Gardening

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chaos

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God damn evelys deleting my gardening thread.... and the rest of the forum, I guess.

So I picked up some stuff today, I've got my area marked off for my garden. it is an old, beat up flower bed that was in ruins before I bought the house 5 years ago and is now is dire need of replacement. But, it is going to be a good starting point I think. I already have an idea for where to put more raised beds if this thing takes off. Monday I'm going to mix in some leaves/assorted dead shit and throw weed block over the whole area for the duration of the winter. The idea being to kill any remaining weeds left after I turned the spoil the other day and make sure they don't come back.

I am not sure what to do about compost/mulch. My neighbor, who is a botanist and has a bangin garden, just has a pile behind his shed. But I've read that those things can spontaneously combust if you don't stay on top of turning them. So they sell these compost tumblers for like 50 bucks, but they are a little small. I am leaning towards the pile.

I have a long way to go, it seems, just because I don't know anything, But if i can get this to work next year then I think the following year will be much easier.
 
What will you be growing? And what zone are you in?

Here's all my protips in one line: Garret Juice, Emulsified Fish n' Seaweed, Worm casings, a soil activator/humate, and a mycorrhizal fungi. No need for a tumbler. A pitchfork and a pile is fine, it won't combust. Not that I know shit about gardening; I don't. Sounds like you have a good neighbor to get real tips from though.
 

Nepenthes_sl

shitlord
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While I guess it's possible for a mulch pile to combust I don't think it's very likely. My dad had a huge pile behind he garage for 40 years. It was warm enough to melt snow but that's about it. Those tumblers fill up in no time
 

chaos

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What I am growing is kind of up in the air. I am still researching. I live in Northern Virginia and I want at least tomatoes, bell peppers, green beans, and squash. My garden area is about 3 x 6 or so, not a huge area, but from what I am reading I should be able to get some good returns.

There is a discussion to be had somewhere about mmo players taking their aspie min/max bullshit to other hobbies and dominating. And I WILL dominate.
 

Pops

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It's not going to blow up, just toss it. Growing stuff you eat, view, smell or smoke is good hobbie.
 

Solariss

Golden Squire
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Sorry for the thread jack, I just moved to Northern Virginia. Where are you exactly? Good luck with your gardening sir
 

chaos

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I'm in Woodbridge, right along the border of Manassas actually. But I work up at Fort Belvoir.
 

Numbers_sl

shitlord
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Find out the chemical needs of your plants and develop the best soil you can for what you are growing. 45% mineral matter of varying composition depending on the species you will be growing, 5% organic, 25% air, and 25% water. If you plan on using fertilizer then depending on if a given plant is flowering or not then a different combination of nutrients is necessary for optimum results. Tightly packed soil will leave ground items like carrots and potatoes little room to expand so try and use a product like perlite to allow gaps for air and water to travel to the roots. The pH of the soil can affect growth depending on if it is out of whack or not. Your botanist neighbour should have great recipes for soils.
 

Nepenthes_sl

shitlord
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1
I grow on my roof in containers with a drip irrigation system. I do mostly heirloom tomatoes and a few types of chili and sweet peppers. I'll toss in a eggplant here and there and last year I grew potatoes in bags. My yield in tomatoes and that's including losing about 20% to squirrels (yes they eat tomatoes and they fucking suck) is more than my wife and I can eat or give away. I lose a few in the early season to blossom rot because getting the irrigation correct takes some tweaking (lack of water produces lack of calcium in the fruit). 3 x 6 is smallish but it's enough for maybe 10 tomato plants or so. I plant at higher densities because I use drip irrigation.
 

TheBeagle

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Always rotate some legumes in, they have a symbiotic relationship withRhizobiumbacteria that fix atmospheric nitrogen and help recharge the soil.
 

splorge

Silver Knight of the Realm
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I grow on my roof in containers with a drip irrigation system. I do mostly heirloom tomatoes and a few types of chili and sweet peppers. I'll toss in a eggplant here and there and last year I grew potatoes in bags. My yield in tomatoes and that's including losing about 20% to squirrels (yes they eat tomatoes and they fucking suck) is more than my wife and I can eat or give away. I lose a few in the early season to blossom rot because getting the irrigation correct takes some tweaking (lack of water produces lack of calcium in the fruit). 3 x 6 is smallish but it's enough for maybe 10 tomato plants or so. I plant at higher densities because I use drip irrigation.
To avoid losing tomatoes to animals, pick them when they are sort of half red half green. most animals wont eat them, and they will ripen on the counter easily enough in a few days. Also, if you can get yellow varieties, most animals won't eat yellow tomatoes.
 

