Planning your garden?

[bethzaring]

What are yall doing for your garden so far? Going to plant anything different this year?

While it is way too early for me to start the bulk of my vegetable and flower plants, I do start a few things in February, namely celery and parsley. For the second year, I am starting seeds for onion plants and those are growing very well, in fact I will set them outside today for a breath of fresh air. I have had disappointing results with onions over the years. We usually start them from seed in the garden, but they do not get very big. I do not like onion sets due to the very limited, one !, variety available. So two years ago I bought onion plants from my seed vendor. Very, very expensive, and I thought, I can make my own plants! So I did, and it worked kinda well. I did not start enough plants last year.

For the other vegetable plants I start, I usually wait until two weeks AFTER the last possible time to start the plants. I start a couple hundred of the little buggers and it is very labor intensive, so I start the process as close to planting out time as I can.

Hows your plans going?

 

[Barb L.]

Wow , where do you have room for "couple hundred of those little buggers" ? LOL

 

[lulu]

Well, my sweet peas have been coming on really strong, and my little lettuces, the only thing is we are probably moving so not sure what to do with the sweet peas. Probably give them to the landords wife if she is still talking to us! I love having things sprouting, makes me feel kind of hopeful. Probably like it as much as when the flowers then the fruits come, my other two gardening year highlights. My mother's garden in May/June is surely what heaven looks like, old fashioned roses everywhere, and all the cottage garden annuals out. English cottage gardens make me pleased to be English (which makes for the things hich embarass me!)

 

[YT2095]

My Garden a few years ago:

 

[bethzaring]

DH designed and built our house. The south side of the house has a greenhouse which also functions as a mud room and air lock entry. It is 8 feet wide by 25 feet long and has a long bench in front of the windows. I start the plants in pots in trays which hold (15) 2 inch square pots. The pots are big enough that I do not need to transplant anything.

You can build a green house to be either a solar collector or a food producing structure, but not ideally both. Ours is a food producing green house.

 

[mudbug]

I have to rip out pretty much everything I have and start over this year (just grasses and flowers).

signed
Lazy Gardener

 

[BreezyCooking]

I always start my tomatoes, peppers, & eggplants inside - mostly heirloom types. Cold weather greens, Asian stuff, broccoli raab, Swiss chard, etc., I usually start outside in my cold frame, but will sometimes jumpstart inside first depending on how much room I have.

I'm a big fan of wide-row "intensive" gardening rather than the regular narrow row system. I manage to squeeze tons of stuff into a smaller amount of space, & find I get much larger crops to boot.

I grow everything & anything that interests me, & always try something new every year.

 

[Uncle Bob]

At this point I have been through the garden with the tractor twice...just trying to open it up a bit. Is still early.

 

[silentmeow]

We built a greenhouse on the front of our house. I start the plants on shelving units with rollers so I can roll them into the greenhouse during the sunny days and into the house if the nights are sill freezing. I know I'm jumping the gun here in MI but I've started eggplants and rainbow peppers which are supposed to turn different colors through their growing stages. I just can't wait for Spring!

 

[bethzaring]

Wow silentmeow, you have an enviable set up with the rollers on the shelving units. I have to lug each individual tray of plants in and out and in and out every day, weather permitting, to harden off my plants.

Hey YT, is that netting on the first bed? Trying to keep something out?? You have a nice looking garden!

 

[Half Baked]

I have a very small garden that is parallel to our back fence. It's rectangular and I can walk through the middle. On each side I have 4- 3x3 plots, separated by 2x4s and at the end, the plot for tomatos is about 12' long and 3' deep.

Yesterday I planted 2 of the plots. In one, I have a row of radishes, carrots and beets. The other one has eggplant, chard and leeks.

I have loosely based this on the book Square Foot Gardening. We don't want a ton of veggies and this is mainly for my entertainment, watching the garden grow is so cool to me.

This is only my 2nd year. Last year I had one plot about 6x5 and got such a kick out of it that Mr HB built this over the winter out of 2x4s and has a rabbit fence around it.

btw, as soon as we finished the 2 areas, we gathered up the tools and put everything away. We came back outside and there were big black birds pecking away. Now I need a scarecrow.

