As I get older, I'm reverting back to my roots comming from a farming family. I'm currently growing a garden all year long. Spring I plant potato's, summer squash, cucumbers, tomato's, corn, bell peppers, jalepeno's, onions and such. Winter I plant onions, broccoli, collard greens. I'm trying to hone my gardening skills so when the time comes, I can support myself and wife. I have such an abundance I usually give all the neighbors plenty of food in the spring and summer. This year is the first on the winter garden and I can say its a success. I just harvested a whole bunch of collards, and onions. Gave a whole bag to my Mom, and still have 2 bags left. Cooked some bacon in a cast iron pan, sauteed onions then added the chopped collards. Then when that was done, poured cornbread mix over that and baked it in the oven for 15 minutes. That was a meal in itself. Sorry bout this post guys, I know some of yall will be hungry for some southern cookin now.

Someone (and I forgot his name) wrote:

if you want to be happy for an hour: get drunk!
if you want to be happy for a year: fall in love!
if you want to be happy for the rest of your live: get a garden!

might make sence...

What a GRAND idea ,,,

Adding delicious tidbits from the garden into one of my all time favorites a good warm pan of Jhonny Cake . My little pea sized brain is just a poppin with things it wants me to try . YUMmmmmm .

Thanks for the idea !

10 Spot

I grow a vegetable garden every summer, but I can't think of anything that would grow around here this time of year. Winter wheat? My tiller died last year and I'm considering building raised beds for the garden this year. It should make it easier to weed and take care of.
Don

Way to go Donut!! It's the only thing that makes sense anymore with pricing veggies. Hope you're doing to canning too.

I put in some raised beds, they're wonderfully easy to take care of. Make them long but not too wide. If you never have to step into the bed (like mine) then you never have to till. I go out in the spring and turn them over with a shovel, rake that smooth and they're ready to plant. I filled mine with locally bought compost which is nice and fluffy, so turning the dirt over in the spring is a breeze. The only trouble I have is with cats makin it their toilet. One bed I made a chicken wire A frame and enclosed it that way. The other two beds I put chicken wire right on top of the soil and that works equally well except when the weeds take over in off-season.. but you just have to lift up the chicken wire to pull the weeds.

You guys are awesome!

I love veggies but can't seem to find the motivation and dedication to grow them.
Which is IMHO a bit strange because after all, I grew up in farming community.

To each their own I guess.

Thanks for the hints Suz. I've never used raised beds before, but it does seem like the way to go. I'll have to go the chicken wire route myself. Not a problem with cats, but groundhogs. I usually try to use a lead fence, but I'm not home often enough to get 'em all.
Don

I'm gonna do the raised bed thing this year. Thanks Suz for the chicken wire idea. I have never thought of that. What I've been using is called "gin trash" which is composted cotton seed and such. As the name implies, it comes from the cotton gin and is like $20 for a scoop from a front end loader. More than a truck bed can carry. Stuff is awesome.

Never heard of a lead fence, do they enter the garden from underground or on top of the ground? Well chicken wire keeps the catz from wanting to dig a hole and where I put it on top of the ground, I left the outside edges ragged and pointy to deter any other rodents (nutria) from attacking my tomatoes. The A frame I built with scrap 2x2 fir and instead of screwing everything together I drilled holes in the wood and wired them together with plastic coated wire. It's lasted about 3 yrs so far and seems to weather really well. Only thing with the A frame is you can't plant anything that's going to grow taller than the interior space, and then you also have to plant your tallest stuff in the middle, shorter stuff on the sides. I use it for herbs and it's OK for that.

My raised beds are only raised to the height of one 4x4 on top of the ground, but it's enough to work very nicely. The compost breaks down even further over time and I replenish them each spring from home-made compost, even if it's not fully composted. In a bed that needs compost I'll shovel out some dirt into a heap and add my sticks and twigs that haven't composted enough into the hole then cover it up with the heaped dirt. Sometimes that makes a burial ground looking hump, but in that case I plant vines, like cucumber and squash or peas and let them trail. By the next season it's composed and sinks down again.

When I lived in Arizona we regularly dug holes in the garden to fill with kitchen scraps (veggy scraps, orange peels, apple cores and skins) and stuff like that. With the heat of the day and regular watering it composts really fast, great for the soil too. Here in Oregon it takes a full season to compost my stuff and I have a compost heap behind my garden that gets garden debris but not kitchen scraps (too may critters around here). I stir the heap with a pitch fork about once a month or so and keep it watered if I think of it. The the stuff that doesn't compost enough at the end of the year gets buried in the garden the next year.

Other than watering it doesn't demand a lot of attention. The raised beds are the only watering I do in the summer, I let the grass die, as it would be too expensive to water it and it always comes back nice in the fall when the rains start. Weeds pick out easily first thing in the morning on a weekend and you're done with that for another week or more. Most of the season only once or twice a week it needs attention. Depends on conditions of course.

It's nice to sit out there and pick weeds really. The sun coming up, dew on the grass, got yer gloves on, knee pads and a cat might come and visit, you swat the bstrd, squirt him with the water hose, watch him run.

I want to do a "keyhole" garden

keyholefarms.com/

Suz get yourself some tigerworms as they will do your compost no end of good. We started with about 20 and added aussie blues etc from the lawn and soon had a 350 litre worm farm eating all our household scraps and getn great fluffy vermicompost. Always have spuds silverbeet and rhubarb growing but just killed 5mtr x 15mtr garden when we shifted. May start again but not yet..that wound is too raw.

I've always kept a 6' diameter piece of fence in the garden and all my biodegradable scraps go in there. My chickens love to get in there and kick it around which help to stir the compost and breaks it down quickly. I take shovel fulls from the bottom to use in my gardens.

A herb garden and a few veggies is all we have. Used to have a couple of pineapple plants, but not anymore.

As a gardener, I make a brilliant bricklayer. I manage to kill most everything I try growing.

Donut Slayer...I shall be right over with my bib and fork in hand...

I just took the tractor and cleaned an area out for putting in a new loafing shed for my horse(sole survivor).I took out about 10 cu yds of material-dirt ,manure ,and composted hay.It will become my new gardens "bed".The last time that I did this I grew sunflowers that were 13ft tall,habeneros that broke down the plant,bushels of tomatos ,anchos,bellpeppers,pickle cukes,and zuchini by the bushel or yard!All of that in a 30'x30' plot!Biggest problem is the deer and grey diggers-maybe not this time as it will be about 20' from my "shootin window"and a 7' high electric deer fence!MMMM-fresh venison and veggies!