You know you're a redneck if (aka let's start a garden discussion)

[Mrs. Krabappel]

If you come home from work and your chickens are perching on your 'tater tires. (from last spring)

The temperatures have perked up a bit and I'm thinking about the garden. I've been too ambitious the last couple of years. I planted by looking through seed catalogs and ordering "pretty" or "yummy." Overall, I've not had a good year yet.

This year I'm trying to be smarter. I want to plant what will thrive and what I would pay too much for at the market. This rules out carrots, taters, squash, and others.

I think I'm going to focus on greens, but I also want to plan things that fruit.


Anybody dreaming about spring? What are you planting this year? Making any big changes from other years?

 

[henkmeuzelaar]

(You know you're a redneck if)

you come back from the garbage dump with more stuff in the back of your truck than you drove up with.

(sorry, but that's as close to gardening/harvesting as my brown thumb gets

Henk

PS: My apologies for misunderstanding the direction of this discussion; I thought it was just another redneck joke thread as I had no idea that Heart.com has such an impressive horticultural division!
I hope y'all burn your garden wastes in an environmentally green and efficient way though

 

[szmaine]

Oh, I don't know Kath, looks to me like you're going to end up building a redneck joke thread with that title.
You might want to change it.....

We grow a bit of everything because we have the space I love potatoes -we grow 3 40ft rows of various varieties.
We had a terrific year last year with cauliflower and broccoli - they are relatively expensive at the store and freeze very well if you have the space.

How big is your garden?
Nice chickens - I get eggs from a coworker - nothing beats fresh eggs. I want my own one of these days.

 

[bogydave]

Not thinking about spring yet
but will in 2 months.

 

[wahoowad]

I want to grow onions this year but don't know how

 

[bogydave]

buy some onion sets, stick'm in some soil

 

[szmaine]

Not thinking about spring yet
but will in 2 months.

Man, that is gorgeous I mean it, I gonna look again tomorrow when I have a bigger screen available.

I'd like to do some raised beds nearer to the house - a little kitchen garden with herbs.


Onions need lots of water. We suck at onions, I don't know why.

 

[begreen]

Not thinking about spring yet
but will in 2 months.

Fantastic growing space. Do you have some outside shots?

 

[begreen]

If you come home from work and your chickens are perching on your 'tater tires. (from last spring)

The temperatures have perked up a bit and I'm thinking about the garden. I've been too ambitious the last couple of years. I planted by looking through seed catalogs and ordering "pretty" or "yummy." Overall, I've not had a good year yet.

This year I'm trying to be smarter. I want to plant what will thrive and what I would pay too much for at the market. This rules out carrots, taters, squash, and others.

I think I'm going to focus on greens, but I also want to plan things that fruit.


Anybody dreaming about spring? What are you planting this year? Making any big changes from other years?

Yep, cleaned out the herb beds and starting to fertilize them. I was going to start some plants today, but setting up the flicker nest box took all afternoon. We will have seeds starting by next weekend for sure. Still harvesting lettuce and greens from the greenhouse. We also got some arugula, mache and carrots from outside beds.

 

[btuser]

I'm scared I won't finish my inside projects before March. I was thinking about starting some seeds in Feb.

 

[Mrs. Krabappel]

I forgot to mention that BeGreen is not allowed to post and make the rest of us mortals feel inferior. ;-) Then Dave posts those insane greenhouse pics. Nice

I have 3 8x4x8 raised beds, though I may let the chickens keep their favorite one. At some point I will build more, but it probably won't be this year. I also love potatoes and loved growing/harvesting them. The tater tires were a bust though. Broccoli and cauliflower are a good idea. I've done okay with the broc. I love early sweet peas but anything sweet and trellised gets snarfed by the chickens.


Re: the flicker nest. I worked a job studying wildlife response to snag density. I had a camera on a telescopic pole that peered into cavities. Fun stuff! Though that set-up was heavy and awkward to carry through the woods. And the snag data collection was tedious. Anyway, flicker nests always had a pretty big clutch. I did some research and found out that in one study they kept removing eggs as the female laid. She ultimately laid 71 eggs in 73 days :bug: In another study they tested the egg composition and found them the energy density to be among the lowest.

 

[bogydave]

Not thinking about spring yet
but will in 2 months.

Fantastic growing space. Do you have some outside shots?

The one pic was outside. 1 with tomatoes & cucs was in the green house.
Grand kids growing as fast as the garden.

 

[bogydave]

One more pic of my moose fence.
I found that moose won't jump over raspberries so i planted them all the way around the garden.

 

[bogydave]

OK ~*~Kathleen~*~
I had a trace of cabin fever.
Now you got me thinking about Spring 2 months early.
My "Cabin Fever" temperature is getting higher.
I'm going outside for a walk in the freezing cold to get my mind off Spring &
back where it should be, 2-1/2 months left of lovely winter weather, ground hog or not. LOL

 

[Mrs. Krabappel]

:lol: no regrets. Thanks for sharing the pics.

