Home Vegetable Gardens

[RedWolf]

Trying something different this year - staking my squash plants and trying to train them vertically. We get a lot of squash vine borers in NC and some years, I barely harvest squash because they kill my plants before they can produce much. They are easier to spot and control if you get your plants up off the ground. We'll see how it goes. I have also been experimenting with grow bags but this may be the last year I use them as it gets so hot here that it is a challenge keeping plants hydrated in bags.

There has to be a natural solution I don't know what it is but I'm sure something exists

 

[Boone]

I will build more raised beds when the weather cools down. They work really well and as I get older they are so much easier to manage than tilling ground. And they are a lot more drought-tolerant than grow bags. There are ways to combat squash vine borers, including some 'natural' predators... I am just getting back into gardening after a decade off so knocking some of the rust off...

 

[Boone]

I made an impulse buy and bought an electric indoor composter machine. I went with the Reencle brand. It sounds like it produces actual usable compost in a couple of weeks and is pretty simple to operate. I used to have an outdoor compost system but am looking for something a little easier to improve the quality of my raised bed soil. I will report back.

 

[Boone]

I made an impulse buy and bought an electric indoor composter machine. I went with the Reencle brand. It sounds like it produces actual usable compost in a couple of weeks and is pretty simple to operate. I used to have an outdoor compost system but am looking for something a little easier to improve the quality of my raised bed soil. I will report back.

Machine arrived today. Looks pretty simple to operate. I have it priming for 24 hours with a bag of microorganism infused sawdust and some water and will then start adding scraps and see how it works.

 

[Mickalino]

To follow up on Darrell Green Fan question in the RTT, and this may be more relevant than my other reply because I get the sense he was looking more for compost for the top soil for mature plants, as opposed to pre-planting.

If anyone in your household drinks tea, used tea bags are great to add to the soil.
And it's so much easier than the other things discussed. It doesn't require any prep before adding it to the soil.
Just drop the tea bags on top of the soil. The bag itself decomposes and the herb goodies get absorbed into the soil.
You can even pour leftover liquid tea into it.

Same for coffee, if you consume that. Any leftover, brewed, liquid coffee can be poured into the soil, just like the coffee grounds can.

 

[China]

We'll see how the pumpkins go this year. I got two good ones last year, and this year I have a volunteer in addition to the ones I planted.

Interesting about the tea bags. My wife drinks a lot of tea. I will have to look into recycling her tea waste.

 

[Boone]

Over the years, on the perimeter of my vegetable garden area, the trees have just grown up around it to the extent that it is borderline not getting enough direct sun for vegetables to really produce. I have a local tree guy coming out today to take out a significant number of trees. I'm looking forward to seeing how big a difference that makes in the coming years.

 

[Mickalino]

Since I started gardening, I have become even more fascinated with the Amish.
Apparently they have stayed with the same fundamental, organic, and highly productive method of farming for hundreds of years.
If I'm gonna trust anybody, it's gonna be that guy.

Now, obviously there aren't really any Amish farmers online or on TikTok breaking down their methods.
But they must welcome visitors, because some non-Amish people have spent time with them and learned some pretty cool hacks that they shared on their own video channel.

 

[Mickalino]

An excellent method, if you want to dehydrate any of your grown goods, is to put them in a tray, lay it on your vehicle's dashboard, facing full-sun, roll up all the windows, lock all the doors, and it won't take long.

If the Law of Magnification is enough to put cracks on an actual dashboard, it's certainly good enough if you want to dehydrate your goods.

 

[Miles Monroe]

An excellent method, if you want to dehydrate any of your grown goods, is to put them in a tray, lay it on your vehicle's dashboard, facing full-sun, roll up all the windows, lock all the doors, and it won't take long.

If the Law of Magnification is enough to put cracks on an actual dashboard, it's certainly good enough if you want to dehydrate your goods.

You'd get an interesting "smokey" flavor in my truck...

 

[Mickalino]

You'd get an interesting "smokey" flavor in my truck...

In which case, adding wood chips may enhance flavor

 

[Boone]

As my tree guys are finishing up opening up my garden space, I bought a bunch of raised beds ... they are 2' deep x 8' long x 4' wide. I'm going to do 5 rows of beds (2 of these side by side per row). I'm going to do a cheat to reduce the enormous amount of soil it will take to fill them - and am going to line each with cardboard, tree limbs, leaves about 1/3rd of the way up and then fill the remaining space with soil. The other stuff will break down over time. I also plan to rearrange my existing raised beds once the summer garden is done.

I also bought some pyramid/tiered-style wooden raised beds. I plan on treating the wood before I assemble so they will last long term, and then will make 3 strawberry beds with them.

I just created enough work to keep me busy for awhile but when I'm done I will have a shit ton of gardening space. I love the 2' deep raised beds because generally weeds aren't able to find their way into them and it is so much easier to work and amend the soil than tilling in the ground as I used to do was.

 

[Boone]

My raised bed kits arrive tomorrow. Once I have them assembled and laid out where I want them, I am going to try something different. There is an approach called 'hugelkultur' where you use organic matter to build the bottom portion of a raised bed with layers of logs, branches, green material such as brush or grass clippings with your compost/soil in between them. You can do this in the ground and build up a mound, or you can do it in a container as I will be doing. Basically I will fill my raised beds about halfway with logs/brush/branches/green material, then fill the containers the rest of the way with the soil I intend to garden with. I am going to let my containers settle and age through the fall and winter, finish filling them with soil in the spring, and plant next spring/summer. The wood and organic material will rot and breakdown and provide a source of nutrients for my plants. The other advantage to using this method is that it will reduce the amount of compost/planting soil I will have to acquire.

