The garden is almost ready

I spent a lot of time on the garden this weekend.  Here are a couple pictures of the progress so far.  I have the following vegetables planted so far.  I will post a longer list of activities as the season progresses.

• Better Boy Tomatoes (5)
• Big Boy Tomatoes (5)
• Yellow Hierloom Tomatoes (2)
• Goliath Tomatoes (6)
• Broccoli
• Green Onions
• Broccoli
• Radishes
• Carrots
• Crowder Peas
• Lima Beans
• English Peas
• Silver Queen white corn
• Yellow Squash
• Zuchinni Squash
• Hot pepper mix
• Sweet pepper mix
• Okra
• Eggplant

 

Down for the count

It’s been a little over a week since my last post. I have a pretty good excuse for slacking in my posts. I have been attacked by the flu bug and have really had no interest in getting online to write anything for the last week. I don’t want anyone to think that I have been idle though. That is not the case. I have been planning my next gardening series to help everyone planning their first garden or even those of us who have been gardening for years. I hope everyone will walk away from my next garden series with some new techniques or maybe you will just be reminded of easier or better ways to make your garden the best it can be. I hope to have the finishing touches on the series in the coming week in time for you to get those first seeds planted in preparation for the last frost date in your area.

I have also been spending my downtime this week browsing some seed catalogs and placing orders. The last frost date in Georgia is around mid April so I hope to have my first round of tomatoes in the ground by then. As everyone knows with tomatoes, being the first one on your block or neighborhood with juicy tomatoes in early June is a great feeling. While everyone else is still relying on those picked green and gassed with chemicals to give that red appearance to grocery store bought tomatoes, I will be enjoying a fresh, naturally vine-ripened tomato on June 1st. There is still time to get those tomato seeds in some good potting soil and with some extra protection from cold weather, you can have tomatoes in early June also.

I hope everyone is doing great and I look forward to sharing more with you as the 2013 garden season gets started. I would like to hear from anyone who has tips they want to share with other gardeners on how they get those early crops planted and harvested before anyone else.

TroyBilt Super Bronco Tiller has Arrived!

Well, the day has come…finally.  I am the proud owner of another Troybilt Super Bronco garden tiller and I couldn’t wait to put it through its paces.  The garden tiller arrived Saturday morning and after unpacking it, attaching the handle, and adding some fluids, it has been used to plow up two small garden plots.  I had no issues with it at all and am proud to have a machine as well built as any tiller I have used in the past.  Troybilt really knows how to build them.

Meet my neighbors

Hello all,

We have been debating whether we should move the vegetable garden that we built next to the swimming pool to a larger area outside of the safety of the fence.  If you have been following this blog then you are probably already aware of the nice raised beds that we built last Spring once we moved into the new house in the West Georgia area.  The first season of crops outperformed our expectations and I want more space to grow more vegetables.  I’m sure everyone understands that desire if you like to get your hands in the dirt like I do.  Just to catch you up, the image below is a picture of the raised beds that we built.

As you can see from the picture, there is some open space on the other side of the fence for more vegetables.  In reality, there is a lot of open space over there that is not used for anything except grass.

Now, to get to this new area we have recently ordered a new garden tiller from Troybilt.com.  It should be here in a couple weeks so I will be working all winter on clearing the grass out and amending the new garden space with manure and compost.  I am planning two garden plots on the other side of the fence as well as moving the existing raised beds and reclaiming the space with grass and other non-vegetable plants.  :)

My concern though are my neighbors.  They seem to show up at the strangest hours and are voracious in cleaning out my vegetable plants and their fruity offerings.  There are 3 of them that we have seen creeping through the yard where the new vegetable garden plots will be so now I have to figure out how to keep them out of the garden.  I’m sure you have figured out what I’m talking about by now so here are a couple pictures I took last week.  If anyone has ideas on how to keep the deer out of my garden without building a fence around my acre property, please leave a comment.

Also, I would appreciate if you would click on some of the social media sharing buttons and help spread the word about my blog.  I will post some pictures of the new tiller once it arrives so stay tuned.

My Vegetable Gardening Journey Begins…

Greetings to all of my gardening friends.

My name is Chris and I have decided to start writing about my gardening escapades for everyone to read.  I am hoping to provide some humor as well as practical tips to my readers that describe my gardening journey.

My wife and I are looking for a new house to purchase but things have slowed down to the point it may be at least a year before we can finally move out of the rental house into a more permanent location.  I have been reluctant to spend much time gardening or working outdoors at the rental house but since it will be a little longer before we move, I have decided to spend some time on a garden that we can take with us later.

My goals are as follows over the next 12 months:

• Build a couple raised beds for some vegetables
• Transplant a couple small tree seedlings from the Arbor Day Foundation into pots.
• Figure out a way to handle the kudzu growing along the fence in the back yard
• Build a couple flower beds along the front of the rental house (this is my best friends house which we are “babysitting” while he is in the Army).

I have already been living here for almost 3 years now and haven’t done much gardening since I moved in.  Last year I built 2 raised beds out of 2×8 ACQ pressure treated lumber (Alkaline cooper quaternary (ACQ) is a relatively new wood treatment that is available in some areas of the country. This product is higher in copper than CCA but is free of arsenic.)  My concern about this type of lumber in my garden is that the copper or other compounds used in the treatment process will leach into the soil.  I’ve read so much about studies that show many of the chemicals or compounds do not leach into the surrounding soil or in fact they do leach or who cares if they might leach into the ground, that I am almost to the point of simply building new beds out of stone.  At least I can pickup the stone beds and move them to another location (which I plan on doing when we get our home purchased).

As to the Arbor Day Foundation trees I received after donating $10 to them, we had planned on being out of this rental by the time they were delivered but that didn’t happen.  In the short-term, I had to find a way to keep them from dying so I planted them in the vegetable garden raised beds but now I have to move them.  I really don’t want to plant them in the yard because there is little room to actually do this and I don’t want to leave 10 holes in the yard when we finally move.  I think I can keep them growing with little shock if I just put them into 1 gallon pots for the next year.  They were only 1 year old seedlings when I got them so another year shouldn’t hurt.  I will keep an eye on them though to ensure they don’t become rootbound.

Well, that’s it for now.  I will be posting often and hope that you will continue to read my journey.  Come back often.

Related articles

• Raised beds in (food) gardening (greenreview.blogspot.com)