Gardening In Stupid RL

simplest things ever to grow are zucchinis, just dont let them come to big or they'll lack taste. 2 plants and you'll have zucchini for a whole summer, just cut them off regularly.
Also easy to grow are red beet roots but alot of people dont like eating those.
Fennel is also pretty simple. fennel.zucchini and beetroot can be grown organically they're not loved by insects (also dont start with seeds start with shoots but beware of the birdies)
Just dont try tomatoes if you're inexperienced.
shouldnt plant vegetables or herbs around trees either, cause the tree drains all the water...a good plan of where to plant what is essential for growing veggies 101

It seems like it's more for the aesthetic when people pot them here, there's usually snapdragons and whatever flowers people throw into the mix, which looks nice but seems impractical in the long-run (hard freezes, etc.). Peaches and plums are really resilient here. (I had two peach trees at the old house.)

The bolded, yes! Their broad leaves look nice also.


I think it was either Kara or Mil who mentioned that one of their parents in Georgia(?) grow avocados. Apparently, they take a decade to reach the level of maturity where they bear fruit. Do they take that long in CA? I think CA and central TX have similar soil consistency, but, then again, hard freezes and bi-polar, week-to-week or day-to-day (sometimes), unpredictable winters.

you don't know the half of it, you insolent little whelp.



is on the list! looks like after talking with the wife:

sweet corn
asparagus
potatoes
carrots
undecided melon
squash

strawberries will go in old gutters along the deck, as well as tomatoes & peppers (in five gallon buckets on the deck). after reading up on what this awesome community posted last night (thanks bloodrose & Rydin) I decided to segregate the rhubarb to it's own patch outside of the plot.

I have locators coming today so I don't till up my cable line.

but I ran across another question, I have some left over 20' 5x5's from a work project, but they are green treated, so what is that? are they treated with arsenic & asbestos? will it be OK to make my border out of them, or should I get another plan?

I don't have enough land for an orchard. yet....

you should never plant vegetables or fruit in old tires, its unhealthy

Rhubarb is plant now for next year.

Potatoes.... where I live the water they take costs more than the potatoes are worth.

The best gardening book out there for maximizing yield / area:

Square Foot Gardening

My favorites are the nightshade family. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, tomatillos.... Yum.

Get the territorial seed co. catalog.

You have a short growing season. buy no seeds that take over 70 days to come in.

Learn to shoot deer and rabbits.

I didn't intend to, but good to know, thank you.

I did that as an infant. it's become blase by 32.

thanks for the rest though. there's still room to garden over in NJ?

Assume that anything "treated" is bad. That generally means poison of some kind.

damn it, I was afraid of that.

Asparagus is ambitious! You need a special bed just for asparagus, and if you grow from seed, you can't harvest until it's been established for three years, but if you're successful ... delicious. (You can also get asparagus crowns, but I believe they need a year to establish as well).

Tomatoes, peppers and chilies also grow very well in large planters, if you want to save room in your raised bed. I have a nice little chili farm on the asphalt of our drive, nice and warm, that's been really successful, all in planters (in southern ontario here, similar climate).

Also if you're having a winter like we are (ie; it's trying to snow right now), it's not too late to start a number of things indoors from seed, like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and chilies, etc...

I love asparagus.


why is that?

asparagus are difficult to grow and you need a sandsoil with lots of sun if you want to be succesfull. the asparagusbed is quite a bit higher then the rest of your soil too and you have to move the bed every year btw, you cant grow asparagus twice on the same parcel.
its already a real hastle to let the seeds shoot....i'd really try something different then asparagus

muscat grapes are easy to grow and the plant is quite decorative

inre: asparagus

well thanks, maybe I'll try that once I've got a better handle on some of this other stuff.

Our kumquat produces a lot of fruit, our lemon tree is having some issues as we didn't pull it into the house (from the greenhouse) before it got too cold this year. Still alive but annoyed with us. So far we haven't had a key lime sapling last for longer than a few weeks, our cat likes to play with certain plants in the house.

Citrus is sold and grown here in pots, you just have to keep them well hydrated, warm, and in a sunny place (or heat lamps).

My in-laws have started transplanting some of their citrus via cuttings from FL to a GA greenhouse. Don't know if they have fruit yet, but all the plants are still alive.

