Spring 2009 Gardening Thread
 

Just starting us up as I have to run to an appt. with a student. What's doing in your plans for this year's garden? Ordered seeds or plants yet? Where do you order?

Looking for tips? We have a lot of great gardeners in our Beachy forum and they just might have the answers!

:encore:

I would love to plant a garden, but I am clueless as to how.
I though it would be easy just plant some seeds and water them and watch em grow, but the more I check into it the harder it seems
Like knowing when to get the seeds in the ground & PH levels and additives (i have that red GA clay) so I'm a little scared and just shop at the local farmers market

Cmartin, don't overthink it - just do it. Forget about ph. I garden in clay too, only it's blue grey Leeds County clay. Start small - maybe some green beans and tomatoes this year. I'd throw in some flower seeds too - cosmos do well and are great "just for pretty" as an old lady in the Village used to say. Where are you in GA so I can tell you when to plant?

I live near Thomasville Ga, on the FL/GA line
any help would be great
Thanks in advance

I sometimes listen to a gardening expert on the radio, and his advice would be fine if you could devote your entire day to working in the garden. I have gotten some good tips from him, but I neither have the time or the money to devote to following all his advice. ;) I think as long as you till up the soil and add some composted manure to it, most any plant will grow just fine. Just make sure to keep it well watered and weeded out, and maybe add some fertilizer every now and then. Some plants actually grow better without being fussed with.

And if it's new soil that's never been gardened, you sometimes will be just fine without the compost that first year.

Cmartin: You are in Zone 9b and your last frost date is around April 1. I'd plant around the 7th for beans and set out purchased tomato plants about the same time. Cucumbers should wait until mid-month.

Ruth - What zone am I and when should I be planting? I'm doing seeds this year instead of plants for a lot of my vegetables and would like to know if I should start them early in the greenhouse or if I'll be fine starting them outside.

I'm doing a lot of containers this year - vegetables and flowers.

Last year I had a great experience with tomatofest.com for heirloom seeds and I think I'll order with them again this year. Last year I planted Brandywine along with others and I think this year I'm going to order Brandywine, Earl of Edgecomb, and Cherokee Chocolate. I'll also plant regular tomatoes to use for canning, etc.

I'm also going to plant a few varieties of peppers (probably bell, banana and maybe poblano), cucumbers, spinach, green string beans, and radishes. We already have a banana tree and are hoping to plant some citrus trees.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with flowers this year. I usually have to go to the nursery a few times to get an idea of what they have and then go home to make plans. I have a few hibiscus plants that I cut way way back last year and they are coming back nicely.

I am strictly amateur - no green thumb here, but I try every year and experiment and I think that's the way to get started. I usually plant some tomatoes, green peppers, zucchinnis, and last year I tried an eggplant. I haven't started from seed before, I just buy the seedlings. I compost and dig some of that in every year. I have a little plot out behind my garage, about 25' x 8'. This year I want to move it to a different spot that I think gets a little more sun, and maybe build some raised beds. I don't know if I'll be able to get DH motivated to help me with this, but he does love the garden tomates.

I don't do much with flowers beyond putting some petuniuas in the urns on the front porch. There are day lilies someone else planted, some peony bushes, and a forsythia bush that wants to take over my side yard, but that's about it.

We're well into the planning stage of our gardens this year. DH usually handles most of the work on the vegetable garden and I take care of the herbs. We are able to grow plenty of produce for just the cost of seeds, some potting soil for my herbs, the extra H2O and some insecticide if need be. (We get the fertilizer free from various "operations". :lol:)

I'll be planting basil, rosemary, dill, parsley and thyme in the herb pots. For the veggie garden, we'll do squash, zucchini, beans, peppers, fennel, spinach and lettuce.

I've also been daydreaming about flower beds this year, but we'll see if that works out. It would be quite a bit of work to get them going.

Ruth, can you share the site you use for looking up zones (or did you use a book)?

One caveat I have is that it's really helpful, if you have the option, to use a Sunset gardening book (or their website) to find their climate zones for your area. They used to only do the Western U.S. but now they have books for other regions. They divide up the regions into a very large number of sections based on climate and other factors. This helps you be much more precise in figuring out if something will live in your area.

For instance, I'm in zone 5 in upstate NY. So is my mom in Washington State. But she lives in this weird area where they get almost no snow or rain. The temperature is really different from here! So she can grow all sorts of things I have no hope of growing. According to Sunset, she's zone 1. I'm zone 42. VERY different.

Anyways, whenever I find something I want to grow that is listed "(any number)-5" or "5-(any number)" (meaning my area is at one end of the growing range), I usually check Sunset to make sure it'll really work here. There are a couple of things I'd love to plant, but Sunset says there's no way they'd survive, so I haven't wasted my money.

I'd love help getting my morning glories and sweet peas to sprout; I end up with so few each year even though I score the seeds and soak them for 24 hours before planting. Frustrating!

Here's one of the many websites that will tell you your zone and last frost date.

Woo Hoo! Glad to see other gardeners/ interested in being gardeners people here. An excellent book for beginners or those with limited space is Square Foot Gardening. It's mostly focused on veggies but flowers can certainly be included.

