Calling all vegetable gardeners..........

[whitney]

Are you itching for spring? Tell us about your garden.

Here's mine last year. I have raised bed with lotsa horse manure. This 36x32 garden gives me enough vegetables for 2 years. I end up giving alot to "plant a row for the hungry" its a program that the master gardeners have in my area. I also use chickens to fertilize and patrol for bugs.

 

[JO~*]

opps I last posted on Martys post.

I QUOTE(whitney @ Feb 24 2006, 06:59 AM)

Jo: I would much rather do it your way but my barn is 400' from the house so I have to take it up in pickup loads. It sits in a pile outside all winter and decomposes for 6 months I also use woody pet type bedding which makes the MOST incredible stuff it breaks down the manure much faster it looks like black dirt when I put it into the vegetable beds. Do you start your own seeds?

Mostly I just plant seeds in the beds with the exception of tomatoes. Sometimes I start them myself from seeds or I buy them as plants. I can only grow tomatoes in the green house. We live about 5 miles from the ocean and it’s never to hot here and rains a lot in the spring.

I wish I could find a tomato that tastes like what I remember as a kid. I like a sweet tomato that I eat fresh.

Mostly I just eat the sweet 100s because they taste the best to me. Do you have any suggestions on a tomato I may like? Keep in mind our shorter season and kind of damp conditions.

wonder if I can copy and paste it to here.................

Hey it worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[whitney]

I would try Mortgage Lifters it is THE BEST tasting tomato once you've grown them you will be ADDICTED. I'm in Michigan so I'm not sure if it would work for you. But it is DEFINATELY worth a try.

 

[JO~*]

I would try Mortgage Lifters it is THE BEST tasting tomatoe once you've grown them you will be ADDICTED. I'm in Michigan so I'm not sure if it would work for you. But it is DEFINATELY worth a try.

I just looked them up in my seed catalog (territorial) if the picture is right they are sure a funny looking thing :lol:

Well I'm off to take some Pom puppy pictures for a friend, she has some buyers that want pictures via e mail.

 

[whitney]

They are an heirloom tomato. They look just like a regular tomato. I think they are slightly larger. The history behind the name is the breeder grew these during the depression to pay his mortgage. They are the BEST.

 

[keeperofthehorses]

24 days until spring!!!!! Whitney, your garden is beautiful!

We are going to start some flats inside in the next couple of weeks. Darrin does the veggies, I do the herbs and tomatos. Then Darrin will direct seed some peas, lettuce and my spinach on St. Patrick's Day weekend. Onions will go in shortly after that. When the snow is off the mountain, we'll start on the warm weather stuff: Beans, carrots, melons, spuds, cukes, pumpkins, the usual. The only thing we are not going to grow again this year is sweet corn. We're tired of trying to battle the earworms and smut organically and having a 90% crop loss, so no more. I'm going to severly downsize the herb garden, grow just enough for us and the neighbors and not sell any this year. I'll still sell my Blackberries, as they are great money-makers.

Our garden goes in our front acre. The intent is to turn that into pasture, but it doesn't seem to be happening. I don't have any pictures of it; because we are organic, we don't use herbicides, so by the time the garden is getting nice and big, we have lots of weeds. Although I've 'accepted' it as part of organic farming, I'm not about to actually put it on film for all of posterity. :bgrin

We're participating in a grant-funded program this year with the U of I. We'll be field trialing several varieties for success with organic methods in our region's climate and soil. Darrin hasn't yet decided what to trial, I'm thinking it will probably be something in the cucurbit family. His passion is potatoes, but it's too difficult to find enough double certified seed to do a legitimate trial. The grant is for the next 3 years, and I'm excited to see how the project goes.

Jo, seedsofchange.com has a great selection of heirloom tomato seeds (and I think seedlings too). Although I do grow tomatoes (mostly paste), we don't eat them fresh much, so I can't tell you which taste best. I want to say there's one called Arkansas Traveler (?) that people really rave about. I have several other seed sources, though Seeds of Change is our primary source; let me know if you'd like more websites.

Did I mention that there's only 24 days until spring?!?!?!!? :aktion033:

 

[Triggy&Blue&Daisy Too]

Wow what a garden, I love it! Whitney how long do you wait until you put the chickens in? I mean about how far along are your plantings so that they don't damage anything. I'd wanted to do somehthing like that but was always concerned they'd damage them by all the ground scratching they do. Do they also have a little house in the garden or do you just put them in for a short while?

When I lived in the valley I'm shortly returning to, we used to use ducks to eat the slugs. I'm a mad animal kisser but even I wouldn't kiss those ducks when they had slug slush bills YUK!

 

[FairytailGlennMinis]

I layer muck from the fields with fallen leaves or shredded paper from work along with coffee grounds and anything else I can compost. I just add it in layers right where I want it and plant away. The happy worms do the airating for me and they mix the layers. I don't really do veggies anymore and finally got mad and cut down the rose garden--SO frustrating to feed gorgeous, healthy roses to the deer. Now I just have pretty flowers around the house and fences.

