I have been reading about your garden experiment for the past two years and have been excited to start my own garden. However, we have lived in an apartment for those years. My wife and I were able to start our first garden this spring since moving into our home in Kentucky. It is about 10 yards long and 1 yards wide (starting small). Things that I have learned over the past month or so:

1) Preparation is key – our home is in a ‘new’ subdivision so all the top soil was taken out when the home was built. We tilled the soil 3 times, adding top soil and compost each time. We put fertilizer (12-12-12) and lime in two of those times as well. Next year, I will probably not use as much fertilizer.

2)Plan out your garden – like you all talked about. This saved a lot of time and hassle when we went to buy our plants/seeds.

3)Plant what you are going to eat – with food prices going up this was key for us (we were shocked when we bought a green bell pepper at for $1.56-ugh).

We planted tomatoes, green bell peppers, cucumbers (plant and seeds), lettuce (butter crisp, iceberg, romaine), green beans, carrots, and broccoli. I know this is ambitious for the space. We are using every square inch.

For our anniversary, my wife bought me a tumbler composer. I am excited to start making my own compost.

Anyway, your picture of the tomatoes is making me anxious for mine to grow bigger. I’m growing about 5 varieties this year. It’s so much fun to try the different types.

My suggestion to new gardeners is to start it off simple. Zuchinni, green beans and tomatoes are so simple and they produce quite a bit in a small area. They also produce nearly all Summer/Fall.

I like purchasing my tomatoes and cukes from a nursery. However, greenbeans, soybeans, zukes and squash are so easy (and fast) to grow by seed. Every year, I take on a couple of different plants, and I have not been disappointed yet.

Hubby and I also planted red raspberry canes when we first moved into our home in late 2007. Last year, we had such a great harvest! We cut ours down to about 1 ft every Fall. We bought some dwarf fruit trees to plant when they were on clearance and look forward to those fruits in the upcoming years.

My biggest problem was that I started too big and had too many expectations in the beginning. Now, I plant only what produces large quantities so I am never disappointed.

I noticed your photo of seed-starting “mini greenhouses”. That kinda stuff can get expensive. We get the same effect using the clear plastic boxes from the produce section and spring clips from Office Depot. Another advantage of the “square foot” approach is that is cuts back the number of seedlings you have to tend…

Can you tell me where the Master Gardener sale is and when? You always mention it here but I cannot find any info.

Thanks,
Charlotte

Heirloom plants are just as productive as others, but usually take a little longer to mature.

These gardening posts are really exciting! Love it.

RE: Aaron #43
Raised beds tend to get warmer faster, allowing you to plant seeds a week or two earlier. You can control the soil quality more easily. And if you happen to live in an area with very thin topsoil (parts of New England for example. The granite bedrock bulges through into my front yard in a couple spots! Average soil depth is less than two feet in my neighborhood) raised beds let you grow vegetables that really need deeper soil. (Most require at least 3 feet to be really happy and productive. You can grow a lot of stuff in shallower soil – container gardening for ex. – but the plants never get as big or productive.)

I have a question for the raised bed gardeners. What are the advantages of building the raised beds? The only things that come to mind for me are: less bending over once the beds are built, and potentially better soil for growing. However, it seems like there would be a lot of additional costs involved.

I started some onions seedlings indoors a few weeks ago and now I’m looking to plan out the next few months to come. So many decisions to make, so little time. I’m going to make a serious attempt at growing more fruit this year (blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherry trees, peach trees) so that should be a good learning experience – especially caring for fruit trees.

What we’ve learned so far:
1)Ho’ing is hard work especially on this dry Texas soil. So next week we’re getting a tiller instead of doing it manually.
2) apparently you have to mix in compost into your garden to get it ready.
3) we didn’t pay attention to the seed package and planted several seeds into each seedling pod. So now we have this cluster of seedlings growing together. Next time we’ll stick to only 2-3 seeds per pod.
4) this is fun

We’re excited to see how our first harvest goes.

Just add the yogurt culture to any pasteurized milk from the store, and let it sit, covered with a cloth, at room temperature until it’s yogurt – about 12-24 hours.

Warming the milk a little first, like to 80 degrees, will help the culture get started multiplying faster. But it’s not necessary.

Don’t get suckered into buying a special yogurt making appliance. The only special equipment you need is a cooking thermometer.

This is my 3rd year of raised bed veggie gardening. It’s amazing how much you can harvest from less than 100 sq ft.

I manually track all costs (except water) and track pounds of produce harvested. That allows me to figure cost a per lb of produce. Water cost is minimal since I largely use laundry water and now captured rain water.

One thing I’ve found is that there is always another capital investment I want to make. 1st year it was cost of beds, soil, compost bin. 2nd year I bought rain barrels, electric fence (skunks and raccoons) and another compost bin. Now its more rain barrels, heat mat, grow light and…well you get the idea. It can add up even when you’re being frugal, e.g., compost bin from garage sale, rain barrels were recycled food containers.

Could you put up a direct link?

Thanks!

There aren’t too many hobbies that you can say that last part about!

Lovely pictures =)

We have a community vegetable growing programme in Singapore.

It is scheme where people living in a housing estate can grow vegetables on a common plot of land and share the profits.

Temperature today was -18 Celsius. Sigh.

#7 – Good idea but you’ll need a whole battery of 4 or more rain barrels to get you through the kind of dry weather that requires you to use supplemental water, based on the experience of my brother and a friend here in a similarly temperate/humid climate. This is expensive if you buy rain barrels, cheap if you use old, clean, grease receptacles that you can obtain from restaurants or other 2nd-hand sources.

https://picasaweb.google.com/aace.2001/Garden2011#

Haven’t decided what to plant yet.

We put in a pair of cross-pollinating Apple trees last year. This year we’re putting in a cherry tree, but that one is self-pollinating so we can just put in one.