I am a Landscape Architect by profession so I'm definately into growing all sorts of things. I finally have my veggie garden fully functional this season with drip irrigation (we live in a hot climate and I am a mess at hand watering daily) so I should be able to grow a lot more than I have in the past.

However, you don't NEED a super deluxe set up to grow good veggies. Just loosen your soil, add a little natural organic matter like compost (and this is true no matter if you have sand, clay etc.) and follow the planting instructions for the various types of seeds. Water regularly. You may or may not NEED to fertilize if you use organic matter. I only lightly fertilize and only use pesticides when absolutely necessary.

Planting a garden is an act of faith. Fortunately, it's a rather inexpensive act. Just try it and you'll be surprised how easy it really is and how GOOD everything tastes. There's nothing quite like the taste of a homegrown tomato. My daughter loves to go to the lettuce patch and cut some leaves off for our dinner or pull up carrots. It's fun. Try it!

For Canadian Gardeners, the USA Zones are different from our Canada ones. Beachgal is USA Z5 but I am a USA Z4 which is Canadian Zone 5!

I'm being lured away from work by the gardening siren ;)

I don't have a huge garden space and have yucky soil. I love raised beds. They are easy to maintain and are flexible. I have 6 3' x 3' vegetable beds, a bean tepee, an herb bed, squash hills and a few perennial beds (we call those the intentional weed plantings). I love getting the garden in each spring but refuse to be a slave to it all summer. I'm a big fan of mulch and square foot gardening.

I am planning to extend my growing season with cold frames again. I did a little of that last spring and plan to try a little more this year. Has anyone worked with them before?

On the zone question - although everyone is in 1 zone you often have micro-zones around your house. Those are the warm and cold spots where things grow differently. It's worth spending some time figuring out where the sun hits and when. Sometimes that extra warm or cold will let you grow something different.

I could spend all day on this but have to get back to work!

Gardening fool here. :dizzy:

I'm fortunate to live rural and have a large garden space. Seed orders were placed in January; I'm just getting ready to start some cool weather crops in the greenhouse, and it's time to direct-sow others.

I keep a horse and chickens, among other things, and even if they served no other purpose they're invaluable for the manure (but of course they do!). I really appreciate those fresh eggs now I'm on SB!

I compost everything that can be composted: Garden waste, kitchen waste, leaves, grass clippings, manure, you name it. This month I will muck out the hen house... I let the manure compost directly in the garden for a few months before planting. I usually save that wonderful mix for the tomato beds.

I grow/produce most of my own food, so I have no cause to complain about what's available in the fridge!

Will enjoy sharing tips and tricks with others here. Happy gardening!! :carrot:

Rae

So, for those of us who don't have our own compost (long story, but I'm not going to be able to until I can get something to do it in...which we can't afford right now), any hints on how to get our hands on some?

Hi, Laurie,

I'd suggest contacting almost any horse-boarding facility and asking if you can take away some of their well-rotted manure. These facilities often have large piles of poo in various stages of, umm, cookery. What you want is the stuff that's been around for a few months. Most places are quite happy to let you take it away for free. When I lived in a more urban setting, I used to do this. Was great!

Rae

laurie, we have a city composting facility that we can buy compost from (it's cheap cheap, like $.10 a lb.

Beachgal, for morning glories and sweet peas, I don't soak them in water. I put them between two layers of damp paper towels, cover with Saran and leave them a day or two. They need to be checked daily and planted as soon as they sprout.

Laurie, the farm where my kids take horseback riding lessons has a huge poo pile. In the spring they are delighted to let us come dig down to where it's nicely rotted and take all we want. fun, fun, fun! But that's some good stuff. I would think lots of them do this.

What is the first step in a compost pile? Maybe the second step, too. :)

Chelby, pick a likely corner of your yard and start throwing your veggie scraps in a pile there. Eggshells and coffee grounds are good too. Nothing greasy. When you have a nice sized pile, leave it alone for a while and start another pile. Let it rot. In the summer you can add mulched up grass clippings and leaves in the fall too, but I think not too much of these. Some people build enclosures, but I've never bothered.

Schmoodle -- does the spot need to be sunny?

You want some brown stuff in your compost too - like shredded newspaper. Just a word of warning though, we did end up with 3-4 disgusting and unmentionable rodents in ours last year. We had to hire someone to hang out and shoot them because I refused to put out poison.

This website: http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/ has info on composting and just about everything else under the sun :)

:lol: Cyndi, you crack me up. I can just imagine the interview for that one "so, uh...you like to shoot icky things and have a ton of time on your hands?"

I would really like to start a compost pile here, we had a lovely one in years past. It's a pain in the rear to really get it thriving though.

Ruth - thanks for the information about zoning. I guess I wasn't really informed on that. According this this, I can start planting much earlier than I thought! I guess I should get going on ordering my seeds.

I just put an add on freecycle for pots. I have a few but not quite enough as I would like and they are expensive. I don't care what condition they are in because I'm quite handy with a paint brush and some sandpaper.

