RL: My First Vegetable Garden

[wade moore]

As said in the General Forum when it happened, I bought a house in August of 2004. It is an older home (built in 1930) but it is in Williamsburg, VA and on a 1/2 an acre of land. I have some small farmland around me (plots of like 2 acres, etc) and a neighbor on one side.

Anyway, there were several pluses to buying the house - one of which is we wanted room to have a vegetable garden. This is something that my father did when I was growing up, but since I did not live with him I only had minimal exposure and something that my g/f (Robyn from here out in this story) had never done before at all. We have done flowers on many occasions, but never vegetables.

So, this will log my adventure in attempting to grow a vegetable garden and a strawberry garden. I hope it serves several purposes including just logging my efforts, getting adviced from those who are experienced, and giving advice to those who may be interested in doing this themselves down the road.

I would welcome any and all feedback/questions. I'm looking to learn as much as I can from this adventure, so any input you have on where I went wrong/right would be great.

[wade moore]

PICKING THE PLOT LOCATION:

My lot has a lot of trees over most of it. However, at the back of my lot there is an area that is just open grass area. Just behind that, is one of the smaller farming areas (probably just about 1/4 of an acre really) owned by someone else. This seemed like the perfect spot as it gets the most sunlight by far of anywhere on our land.

You can see from this picture, taken in May 2005, how everything is shaded along the side of the house until it opens up to sunlight in the back:



So. We had an additional problem. There was a MESS of what used to be a rose garden 10 years ago before the last owner moved in and completely neglected it. From what we saw there was roses, some bulbs, some kind of vine, and who knows what else in there. You can sort of see it in the back of the above photo and here is a closeup taken at the same time (May 2005):



So, in February to use this spot and make it a bit larger. Note: Obviously it was not quite overgrown like this at the time, because it was winter so the greenery was not there, but I failed to take a picture because I hadn't thought about the dynasty then.

[wade moore]

CLEARING OUT THE PLOT:

So, we start digging in. We first start by cutting back all of the bushes, etc. that were there to make it more manageable. We quickly realized a big obstacle that was going to make this job much tougher than we anticipated. Whatever the vine was that we saw, was out of control. It had grown itself throughout the entire plot, woven inches below the soil, etc, etc. So we actually spent several days just bent over literally ripping vines out of the soil. It was a complete nightmare and would make my back hurt for an entire week afterwards. Some of the vines stretched 5-10 feet away from the plot even. It was just a mess.

The other major obstacle (which again, I wish I had a picture of) was that they had bordered cinder blocks on two sides (the short side) of the plot and bricks on the other two sides. Doesn't seem like a big deal at first, except that cinder blocks were buried on their side, with about an inch or two above the surface. So there was about 10" of cinder block buried in the ground. To add to this nightmare, they had planted several things inside the cinder blocks. So, there were several that had largish (relatively speaking) trunks and root structures growing through the cinder block. In particularly, I believe one was a Rose of Sharon. Anyway, so that menat digging 10" into the dirt around these things to pry them out. There were probably about 10-15 cinder blocks in total, with 4-5 having things growing through them. The ones with items growing through them were particularly difficult to dig out. In fact, some of the root structures from them we had to get a neighbor to rip out with his truck they were so large.

So, yeah, that was WAY more than we bargained for. The good thing is, once we got all of that out the soild was relatively loose and good quality. we then expanded about two feet on the short side and about 4 feet on the long side.

Here is what it looked like after we cleared everything out:



You can even see the trunk of somethng sticking out of one of the cinder blocks we used to kind of mark our borders temporarily. The cinder blocks should give you some idea of the total size of the plot, but I would say that it is about meh.. idano... 8' by 12'... something like that? I'll try to go measure it later today to be more exact.

[wade moore]

PREPARING THE PLOT:

Next came actually preparing the plot to be ready for planting. As I stated, the soil was pretty loose as it was, but it had been sitting there still for about 10 years. In addition, the areas that we were expanding into were grass previously, so that had to be cleared out. So, what I did was took a shovel and essentially chopped out rectangles like you would if you were cutting out sod, and turned it. This would make it easier for taking a tiller to it (now that I look at it, the last picture actually included this work already being done).

The next step, an initial tilling. I do not have a tiller, but my neighbor has a small Mantis tiller. He kindly did the initial tilling for me one day while I was working.

After that, we put in a bag of Pete Moss that we had lying around and then took a few trashcans full of compost that we have (leaf compost) in a compost pile. We mixed that in some manually, and then I did the 2nd tilling:



We then just raked out what we could of the little roots, grass, etc. that had gotten in there and evened it out as much as possible.

[wade moore]

Now might be a good time to step back and share what we are planting:

From Seed:
Cucumber
Summer Squash
Pumpkin
Sunflowers

From Plants:
Tomatoes
Bell Peppers

[wade moore]

So, on Sunday 4/16/2006 we planted everything that we were doing from seeds. We put in stakes and stretched ropes across to mark our lines:



After planting everything, I put in a sprinkler in the middle that is temporarily supported by a cinder block, will use a log or something down the road that is not so ugly. And yes, that's a garden gnome sprinkler, call me cheesy:



So, now we wait for things to grow! Some of this germinates in 4-10 days, so hopefully by early next week i'll have pictures of growth.

