Vegetable Gardeners here?

Thinking about doing a garden next year.   I don't have a plot but I've got room in the back yard.   Suggestions on whether to till this fall or wait?  Size of plot for a first timer?  Easiest stuff to grow?  Opinions in general?

Depending on your soil a raised bed may be a goid option. Here we have red clay, so no matter how much we till and ammend the soil, we are still just making a hole in the clay that won't drain worth a darn. 

I would start by figuring out what you want to grow and see what kind of soil those plants like. Most veggies want full sun, so pick a spot that has the exposure your plants will need. If you decide to till, do it this fall. Get a soil sample tested (county ag department may do this for free) and amend  the soil as necessary to reach the ph and drainage balance for your desired plants. You may need to till more than once to get the amendments fully worked into the soil. 

If you go with a raised bed don't go wider than about 5 feet across, although you can make it as long as you want. This will allow you to reach the center of the bed from either side for plant maintenance and pruning / harvesting. 

Tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers seem to be the most fool-proof along with green or yellow bush-beans.

Had the most amazing cherry tomatoes  on either side of the shop door this year. Wife planted them in big planters. I would snag a few every time  I went into the shop. Funny enough, since no frost yet, there are still some to be had!

Start small 4x8 raised bed .......definitely sun from 10-2 ....soil composition is critical.......plant what you like and expect to be overwhelmed by your harvest.........oh if you're thinking zucchini check locally how to prevent pests.............good luck and bon appetit...

This thread may be helpful- https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/i-got-spring-fever-and-the-only-cure-is-gardening/99704/page1/

If it were me, I'd prep it now- so that you can plant right away in the spring.  Till it up, and then instead of raking leaves and throwing them away, I'd shred them up, and cover the small plot.  But the time spring comes around, some of that will have broken down for compost.

I've had to change a lot over the years- going from a simple raised bed to an upcoming greenhouse with self watering containers.  It's a long story why, but my issues are not generally shared- so just stick with the small plot or raised bed you decide.  You'll know in a year if you need to change.

Another vote for tomatoes- they are really easy to grow and very tasty.  As for the rest- what do you like to eat?  Cucumbers, zucchini, pepers, many different types of salad greens, beans, peas, etc- nothing is too complicated.

And I'd also consider fruit, too- most yards can easily grow blueberries OR raspberries (not both, since they like opposite soil).  And they are really nice to eat fresh, too.  I also have blackberries and strawberries.

The effort is very worth the taste.

The biggest problem with a garden is you need to do a little work in it everyday in the summer.   Skip several days and you can lose it.  

I got tired of feeding the deer around here.  

This year I had very mixed results. 

Red cabbage was cool but required a pretty big footprint and only yielded a single head per plant.  Bib lettuce suffered from the same problem. 

Tomatos (usually a winner) were slow to put out fruit which stayed small and were mostly gobbled up by squirrels (!)

Cucumbers grow like mad, should have planted less of them.  Seriously, I couldn't give the damned things away fast enough.

Bell peppers: fine, nothing special.

Jalapenos:  oh good gracious me!  These things just keep producing like crazy.  Literally just pulled up the plants this weekend.

This is all in a 30'x12' plot in my back yard.  This year I'm getting serious about amending the soil, composting, turning, clippings.  Next year I'm gonna do more vine and bush plants and leave the one-n-done things to the farmers.

Mrs VCH has a pretty green thumb.  She does this thing called sheet mulching- also google lasagne gardening.  Basically, lay cardboard down on top of the grass in the area you want to garden, throw good dirt and organic material on top of it, and plant.  No tilling required.  

4' wide rows work well for us, though for big spready plants like squashes and stuff a mount or large round area seems to work well.  Peppers grow like weeds.  Tomatoes are good and useful but can be a little picky.  Plant _ONE_ zuchini or squash plant- they produce like crazy.  We've had mixed luck with root veggies.  Beans and peas grow quickly and like part-sun.  Same with leafy stuff like kale, swiss card, and spinach.

Find a local chicken farmer and see if you can buy some chicken poop.  It's great stuff.  

We fenced off the garden with a ~4-5' high fence, to keep out the critters.  And buried the fence 6".  Groundhogs and rabbits are the big menace for us.  

Now is the perfect time to plant garlic, if you like garlic.  Mrs. VCh just put in 200+ cloves on Sunday.  Plant in fall, harvest ~late June.  We cook a lot and use a ton of garlic.  

Herbs and stuff can be grown too- and in a small space.  Some herbs can help to keep critters away, as a bonus.  I understand the same is true for hot peppers.  

We went with the raised bed approach and it worked very well.  I just used some 2x8 to frame up a 4x8 box and dumped in a bunch of bagged compost, but I would imagine that any commercially available garden soil would work.  Like above, cucumbers, tomatoes and Jalapenos were plentiful.  Pretty easy to maintain, and it was small enough that it was still a little bit fun.  Good luck.

My $20 raised beds have been good the last 2 years. 2x12s, separated into 4x4 boxes. 

