do you all have your garden planted?

[oldmech]

close to spring here in the states and east coast.. got some things planted already. parsnip.carrots,turnip,kale and spinach. attached are a few pics of last years spring garden, lots of spuds,swiss chard kalarobi, and broccoli.  plan on planting some new zealand grey punkins.too. ( father in law smuggled some seeds in on his visit last year) hopefully kiwiinginuity will pipe in with planting tips. do well well with beans  in the summer and into the fall getting several bushels. grow lots of cucumbers since the little one loves pickles. freaks me out when i go to the store and see what they charge for things that grow like weeds and i give away by the bag full from my garden.
also a pic is of one of the biggest garden pests i have, he is 90 pounds and will eat anything that is growing. had less trouble out of a groundhog last year!

[pliskin]

Hey, that looks about the size of my garden. I'm in PA so it's a little early here. I usually start everything from heirloom seeds in February. Last year I took the easy route and got my stuff at a nursery. I was actually out there today doing a little prep on garden.

I usually do about 5 or 6 different kinds of tomatoes. I grow enough tomatoes to supply my whole neighborhood...tomatoes are my specialty. I also grow cantaloupe, onions, green/chile,habs peppers, watermelon, pumpkins, yellow and zucchini squash Blackberries, raspberries.

We do a variety of lettuce and herbs in planter boxes also.

I gave up on broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage. The heat and bugs get to it here in PA and I don't like to spray my garden. It's 100% natural.

You should try mushroom mix as fertilizer if you can find it. It's the leftover dirt used to grow shrooms. That stuff is magic for the garden.

[Janx101]

been quite a while since i gardened like that .. but yeah agree on the shroom mulch... there is however an even betterer product/s ... if you can get hold of it....

here in Australia .. the tailings/waste material from the sugar cane mills... it is sold now as a prepared product with added this and extra that .. but the raw product is the 'ducks guts' .... its almost like... empty the barrow-full onto the dirt.. turn it over into the dirt a few times... take a step back... toss a seed or seedling into the middle... and RUN!!.. afore you get knocked over!! 

now i dunno if you lads in the USA have sugar cane and mills.... not having a go at ya.. i just really dunno... but from a few investigations over the years .. Yankees use a lot of corn syrup yeah?.... reckon theres gotta be some good mulch material from those processors.... distilleries should have some high organic/sugar ratio material laying about... anything like that which is a waste material from a high sugar content plant donor......

originally i saw a semi trailer load of sugar cane tailings dumped on a small property/paddock up near Bundaberg in Queensland, Australia. (which is on its way to florida weather) the bloke then just drove his old farm runabout landrover more or less through the pile in several places .. kinda went mudboggin if you get the idea... mixed the dirt and mulch up a bit with the tyres scrabbling etc .. (he was too lazy to go borrow a tractor) .. and then he put in seedlings... punkins, watermelons, squash, zucchini and other vegie type stuff... was about... 30yard square of 'garden bed'? ... i was back past there 11 weeks later .. looked like day of the triffids!!... plants were running riot in the mulch! .. mostly loaded with heavy crop too...

come to think of it... first time i saw a watermelon headed wallaby crash into a fence also!!...

little wallabies like this guy

would come across and start nibbling into a big watermelon... make a nice neat hole through the skin .. and then munch out the insides as much as they could rotate their heads to get at ... Mrs Bloke wouldn't let him shoot them just for eating melons that they had a oversupply of .. but he was allowed to scare them off a bit... which he did .. with a shotgun blast over their heads.... one wallaby was working on a smaller melon... stood up real fast to get away .. but his ears held the melon skin on his head still.... however muscles are saying go Go GO!!! .. so he went.. about 40 yards in a wobbly line... hit a fencepost with his melon hat which busted it... then kept on going...  .. took me a while to stop laughing!.

but yeah .. 'raw' tailings from a food/sugar type processor factory thingy ... good gear!

[Janx101]

thats a healthy looking boxer dog there too!!... must be his balanced diet with nutritous vegies eh!! 

[yamahonkawazuki]

hmm might be worth tryin.
speaking of grey punkins
http://rareseeds.com/jarrahdale-pumpkin.html

[Janx101]

mmmm yum.. the Jarrah's are a good one!... long as you let them dry on a nice tin roof or warm sheltered wire rack kinda thing... extra nice for baked vegies and roast anything! ... 

just bring your arm muscles and a good sharp knife... they strong buggers to cut!

[pliskin]

Janx, good soil is key. I'll let you in in an ultra top secret formula for garden dirt. Here on the east coast of the US we have a bay in Maryland that has that has the best crab you will ever eat. Maryland Blue Crabs. It is known that they can only be steamed proper here with Old Bay seasoning. A true Maryland creation that cannot be matched. There are packing plants the pick the meat from said crabs for sale in the area. The leftover shell, fat, and trash from the "picking" process is gold for garden. It's called crab mulch.

