost a little to put in and need turning under in the spring, but that's better than having bare dirt all winter.

Very good advise Flowerbug.

Mary

 

[majorcatfish]

@baymule how is that brick working for you all....how about a photo of it?

 

[baymule]

@baymule how is that brick working for you all....how about a photo of it?

I still have that brick. It is a prized possession! It is keeping wild elephants from trampling the garden, bears from eating the squash and tigers from ambushing me as I walk to the garden.

 

[Ben E Lou]

Part of how much time it takes is what you are going to do with it. Are you just trying to grow enough for fresh eating or are you also going to preserve it by canning, freezing, or dehydrating? If you preserve some you not only have to grow more it can take a lot of time to pick it, prepare it, and preserve it. A lot of times the crops are not going to wait on you. When they are ready they need to be picked and preserved. I froze, canned, and dehydrated enough that we were eating in it all winter and gave some away to family, but I was retired. Some canning days, like corn, were long days. If you need help on how to preserve let us know.

Actually I'm growing a moderate number of a lot of things. Unless some things produce much more than I'd expect, I don't intend to can/freeze much. Having extra would be a good problem to have. Cross that bridge when we come to it.

One of the things that can take a lot of time is weeds. They just don't stop. I always have certain areas that just get out of control, many of us do if we have large areas and most of us are honest enough to admit it. I'm a big believer in mulching for that reason alone. If you can get certain crops mulched they pretty much stay weed-free the rest of the season, even after harvest. You can still get a few weeds but if it is mulched they are usually really easy to pull out. It's a lot faster than tilling, hoeing, or getting on your knees and pulling. The problem is that it takes time to mulch. In Arkansas I'd often have a choice to make in Spring. Do I preserve cool weather crops I started in February, plant warm weather crops that need to be planted now, or mulch stuff that needs mulching? Then it would set in wet for a week where I could not get in the garden. Oh the joys of gardening.

Yeah, weeds drove me nutso last year. Over winter, I'm mulching with shredded leaves in the "regular" garden area, and pine straw in the blueberry bed. The City of Greensboro provides free shredded leaf mulch, and inexpensive (as in $20 per pickup truck load) wood mulch. I intend to avail myself of that.

Like Major I too saw too much grass, haha. You could always do walkways, water features, or patio/sitting areas to eat up some of that lawn. I imagine planting watermelons, cantalopes, or zucchini and other squash will take up a lot of that space.

I can't use all of the area for two main reasons:

1. My kids and neighborhood kids like to run and play in that big back yard, and they're back there a LOT. I don't want to talk away too much of their space.
2. The power company has rights to bring trucks through my property to get to some of their lines, so I need to leave a wide enough avenue for them, otherwise run the risk of them showing up one day and needing to drive through a gardened area. (We've lived in this house for a little under four years, and they've shown up twice so far.)

Love how you are a planner and already getting your beds ready for spring.

Well, we'll see if I actually follow through with all that's planned!

i like having larger spaces to work with. that is much more flexible than a bunch of small spaces. we are consolidating gardens here as i get time for them. i hate wasting space on pathways. you can use the rows between plants as pathways well enough. if it gets too wet and muddy that is usually a good sign to stay out of a garden anyways if you can help it (to avoid compacting the soil). the following seasons you can change your layouts without having to deal with moving a hardscape pathway.

This makes sense. I'm pretty sure I've got more space than I need this year, so the pathways will probably be in. I'll post an unfinished map..maybe tonight.

winter cover crops are nice and they can keep weeds down and help hold nutrients for the coming season and also add more value (free energy from the sun, free worm food, etc.). yep, they can cost a little to put in and need turning under in the spring, but that's better than having bare dirt all winter.

Do people till cover crops, or just shovel them under? (I'm purchasing a tiller.)

 

[Ben E Lou]

OK. The plan isn't fully complete yet, but I thought I'd show the work in progress, as it's fairly close. A few comments for clarification...

1. If you've seen the pics, you know that my garden space is long and narrow--93 feet long, and an average of about 16 feet wide. As a result, I've split the screen shot into three sections for readability.
2. I used Excel. and each cell represents one square foot.
3. The garden area gradually gets a little wider as it moves up the yard, so the expansion of the width in the Excel file by square feet isn't an exact representation, but it's fairly close.
4. The black line at the top of the spreadsheet is the fence.
5. I'm combining some square foot garden principles with row gardening, mainly to bring some companion plants closer to their allies. This is particularly the case where I'm surrounding the zucchini, squash, and tomatoes with companions.
   
6. That said, apart from the widening near the top, I've essentially set up 8 "rows" in the vegetable area, where I'll run 8 drip irrigation lines fed by my converted-IBC-tote rain barrel. I already have the 8-output manifold and the necessary 400 feet of drip line to make that happen.
7. We've been saving lots of cardboard from Amazon purchases to use in covering all the walkways.
8. The "flower mix" stuff between the veggies and the blueberries are pre-made mixes that I can just scatter over a tilled area and rake into the soil. I had a good bit of success with similar mixes last year on a smaller scale, so I intend to try to take it to the next level.
9. I have violas near the front at the bottom of the garden, and california poppies near the front at the top. Those serve no functional purpose. I just like those particular flowers and want to grow them in the area where they'll be most seen. All other planned flowers have purpose.
10. The one thing that I don't have marked out is that I planted around 60 garlic cloves along the top and front sides of the vegetable area a few weeks ago, a few inches inside the bricks. The sprout rate of those has been *IMPRESSIVE* so far. 100% of the ones along the top side have sprouted. I didn't check all the ones along the length, but in the area I did check, it has also been 100%.

