As requested here is what I have been playing with this year.
Garden Pictures
This is one of the beds
Same Bed from other angle.
And another from the second bed.
This is another angle on the second bed.
Third Bed
Third bed second side!
Entire Garden
5th Bed
Entire Garden (Really)
I am growing watermellons and large wintersquash (too heavy to grow vertically) in Wine Barrell halves.
And Another
Sprayed this guy with Sevin, Will that do the trick, shoulda just squashed him. This is my first real garden, worked in many and grew a few things in the past but never really tried hard to have a "Real" garden befor this year. I have made lots of mistakes but more input is allways appreciated.
Cucumbers in the dirt, gonna put this space into raised beds this fall/winter.
One of 2 tomatoe beds in the dirt.
THe other tomatoe bed
Zucchini in Dirt
Luv seeing your raised beds, Drew. (I've seen them in other threads.) Lookin' mighty good!
Did you come up with a good soil mix, or did you have access to good dirt?
I just planted these 4 habanieros from the nursery, started all the other stuff from seed. I had a little extra room after tilling and put in some more sweet corn and beets from seed, I may be able to just squeek by before frost hits... Both crops I believe are somewhat frost tolerant. I have 5 crimpson Sweet Watermellons and 2 Pink Banana squash in barrels, the 2 watermellon shown here are my medium sized vines, one bigger, 2 smaller so far, I may have fertilized them too much as well. They are however growing pretty well at this point. Cucumbers are now growing well but have really struggled. I think I used up a lot of server space and will not try to pass myself off as an expert, mostly booklearnin from the Mittleider Method at www.growfood.com and crossed that with the square foot gardening method from Mel Bartholemews book (the cubed foot book was also good). Next year I will be a little more pure Mittleider method.
This message was edited Jun 25, 2004 4:42 PM
SHoe the soil in the beds (4 of them at least) is all made from Pearlite, vermiculite, peat moss, sand, and sawdust. Perfect for Mittleider. the thing is it is Sterile and the problem was I kinda gave up and was not feeding the beds properly early this season when I got the starts in so I am about 2 weeks set back. THings were growing really slowley but now they are doing well. Our soil is a dense clay, even the stuff in dirt is growing on imported top soil I brought in for the lawn. I am building another 2 car garage and where the plants in dirt are is where the tractors/backhow will be running later so I did not want to put sod in and since is was just sitting there "fallow" I figured I would use it. Having so much fun with it I am going to keep it in gardenbut set it up like the other boxes.
Yeh...I checked out Mittleider some time back. Decided since I garden/farm bigtime it would be too expensive for me to get set up with that type of system. Am also using organic feeds and Mitt uses chemical feed; I prefer not to change over.
I may one day set up one raised bed though just for fun.
You are definitely having fun w/your gardens though, aren't you! Keep up the good work!
Shoe, The thing about Mittleider is that they do this in lots of 3rd world countries just in the dirt, I would suggest spending like 20 bucks on their guide. THere are some ideas you can steal from anywhere, for one I have spent maybe 3 hours totall weeding this year and maybe pulled 10 weeds out of the boxes, I am useing the in the dirt bed method (all-be-it poorly) for some of my stuff. They actually plant tomatoes in 18 inch wide beds and then sucker them so they grow on 2 stems every 6 inches, yeild per plant is lower, yield per acre is 10fold what it would be the normal way. It is pretty amaizing. I have 57 tomatoes this year, next year I think I will put in 150 plus. (In less space) I was interested in a more organic approach as well but could not figure out how to make sure that I was getting every nutrient needed every year consistently. This gives a ton of control, its pretty cheap if you mix your own (with the space I have the local nursery carries the mittleider formulas and it is not worth mixing it up to their specs.) I actually went and saw their demonstration gardens in SLC and it's pretty convincing. The production per acre is astounding!
Yes, I've read quite extensively about the system. However, I could never make the time to train and sucker 500 tomato plants plus do all my other crops. As for weeding, my garden is over an acre (some folks say it is two acres) and I've probably spent the same 3 hours as you have weeding.
I'm sure it can be a great system for many folks but for me I tend to see flaws in it. Not a put-down you understand, it's just not a system I could easily operate.
I am tickled pink you get to utilize the technique. I also think, should you need any help with questions, that Jim will be right there to guide you though it. (He's always answered my emails promptly!)
Looking forward to more of your posts! Appreciate you sharing!
Drew_n _Corinn: Didn't you just move in recently? If so ,you have accomplished a tremendous amount of gardening and your efforts definetly show. Nice work!
He was a big help for me and got me back on the right track, a lot of what i am doing this year is wrong, (Still works) but could be improved on. Next year however will be different. Shoe, do you have a greenhouse/seedhouse to get you started in the spring?
Yes, I have a greenhouse and grow lots of plants/seedlings, etc.
This year I'm trying to cut back a bit but still have a housefull of stuff. (I look forward to the day when the g-house is empty!)
Looked back through the pictures adn this is the right entire garden pic.
Tplant, yes, just moved in, well January 2002... Finished my basement, put the yard in (.5 acres of sod...) and built the boxes last year, this year I got to plant in them... It has been a TON of work. (I am tired... PERMINANTLY) Also have a 2 year old born the month we moved in and a 5 year old that babysat while we worked on the basement. They are both AWESOME kids and are used to being on the go nonstop.