I got spring fever, and the only cure is gardening

Hmm - no hydroponics experience but I did plant a carnivorus plant terrarium with my boy this week...

Thats some ambitious work you have planned! I'm just trying to keep some plants alive over the winter. My titan arums got seriously messed up during a chill streak, but they aren't dead. My carolina reaper pepper plant is growing but not well. No fancy-ponics systems here, though, just pots of dirt by some light.

In reply to alfadriver:

Thanks for the update! I can't wait to hear how it works out. My turn.... right now I'm working on my hot composting and researching the details and networking for getting my food waste recycling business off the ground.

Rufledt wrote: Thats some ambitious work you have planned! I'm just trying to keep some plants alive over the winter. My titan arums got seriously messed up during a chill streak, but they aren't dead. My carolina reaper pepper plant is growing but not well. No fancy-ponics systems here, though, just pots of dirt by some light.

One of the other reasons for the shift- I'm trying to grow greens in some soil- and they refuse to do it. Doing some surfing brought up a bunch of greens being grown via various forms of hydroponics. One thing lead to another, and before I know it, I'm planning some pretty easy projects for next summer.

I just bought a dried-out Amaryllis bulb from the grocery store! I remember we had one in the house when I was a kid. It's pretty dead. I will see if I can resurrect it! Paging Dr. Frankenstein!

Well it's that time of year. I've been working overtime the past few weeks trying to attend to some of the long neglected landscaping at our new house, which has included establishing a vegetable garden.

I started by making an L shaped bed, 8 feet wide 12 feet long and 4 feet thick by 16" deep, out of cedar.

Then dug out the grass from inside.

My parents have a virtually endless supply of horse manure, so I added a healthy dose of that (would have been easier if I did the topsoil first.)

That's a load of E36 M3.

Then two big loads of topsoil/compost mix. I added a grid of galvanized wire on top in 1x1 squares on top of that, and used a soaker hose kit that came with a bunch of different fittings to fashion an irrigation system.

Added a couple of raspberry plants as well. Hoping to ultimately fill in a row between the current two.

My goal is efficiency, setting this up to maximize space and minimize maintenance. Part of that is I'm trying the square foot gardening method, hence the wire grid. Pack the plantings densely, mulch well, and put the soaker hose on a hose timer and I should be able to keep maintenance to a minimum.

I've got garlic, onions, snow peas, carrots, lettuce and spinach in already and started seeing my first sprouts yesterday. Going to add a few tomatoes, a variety of peppers (in addition to some potted Carolina Reapers I have started inside already), cucumbers, green beans, maybe some zuchinni...

Just did my first gardening of the season tonight. Put in a few tomatoes, some snowball bushes, and split a bunch of my big leaf hostass up. Life was good until I clipped the fiber-optic cord to the house while wrestling with some field stone...

New house means new garden!

Ordered some hop plants (established,not rhizomes) from Mich. last night. I'm excited to get those going.

The auto watering setups are giving me lots of ideas for the veg beds. Hmm...

Saturday I had three of the children out prepping the garden for planting. All barefoot as they should be, and my 12 year old step squarely on a garter snake. The most blood curdling scream you can imagine!! .

The terrified snakey snake coiled around her foot momentarily before making a beeline (snakeline) out of the yard and to the safety of a nearby walnut tree.

The garden looks good, we planted red cabbage, romaine lettuce, bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, cucumber, and tomatoes.

Wife has planted some tomatoes, strawberries, and onions in the little garden, big garden she tilled up last weekend and got cantaloupes and squash going in there, later on the pumpkins will go in.

I need to get the 8' deer fence installed on the back of the property before we really start to get into it. This is our first spring at this new house, and my wife is loving the soil here, she said she only hit 1 rock while tilling a 20x10 plot last weekend.

I haven't uploaded pictures yet, but I learned my lesson from last year.

I still have the 4x8 raised bed by my garage, but only one 4x4 area has dirt. That's for tomatoes only, since they overtook everything last year.

When I buried the conduit, I put in a new raised bed at the car port. 12x4, split into 2 6x4 sections. One is full of dirt ready for peppers, sweet and hot, and I think cucumbers this year. Probably several types of peppers because both the baby and I enjoy then.

The other side will get filled up next year. Eventually it'll be a big garden, but doing it section by section it's saving me work and letting me get picky about nutrients/feedings. I may actually make several smaller sections out of the other 6x4, so each section can have separate plants, but I haven't thought that far ahead yet.

I took out a 4K sqft area of grass that I was tired of watering/mowing, and planted a wildflower meadow. Its been two weeks and new growth is visable. Time will tell how much is weeds vs flowers.