Oh, and speaking of hardscape, I have an issue that I have to deal with either with a trench, hardscape, or both--water runoff. Those bricks aren't just there for looks. Before they were in place, during times of heavy rain the water runoff was toward the back of the yard, but also toward the fence by the garden, and I lost a lot of soil and mulch to it last year. So far this winter, the bricks have helped affect a dramatic change in the water flow, reducing runoff in the garden area significantly.

 

[majorcatfish]

Actually I'm growing a moderate number of a lot of things. Unless some things produce much more than I'd expect, I don't intend to can/freeze much. Having extra would be a good problem to have. Cross that bridge when we come to it.

Yeah, weeds drove me nutso last year. Over winter, I'm mulching with shredded leaves in the "regular" garden area, and pine straw in the blueberry bed. The City of Greensboro provides free shredded leaf mulch, and inexpensive (as in $20 per pickup truck load) wood mulch. I intend to avail myself of that.

I can't use all of the area for two main reasons:

1. My kids and neighborhood kids like to run and play in that big back yard, and they're back there a LOT. I don't want to talk away too much of their space.
2. The power company has rights to bring trucks through my property to get to some of their lines, so I need to leave a wide enough avenue for them, otherwise run the risk of them showing up one day and needing to drive through a gardened area. (We've lived in this house for a little under four years, and they've shown up twice so far.)

Well, we'll see if I actually follow through with all that's planned!

This makes sense. I'm pretty sure I've got more space than I need this year, so the pathways will probably be in. I'll post an unfinished map..maybe tonight.

Do people till cover crops, or just shovel them under? (I'm purchasing a tiller.)

depending on the cover crop you choose <little late this year> in past i have planted <crimson red clover> does good till the first real hard frost then dies easy to till in.
winter rye grass it will handle our winters quite well, easy to till in..

as for a tiller thats depends on your budget box store have great sales on them but those tiller are like a bic lighter "disposable".. read up on them and find one that truly fits your need and well built..it is a major investment.

 

[Ben E Lou]

Here are a few more pics to give better perspective on the entirety of the garden/yard. The first was taken from the deck this week, and gives a good feel for the mulch, straw, and composting areas as they are currently. The second is from the back corner of the yard looking up toward the house. One thing to point out from pic 2 is the open area under the deck. The side facing the yard is roughly 16'x6'. We plan to trellis that and grow blackberries there. The third picture is from the opposite side of the yard from the garden--not quite all the way to the fence. It gives a pretty good feel for the size, openness, and utter CRAP of a weedfest that is my back yard.

 

[majorcatfish]

OK. The plan isn't fully complete yet, but I thought I'd show the work in progress, as it's fairly close. A few comments for clarification...

1. If you've seen the pics, you know that my garden space is long and narrow--93 feet long, and an average of about 16 feet wide. As a result, I've split the screen shot into three sections for readability.
2. I used Excel. and each cell represents one square foot.
3. The garden area gradually gets a little wider as it moves up the yard, so the expansion of the width in the Excel file by square feet isn't an exact representation, but it's fairly close.
4. The black line at the top of the spreadsheet is the fence.
5. I'm combining some square foot garden principles with row gardening, mainly to bring some companion plants closer to their allies. This is particularly the case where I'm surrounding the zucchini, squash, and tomatoes with companions.
   
6. That said, apart from the widening near the top, I've essentially set up 8 "rows" in the vegetable area, where I'll run 8 drip irrigation lines fed by my converted-IBC-tote rain barrel. I already have the 8-output manifold and the necessary 400 feet of drip line to make that happen.
7. We've been saving lots of cardboard from Amazon purchases to use in covering all the walkways.
8. The "flower mix" stuff between the veggies and the blueberries are pre-made mixes that I can just scatter over a tilled area and rake into the soil. I had a good bit of success with similar mixes last year on a smaller scale, so I intend to try to take it to the next level.
9. I have violas near the front at the bottom of the garden, and california poppies near the front at the top. Those serve no functional purpose. I just like those particular flowers and want to grow them in the area where they'll be most seen. All other planned flowers have purpose.
10. The one thing that I don't have marked out is that I planted around 60 garlic cloves along the top and front sides of the vegetable area a few weeks ago, a few inches inside the bricks. The sprout rate of those has been *IMPRESSIVE* so far. 100% of the ones along the top side have sprouted. I didn't check all the ones along the length, but in the area I did check, it has also been 100%.

Oh, and speaking of hardscape, I have an issue that I have to deal with either with a trench, hardscape, or both--water runoff. Those bricks aren't just there for looks. Before they were in place, during times of heavy rain the water runoff was toward the back of the yard, but also toward the fence by the garden, and I lost a lot of soil and mulch to it last year. So far this winter, the bricks have helped affect a dramatic change in the water flow, reducing runoff in the garden area significantly.

you have a very impressive goal... looking at your lay out you have no thyme? whats up with that?