I will provide photos of various gardens in a later post, and of course of my own gardens , this Blog is sort of a spur of the moment entry.
So one of my passions is gardening, both flowers and vegetables, I am lucky enough to have a property that supports multiple gardens and have a lot of free space for lawns and trees, I realize not everyone has that much space to play with, but no matter how big or small your space is ,there is always room for a garden.
My main vegetable garden is roughly 12 feet wide by ohhh I’d guess around 50 feet long, it’s your standard in ground garden, I simply rotor tilled my plot into the ground without much thought or precise mapping, I tilled the grass under and let the sun burn the roots, still I do have to weed and pull some grass out throughout the summer, but as each year passes the grass gets less and less, I confess ….the weeds are the bane of my existence, no matter how many I pull (root and all) there always seems to be 10 more the following week, I’ve been at war with the weeds for 6 years now.
Next year I will remedy my weed issues by spraying the entire empty garden with commercial grade round up, let that settle in about a week, then back fill the garden with clean black top soil, about 4 yards worth of fresh dirt, then plant my vegetable garden.
I also have a small flower garden under the bay window of our house out front, where I usually plant flowers , but this year I decided to change things up, since my main garden is doing poorly this year due to weeds and flooding, the only things that survived the flood is the corn and onions , so Back to the flower garden, this year I back filled it with fresh top soil (12 fully loaded wheel barrows full of dirt) I bricked off the ornamental grass to keep it from spreading, and planted beets, carrots, cucumbers and squash in the flower garden, I also planted about a dozen giant sunflowers there, 6 I will harvest for the seeds (should get about 5 pounds) which will give me something to munch on through the winter, the other 6 I will leave for the winter birds.
By the back step, my wife has an old toy box that she had filled with dirt last year and grew flowers, this year I planted 6 tomato plants there instead, we also have 4 really large planter boxes along our front yard fence, usually we fill them with flowers, this year I put petunias in them along with a couple tomato plants.
I have been collecting hanging flower pots from yard sales, next year I will plant things like lettuce and cabbage in them, 1 head per pot, I have discovered container gardening is far less work than my main in ground garden, less weeds for 1, less water also.
Which brings me to small space gardening, pretty much anything that holds dirt can be used for gardening, plastic pop bottles, buckets, lengths of eves trough , wooden boxes, burlap bags, wicker baskets, the possibilities are endless, if you live in an apartment and have a balcony or even a window sill you can grow a small vegetable or herb garden.
If you live in a house, either rent or own, you can either do an in ground garden and do battle with weeds and grass or there is an alternative, you can build boxes and do a raised box garden, this eliminates the grass and most weeds, when I back fill my garden next year I just may go this route. You can also container garden as well.
Garden (for me) gives me a distraction and relieves stress , in the end the work I put into it pays off big time, come harvest my grocery bill drops to almost zero, the extra money saved I either bank or use for meat to fill the freezer ( I also hunt to fill the freezer), with the exception of this year (due to flooding) I usually average around a 500 pounds of vegetables yield, some can be frozen some pickled some canned , there’s nothing quite like garden fresh vegetables.
Another benefit of gardening is, all plants take in carbon and pollution’s, even the lowly lawn grass and they release oxygen,so when you plant vegetables, not only do they benefit you in health and financially, they also give you oxygen, flowers and flowering vegetables attract bumble bees which take the pollen and make honey, so you are also helping the bees as well. You can compost the parts of the plant you don’t eat easily simply by chopping it up and putting it back on the soil of your containers or garden plot, they will rot and fill the soil with nutrients ( you can plow dead leaves under too)
So I will leave it at that and go outside and start taking some photos , as well as going to some of my favorite gardening sites and linking them up for gardening ideas tips and tricks.
Remember folks, express your love often, never take tomorrow for granted, and be kind to others
Butch
easy wood projects to build