This weekend I'll be taking a weed wacker to the tomato plants and weeds that have grown through my soil, then covering everything with a couple inches of top soil and tilling it in. Hopefully by spring that well translate to better nutrition for the plants. 

My garden was garbage this year because everyone kept offering me plans and never delivering, so I'm starting inside this winter from seed.

Rosemary and basil in pots kept the deer away better than hair, wolf pee, and Irish spring soap combined, so I recommend that if you have deer problems.

Old tires make good raised beds. It helps to cut the sidewalls off.

Yes!   Get started now!  The key to successful gardening is good soil.  Fall is a good time to work organic material (think composted leaves and such) into the soil.  Till again in the spring prior to planting.  I've generally had better results with plants that I grow from seed vs. those I've bought in a store, so plan on starting some around late February-early March (or depending on your local growing season).  Veggies need full sun, so choose your location with that in mind.  You will have to fight for your produce, as various furry critters and many kinds of bugs will try to get the fruits of your labor before you do.  Good luck!

I didn't put a whole lot of effort into it this year, but got a phenomenal yield of cucumbers from late Spring through mid-Summer.  Some tomatoes, and hot peppers.  Best to give it a little time every day.

I would do a raised bed and cheat by setting it up early and letting it winter.  This would give you the chance two turn it once or twice before planting.  Decent soil, drainage, and the occasional manure in the winter seems to work well. 

My current setup is 16'X4' out of 2"X12"s which lets me run 12 tomatoes and have room for 6-8 other things things like peppers, and cucumbers.   

I'm really just in it for the fresh tomatoes but the kids get to pick something new to plant each year.  This year's watermelon experiment didn't work out unfortunately.  

volvoclearinghouse said:

Mrs VCH has a pretty green thumb.  She does this thing called sheet mulching- also google lasagne gardening.  Basically, lay cardboard down on top of the grass in the area you want to garden, throw good dirt and organic material on top of it, and plant.  No tilling required.  

4' wide rows work well for us, though for big spready plants like squashes and stuff a mount or large round area seems to work well.  Peppers grow like weeds.  Tomatoes are good and useful but can be a little picky.  Plant _ONE_ zuchini or squash plant- they produce like crazy.  We've had mixed luck with root veggies.  Beans and peas grow quickly and like part-sun.  Same with leafy stuff like kale, swiss card, and spinach.

Find a local chicken farmer and see if you can buy some chicken poop.  It's great stuff.  

We fenced off the garden with a ~4-5' high fence, to keep out the critters.  And buried the fence 6".  Groundhogs and rabbits are the big menace for us.  

Now is the perfect time to plant garlic, if you like garlic.  Mrs. VCh just put in 200+ cloves on Sunday.  Plant in fall, harvest ~late June.  We cook a lot and use a ton of garlic.  

Herbs and stuff can be grown too- and in a small space.  Some herbs can help to keep critters away, as a bonus.  I understand the same is true for hot peppers.  

That's a great idea that I've not heard before.  

Kind of goes with all of the ideas of no-till gardening- which is how I would lean now, too (if I didn't have an invasive root issue).

One thing to note- of all the things I've seen (youtube has a lot of good gardening) and read- weeds will be a problem, BUT if you keep on top of them, they will eventually go away on the large scale.  

Other ideas brought up- various compost piles, worm bins, etc.  My new feeding idea will be 100% fed by worm and compost tea.  I tried that last summer, and it worked really well. Next year will be a big step up from that.

Just remember, there's rarely one "best" way to grow a garden.  There are a TON of items that will work, and it's fun to figure out what will work best for you.

This year my weed control was to cover everything not veggie in brown paper (i used those free yard waste bags), and weigh it all down with grass clippings to mulch it nicely and help keep the soil moist.  It generally worked quite well.

One thing to be careful of with lumber framing for raised beds: you do NOT want pressure treated lumber to touch soil.  The chemicals will leach into the soil...and your veggies.  Either use non-pressure treated lumber (or something else, my neighbor likes cinder blocks, they are cheap) or make sure to protect the soil from touching the PT lumber with a plastic sheet or similar barrier.  

In reply to alfadriver :

We have invasive root issues, too.  Poison ivy/oak, plus some other non-poisonous but equally irritating vines.  After 3 or 4 years of attacking them physically (i.e.pulling them up wherever they show up), and more than one prednosone shot in the keister, it seems to be getting better.  That was part of the reason for the lasagne gardening, the thick cardboard sheet on the bottom helps keeps the roots out.  

Recycling bins are a good source for cardboard.  Large appliance stores, etc.  You want big sheets of brown cardboard, no dyes, and minimal printing.  

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

Mine are some trees.  First time, when it totally bound up my raised bed, I tried to isolate it with one layer.  Didn't work- next year was just as bound up.  Then tried again with two different kinds of layers.  Still bound up.  It's a really nasty tree.  The brambles and grapes I have growing are the only things that don't seem to mind it.

So I've switched to container gardening.  And it's fully auto watering using rain water barrels.  Next year it will be auto feeding, too.  Hopefully in a greenhouse warmed in the winter by compost.  

It's pretty fun, actually.

