I had a request from my friend Steve that I ask my readers to share their vegetable garden ideas and solutions to their individual problems. I thought that was a great idea.
Send pictures to jughandle@jughandlesfatfarm.com and I’ll post them as they arrive.
Gardens
No better way to make sure your food is exactly how you’d want it to be than to grow your own, or rise your own livestock for that matter. Gardens can be all shapes and sizes. They can be planted in the ground, in containers, in raised beds, on roofs, flower boxes, old wheel borrows, concrete blocks etc, etc. I know some of our readers even manage their own bee hives too. This is GREAT stuff people. I love this idea.
Brown thumb
I must admit that I have a brown thumb. Try as I must, year after year, I always have some kind of problem that makes my crops less bountiful than I wish they were. To be honest, I’m going to use your ideas to boost my crop yield.
Things I’d like to know
- How important is the soil?
- What kind of amendments should I add to my soil?
- What kind of vegetables should I try to grow in the North Atlanta area?
- How close should my tomatoes be?
- What kind of support should I use for my vines?
- How much sun should I have on tomatoes, beans, squash, broccoli?
- Should I protect my garden from my free range chickens, local rabbits, chipmunks, etc, if so how?
- When and with what should I fertilize?
No Dig Vegetable Garden
To start things off, I’ll offer a find on the net about a no dig garden and how to build it.
That should get the ball rolling. Please help us all answer these and other lingering garden questions and God knows, please send pictures. – jughandle
3 comments
We built some raised beds last year and had decent beginner’s luck. Nothing did as well as we would have liked but just enough to get us hooked on gardening. We just has 2 cubic yards of compost delivered last week and added it to our soil. A few things we will be doing different this year: A lot of our tomatoes split open last year and one of our horticulturist friends said it was from uneven/sporadic watering, so this year we are going to add a simple drip irrigation line through them. I also read that a good organic fertilizer for tomatoes is to dig a one foot deep hole when you plant and put a fish head in the hole, then cover with several inches of soil, add some crushed egg shells and then plant the tomato plant. The fish head decomposes over the summer and fertilizes the plant, the egg shells add calcium. Apparently the depth keeps the fish from smelling. We also read that you can crush red pepper and put it in a little bit of water and spray it on your tomato and bell pepper plants right as they bloom/before fruit appears, and the pepper will deter insects. Basil should be planted beside tomatoes to repel pests and insects and to add flavor (they are companion plants). We planted our tomatoes and bell pepper plants 2-3′ apart. I dont know of that is the right way, but we didn’t run into any problems with that last year. Our carrots were small and deformed last year so I don’t think we will try those again. Our leaf lettuce did really well in pots last spring and then I moved them to the shade when it got warmer and they lasted well into the summer.
We just doubled our raised bed space for this year and we are adding more plant variety….the problem is we want to grow everything. 🙂 We are adding a trellis structure for cucumbers and zucchini this year that I designed for Mason to play under and I did a low planter besithat he trellis for red potatoes …. so that is Mason’s section in the garden. I think he will enjoy digging in the dirt to find the potatoes. I have had fun trying to think of ways to get him involved in gardening so he will understand where food comes from. We trade a lot with our neighbors on both sides of us too so gardening has added another fun level to community. We are addicted to gardening now, we have SO much to learn, but that keeps it interesting.
Thank you Heather for the great response to our Gardening post. Your thoughts and ideas are great and I for one will take them into consideration when planting this year. Love the ideas to get Mason involved and also the trading with your neighbors lets all of you try different things. I’m having a hard time trying to decide what to plant this year too. So many choices.
Ain’t it fun?
Jughandle
salutations from over the sea. excellent post I shall return for more.