Gardening help

[lady9]

I've never had a garden but would like to have one this year. My goal is to eat what we grow, not necessarily freeze or can anything this year. I don't want to get overwhelmed and give up. Do you have any tips for a beginning gardening?

 

[3happydancers]

I've never had a garden but would like to have one this year. My goal is to eat what we grow, not necessarily freeze or can anything this year. I don't want to get overwhelmed and give up. Do you have any tips for a beginning gardening?

What are you looking to grow?

 

[Colleen27]

Start small. The biggest mistake I see new gardeners making is planting more than they have the time or desire to tend. If you enjoy your garden and do well with it this season you can always expand next year, but nothing is surer to end up with an overgrown mess and discouragement than going whole-hog and feeling like you have to spend your whole summer weeding to keep up with what you've planted.

I highly recommend Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. Most libraries have the book or you can buy it really cheap from any online used bookseller, and the entire method is based around making gardening easy and productive. It really helped me get into good habits with my garden space and I still use the plant spacing and many growing techniques now that I've expanded into much larger beds.

 

[lady9]

Thanks for the replies.

I am looking to grow mainly green beans, peas, zucchini, and pumpkins. I just want to try it for this year and see how I like it so any tips to help me be successful are much appreciated.

 

[CTdiznymom]

Check out www.gardeners.com They have a site that you can plan your raised bed garden, and there is a lot of useful info about when and how to plant your veggies. They even give you ideas for plant layouts.

 

[5stljayhawks]

Get a soil test - GET A SOIL TEST - Oh Yah - get a soil test.....


Why ??

think about as how you eat and how plants eat... having a balanced diet is best, this includes veggies, fruits, meat, dairy and grain. The same holds true for growing plants, but at this level, you need to know the elements are in or not in the soil, which you gain through a soil test.

It may cost 20-40 bucks but worth it... it gives you a map of where you are now and where you need to go, so you plants have a balance diet..... of teh right PH and (phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulfur, manganese, copper and zinc)

contact your local conservation department or ag department, they will be able to direct you or provide an address to ship a soil test. This is a not an overnight process but a labor of gardening...

 

[shortbun]

you can get a small raised bed set up at Sam's and lots of garden supply places. We've found peas difficult and beans not so easy either. Zuchinni and pumpkins are easy but they rot if they lay on the ground. We like deep fried zuchinni blossoms almost better than zuchinni. If you have too much zuchinni, you end up giving a lot away. Pick them before they get too big. We grew five nice sized pumpkins last year from the seeds of the previous years pumpkins that lay on the edge of our compost. We have volunteer tomatoes every year too from rotting tomatoes turned under. Try some potato eyes, a tomato plant and sweet peppers or green onions. I also grow herbs up close to the house in the sunny spots. This is the second year for rosemary, oregano, chives, tyme. I end up planting a basil plant or two. You could try nasturiums-they are a peppery tasting, delicate flower that are great in salads!

 

[NHWX]

Go to gardenweb.com; it's sort of like disboards for people who like to garden.

Part of what you need to do is figure out what is good to grow now where you live. In New Hampshire, it's a good time to plant peas and start tomatoes. In Miami, tomatoes are all done.

Peas are fun to grow but can be frustrating because they take up a fair amount of space for relatively little produce.

I'd also ask at a local garden center what varieties grow well in your area. We don't have a huge growing season in New Hampshire so picking a variety that needs 100 growing days is pretty chancy some years. If you live in Arizona, you might need to choose heat tolerant varieties.

Have fun!

NHWX

 

[Sandy61]

Get a soil test - GET A SOIL TEST - Oh Yah - get a soil test.....


Why ??

think about as how you eat and how plants eat... having a balanced diet is best, this includes veggies, fruits, meat, dairy and grain. The same holds true for growing plants, but at this level, you need to know the elements are in or not in the soil, which you gain through a soil test.

It may cost 20-40 bucks but worth it... it gives you a map of where you are now and where you need to go, so you plants have a balance diet..... of teh right PH and (phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulfur, manganese, copper and zinc)
I have seen and used soil testing kits at local home and garden stores. I got mine at Theisen's.