BUT- I'd be all over your idea if I were to start over not knowing that I had invasive trees....  It's a great idea.  And it's worth pointing out that worms like the glue used in cardboard- so that will also attract them to the garden.

Be careful using chicken poop for manure.   Its strong stuff and too much will burn the plants.   It also tends to have a lot of weed seed for some reason.   

In reply to alfadriver :

Very cool.  We just put in rain barrels this year, but didn't need them at all- Ma Nature provided us with plenty of water for most of the summer.  We don't fertilize at all- just amend the soil periodically with some fresh organic material- we get leaf Mulch, and topsoil.  

Greenhouse is a longer term goal, esp for seed starting.  Make sure you post pics of yours when you build it.  

Mrs. VCH "farms" about a 6000 sq ft area.  We had over a hundred tomato plants.  Plus everything else.  We also have a dozen or so fruit trees and some blueberry bushes.  More blueberries are planned for next year, maybe some grapes too if I get my act together.  

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

I'll have to remember to take pictures.  Right now, I'm working on the foundation.  So when I take out the actual garden, it will be a good start.  

If I were not container gardening, once again, I would be following your lead of natural soil amendments.  But for the container gardening I'm doing- it's kind of a derivative of hydroponics- containers run out of nutrients reasonably quickly.  I need to take more pictures of that when I get to it.

I'm sure you have noticed- but one of the most elegant things about your method is how cheap it is.  If you use your own soil amendments- compost and worm stuff- that's all pretty much free.  The fact that it's organic and very good for the environment is just bonus.  It's a method that I'm trying to figure out how to scale to beginners who have very low incomes.  And it's also very close to the Cuban Agriponicos that they had to figure out during a "Special period" just after the Soviets collapsed and pulled out, thus cutting their main source of food off.

And you are growing in an are about 40x what I have....  My greenhouse is 6x10, and the other strip of land is 4x15, and I have another small area for the berries (actually, I think my plot of land with my house is smaller than 6000ft^2).

We built a single, L shaped raised bed, 12x8x4 feet, at our new place this year. Cedar boards for the sides, filled with topsoil and horse manure, and protected from rabbits and groundhogs by a 3' wire mesh fence. In an effort to maximize space and minimize the need for watering and weeding, I tried planting using the square foot gardening method. I'd say it definitely reduced the maintenance and we were able to pack a lot into a small space, but I think some of the plants got choked out a bit and the dense spacing made harvesting difficult.

We had the most success with our Poblano and Chile peppers, cucumbers, beans and peas,  while cherry tomatoes and the rest of the pepper crop were only moderately successful. Eggplant, larger tomatoes, and root veggies were largely a failure. I've always found tomatoes difficult to grow, prone to pests and diseases. Lettuce was a success until the rabbits got it, prompting the fence install.

Marigolds are another effective pest repellant.

In reply to alfadriver :

You are correct on all counts.  Mrs. VCH actually went to San Francisco for a week to learn how to do all this, she's a degreed landscape architect, too.  At the moment all of her efforts go towards our homestead (we have a little over 3 acres of land here in central MD, and she's stay-at-home mom for our 2 kids) but she has all of her texts and whatnot for landscape which come in handy.  As an engineer, I can understand it and find it pretty interesting, too.  

We do buy a lot of stuff, party because the garden is fairly large and party because time is so precious.  And we're not, you know, dealing with massive political instability or food shortages.  I do save up rotted wood for some of the compost, and we compost all of our scrap food that we can, plus have chickens.  But we also buy a few yards of topsoil every year from the local landscape supply place, and I move it with my front loader into the beds.  

I do appreciate the relatively low effort of it, though.  I got all the cardboard we used for free, and my rototiller sits in the shed- haven't even started it all year.  I think it does scale very well for small spaces and low incomes.  

If I had to guess, I'd say the actual economic output of the garden is maybe a couple of thousand dollars worth of food.  it's hard to say exactly because we do tings like can the tomatoes to make sauce, so there's value added.  And you can't really compare a homegrown tomatoe to a store one.  Store ones generally taste like red cardboard.  A tomato, fresh off the vine, a bit of salt and pepper on it...my wife actually keeps some small shakers of them in the shed for when they're in the garden working and want a snack.  It tastes like sunshine.  

There's a few dozen wild berry bushes around the property too, that we mow around and just sort of let do their thing.  Pick and freeze them when they're ripe, and we have berries all year.  

I also have a pile of old windows I have half-baked thoughts about turning into a greenhouse.  So I'm curious to see how you do yours.  

volvoclearinghouse said:

In reply to alfadriver :

 

I also have a pile of old windows I have half-baked thoughts about turning into a greenhouse.  So I'm curious to see how you do yours.  

I was going to build one, but my wife overruled me and we bought one.  Oh, well.  Would have saved a lot of money, and using some "shed kit" ideas- one can construct it really easily and quickly.  I'll still find a way to use our old windows.  Perahaps to use as insulation in the winter.

On the one we bought- so far, I'm pretty happy with the Palram system.  But all I've done so far is construct the base to put something under it.