It was a tree in FL and it took 20 years to fruit. Very good avocados though :)

/burns all the gardens

Asparagus is probably the easiest veggie we've ever planted. Make sure to cut them off at about 4-6 inches, they grow incredibly fast. They keep producing all summer here.

We were lazy one year and let some them keep growing ....I mean it was an experiment and totally on purpose! One stalk got taller than the apple tree it was under.

I'm assuming that you mean feet, not meters or yards?

You probably should start off by finding out what your hardiness zone is. That will give you more (readily available) information about the relative climate for your area.

Call your local university/college's agricultural department, and have a short chat with them to get some more information. They'll likely point you in the right direction towards resources, and will have a good idea of what is feasible for your area in the particular season.
(For example, there's a lesson primer for kids from South Dakota University, which you might find useful)

A good idea would be for you to sit down and look at what you normally eat/like to eat, and make a list in conjunction with the advice from your local experts.

Running the list against what the prices of the various items are during peak season isn't a horrible idea, as that can give you a better idea of what may make the most sense to plant.

You've probably got a few more months before last frost, so now's a good time to do the research for the warm season. Starting the seeds indoors can give you a bit of a head-start as well.

He means learn to shoot them before they eat your garden.

It's ok, you guys are good at growing... rock... in Stockholm.

Depending on how many fruit trees you have and how you have pruned this you can plant a variety of veggies underneath or around them.

I currently have strawberries and asparagus under an apple tree, Rubarb under a cherry tree, blueberries near and under the canopy of a plum tree.

It depends on how much direct sunlight is needed and how much your area receives during the summer. If you don't have a lot of space there are plenty of plants that work well together.

That plum tree is going to get trimmed. It's got it coming.

Seriously not trolling or anything, but one has to wonder: What's the point in growing anything on land less than an acre large?

I mean, you will still have to buy most of your fruit/veggies, and those fruit/veggies are generally better quality than what you grow yourself.

Plus, having to keep pest/animals off of it is a lot harder to do on a small parcel of land than it is on a larger parcel.

So, honestly, what's the point?

depending on what plants you want to grow you can get alot of vegetables or fruits....i do admit when you have limited space and you have to keep it at a small variety, your diet will get a tad monotonous. Especially in the midst of a season some plants start making fruit very fast.
home grown stuff tastes equally good or better then store veggies and fruit though just dont expect them to be A-class fruits towards shape.

Why play video games? Why do people invest themselves in any hobby? It's relaxing, meditative, you reap the rewards of your time/effort.

I don't know about relaxing or meditative part, but I'll take your word for it.

Remember, this is coming from a guy who leases his property to farmers to grow crap on it. So, my viewpoints are skewed, I'll admit.

Was not intended to demean or hurt anyone at all, I just wanted to see what the real purpose was. Relaxing and meditation I'll buy into.

Have you ever eaten tomatoes straight from the vine? They taste beyond better than stuff you get from the store. Same with blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, etc. I know for a fact watermelons in TX taste fantastic straight off the vine compared with store bought. Bananas picked while ripe rather than green have an entirely different flavor.

As to not baing able to grow much, that is not true. We live on roughly a quater acre. Mil harvested 12 butternut squashes from one plant (which keep for roughly 6 months in dry storage), over 200 apples from two trees (which still need more pruning for better yields), probably 5kg of raspberries, and I think 15~ tomato plants that produced many kilos of fruit. That doesn't include the 10 basil plants, or black eyed pees, or aspargus, horseradish plant, etc.

You don't need to have tons of space to produce a lot food, but you do need to plant in the correct sunlight, fertilize, water, etc to the plants needs.

I hate tomatoes, so...

But I do go to the farmers market often. Luling has the best watermelons, Poteet has the best strawberries, Fredericksburg has the best blueberries, etc.

But yeah, I don't deny the ability to grow a lot (again, coming from a rural area) in such a small parcel of land, and I probably was a little biased in my thinking now that I have a little time to think about it.

I'm thinking about a profitability (or in this case, a reduction of costs) standpoint. Which, given the circumstances, doesn't apply here since, as Zah said, it's used for purposes other than reduction of costs.

AKA a hobby.

to say the least. please stay on topic, there are plenty of other threads for your general 'musings'.