[yamahonkawazuki]

mmmm yum.. the Jarrah's are a good one!... long as you let them dry on a nice tin roof or warm sheltered wire rack kinda thing... extra nice for baked vegies and roast anything! ... 

just bring your arm muscles and a good sharp knife... they strong buggers to cut!

price seems good. i think lol. have a decent sized garden patcha vailable to use.  from 10'x10' to 2 acres lol. may try something small this year and see what happens. the soil is perfect

[Janx101]

Janx, good soil is key. I'll let you in in an ultra top secret formula for garden dirt. Here on the east coast of the US we have a bay in Maryland that has that has the best crab you will ever eat. Maryland Blue Crabs. It is known that they can only be steamed proper here with Old Bay seasoning. A true Maryland creation that cannot be matched. There are packing plants the pick the meat from said crabs for sale in the area. The leftover shell, fat, and trash from the "picking" process is gold for garden. It's called crab mulch.

oh hell yeah!! .. that'd be awesome too!!.. any hi intensity organic input like that would be awesome... prawns/shrimp heads and shells (if you aint making bouillabaisse 1st though... cos that takes priority in my tummy!) .. well rinsed seaweed/sea grass ... errr  .. my uncle used to have a problem with genuine feral cats around his farm.... every new young citrus tree he planted had a fresh feral at the bottom of the planting hole... best citrus trees and fruit in the area!! ... lots of trees and not so many feral these days though 

i have been told though... use crab mulch or any crustacean mulch ... you dig that stuff in deep!!! .. can get a little piquant to the nose on a hot summers day if you dont 

[steezin_and_wheezin]

Awesome garden!! I'll be following your progress for sure. The gf convinced me to put a smaller garden in my front yard this year. The house's previous owner put in wild roses and other flowers that got out of control and are an eye sore imo.

One strip is 18'x5' and another funky shaped spot is ~20'x6'. I'll be going in this week and cleaning up the existing plants and crappy red mulch. We've already had the soil tested at a local college, and everything checks out. Plan is to have the areas cleaned by the end of this week. Then the little fertilizer needed put down to sit for ~40 days before anything is planted.

We'll be planting mostly veggies to help save on grocery costs. Lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, broccoli, beans, pepper, and some others.

This is our first time attempting a garden. I'm stoked to see if i still have the green thumb my Papa passed down years ago!

I'll post some photos of the progress

[jestercinti]

All y'all are showing me up.

I buy my food from Kroger.  When the zombie apocalypse comes, I'll be at your house 

[cbrfxr67]

 
sweet garden

[oldmech]

hope to see some pics of everyone elses garden spots also. i have been using chicken poop the last few years as a fertilizer. put it in in the fall and till it under in early spring. cold and rainy here today,maybe some snow tonite. no biggie all the stuff i have planted so far will be ok. heck i saw the radishes and lettuce starting to come up already.
hey janx, the punkin i am going to grow is i think called a crown punkin, looks a littled different than the jarrad.
will post a pic of the seed packet when i get a chance.

[oldmech]

and here is a pic of the seed packet.

[yamahonkawazuki]

lol whangaparaoa sounds like the sound my goped makes when i take off.

[Janx101]

  ... is this guy ripping your ride vids Yama?? 

and yeah oldmech .. the crown punkins are good gear!!... my preference for soup and in a vegie/pasta bake .. slightly looser flesh to them mostly.. the easy cut thin skin is a bonus!

[yamahonkawazuki]

got the frog track as well as yakety sax set up to run with tomorrows ride

[oldmech]

hey steezin looks like you are right down the road from me in radford. good freind lives in riner and usines a small nursery for plants. i see if i can get their name for ya. if not any local northwest hardware chain has plants allot cheaper than any of the big home improvement stores. i just got 20 brocilli plants there for about 9 bucks.

and for those of you that like do not use checmicals in your garden like pliskin. check out this old boys recipie for homemade bug spray. it works!

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

[steezin_and_wheezin]

'Preciate the heads up oldmech!! Plan was to start everything from seeds, but we're dragged our feet a bit much. Might definitely hit up a nursery to get some of the things that need to be in dirt soon. Homemade bug spray sounds great! Will definitely have to mix up something

DAY 1
So we dove in and started clean up. There were originally 5 or 6 rose bushes in the flower bed. I've always thought they were an eye sore and a PIA to mow/weedeat around(no photos, but you can barely see some of them in the right side of this photo) So i hit them with my branch trimmers, took them down to the root clump. Then proceeded to dig up the root clumps.

From the beginning i had thought there was only the crappy red mulch over the root/moisture barrier. I was WAY wrong haha. it had nearly 4" of that flint looking white rock. So after working into the night we got all the rock, mulch, and old rotting moisture barrier out of the garden.

Blurry photos from the crappy cell phone;



like a kid again, having fun playing in the dirt


pile of rose bushes on left and on right a view of garden #2 that's in need of some major attention as well


i need a wheel barrel! haha used the old tarp to make a pile on the back porch until i can get our trailer back(currently hauling our shred gear back from the WV mountains)




cleaned and ready for the tiller! I guess spring is still fighting to show her face, we got a light snow over the night

Seeds will finally be in on monday. The gf ordered online and we've been waiting nearly 2 weeks for them. Should have the tiller next week also, then; fill dirt, fertilizer, and tilling on the garden. Also we're going setup an incubator station in the shed to start the seeds. I'm really talking out my butt at this point haha, Jessica(my gf) has the plan in her head. She has already threw a garden plan together and it looks like we won't have much work on the garden #2 until we run out of room on the #1.

Til next time! Can't wait to see y'alls setup this season!

[BockinBboy]

now i dunno if you lads in the USA have sugar cane and mills.... not having a go at ya.. i just really dunno... but from a few investigations over the years .. Yankees use a lot of corn syrup yeah?.... reckon theres gotta be some good mulch material from those processors.... distilleries should have some high organic/sugar ratio material laying about... anything like that which is a waste material from a high sugar content plant donor......

but yeah .. 'raw' tailings from a food/sugar type processor factory thingy ... good gear!

That stuff doesn't go to waste here, and is destined for a much more expensive market actually... it is put in with TMR (Total Mixed Ration) formulations for cattle as as a partial corn replacer... since corn prices have gone up with the demand, such as that resulting from Biofuels...  I have worked with it for some time now, and I can tell you that if its not dry enough, it will quickly mold... and if its too dry, it can easily start a fire in the shredding/grinding process.  Hard to work with in general as a feed ingredient, which is why it hasn't taken off yet, but it has enough potential its getting used.

- Bboy