 

[Half Baked]

I'm a big fan of wide-row "intensive" gardening rather than the regular narrow row system. I manage to squeeze tons of stuff into a smaller amount of space, & find I get much larger crops to boot.

I grow everything & anything that interests me, & always try something new every year.

Breezy, what is wide-row "intensive' gardening?

 

[Snoop Puss]

About to move into a run-down small holding. I've ordered my seeds - probably way too many for my first year. Or more to the point, way too many for the amount of digging I'll be able to get my partner to do given that the land hasn't been worked for nigh on 30 years and has been compacted down by goats and sheep as far as I can tell.

I'm going to try growing shallots from seed. Perhaps too ambitious. What I'd really like to grow, however, are the tiny little Italian onions that are just perfect for beef stew of any kind, but I'm going to leave those for next year. Another moderately unusual vegetable I'll be growing is Romanescu, a fractal cauli-type vegetable that is as good to look at as it is to eat.

I'm a great pea fan, so among all my assorted seeds I've ordered marrow fat peas, petits pois, mangetout and asparagus peas.

One thing that will shock any locals is that I'm going to grow sweetcorn. It's regarded as animal feed here rather than as a delight for humans.

Edited: here's a link to a picture of Romanescu taken by someone totally unknown to me: Romanescu Cauliflower on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Hope I'm allowed to post this here. Anyway, not fractal according to the photographer but a fine example of the Fibonacci sequence. I've never seen a Romanescu quite as yellow as this - he's probably enhanced the image to pick out the swirls. Very pretty, either way.

 

[YT2095]

Hey YT, is that netting on the first bed? Trying to keep something out?? You have a nice looking garden!

yeah, there`s a line of Garlic along the middle, but I have all salad type plants on either side, and the net stops the pigeons eating it when growing, and other birds from eating the seeds planted

 

[JMediger]

Unfortunately, we are currently under a winter storm warning and have received about 3 ft of snow in the last 2 weeks so my garden is just a dream right now! I do appreciate we are getting it as it (moisture in the ground) will help everything through the summer but I'm ready for spring.

I am, however, getting ready to start tomatoes and peppers inside.

 

[Ali]

Last year I created a container garden. The couple years preceding, I had a garden spot plowed, but the weather wasn't conducive to producing a good crop. Since I'm cooking for one these days, I don't need to plant a lot, but still enjoy gardening and home-grown vegetables.

I think I'll do the container garden again this year. I'll probably plant tomatoes, chives and whatever else will fit in the space I have.

~Ali

 

[bethzaring]

Here is a link to a photograph of the interior of my greenhouse, in the members' photo section.

 

[Claire]

Oh, gee. All I want is a tomatoe. A real tomato. I'll plant peppers and cukes, and my herb garden takes care of itself. But I'm dying for a real, honest-to-God tomato. It'll be months before I can even think of planting one, much less harvesting them. I have a friend who is dying for a mint julep from my garden. That is a closer goal. Lovely gardens, by the way. Mine is still under snow. My puppy is peeing in my herb garden. I cannot bring myself to punish her (I call her a puppy, in reality she's geriatric and lost her mommy this year) You guys won't tell anyone, will you?

 

[Snoop Puss]

Claire, I was under the impression that the nitrogen in pee was good for the soil. Your dog probably thinks she's doing you a favour!

 

[dgregory]

New Home, New Garden

Just moved into a new home in Devon and it's got a huge back garden that has been uncultivated for the past 8 years. Almost finished grunbbing up the bramble roots and now its march I can begin to think about veg!

New things this year will be Amwerican Land Cress - supposed to be very like water cress but doesn't need running fresh water.

Following last years raging success I'll be doing Thompson and Morgan Oriental Salad Mix and Nich Salad Mix - although quite pricey these were very prolific and self set to grow on through the winter. Rocket of course and I'm dead keen to try loveage - I'm told it has a celery flavour but have yet to find a seed supplier.