 

[Boone]

Tree removal around my garden area is done and it is going to make a huge difference. Looks like it did when I first moved in with tons of direct sun. My raised bed kits arrived yesterday. One of the only things I was unhappy about is that the tree guys cut down my 20 year old rabbiteye blueberry bushes that gave me tons of fruit every summer. It is not the ideal time to plant blueberries but I found a supplier in Georgia and planted 8 new ones yesterday. Hopefully they will do okay.

Next project is putting together 3 tiered raised beds for strawberries I'll plant in the fall. They are wood so I am going to treat them before assembling with a food-safe wood preservative that will hopefully help them last a decade or more. Another thing I have learned with raised beds is that if you don't take steps to prevent it, rodents (especially moles/voles) will get into your beds by tunneling from beneath and can make a mess of your beds eating the roots of plants. I am using 1/4" wire mesh underneath my new ones to keep that from happening.

After I get my strawberry beds set up, I will move on to assembling installing the 10 raised beds for more vegetable space. I have to force myself to take my time and not kill myself doing it as once I start a project I can be obsessive about getting the job done. Luckily, it looks like we are finally going to get a break from insanely high temps over the next couple of weeks.

 

[Miles Monroe]

Tree removal around my garden area is done and it is going to make a huge difference. Looks like it did when I first moved in with tons of direct sun. My raised bed kits arrived yesterday. One of the only things I was unhappy about is that the tree guys cut down my 20 year old rabbiteye blueberry bushes that gave me tons of fruit every summer. It is not the ideal time to plant blueberries but I found a supplier in Georgia and planted 8 new ones yesterday. Hopefully they will do okay.

Next project is putting together 3 tiered raised beds for strawberries I'll plant in the fall. They are wood so I am going to treat them before assembling with a food-safe wood preservative that will hopefully help them last a decade or more. Another thing I have learned with raised beds is that if you don't take steps to prevent it, rodents (especially moles/voles) will get into your beds by tunneling from beneath and can make a mess of your beds eating the roots of plants. I am using 1/4" wire mesh underneath my new ones to keep that from happening.

After I get my strawberry beds set up, I will move on to assembling installing the 10 raised beds for more vegetable space. I have to force myself to take my time and not kill myself doing it as once I start a project I can be obsessive about getting the job done. Luckily, it looks like we are finally going to get a break from insanely high temps over the next couple of weeks.

Have you ever heard of flame treating (charring ) wood. Not really practical with the scale of your garden. Shou Sugi Ban. Sitting in doctors waiting room, I caught a story on it on one of the home/garden channels a year or so ago. Labor intensive to do initially from the looks of it, but they say it can last 80 years or so if done correctly. I'm thinking about doing a few small raised bed this winter, and think I'm going to give it a shot.... fire is your friend

 

[Miles Monroe]

Will you be setting up irrigation for your beds ? We use the rain barrel to a lesser degree, mainly the plants on the lani being we have duel water service. We have normal city water, and then non-potable irrigation water line, which is a small flat fee ( 13.40 ) per month. I have to drag hoses around, but can hand water plants as much as I want even while water restrictions are in place. We are still in a severe drought. Been in this house 30 years, been paying all along, and have never used it up until now. I'd put in an automatic sprinkler system to cover everything, but the city is such a pain in the ass to deal with, it's kept me from doing so.

 

[Boone]

Have you ever heard of flame treating (charring ) wood. Not really practical with the scale of your garden. Shou Sugi Ban. Sitting in doctors waiting room, I caught a story on it on one of the home/garden channels a year or so ago. Labor intensive to do initially from the looks of it, but they say it can last 80 years or so if done correctly. I'm thinking about doing a few small raised bed this winter, and think I'm going to give it a shot.... fire is your friend

I had to Google it. No - never heard of that technique - pretty interesting.

Will you be setting up irrigation for your beds ? We use the rain barrel to a lesser degree, mainly the plants on the lani being we have duel water service. We have normal city water, and then non-potable irrigation water line, which is a small flat fee ( 13.40 ) per month. I have to drag hoses around, but can hand water plants as much as I want even while water restrictions are in place. We are still in a severe drought. Been in this house 30 years, been paying all along, and have never used it up until now. I'd put in an automatic sprinkler system to cover everything, but the city is such a pain in the ass to deal with, it's kept me from doing so.

I have thought about it, but probably will stick with occasional manual watering when the weather doesn't cooperate. We are on well water but our well is very deep and never had an issue with watering as much as I want.

 

[Boone]

Impressed with my Reencle composter… putting tons of scraps into it and this is what it looks like coming out after a couple of weeks…

 

[Miles Monroe]

I don't understand the dark and light, but that's really nice looking compost.

 

[Boone]

They put some charcoal in the starter material for some reason.. those are the black pellets. I think the light stuff is lethally broken down orange peel. I am not putting it directly on my plants. I put it in a bucket with a scoop of cow manure and some potting soil and let it sit for another couple of weeks before I use it.