Vegetable gardens

[DV1]

DV1, are you all vegetarians, or do you have a roadside stand?  Nice layout you have there.

No, not vegetarian, unless these are vegetables too. 

 

 

Never had a roadside stand, just fed the neighbors and people at work, as well as my family. I have 2 brothers that have always been into gardening too, in fact, it's sort of a competition between us. One has a smaller plot than me, the other's is bigger. It's all good fun and chop busting but we also trade stuff too. While we all grow some things in common, seems some things do better in my ground than theirs, and vice versa. So, I don't grow potatoes, corn, peas, blackberries, carrots, radishes, garlic, turnips, onions, and a few other things. Between the two of them, they grow all that, and more.  Squash (all types) cucumbers, egg plant, and the jalapeno long hots and pablano peppers do well here, so they don't grow them, nor the fruit trees or blue berries. We supply each other. My older brother is now getting into it. He turned over a big piece of dirt but he's a rookie, no competition there. He bought like 30 cucumber plants last year because he wanted to try and make pickles (I do about 3 dozen jars a year) but what he thought he was buying as cucumbers was zucchini.   If you've ever grown zucchini, you know how prolific they are. 

[Lunatic]

Nice looking gardens, lots of work. 

 

I used to do a sizable garden every year, this year I really cut it back, too much to keep up with for me this year. These pictures are from last year and pretty typical of what I usually do, although, in years before the fence, I would go all the way to the trees with stuff. I made it smaller and fenced it to be more manageable. 

 

From left to right; broccoli, a few types of kale, brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumbers and pickles, roma, beefsteak, cherry and grape tomatoes, zucchini and yellow squash, cubanelle, bell, long hots, jalapeno and pablano peppers, Italian, Japanese and purple egg plant, string beans, strawberries and a row of blue berries along the right side fence. The trash can contains about a 5 gallon bucket of chicken manure, to which I add water and make a manure tea for fertilizer. In the back part of the garden where it's not planted, I usually put in pumpkins, butternut and acorn squash but they get planted later. Behind the fence, in the field, there are newly planted white and yellow peaches, bing and black tartarian cherries, granny smith, honey crisp, red rome, golden delicious and fuji apple trees, but they have a few years to go before I get anything from them. 

 

During peak picking time, I get about this much every 2 or 3 days. Those tomatoes are early, they come on heavy a few weeks after this time, and I get about a 5 gallon bucket of string beans every 3 or 4 days, for a few weeks.

 

 

And I do blueberries and raspberries in the yard, as part of the landscape, as well as herbs. 

 

 

 

I have sage, parsley, mint, cilantro, basil, mexican, greek and italian orgeano, rosemary and thyme in pots and beds around the back patio.

 

 

 

 

So if the rain does not come HOW LONG does it take to water all this, and how often?

[Greybeard]

Zucchini does well here.  My wife makes and freezes a lot of zucchini bread.  My daughter takes a bunch to make zucchini boats.  Cucumbers take off fast from seed.  I don't buy the plants.  Plants are getting too expensive.  I'll buy tomato, peppers, eggplant, because I have no good place to start seeds indoors.  I'll bury a few tomatoes in the garden in the fall, and transplant some of those plants, too.  They come up all over, but I don't know if they are cherry, or beefsteak, or what, unless It's where I buried one.

For a couple years I put in a 60'x100' garden on a farm that my son and I manage, but the owner hardly ever came up to pick the stuff when it was ready.  It costs too much if you have to pay someone else to take care of it, then don't bother to take the produce, so it's a garden of weeds now.  That was a lot of work.  Yours must be about the same.

[Haskell_Hunter]

Growing a garden is real hard work.  And it requires physical labor.  I'm not opposed to hard work, but physical labor is so last century.

 

If I were to garden, this is how this nerd would do it:

 

[BenedictGomez]

He bought like 30 cucumber plants last year because he wanted to try and make pickles (I do about 3 dozen jars a year)

 

Thirty plants?   How the heck many pickles was he planning on making!

[DV1]

So if the rain does not come HOW LONG does it take to water all this, and how often?

I had a riser from my sprinkler system put out there so I have a faucet in the fence. The row crops and berries are done with soaker hoses from a manifold that can run 5 hoses at a time. The melons, squash, tomatoes, peppers and egg plant are planted in small depressions that hold the water and fertilizer. I was doing the manure tea every Sunday morning. With the water concentrated around the plant, a few times a week is enough during drought conditions.  I have one of those 20 gallon blue tubs from Lowes that I put in a wheel barrow, fill with water/tea and go down the rows. Takes less than an hour a few times a week to do the entire thing. Keeping the weeds out is another story. 

[DV1]

Thirty plants?   How the heck many pickles was he planning on making!

Like I said, he is a rookie. He was trying to duplicate what I do and wasn't that far off in the number, he just bought the wrong plants. When I do pickles, I do whole pickles, spears, thin slices, thick pickle chips and those little whole pickles about the size of your pinky (my family likes theses the best). I think they call them "snack mm's" in the store, and they are like $5 for a small jar.  When doing those little pickles, it takes a lot of plants to fill a few quart jars because you are picking the pickles when they are tiny, you can get several from each plant, but it takes a few dozen to fill a mason jar, so it takes a lot of plants to get several jars of them. 

[rgw]

just got done putting in one of the gardens. got to say my butt is wooped. each year it wares me down more and more.

[Greybeard]

What are you growing there, rgw?

[Haskell_Hunter]

What are you growing there, rgw?

That's his pot garden. Damn hippies.

[Greybeard]

That's his pot garden. Damn hippies.

Thought so.  Didn't want to say it, though .  Getting a head start on it being legal.

[rgw]

there is mint, chives,parsley, thyme, dill,basil in there

[rgw]

just get these little pods, stick them in, add water and plug in.

Edited June 19, 2017 by rgw

[rgw]

even tells you when to add water, lol

[Buck154]

even tells you when to add water, lol

Come now your getting lazy...lol