What does "brown" stuff mean? I've never done the papers, maybe I should. I thought the ink was bad though.
I don't think it needs to be sunny, mine isn't. Once it gets started rotting it will create it's own heat.
I've never had rodents either, but that corner of my yard backs up to my crazy cat lady neighbor. She feeds 27 strays and they all hang out back there, so that would have to be one brave rodent.
All the research I did nearly convinced me not to compost. It can get very technical - layers of this and layers of that, and turning and watering. Then I realized it was just stuff rotting and I figured I could handle that.

Schmoodle - check this page out: http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/swfa/...e/compost.html it explains the green and brown stuff. I wasn't thinking outside of my bubble when I mentioned newspaper. Our local papers all use vegetable inks so are safe to compost. Many papers are now (the newsprint not the shiny brightly colored pages). I hesitate to mention this because you all think I'm weird already, but DP took the Master Composter class a few years ago. I garden and she composts. Not a bad combo ;)

I'll absolutely put the compost pile away from my house. I didn't even think of rodents!

Last year I had a tiny little 3x6 garden because everywhere I seemed to read said go slow and don't let yourself get overwhelmed... and I surely didn't!(NO time to till up either, that 3x6 was last minute as we bought our house in April... so this year I think we are going to do more of a 10x10 or 12x12 garden and see how that goes- I am hoping the doggies will keep out of it and not dig everything up!!! Last year I just did tomatoes, peppers, and herbs.... this year I would like to do tomatoes, zuchinni, eggplant, cucumbers, lettuce, green beans, peas(for the leafy plant tops! they are soooo yummy!), maybe some sweet potatoes, misc. peppers, and lots of herbs...dh will want corn no doubt! I am excited about planting a garden this year! we have never had enough sun at our old house- our yard was wooded and we love fresh veggies!

But of course your veggie garden need lots of sunshine. I use to have a lovely garden until my birch tree grew and grew and now my whole garden is shaded. You can also buy some compose accelerator at the gardners that speeds composing.
So three years ago I planted a northern cactus in the front and to my surprise it has survived three winters. Has beautiful yellow flowers in June. If it survives this brutal winter I will take pictures.
Sophie

I am so excited to see we have so many experts! I am really wanting to do a small, simple veggie garden with my daughters this spring. I see that we are 5b (or maybe 6a?) are there certain veggies that work best in that zone? Like cucumbers? Or zucchini? What do you think?

Also, I have a corner of the yard that has no grass b/c the previous owner had a trampoline there, would you think that would be a good spot? It is in the corner furthest from the house, so do you think it would be better to be close to the house? I want to make it easy enough that we'll do it.

Thanks everyone for your help!!! :)

Cukes and/or zucchini will do just fine in your zone. The garden space should be fine as long as it's in the sun most of the day and you dig it up well. It may be quite packed down. I'd amend the soil a bit too - maybe with purchased compost or manure.

Natalie'sMom - I have lots of activities and ideas for gardening with kids. It's actually one of my favorite parts of my job. When I'm back in the office I'll send you some info :)

Originally Posted by CyndiM:
Natalie'sMom - I have lots of activities and ideas for gardening with kids. It's actually one of my favorite parts of my job. When I'm back in the office I'll send you some info :)

That would be fantastic! Thanks so much! :carrot:

cc me on that one, Cyndi :)

I read this whole thread with much delight! I am fixing to start my first inground garden this year and eveyrone was telling me that I needed the soil tested and had to have till it up last year and all this stuff. Everyone on this thread made it sound so simple!

I live in zone 7a and was going to plant blueberry, tomato, cukes, and peppers, along with my herbs. I just may now skip the soil testing and just get some fertilizer and till up the ground and give it a go...

So, if I am starting in a grassy area, do I just till up the area, including the grass? Can you do that?

Am I better off with plants or seeds? We are in Kansas -- and I read on a local gardening site that you should wait to plan until the first weekend of May. Is that right?

Hi Natalie'sMom- I'm a big fan of raised beds. It will save you the tilling, amending the soil by guessing, and it's really great for kids. Raised beds have a nice border that keeps kids from walking on plants so makes it easier for them to help. I also worry about suburban neighborhoods and fill. Some lawns have things in them we would rather not have in our gardens. It's more expensive the first year but balances out over time.

BTW gardeners - I'm enjoying some of my onion dill zucchini chips from last summer's harvest. Just a reminder of the year round goodness of gardens :) I love finding those jars in the winter :)

ETA - I love this design - so much space for kids to help :) Of course you don't need this much at home. This was a child care center garden.

Cyndi- that is a nice little raised garden! We have been planning ours and just wondering how I am going to keep mu big clumsy dogs out of it..... that may be a good idea for us!
I have also been thinking of planting some seedlings in the house to get started... I was thinking of buying this little gadget to start!
http://www.seedandgarden.com/shop/pr...Pot-Maker.html
its got great reviews everywhere i have looked!

Also, does anyone know about underground utilities? all of ours are underground and I would hate to hit something I wasn't supposed to!!! I don't know how deep they are...