What grows in your garden?

[Haggis]

What do you grow?

Do you have a small bed just for fun? Do you have a massive garden to provide for the pantry? Or is your growing space measured in hectares? Or do you just stroll through the Piggly Mart for your consumables?

My Mom and Dad started the Clan’s garden years back to provide for the clan’s larder but mostly for the joy of it. The garden resides over at the family's hunting grounds and we all work together to attend to the produce growing there. It all started with 42 blueberry bushes the size of VW bugs that we were given by a friend of ours that was going out of the U-Pick-It business. We loaded them up on the equipment trailer behind our old International dump truck, the bushes were so big it looked like we were transporting a jungle through the center of town as we passed through. We took them to the hunting grounds, made a fenced in blueberry batch and ever since have had some of the nicest blueberries in the area.

From there over the years that blueberry patch grew into a full scale commune garden. Rows of raspberries, a large bed of strawberries, a full garden with tomatoes, peppers, sweet corn, cabbages, zucchini, cucumbers and finally a large patch of ground for taters. While my parents are the planners and caretakers, the rest of us are the planters, weeders, rock pickers, harvesters, and muscle. My kids spend berry season picking and selling the berries at a road side stand, though usually we have so many berries that they have to be wholesaled so they don’t go to waste. My boy Cameron and my dad spend a lot of the summer on pest control, .22s and shotguns at hand.

Anyway here’s’ some pics of our little plot of vegetable/berry goodness…Let’s see yours!

Mom, Dad and Michelle taking a break from pickin’

A day’s strawberry pickin’ in the back of the Jeep……and even more stuffed in the front with the pickers…

....

Just about done tossing taters out of the ground…

The starchy harvest all ready to go…

......

We than cold store, can and freeze the harvest to feast on over the winter.

 

[12husky]

I am hoping to get a garden started this year. It will probably be just 2 raised beds about 3' x 12'. Growing up, we had a full smorgasbord of roots, melons, squash, berries, etc. We also had fruit trees that the squirrels and therefore my .22 loved. Hopefully ours will grow through the years.

 

[Dean]

Over spring break I will building some raised beds for some "straw bale gardening." Plan is to build a pair of 6'x12'x18" boxes and a pair of smaller 18"x6'x18" boxes. The smaller ones will most likely be for flowers and the larger ones for vegetables. Looking at doing red potatoes, squash, zucchini, tomatoes, and maybe some greens.

 

[scbrian]

We always have some tomatoes. A couple of years ago I had some hot pepper plants. I jarred some them in vinegar. Everybody thought they were good. I usually keep things on the small side but may expand some this year. We have a couple of small raised beds but may not use them this year. I made some upside down tomatoes last year and they turned out great. Probably the best tomato plants we ever had.

 

[Haggis]

We don't have a garden at our house as we are situated just 50' from a trout stream in a holler and surrounded by 6000 acres of PA State Gamelands. Two many bear, 'coons, skunks and deer skulking about that would have to be dealt with to make a garden at home feasible outside of putting up a 8' high sercurity fence. I figure I'm being a good neighbor as I don't tempt the locals into a garden where they would end up become part of the clan's provisions along with the veggies. Having the family garden just makes things better for everyone.

 

[DBlosch]

We don't have a garden at our house as we are situated just 50' from a trout stream in a holler and surrounded by 6000 acres of PA State Gamelands. Two many bear, 'coons, skunks and deer skulking about that would have to be dealt with to make a garden at home feasible outside of putting up a 8' high sercurity fence. I figure I'm being a good neighbor as I don't tempt the locals into a garden where they would end up become part of the clan's provisions along with the veggies. Having the family garden just makes things better for everyone.

Sounds like paradise to me! One day our clan will have a place of similar description. To me, working the land and raising your own food has to be the ultimate way of life.

 

[rangermatt]

My fellow rangers say that i must have been a bear in a prevoius life cuz im always munching on wild edibles and berries when in the field. I love picking wild blueberries and cranberries and have spent many many happy hours bushwacking through new england swamps and old clearcuts in search of berries to add to my pancakes and muffins. Hopefully going to put in a garden this spring once the 3 foot snowpack melts out of the back yard.

 

[Haggis]

I'm a forager too. I'm always stuffing whatever berries are in season down my gullet while I'm triapsing about. Or picking 'hazelnuts, or chicken of the woods, or....