-Amy

 

[whitney]

keeperofthehorses, can you reccommend a paste tomato? I've tried a lot of them and they just taste like paste! HELP.I'm going to attempt an EARLY spring garden for the first time this year. Do you put covers over your early crops? Those white barrels in the back on the right hand side are my potatoe growers. I got some beautiful Yukon gold potatoes this last year.

I've come up with a really good organic mulch. I use landscape fabric and cut out holes for the plants. I pull this up every fall it worked really well last year in my test beds.

That little wood shed is the chicken house they stay right in a resting veg bed that is fenced, and I let them out to roam once the plants get good and established about 8" tall.

I don't have a slug problem. I have a grub problem but peggy the chicken LOVES GRUBS!

 

[keeperofthehorses]

keeperofthehorses, can you reccommend a paste tomato? I've tried a lot of them and they just taste like paste! HELP.I'm going to attempt an EARLY spring garden for the first time this year. Do you put covers over your early crops? Those white barrels in the back on the right hand side are my potatoe growers. I got some beautiful Yukon gold potatoes this last year.

I've come up with a really good organic mulch. I use landscape fabric and cut out holes for the plants. I pull this up every fall it worked really well last year in my test beds.

That little wood shed is the chicken house they stay right in a resting veg bed that is fenced, and I let them out to roam once the plants get good and established about 8" tall.

I don't have a slug problem. I have a grub problem but peggy the chicken LOVES GRUBS!

Hi Whitney;

Last year I grew Ropreccio? and San Marzanos (both from SOC) paste toms. They both did well, stored good; I preferred the texture of one and the taste of the other (can't remember which was which). Like I said, I'm not a big tomato connosieur and have a hard time distinguishing between them. Berries are a different story! I didn't have disease or pest problems with either one (and we grow potatoes on the property, so that's a concern for us). Anyway, I use companion planting and planted my tomatoes in among my Basil, Bunching Onions and Chives. This helps to improve the flavor and vigor of both the tomatoes and the basil. Might be worth a try.

We do cover some of the crops as needed. We don't cover peas unless a hard frost or hail is expected during flowering or early pod set, and then it's just a temporary thing. Peas love Idaho springs. I don't cover lettuce or spinach, but will mulch pretty heavily. That's about all we try for early season. We cover cucurbits only because of squash bugs. We tried covering the spuds last year, but with the frequently hilling, it became more of a nuisance than it was worth. Potato beetles are easy enough to pick off anyway.

We had a great potato crop last year; over 200 lbs harvested (off of 18 lbs. of seed) and very few culls. We also grow the Yukon Golds (soooooooo yummy), as well as All Reds and All Blues (we market them together as our 'Red, White and Blue Potato Salad mix'). Kids love the Blues, as they mash up into the coolest color. My mom won't try them though, says they freak her out.

:

I would love to get some chickens for the garden (mmmmm, fresh eggs). We will wait though until the garden area is fenced (predators). My favorites are Buff Orpingtons. I like to get some Araucanas also.

 

[Sterling]

Wow...now thats what I call a garden!!! It sure is beautiful. I'm going to "attempt" tomatoes again this year. I think I can honestly say now that I don't have a green thumb. We have so many farmers in the are, tht it's so much easier to drive by their stands and buy locally grown. By the time I finish setting up my garden, and trying to keep bugs and critters out of it....I've spend more money and time than if I just go and buy it from my neighbor farmer... :lol:

P.S. Oh and my chickens will dig craters if left up to them.

 

[runamuk]

Well we have a 60 X 60 area we plan to till a big pile of composted alfalfa into and see what we can grow

:

: last year around the end of June I got frustrated with no where for a garden so I took my 6-7 year old territorial seed

: and made piles of what was getting scattered together in my flower and tree areas....tossed corn/peas/beans/cukes by a birch tree then threw down spinach/butter lettuce/several types of tomatoes(mostly cherry) carrots and beets down the west side of the house tossed a load of tirds on top raked and watered......we had a bumper crop of beets, spinach, and lettuce got enough carrots to keep my kid happy, the peas did okay we had two bean bushes and the cuke was baby dill sized

: .....the corn also was baby corn sized and the tomatoes were just starting to ripen when we got hit with hard frost (september/october)....my husband is anal and wants a "real" garden

: I do not have patience for weeding etc...so organic wont be tough for me :bgrin :bgrin I think I have him almost convinced to let me still have a messy garden.....I HATE rows...looks awful totally bad funky shway

: :bgrin :bgrin so we shall till then create raised beds and raised domes and then I can mulch the walk areas with manure/hay/etc........

Thanks for the planting time tips Suzanne as I wasn't sure but late June is a bit too late...and I don't have time or patience or room for starts indoors....seed in garden add mulch and water and hopefully some good luck :bgrin :bgrin

BRING ON SPRING :aktion033: :aktion033: :aktion033: :aktion033:

OH and I love that garden pic gorgeous reminds me of grandma and grandpas garden

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