mkopec

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I have a roughly 15'x 15' raised bed I constructed a few years back. Mostly grow tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. I save all my grass clippings and use those as weed prevention. What I do is spread it all around the plants when they are planted. Also in the fall I spread a layer of mulched up leaves and grass all over the garden, it usually prevents weeds in the spring. I usually fertilize with miracle grow during the growing season and add a few bags of manure in the spring and till it all in to mix it up.

I usually buy the plants at the local market or home depot in the spring since im not hardcore enough to start the shit from seed. My growing season is a bit shorter since Im around the Detroit area so that works out better.

And yeah I have one of those mulch piles right behind my garden. I toss everything in there that is plant material, even from the kitchen in the summer. It might get a bit stinky but it never has gone up in flames lol. I think your neighbor is a retard because if you think about it, in order to set fire, shit like that it would have to be in the range of 400F-500F+. Your local nursery has piles of different wood mulch 10-15 ft high they store all summer long and you never hear of those catching fire.
 

Jalynfane

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Chaos, just put some seeds in the ground after your last frost date for this year and go from there. Get a cheap PH test kit (chemical one) from a local store and make sure your ph is around 6.5-7.5 so your plants can absorb nutrients well.

If this is year 1 of your garden, it won't turn out perfect, just get stuff in the ground based on planting dates for the seed types and worry about the rest in fall when you start planning year 2.

Start saving your gallon milk jugs so you can use them as covers for your sensitive plants.
 

chaos

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Yeah I am going to buy some plants here in a few weeks from the local nursery, raising from seed sounds like a complication that I don't need on my first ever garden. I'm not expecting much, if I get some experience and a few good veggies I'll be happy.

I dug out the overgrown jungle behind my shed and made a decent little compost heap now. Got a hellacious spider bite in the course of that, so I am rethinking my position on pesticides, at least over in that area. My neighbor wasn't the one who told me about compost heaps combusting, that was something I read online that enough people talk about that it seems true enough, but also an extreme case. I'm not really worried about it.
 

McQueen

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We tried something new with our corn this year, and planted string beans in the same beds. I forget the specific reasoning, but it was supposed to be beneficial. The beans ended up choking the life out of the corn, and didn't do much themselves. We had a really good crop of peppers last year, but it was too cold for too long this year and they never really grew. Our other bed of beans grew like weeds, though, and we got a pretty good amount of tomatoes this year that we're canning right now.
 

Deathwing

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I live out in the "country". Enough that deer are common place. I honestly don't give a shit about growing food, but I do care about my wife's half-assed attempts that end up a waste of money because the deer eat EVERYTHING. Except parsely, but I couldn't care less about parsely, grows like a weed. And I'm dubious how much flavor they actually add to dishes.

Had some sugar pumpkins coming in nice, deer ate them. Had some nice basil plants, deer ate them. What are some ways of keeping deer away or what crops won't they touch?
 

chaos

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rrr_img_44459.jpg


Everything I have read says to create some kind of barrier. Either from growing certain kinds of plants or barriers of pallets, apparently deer are afraid of pallets or some shit.
 

Erronius

Macho Ma'am
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We spent years growing a couple acres of produce (tilled an old field up) and deer were always an issue. Standard fencing is a PITA because those bastards can jump pretty high and no one wants to build a 6'+ fence. Electric fencing was probably the best solution for us (though we had all the material already). We also tried spreading a few different kinds of repellent that all smelled terrible and it did absolutely nothing besides cost money and smell like chemical ass. And when it rained it seemed to impact the stuff pretty badly and you'd have to reapply fairly often.

If it isn't something you can put an electric fence around, I don't know what to tell you. If you are up at dusk and dawn (that's when our local deer seem to like walking into our yard area to nose around) I guess you could keep an eye out and just chase them off until they get the hint, but I don't know anyone except full time retirees or farmers that would be able to do that. But short of culling and hunting there isn't really much you can do, honestly.

We have our own local deer that have a schedule and they're in our yard/fields every morning and evening. If we see them we can just walk out a door and half the time they'll run off without us having to do anything.