In my opinion this is the best gardening method your can use in your garden.
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17 Comments
If you are busy no worries, but I did want to ask your opinion on something. I have 10 raised beds in storage, got them on clearance, but they are 1 ft deep! I live on an ancient coastline so the "soil" is sand. My plan was to fill the bottoms with chicken manure (not aged, but it's free), and then buy topsoil and compost for the top 6-8 inches. Am I going to burn up my roots? Cost is a factor but wondering if you have a better idea 💡 ❓
On a side note, I didn't know about that particular bald-man problem, but the solution looks great 😂
i'd rather use organic fish emulsion
Looks great! I put our chicken compost every fall, never fails.
Have a great weekend!
Sfg method is really good for beginners. It worked really well for some, others not so much. You need way more space for zucchini than they recommend, tomatoes take over and shade out other things like green beans for instance. But it is a great way to get the ball rolling and understand you can put more in than the seed packs recommend. But yeah, I do a little bit of this and a little bit of that as well. Food Forrest/permaculture stuff as well as traditional raised bed style. I use hugelculture (probably spelled that wrong) to get my beds going because I wanted the beds 18" high. So logs on the bottom, branches, sticks, leaves (bottom half) then my compost and soil mix on top. Going to be expanding garden beds real soon. It will be interesting doing that with a prosthetic and a now teen who doesn't help like he did when he wasn't yet a teen. 😂
I like to plant the same plants in ground and in tall raised beds in different areas to see what does best with pests, sun, different fertilizers, etc.
My first year I put plants too close, left gaps and found the square foot gardening later. That really helped with my second year planting. I tried the logs in the bottom and like you said, they didn't break down. This year as I'm redoing my garden, I'm pulling them out. It's all about what works. Now I use what I've learned and combine what has worked with what I'm still learning.
We use multiple methods. Generally, we amend our soil over winter, this year with alfalfa pellets, compost and leaves. The soil in our large raised bed is not compacted so we don't till it. I've attempted to use cover crops, but it never seems to work with our planting/wintering schedule. I did find an interesting additive on the MI Gardener channel where he suggests an inexpensive aquarium probiotic liquid that can be used to jumpstart the breakdown of compost, so I may buy a bottle of that today. Some of our pots (roses and peppers) we're just moving inside the garage to overwinter. Other pots and bins we dump into our garden cart to dry out in the garage, so I guess that is similar to tilling. We amened our pots/bins and replant them in the spring. We use trellising extensively for our tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet potatoes and squash. I also like cedar mulch to protect from soil diseases and subdue weeds as well as deter digging by squirrels.
That sounds like me. I spread granular fertilizer, plant my transplants, and water them in with sdynthetic fertilizer to give them a boost and prevent transplant shock. It feeds them until the granular fertilizer starts breaking down. On occasion, I'll give them a second watering with synthetic fertilizer if the plants need a boost to get them going. I'm not 100 percent organic, but probably between 95-98 percent. That is good enough for me.
I've tired square foot gardening, and use it as a guide for dense planting some crops, but I've adapted it to my style of gardening. My bible for gardening is Seed To Seed. I have many other gardening books, and have taken information from all of them, but for the most part I garden based on personal experience. I've been gardening for six years, and for the last three years I've been growing three or four seasons. My worst season is summer. I live in sylacauga Alabbama, and it is just too damn hot and humid In July and August. With the exception of peppers, herbs, and melons, my garden beds are left to rest in July and August. I'm more apt to grow through winter than summer, even when it snows, so lots of green stuff and root crops in my garden.
I'm down to one surviving head of Dutch Cabbage—fusarium wilt. I pulled one head yesterday, salvaged what I could, and fed the salvaged leaves to the chickens. Dang birds expected me to hold the leaves for them while they tore bits from them. They are spoiled! My last remaining head will probably become chicken food next week. It is a good thing that I planted an experimental crop of Napa Cabbage. They are now my replacement crop and are doing very well.
You obviously don't suffer from dollar weed or florida betony and I am happy that you don't. I can't build a bed of any height without some sort of barrier at the native soil level without those weeds taking over.🙂
I call my method round foot gardening. My space is oddly shaped so plant spacing is hit and miss for some. My watermelons grew in a big s shape
Completely agree. Gardening should be relaxing and full of personal preference. If you push one thing too far, it's not that enjoyable any more.
I too just do things my way and work with what I have or can afford. I have 2 in ground plots and about to have a 3rd. I built 5 raised beds from our old deck and filled them in a hugekultur fashion. Purchasing half and half compost/garden soil for the top 6". I try putting an inch or two of compost on everything every year which is getting crazy expensive. I try making my own to help offset the cost. Trying a winter cover crop for the first time this year. Usually I just tarp off unplanted sections. But I'm trying to utilize my chicken tractor this year. I have chickens and rabbits so I generally have a decent amount of poo for the compost but not a lot of scraps as a result of raising animals. I got into gardening to save money and to save my family from the tasteless poison at the grocery store but the government is making it to where it actually costs more to have a garden than buying their poison. So being on a budget with a large family you just have to do what you can however you can. So I don't subscribe to any one way of doing things. I do whatever I can afford and work my butt off to make it happen. How deep your pockets are dictates your methods sometimes.
I was born a yankee and thought turnips were just a garden staple. But after living in the south for 25 years and being introduced to rutabagas, I stopped growing turnips. I threw some cheap turnip seed into my homemade cover crop blend this year but that's for the chickens. If any big turnips develop I'll eat them but I'll never grow them as a staple again. Rutabagas took that spot
"Made you look!" Wham! Lol. I got it but I'm as old as you. Lots of folks didn't get it lol
I think I'd like to try the cardboard method. It should suppress the weeds like a tarp but break down to add moisture retention properties to my soil. Sounds great. So if I ever get enough plots to let one rest without using a cover crop and chicken tractor I will do that instead of a tarp just to see. Provided I can obtain enough cardboard to cover a 20×40 area. Trying to keep all my plots similar in size and that's what I started with. I live in the sandhills of the Florida panhandle and my soil is garbage. So even adding compost yearly it just doesn't add fertility or moisture retention long term. It burns up pretty quick. So I till sparingly. I turned over two 20×40 plots this year by hand with a hoe as my tiller is hard to till shallow with. It's hard to till weeds and not bring all that sand back to the surface. Zone 9a sand gardening isn't the same as gardening up north where I'm from. It's basically learning all over again. Trying to forget everything you thought you knew about gardening. That's why I subscribed. I try to follow people growing in the same crap I'm dealing with. I have about 6 or 7 that I watch regularly. So try to cater a bit to people in your area. I've watched a ton of videos on different channels but I get burned out watching things that don't really pertain to my situation. I like seeing things that work here
I'm also a terrible over planter. I don't have enough space to put things in recommend plant or row spacing. I plant things thick but then have a terrible time getting in to weed and fertilize. I do learn from my mistakes and I'm getting better about it but I still plant things closer than is ideal. I love the thought of permaculture/food forrest but I'd basically have to clear my entire property and start from scratch and hire a damn landscape guru to help lol. Definitely not in my budget. So I cram as much in to my small clearing as possible and try to take over small sections of my wooded property when I can
The plants don't know the difference between synthetic and organic fertilizers. Everything is a chemical.