Garden dayFollow

No chance of spaghetti squash being grown, mostly on account of my disdain for all things squash and zuchini. I will be growing walla walla sweet onions and elephant garlic though too. forgot about them for a while.

Not much to tell yet on the other front. I've been working out some to get in better shape, and I've signed up for several local singles thingies. Probably going to try the online dating thing too. I've found the whole "me vs. the world" by myself bit is kinda lonely after a while. So yeah. That.

I'm pulling for you, dude. Just stay out of gaming forums.

Amen. Them chicks be batshit crazy!

Don't plant in rows. Divide the garden into 1 ft squares and then depending on how much space each plant, divide each sq. into smaller squares. Sq. Foot Gardening Rules! Instead of one long bed, you make 4'x4'x6" or smaller, boxes that can be moved about if you want to. Put ground cover underneath to prevent weeds. Since it doesn't have soil and compost should have no weed seeds in it, you shouldn't have to do a lot of weeding. I love gardening, but hate trying to stay ahead of the weeds.

While Ari's recipe for soil less gardening sounds good, there is a faster way to do much the same. It's called Mel's Mix and is made up of equal parts peat moss, compost (need to start with several different sources until you get your own compost bed going.) and Vermiculite.

Then each time you plant something add some more compost and it will never need additional fertilizer.

That's about all you really need to know from Mel Bartholomew's book, which he sells from his web site. I have the book, but yet to get Jonwin to build me the raise beds and spend money on the ingredients for Mel's Mix.

I did a no-dig elevated garden last year. It was small, and only marginally successful. It was a really crappy growing season here though - everyone's gardens kind of flopped.

My lettuce did the best, tomatos ok, beans and peppers grew but didn't yeild much fruit, and the peas never came up at all - don't know if I had bad seeds or there just wasn't enough substrate for them to take hold.

Anyway, I plan to do a regular tilled garden this year.

I've always kept an herb garden though - separate from veggie garden. I like to keep it close to the house, for both convienence and to help dissuade would be munchers from moving in. Critters like herbs. If I cut them back and bundle them up for the winter, the hardier ones will come back year to year.

Good luck:)

My tips? Try lots of stuff and see what works. Ask questions when it doesn't. But it sounds like Kaolian is on that path anyhow.

I have done nothing in the garden yet this year. However, I am madly giving away avocados setting up trade routes as one of my neighbors calls it for all their citrus.

The peaches are doing great and should be ready in May. The plum tree is just flowering now, which is normal. Also doing great and our bee situation seems better then last year at this point, meaning we have more. My lemon bush is doing OK but they are just now ripening. Not much on it. And the black raspberry vine I trained over our garden arch last year seems to be fruiting. I never paid much attention to it last time so we'll see.

Tomatoes, onions and chives are definitely going in.

Here's an idea you might want to think about for your herb garden.

Why not combine two hobbies?

The one thing that would make me nervous about that would be the sentance "in which you know precisely what is going into the food you eat" since that would consist mainly of Fish ****.I actually do something quite similar to that with the existed planted tank, just not with edible foods. If I had a basement and more yard space, I'd probably think about it anyways though. Set up the main show tank and the indoor sump, then run a line from the indoor sump through the UV sterilizers to an outdoor aquaponics setup stocked with freshwater shrimp, clams, and smallmouth bass, floating mass of plants on the top, treat the whole thing as a big filtration getup, the UV steralizers would seperate any potential diseases.I may do that someday anyways when I get a bigger tank. I have space for a 260 gallon right now, just need to find a cheap good condition acrylic tank with a stand. Temperature regulation would be the key issue. Might have to set a system cutoff valve to the outer pond if the temperature goes above or below a set point.

"Water? I never drink the stuff. Fish fark in it!"

A primary ingredient in most fertilizers is urea. As in urine. Which is so effective that we artificially manufacture about a hundred million tons of it annually.

So instead of fish ****, you can use factory manufactured pee.

Every summer my mom and I used to can vegetables and make jam, jelly and chutney. GOD that was hot work.

Kao,



Stay away from watermellons. The size of the garden you're planning isn't big enough, they vine all over the place.

Also break down and buy a tumbler composter.

Other than that just make sure you've got a good watering system.