 

[begreen]

Outstanding Dave and very impressive for AK. Nothing like 20 hrs of sunshine to keep those plants working. I'm surprised the moose fence works. Down here the deer would happily munch right through it.

Kath, lots of good gardeners here on Hearth.com, I'm an amateur in comparison. And we still don't have chickens.

Interesting to hear about the flickers. I got the nest box up today. Now if I can just keep those pesky starlings away from it.

 

[nate379]

Couple years ago I tried doing a garden at the house. Damn moose pretty much ate everything.

 

[wahoowad]

bogydave (and anybody else),

what is that black material called you put down between rows? Is that to control weeds? My garden is in the middle of a large grass field and I get a LOT of grass growing in my garden. I try to pull up the clumps to keep them from competing for water/nutrients but it can be a continual battle. I'm wondering if I should consider using something like the plastic to snuff it out?

 

[btuser]

Last November I picked up over 200' of bridge curbing so I could re-work the garden beds. I ordered another 5 trees for this Spring (2 plum, 1 peach and 2 3-in-1 cherry) I have NO IDEA where I'm going to plant. I've got plans for another shed on my desktop. STOP IT! YOU PEOPLE ARE STRESSING ME OUT

 

[RNLA]

Does anyone here have a fabulous idea for raised bed construction that would be readily available for me or that I could do myself, IE: concrete walls or the like? I have a good size space to put in some raised beds and would like to get some good ideas. Sorry Kathleen, I'm not trying to high jack your thread I just want to ask the pros here, the pictures I have seen of the gardens say "you know what your doing". Oh yeah I forgot "you might be a redneck"! :smirk:

 

[JustWood]

Does anyone here have a fabulous idea for raised bed construction that would be readily available for me or that I could do myself, IE: concrete walls or the like? I have a good size space to put in some raised beds and would like to get some good ideas. Sorry Kathleen, I'm not trying to high jack your thread I just want to ask the pros here, the pictures I have seen of the gardens say "you know what your doing". Oh yeah I forgot "you might be a redneck"! :smirk:

If you realLEE wanna go redneck style try junked out chest freezers or refrigerators on their side. The insulation keeps the dirt warm and the heigth keeps stuff off the ground where frost starts.
Recycling and they work great

 

[RNLA]

Ha, LEE you crack me up! I do not think my wife would go for that. I also would be driven out by the nieghbors they have a realee nice garden and yard.

 

[burr]

Did you say focus on greens ? These are collards, photo from november, and I'm still picking batches weekly. Hope to harvest until early spring, just before preparing ground for summer garden. They were planted ('Georgia collards') Sept or so, after the summers' garden was totally fried. Last season, we had another summer that was hot and dry.

By the way, we've had one of the harshest winters I can remember and these babies were laid out flat on the ground more than once. Course after a couple days in this region, it's back into the 60s (or even 70s) and they recover and continue to produce.

 

[bogydave]

bogydave (and anybody else),

what is that black material called you put down between rows? Is that to control weeds? My garden is in the middle of a large grass field and I get a LOT of grass growing in my garden. I try to pull up the clumps to keep them from competing for water/nutrients but it can be a continual battle. I'm wondering if I should consider using something like the plastic to snuff it out?

I think it's called "landscape fabric"
It lets water thru.
I was 30" wide & staked up as a fence along the road where some construction was done to.
I saw it wasn't picked up after construction was done& gone, about 300 feet, so I scarfed it up. (I scrounge, more than just firewood)

 

[bogydave]

Does anyone here have a fabulous idea for raised bed construction that would be readily available for me or that I could do myself, IE: concrete walls or the like? I have a good size space to put in some raised beds and would like to get some good ideas. Sorry Kathleen, I'm not trying to high jack your thread I just want to ask the pros here, the pictures I have seen of the gardens say "you know what your doing". Oh yeah I forgot "you might be a redneck"! :smirk:

I use 2X10s at an angle now now, at 1st, I made some square with 2X8s, 2X6s. Found the 2X10 to be right depth to be able to rotate crops.
Now I like the pyramid base ones, I can lift them up easy & they stay so I can add more compost when needed, hold moisture better, sun angle heats them better.
Easy to make, get 2 say 12' 2X10s, cut a piece of 1/2" plywood at the shape wanted & nail it to the ends. some 30" at bottom 22" at the top for beds, some
18" bottom 10" top for rows, various lengths. Cut one sidewall out of an old tire & turn inside out.
Lay them in the garden, I fill them with 100% compost.
I'm experimenting with a solar heated one, using GH plastic for the sides. I get a few degree warmer soil, good for some crops.
Some painted black to see if I can get soil temps warmer, some plane wood. (not much difference in the soil but heat radiate to the plants in the evening does it help ?? dont know
You can see there are lots of ways to go. Some use 1" thick wood sides with 2X2 in the corners. **Just don't use treated wood, the chemicals are toxic & leech into the soil**