 

[Fowldarr]

Wish I knew more about local berries. We have a lot of choke cherries, but they are not so good right off the bush, but if you can get one of the local tribal members to make you some choke cherry gravy......mmmm.

We have always had a garden, but we are renting our current house, so nothing big will happen. We keep a small herb garden in the kitchen window ( you know those herbs the grocery store charges $8 for a small bottle of dried and processed stuff, you can grow most of that in your kitchen)

We may put out some small containers, but at a minimum we will throw some tomatoes in some buckets, maybe some peppers too. We have to be careful because of the deer, and we live in the middle of town.

 

[Muirist]

This our first attempt at a garden since I was a kid. I wanted to relearn and teach my boys about growing their own food, even in suburbia. I wanted to start simple and I have limited space so I built a simple 8x4x16 raised bed. Took us about 1 hour total to cut and build.

We have some maters, squash, green, red and banana peppers, rosemary, and a few others that I cannot recall, wifey was in charge of choosing the crop and planting them with the boys. We used some potted ones and starting some from seed. The empty area is for the cukes we forgot to get.

I used about 25 CF of topsoil mixed with 5 CF of humus and manure. Cost less than $200 all inclusive. Very simple to build.

If anyone has any good tips, I'm tuned in.

.

 

[Quatermain]

I'm working on a few things around the whole garden. Most of my garden was already planted with non-edibles when I moved in, so I'm working with limited space.

I planted strawberries & celery mixed in with the rose bushes.

I'm also working on getting some berries going: raspberries, blueberries and blackberries.

Planted some fruit trees: peach, guava, passionfruit.

Then I made a 5X3 raised bed out of mortar blocks. Inside are tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, corn and then in the holes of the outer blocks I have herbs.

I'll see how they grow.

So far the easiest thing to grow has been celery. It seems to just grow on its own.

I also try to grow stuff indoors. I get some of my best ideas from Pinterest, like regrowing green onions in water.

 

[Scott C]

We have a 10'x12' garden. Tomatoes,okra,peppers,squash,zuccini,and a few herbs.

 

[JEREMY]

Nice gardens everyone!

Here's a garden I built for my wife for Valentine's Day this year. It's 20'x12' (you can see a separate 8'x16' garden in the background):

I went to a local worm farm and bought a cubic yard of wormy, organic soil for the raised beds. We already had good soil but the extra worms seem to have turbo charged everything:

We have 3, separate gardens on our 1/2 acre lot. Currently growing tomatoes, beans, lettuce, spinach, artichokes, eggplant, strawberries, blueberries... Avocado, orange, plum, cherry and fig trees were planted in the past few months but will likely need another few seasons to mature. Our next door neighbors have bigger plots and more produce. Lots of good meals being eaten.

Sunsets from the garden are the icing on the cake:

 

[TangoBlue]

Wow - that's pretty cool. Location?

 

[JEREMY]

San Diego, CA

 

[Scott C]

Wow, nice garden.

Nice gardens everyone!

Here's a garden I built for my wife for Valentine's Day this year. It's 20'x12' (you can see a separate 8'x16' garden in the background):

I went to a local worm farm and bought a cubic yard of wormy, organic soil for the raised beds. We already had good soil but the extra worms seem to have turbo charged everything:

We have 3, separate gardens on our 1/2 acre lot. Currently growing tomatoes, beans, lettuce, spinach, artichokes, eggplant, strawberries, blueberries... Avocado, orange, plum, cherry and fig trees were planted in the past few months but will likely need another few seasons to mature. Our next door neighbors have bigger plots and more produce. Lots of good meals being eaten.

Sunsets from the garden are the icing on the cake:

 

[BoldAdventure]

I kind of missed the good portion of the Florida growing season, but my wife and I have two worm composting stations we built this winter and we're planning on growing a number of things come next winter. Anyone have livestock with their garden? We have a neighbor with chickens.

 

[Jeff]

Are you ready? I have a 10' X 16' green house I built for the wife. All hydroponics. All my design. Three zones, one drip, one constant flow and one ebb and flow.
And here we go:

Jeff

 

[Grumps]

Wow Jeff, that is amazing.

-Andy

 

[Jeff]

Thank you very much. Now that all the kids are gone, I live by the motto, " when the Queen is happy, the Kingdom is happy"
You know what I mean?
Jeff