We're Going to Try an Heirloom Garden This Year

We're going to try our first garden this year. I'm sure we will have many failures, but our goal is to be able to eat healthier, reduce our food costs, and have a sustainable source of seeds because we're paranoid fools. :|

We're looking at planting the following:

• Tendersweet carrots
• Piatta d'Italia onions
• Walla Walla Sweet nions
• Di Cicco broccoli
• Catskill Brussels Sprouts
• Charleston Wakefiled Cabbage
• Early Tuscan Cauliflower
• Dwarf Long Green Pod okra
• California Black Eye Cowpea
• Jalapeno peppers
• A "sweet pepper" collection
• Connecticut field pumpkins
• Argenteiul Asparagus
• Jesi Caulifllower

I know we want carrots this year, as they take two years to produce seeds.

Experienced gardeners, which of these are the hardest to grow, and which are the easiest?

Also, I have a source of horse manure. Am I ok spreading it out now, and then just tilling it into the dirt?

No tomatos?

You know, I thought I had included those. I didn't. Yes - tomatoes.

No habanero? for shame.

We had tomatoes and peppers and our last house. We bought this new place and it's 2 acres so that we can have a large garden.

I have this soil sample drawn and I'm hoping to go to the extension to have it tested within the next couple of weeks.

We're wanting to have about a 40' x 40' garden. I have a gasoline powered tillee of good size.

We got a few thousand clay pots with the house (old owner who died was a botanist). We are going to start a lot of things indoors.


Any thoughts based on my feedback?

I haven't been very successful with gardening, but may try again this Spring. I would love to do chickens, which for some reason is illegal in Boston. I would need to patch some fence gaps, and figure out how to protect against cats and critters, but fresh eggs are fucking unreal.

Indeed. We hope to do chickens as well. We'll free range them too (well, in those movable cages), and I imagine my yard will do well. The law in our town states that they can't bother neighbors. Given our situation (lot with a forest on all sides) I'd say we'll be ok there.

Here's a good link for coop designs...including tractor coops.

http://www.backyardchickens.com/atype/2/Coops

I've been bugging The Warden for some chickens for a while now...but she won't budge. I did get her to agree to a couple of bee hives though.

With regards to gardens, I built a raised bed, and it worked phenominally. We had 27 straight days of rain early in the summer, and not only did our garden survive where others in the area didn't, it thrived.

I used these instructions to build it here.

ETA: a pic of the garden I built. That was early on with just the strawberries. I had mostly tomatos in the other sections and a zuccini plant. Now those sections have rye and vetch for winter cover. I'm going to build another one or two for next year.

That looks nice. How long do you reckon the wood will last?

I'm currently building compost bins out of the 400 concrete blocks that were stacked on the property and will be basing my compost on 2/5 horse manure, 2/5 leaves, and 1/5 table scraps.

I reckon that I could build some raised beds out of concrete blocks too. They'd never rot. *thinks*

I used treated lumber, so it should last a few years at least. But this design makes it easy to replace a board here or a stake there as they wear out.

But if you want to do something similar with concrete, be sure you allow for drainage, or else you'll drown anything you plant.

As long as you don't have a rooster, the neighbors shouldn't complain. Hens are pretty quiet.

Are you worried about the treated lumber leaching chemicals?

I looked into it, but it turns out that I would have to eat something like 20 pounds of veggies a day out of that bed for 100 years before I suffered any ill effects. Plus I think they've stopped using arsenic to treat lumber anyway, so

WTF is an "heirloom" garden? You mean a vegetable garden? As opposed to a flower garden? Quit talkin' with such fancy, high-falutin' words!

"heirloom garden" Sounds like you'll be growing knick-nacks for the antiques store or something...

"Heirloom" vegetables (and flowers for that matter) are generally considered to be non-hybrids. Almost all of those vegatable plants you buy at your local garden center are hybrids, and most hybrids either won't go beyond the current generation or will have weaker and weaker following generations. In other words, you can't harvest the seeds and plant them for next year. *

With Heirlooms, you can harvest the seeds and plant them again.