I plant green beans and they are very easy. Pick them when they are very slender and you won't have to cook them as long. I use steamer bags in the microwave which is very fast. I also cook them in a skillet with a lot of water and when the water is gone I put oriental sauce on them and stir fry.

I did not have good luck with pumpkins because of some ugly bug and they just would not grow well.

Strawberries grow by themselves but tend to grow ever wider each year so you have to yank out the new runners to control them.

Onions and garlic take care of themselves also. Tomatoes are nice, just so you go out every couple days and kill the caterpillars that eat them.

Plan to weed once a week faithfully and use other methods if you can. For instance I put newspaper and grass clippings around tomatoe plants.

 

[riley2008]

I don't know where in the country you live...I'm in Texas, so take my advice with that in mind.

Green beans - decide if you want bush or vines. If you have a chain-link fence, these can be fun to grow along that. Bush beans sometimes only give two blooming periods and you are done. When we had a little home with a 4'x4' garden with fencing on two sides, green beans were our treat. We planted them about 4" apart and had enough to give away and freeze.

Zuchinni/squash - take up a lot of room per plant. I've never had problems with them rotting though, just missing them and they get too big.

Pumpkins and Peas haven't worked out well for us here.

Cucumbers - again, planting along a fence or using a tomatoe basket saves space. (we've planted these in large pots with tomatoe baskets, when we had no yard)

Tomatoes - easy to plant even in a pot or in a flower bed.

Peppers - again an easy pot plant

Okra - we love stewed, jumbo and fried. Gets tall very quickly. Itchy to pick. (We put away a lot in the freezer for winter.)

FWIW - never had a soil test, but I assume we have good soil. We do have a composter in which we add it all in the spring to the garden. We never fertilize. We do water twice a week, even in last year's drought. We only weed until the plants get bigger than the weeds and then they are on their own. (It's not always pretty but it's plentiful, sometimes to the point of over-abundance.)

Good luck!

 

[manning]

Take a look at these sites



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBh1fjMqjmI

I believe the gutter would be the easiest. this is the same principle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...annotation_id=annotation_997226&v=rexQMPFNbN8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRZt2YG1VaY&feature=relmfu

You can see by using the gutter you eliminate having to stack one bucket into another.

The gutter system


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRQzhFBCot4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd_NUqazoq0&feature=related


This one shows how to do strawberries

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1kIaJvpdTg

 

[karliebug]

home depot is having free gardening workshops on saturday mornings in April on raised bed gardening. Check with your local store.

 

[gillenkl]

Start small. The biggest mistake I see new gardeners making is planting more than they have the time or desire to tend. If you enjoy your garden and do well with it this season you can always expand next year, but nothing is surer to end up with an overgrown mess and discouragement than going whole-hog and feeling like you have to spend your whole summer weeding to keep up with what you've planted.

I highly recommend Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. Most libraries have the book or you can buy it really cheap from any online used bookseller, and the entire method is based around making gardening easy and productive. It really helped me get into good habits with my garden space and I still use the plant spacing and many growing techniques now that I've expanded into much larger beds.

I am a square foot gardener too and love this method. No soil tests and no weeding. You can buy one kit to start at home depot to see if you like gardening. Get the sfg book as suggested and you're on your way.

 

[Crystal0608]

I'm doing my first year of gardening too. I built a 4.5x13.5ft cinder block raised garden and mixed in my red clay with bags of mushroom, cow, and chicken compost as well as peat moss on top of a layer of newspaper. I'm counting this year as an experiment year. I've learned so far peas are the easiest to grow from seed. I have marigolds bordering the garden, which I heard keeps bugs out. I bought little onion bulbs from the farmers market that are growing like crazy and all we did is push them in the dirt, quite impressive, lol. I have been saving my veggie & fruit scraps in a closed bucket to compost, but I've read rinsed crushed eggshells and coffee grounds can go directly onto the ground. I have a bag of organic fingerling potatoes that I forgot about and rooted, so I'm going to try to grow them in a bin with mulched leaves. The kids want to grow watermelons and pumpkins next, so we are going to try them growing on a hill with some corn and sunflowers.