How does your Garden Grow?

A few months ago, we were discussing different gardening ideas. I previously had a garden for 10 years, also grew up with a garden my whole life. A divorce changes a lot. My previous house a had a 15'X 15' garden, tiller the whole works and had a lot of room for many veggies. Now that I am renting and have a decent sized yard, I wnet with above ground garden bed, which is 4'x4'x8" purchased at Lowe's for about $80.




I did overload it. I went with a variety of tomatoes, two cucumbers, one zucchini, one cherry tomato, a pack of Bush beans, banana peppers, and two yellow peppers. I also tried Romaine lettuce and never grew it before. I researched the lettuce and it went to seed early? It went up to about almost 3' tall. Lettuce experts out there for input?
I know I overloaded the garden to start, I usually get 3 to 5 picks on my beans(they had room), I will say the drought did them in, I got 2 picks. I will try and post a pick later, the camera is in Disney at the moment.
My tomatoes are coming in nicely now, the cucs and zucs have been since July along with the banana peppers
My girlfriend moved some of my plum tomatoes into a separate planter for flowers(3'x2'x 4")...ugh, never again.

For those looking to garden in the future,Do Not use small flower planters ever! My first tip. from experience. They are not deep enough and you can not post stake anything that grows tall, you need a good 8" depth for many plants. For those renting as myself, the pre-fab kits are very easy and cost about $80.. I needed 11 40lb. bags top soil and 1 horse manure to fill it.(Soil only $2 per bag)

The whole operation cost me about $100, about another $20/30 for plants already started from a nursery.
You can go even way cheaper! Buy two 1"x 10x 8'' no chemical treated boards, cut them in Home Depot/Lowe's to 4' sections, add in a pack of 3/4" wood screws and one piece of lattice and you have a garden. I would also add 8 L-brackets to secure the sides better. For apartments, you can buy at Home Depot their 5 gallon buckets cheap and have a few tomatoes to grow. If you have a friend in the Construction industry(paint and spackle buckets), you can get the buckets for free, just make sure they rinse them out and poke a few holes in the bottom for drainage.

I'll leave you with a simple zucchini recipe for a side dish. 1 zucchini, 1 16oz. can diced tomato, 1 box sliced mushrooms(I like baby bellas), 1 onion if you like, parm cheese and mozzarella, bread crumbs kosher salt and cracked pepper, olive oil.
Saute' zucchini(sliced) and mushrooms,onions in oil until soft, add diced tomato.Transfer to greased(Pam) baking dish and mix with cheese. top with parm, crumbs and more mozzarella. Bake 350 for 30 minutes.
To cut time, just saute' and add tomatoes!
Enjoy!

I may be wrong here but I have found that if you use too much fertilizer
you have the tendency to make the plant grow too fast.
I did this with some of my tomatoes and they got to be about 7 feet,.with little fruit.
and my other varieties are providing lots of tomatoes that had a much less fertilization at planting.

If you're doing above-ground beds with limited space, check out the "Square Foot Gardening" methods. Some nice PBS videos and a book that's geared toward beginners and pros.

Lettuce going to seed early is usually because it's too hot. Lettuce is a cold-weather crop, and too much heat makes it bolt early. You can still grow it when it's hot if you keep it moist and shaded, [it's a hassle!] or just plant a bunch and harvest it as soon as it's a couple inches tall. Don't pull them up, but cut them instead, and they'll grow back for a 2nd or 3rd crop.

reply to post by SuperManny


Thank You, had it open sun light with a slight drought. I figured it was the culprit.

Great thread s& f for you
I have raised beds out the front, using bessa blocks (the holes in the bricks can be used too) and dug in gardens out the back. It's cold and slow this year (out the back, East) and had to replant for seedlings instead of straight into the ground. The front (West) is booming though.
Pumpkin, Rock Melon and watermelon went into the chook pen (with a wire cage over the top), seems if I ignore them they flourish in there.
We are absolutely hanging out to eat the bananas in the yard, Lady Finger, we haven't had bananas since the cyclones. At $18/kg we eat other fruit thanks.
The no dig gardens you can have anywhere you want, absolutely fabulous. Using old tin off roofing material is good too. Recycle guys it's heaps cheaper and grow your own where ever you are.
A tip...Don't use straight horse manure for fertilizing, grass is a real problem (I'm sure some of you knew that, but) I seem to learn the hard way sometimes. My mother-in-law put's it in a 44 gallon drum fills with water then lets it rot, solids sink, and she uses the water off the top.
Always cover your mouth and nose with a cloth when dealing with dry chook poo too, it is not healthy for you.