...Plus, a lot of people thing heirlooms taste better.

So by "Heirloom garden", Apostle means he wants a garden that he can harvest the seeds from to plant over and over again.

* an exception to this rule is Roma Tomatos, which are hybrids that are capable of being multi-generational.

I tried a couple of tomato plants a couple years ago but the squirrels in my area are freakin' rapacious.

I missed this part.

When you're talking about table scraps, you'll just want to stick to vegetable matter. Meat type stuff will attact varments. Also, you can throw all kinds of crazy stuff in there besides scraps. Tea bags, cotton rags, dryer lint (dryer lint???!?) yes, dryer lint...used paper towels, coffe grounds and filters...the list goes on and on. Just remember to turn it occasionally.

Yeah, I'm planning on turning it about every three weeks, and having there "bays."

Is three weeks appropriate?

I should think so. We need Aena and Oldfella in here. They know way more about this stuff than I do.

Come one @Aenea and @oldfella1962!

3 weeks sounds good on the turning. Make sure you put paper goods in as it helps everything to break down. Yes put manure down work it in and water it. Otherwise when you put in unseasoned manure you burn your veggies. Same thing with alfalfa hay.

We have the plastic and wood around a bed (see pic) but that's basically because it is between a sidewalk and the house. I don't know how it would stand up to a lot of dirt pressure. GO WITH a raised bed. Put in one, then put in more next year. Live with one first. See how your space flows before doing another.

Several of those veggies are pick every day varieties and with that many are you really up for spending at least an hour a day in the garden? Is your back? I would say pick 4 or 5 and build in more veggies every year.

I wish our damn tomatoes would ripen . We took for granted every other year our tomatoes ripening but the last three years they haven't. We couldn't blame it on the drought this year.

The squirrels enjoyed our tomatoes a lot this last year. :|

Anna, we built a raised garden at our last house and it worked well. However, at this house, which we will be at for a long time, we want to work to improve the soil quality. It is two acres and I literally want to, over the next ten years, bring in and compost tons of material (with onsite organic material too) - starting with the garden area.

I talked to one of the neighbors and he said the old man had a few good garden spots that he rotated. He'd garden them for three years and then plant stuff for his goats to eat (he had goats in town). I'm thinking that those goats helped the soil quite a bit. Plus, the old man was a botanist with a floral shop, an onsite greenhouse (we still have all the glass for that, but not the frame :/).

My question to you is, with these goals in mind, and with the history of the property (and I'm in the process of getting the soil testing done if you can count "I just emailed my extension agent!" in the process)... are we stupid for not using raised beds?

Raised beds cut down on weeding sooooooooooooo much. It makes gardening more enjoyable to not have to weed in the heat. But think about where you want it over the winter, put out some stakes and string and see if that area will really work in your space. Make sure you put a small herb/veggie garden outside your back door. Then have a bigger one further out.

Along with that one raised bed put in a more traditional garden as well. See how you like it.

edit: improving your soil is a good thing to do whether or not you use it for a garden or not.

Thanks for all the input.

Regarding improving the soil, I will talk to the extension agent. If I want to improve outside the garden area, do I spread the compost on top of the ground once it is ready, or do I have to somehow work it in? I've never done this before.

According to "ask this old house" you should rent a soil aerator then spread on top.

So gardening threads are allowed in here now? My, how times have changed. I may visit more often...

Why is it always squirrels? (Except when it’s tomato borers. Haven’t seen them out here, but they’re rampant in NY/NJ.)

Thought I’d try a little patch of lettuces for the rainy season. Mulched ‘em with cedar chips to discourage the few bugs that survived the cool evenings, and they were flourishing. Went out one morning a couple of weeks ago and some *&^%$#@! varmint had eaten them right down to the soil…almost. Left a couple of leaves with teeth marks on ‘em as a signature so I’d know who’d done it.