[wade moore]

PLANNING THE STRAWBERRIES

To plant the strawberries, it was a bit of a different situation. We got a "kit" from a catalog company that is a three tiered, circular setup that would fit 50 strawberry plants. So, we purchased it and received it in the mail. All it essentially was is three aluminum rings. We put down weed-blocking mesh on the bottom, laid the big ring, filled it with dirt, laid the medium ring, filled it with dirt, and laid the small right, filled it with dirt. In the process, we buried a hose underneath so that we could put a sprinkler on the top of the setup.

[wade moore]

PLANTING THE STRAWBERRIES

We ordered the strawberries from the same catalog. Essentially it came as 50 strawberry plants rolled up together in a plastic bag. The strawberry plants are basically just roots, with maybe some leaves on them. We planted the strawberries the weekend of 4/2/2006. I took the first set of pictures a week later:

[wade moore]

STRAWBERRY PROGRESS

In just two weeks since we planted, and a week since the last pictures were taken the strawberries have REALLY taken off. Some of them even are beginning to flower. Now, from everything we have read, to make strawberries taste better in the first flowering season you pinch off all of the flowers, so that is what we will do when they are done flowering.

[flere-imsaho]

Nice stuff! We're planning on doing a vegetable garden this summer, so I'll be checking in to see how you do.

[dixieflatline]

Very nice stuff Wade. It looks like you have already planted for this year but for next year I would highly recommend the wide row, raised beds technique. My wife is an avid gardener and since moving to this method our garden production has exploded. We have a very good book on this if you decide you are interested you can PM me.

[wade moore]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Nice stuff! We're planning on doing a vegetable garden this summer, so I'll be checking in to see how you do.

Where do you live? Have you looked up when you should be planting, because if you want it this year, there's a good chance you should be planting relatively soon...

Originally Posted by dixieflatline

Very nice stuff Wade. It looks like you have already planted for this year but for next year I would highly recommend the wide row, raised beds technique. My wife is an avid gardener and since moving to this method our garden production has exploded. We have a very good book on this if you decide you are interested you can PM me.

In all of the stuff I've read, I've never seen this. Sending PM.

[flere-imsaho]

We're in the Chicago area, so yes, we're probably getting close to the time where we should be planting....

[flere-imsaho]

Apparently we're about a month away from planting (depending on the plant): http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/tog/planting.html

[Franklinnoble]

Your soil looks kind of sandy... or is that just the photos? (or my bad eyes?)

You might wanna see if anyone around you owns horses or cows, and before next year, just dump TONS of manure on the garden. Tons of it. In fact, I'd dump it as soon as the fall harvest is done, and let it compost over the winter. In the spring, spread it and till it.

Add a few bags of gypsum and lime, and till it again. If you really want to give your tomatoes a boost, save about a garbage bag of eggshells during the winter. Crush and place them in the holes with the tomatoes - they love it.

I just tilled our garden area today (nor cal has had a TON of rain this spring - this is the first dry week we've had)... so our stuff is going in soon.

[wade moore]

Originally Posted by Franklinnoble

Your soil looks kind of sandy... or is that just the photos? (or my bad eyes?)

You might wanna see if anyone around you owns horses or cows, and before next year, just dump TONS of manure on the garden. Tons of it. In fact, I'd dump it as soon as the fall harvest is done, and let it compost over the winter. In the spring, spread it and till it.

Add a few bags of gypsum and lime, and till it again. If you really want to give your tomatoes a boost, save about a garbage bag of eggshells during the winter. Crush and place them in the holes with the tomatoes - they love it.

I just tilled our garden area today (nor cal has had a TON of rain this spring - this is the first dry week we've had)... so our stuff is going in soon.

I think that is at least somewhat the pictures. I won't say the soil is perfect, but it isn't too incredibly sandy - at least not compared to the rest of the soil in the area. That being said, it is a little bit sandy and could definately use improvements. Unfortunately the only farm with livestock in my neighberhood is not someone I know, but I'll have to see what I can find out. It is my intention to essentially do a mulch pile of leaves on top of the garden this fall, and it's even been suggested to me that once the plants have some substance to them, to put leaves down immediately to serve as a mulch - it will feed the plants, keep the temperature even, and do some weed prevention.

As I said, I did mix some Pete moss and mulch in with the soil, but it wasn't a ton.

[Franklinnoble]

That's cool. Don't be afraid to ask... most folks with livestock have more poo than they know what to do with, and they'd be happy to share.

I'm just passing along what we do with our tomato garden. Then again, we have horses, so fertilizer is easy to come by.

[ibnsgirl]

While I really enjoy the idea of growing a garden, I can't say that I've done much at all -- a few tomatoes and squash -- but I'm really enjoying following along with your dynasty!

Originally Posted by Franklinnoble

That's cool. Don't be afraid to ask... most folks with livestock have more poo than they know what to do with, and they'd be happy to share.

I'm just passing along what we do with our tomato garden. Then again, we have horses, so fertilizer is easy to come by.

While I may not know much about gerdening, I do know something about horse manure, and I'll second that most people with horses are more than happy to find ways of sharing it.
We've just got one horse, but a neighbor took a load from us a few years back and reported that it was his best garden in years.