Hello from West Georgia

[Grampa Greenjeans]

Hello. 20 year transplant from Illinois where I grew up and later worked on an apple and small fruit orchard. It was so easy to grow anything in that wonderful topsoil there i thought I could garden anywhere! LOL. This Piedmont Georgia soil has pretty well kicked my hiney, so I'm going with raised beds now. As I get older I don't take kindly to bending over or working on my knees. Ha! My grandfather refused to grow strawberries as he called it a stoop crop. He wanted to work with stuff he could stand up to care for. I don't blame him.

Anyway I'm setting up trickle irrigation for my raised beds, as well as my front landscape. Trying a little heugelculture as well. I have chickens which behind the coop they have made some amazing dark soil. Full of worms and all kinds of good stuff. Incorporating it into my beds. Plus lots of tasty eggs and shells to compost. It was Backyard Chickens where I found this site.

Last year was the first year for my raised beds. Built with scraps from a local sawmill and filled with what ever I could scrounge. Had really good luck with it with very little weeding, yippee! I hate weeding. I thought I had the last garden weed free with lots of old wood chips, till my kids mowed the grass and blew all the clipping, seeds and all into the garden! Rats. Top that off with this clay and I gave up for a few years. Nothing like watching the weeds thrive and everything else die no matter what you did. But now I'm back at it again. Between the Blueberries and the chickens, the raised beds are the way to go.

The grandpups love picking and helping out too. Momma likes it too as I try to get her involved in it. So far I went nuts and have a couple hundred seeds started in pots , trays, and whatnot. Getting some grow lights set up and I think I'll be in business!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi, welcome from Louisiana, glad you found us.

I can appreciate a good part of what you said. There have been a couple of things happen recently where I've thought "30 years ago I took care of that myself. Now I just don't want to."

There is nothing like compost to improve any soil. I use a lot of that.

 

[Collector]

Welcome from Eastern Washington state, glad you came over to the garden site.

 

[Marie2020]

Pleased you have joined TEG. It will be really good to here of your progress with raised bed

 

[flowerbug]

welcome from mid-Michigan. as i get older i get more efficient. yeah, that's the story and i'm sticking to it... at least until nap time.

 

[Zeedman]

Welcome from Wisconsin, @Grampa Greenjeans ! I can sympathize with being a "transplant", and having to adapt to a whole new set of growing conditions. While I was born in Wisconsin, I lived in California for 13 years, and learned to garden efficiently there. I had to re-learn gardening when I returned to Wisconsin as an adult.