I'm even thinking of approaching our retirement/elderly hospice to help organize them, to grow some vegies, they should grow some too, makes no sense to me that they don't. My husband works there on an extension at the moment, and quite often this same little old man tries to escape and go for a walk. They're well looked after but I don't think they get much, a garden is a great way for that to happen.

Originally posted by mugger
A few months ago, we were discussing different gardening ideas. I previously had a garden for 10 years, also grew up with a garden my whole life. A divorce changes a lot. My previous house a had a 15'X 15' garden, tiller the whole works and had a lot of room for many veggies. Now that I am renting and have a decent sized yard, I wnet with above ground garden bed, which is 4'x4'x8" purchased at Lowe's for about $80.









I'll leave you with a simple zucchini recipe for a side dish. 1 zucchini, 1 16oz. can diced tomato, 1 box sliced mushrooms(I like baby bellas), 1 onion if you like, parm cheese and mozzarella, bread crumbs kosher salt and cracked pepper, olive oil.
Saute' zucchini(sliced) and mushrooms,onions in oil until soft, add diced tomato.Transfer to greased(Pam) baking dish and mix with cheese. top with parm, crumbs and more mozzarella. Bake 350 for 30 minutes.
To cut time, just saute' and add tomatoes!
Enjoy!

Yum! that sounds lovely, will try that.

Here's a variation we have sometimes.
All your mentioned vegies, with fresh tomatos instead,go one layer at a time drizzle Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar, salt pepper Thyme (fresh) then layer again and again until all vegies used. Bake with a lid on.
We sometimes add squash too....YUM. Very refreshing non heavy side dish.

Great. I love reading about other people's green thumb. It's becoming a lost art.

I live in Middle Georgia, South Eastern United States.

My garden is about 15X15. Rows east to west. Started from seed. Complete with rain catch.

This year i grew squash (Yellow and Green), Carrots, Brocholli, Corn, Peppers (Red and Green), Peas, Beans, Watermelon, Tomatoes (Cherry and Hybrid), and Okra.

The garden was planted with the idea that the taller plants (Corn, Okra, Beans) would provide shade for the plants closer to the ground.

The heat this year burned my brocholli and forced my lettuce to bolt very early. After this happened to my brocholli and lettuce, i shaded my tomatoes, peppers, and watermelon.

The shade is made of bent bamboo poles, about 5 ft. in the middle, with supports throughout molded into a bamboo tunnel. I then covered the bamboo frame with a sheer white curtain. When finished, it looks like a covered wagon, and the white shear curtain provides just enough shade to keep the plants VERY happy.

As an experiment, i left a few tomato plants out of the shade just so i could have a control. The tomatoes and peppers without shade have suffered through the heat, barely producing at all. The plants under the shades are BOOMING.

The squash, okra, peas, and beans all just keep giving and giving, Georgia heat and all. The tomatoes and peppers are starting to ripen and the watermelons are about as big as a man's head.

The rain catch was built using an old blue rubbermaid trash can, tapped with an outdoor water spigot (sealed with JB weld), and a soaker hose running the length of the rows.

The rain catch works GREAT!....I positioned it at the corner of my lawn mower shed and built a gutter off of each side of the shed roof emptying into the catch, with a screen over top to keep debris from the water....After a good rain, it's overflowing with fresh water, about 40 gallons.

I'm getting ready to replant alot of my leafy greens in the next few weeks, and hope to get a little more goodness out of it before the seasons over.

Great thread.

We tried something different this year in the garden since my tiller broke We made a laayered garden and its been the best producing garden I have ever grown!

Its really so simple that I had serious doubts that it would work but here's how its done.

~Mow your grass short.
~Cover the area you want to be a veggie garden with flat/opened cardboard boxes. Newspaper works just as good if you use several sheets.
~Cover boxes with some wood chips just enough to barely cover the cardboard.
~ Pile leaves on next at least 3 inches deep but if you have a lot of leaves pile them up to 10 inches deep.
~Cover leaves with some straw or grass clippings just so you cant see leaves.
~Water

Now all you have to do is wait about 3 weeks and all of this will break down and start turning to soil very quickly. Then you are ready to plant and you never once had to pick up a shovel.

Our garden is producing large perfect sized tomatoes, peppers, water melons, cucumber and zucchini and I will NEVER ROTO TILL AGAIN!!!!!!

PS the small garden I planted where we had used a shovel to turn the soil is doing very poorly and we have only gotten 3 tomatoes off of 9 plants