D2W wrote: I took out a 4K sqft area of grass that I was tired of watering/mowing, and planted a wildflower meadow. Its been two weeks and new growth is visable. Time will tell how much is weeds vs flowers.

I'm in the process of murdering my lawn in the same way.

Less time mowing, more time riding.

Where do you plant your canoe?

Canoe deleted.

Finally started my 2017 gardening today, started raking and stick gathering. Sooon...

Don't know what to grow this year, probably tomatoes and peppers again. How many years do you get on seeds? I've had some seeds for a few years now. Every year they few I plant seem to germinate, but i'm wondering how much longer I can stretch it.

alfadriver wrote: For the garden set up I currently have, I need to roughly increase the pearlite by a lot- so that it's 1/3 the total mixture. That way, it wont be soaking in so much water and staying wet, preventing some extra greenery I got. Second- I'm "breaking up" my compost next spring. I'll leave the one full container I have going, but I'm going to add a 3x5 gal bucket set up for worm composting. Saw some interesting thoughts that basically suggest leaving shredded leaves on their own, and keeping food waste on it's own. Third- with the above shift, I'm also going to make some compost tea to feed my self watering system. That plus some more regular feeding should take care of a lot of stuff. Or lack of growing...

Quick update- the above is done.

Over the last few weeks, I've planted all 39 spots with large dilutions of pearlite. We will see if that works.

Two weeks ago, I cut up some 5 gal buckets to have a 3 part worm composter. Instead of buying worms, I also went cheap and started to harvest my own worms. AKA- finding them, and putting them into the bucket. So far, so good. The only issue is that I'm finding more than red wigglers, but all of them are eating my compost, and they seem to be multiplying and growing, too.

And today- I added a second barrel that I can isolate from one of my corner barrels that I've been using to water my stuff. So now I have a barrel that I can add food and let it set. Funny that I set up a barrel the day that it looks like it will not rain for a while. And it rained a LOT last week. Oh well.

So a reminder of my set up- I have 3 gal ice cream buckets with net pots set in a 3" pipe, which is fed by the barrel. So it's all automatic.

Still working on making an aeroponic set up. And the Kraktay set up was kind of a bust. So I'm going to convert it to something else- as the few greens we got tasted great.

In reply to alfadriver: Tell me more about your bucket worm bins? And how do you manage your bins in the wetter and cooler parts of the year?

I don't have the time to do much serious gardening right now, but my lilacs are blooming. These started as twigs with roots from the county cooperative extension that I bought as a fundraiser 9 years ago when I bought the house, 10 for $10. five of them have thrived, with two growing taller than my garage.

Sunday was almost nice so I went and picked up hanging baskets for the front porch and small plants for the planters on the back railing.

Exciting news from the 84FSP garden.

There are a handful of the season's first tomatoes that look to be ready to pick in a few days. I threw caution to the wind and planted the second week of May this year.

That is all.

mrwillie wrote: In reply to alfadriver: Tell me more about your bucket worm bins? And how do you manage your bins in the wetter and cooler parts of the year?

Sorry I missed this question a month ago. I'll get some pictures and explain it better tomorrow.

alfadriver wrote:

mrwillie wrote: In reply to alfadriver: Tell me more about your bucket worm bins? And how do you manage your bins in the wetter and cooler parts of the year?

Sorry I missed this question a month ago. I'll get some pictures and explain it better tomorrow.

So the system I have is a 3 bucket system- the bottom one is to catch liquid, the middle one is for a full bin, and the top one is for the food compost. I also added some spacers, as I had a few buckets that I really could not use with food- so they are there to just put space in that allows for more stuff in the buckets.

I was also cheap on the worms- harvesting them right out of my back yard. For sure, this means it takes a lot longer to get it going, but it's working. One thing I like about it- it will reach our level of compost production from a low side vs a high side.

The original inspiration came from this board, btw.

alfadriver wrote:

alfadriver wrote:

mrwillie wrote: In reply to alfadriver: Tell me more about your bucket worm bins? And how do you manage your bins in the wetter and cooler parts of the year?

Sorry I missed this question a month ago. I'll get some pictures and explain it better tomorrow.

So the system I have is a 3 bucket system- the bottom one is to catch liquid, the middle one is for a full bin, and the top one is for the food compost. I also added some spacers, as I had a few buckets that I really could not use with food- so they are there to just put space in that allows for more stuff in the buckets. I was also cheap on the worms- harvesting them right out of my back yard. For sure, this means it takes a lot longer to get it going, but it's working. One thing I like about it- it will reach our level of compost production from a low side vs a high side. The original inspiration came from this board, btw.

No worries on the delay. Thanks for the info. We're in the sell/buy/move phase of things so my garden and compost bins are gone for awhile. I would like to see your spacers, but no rush on it. I'll post back when I get settled in the new place. Thanks again.