Been playing gardener for about 5 years now, each year getting better. Started with a small 20x30 plot, today it’s 60x120’, surrounded by vinyl coated chainlink ( I got for free ) and multiple hot wires from an 25 mile fence charger that also covers 3/4 mile of cow fencing . A few years ago, I built a full butcher shop in my garage to process out deer each year ( approx 6, sometimes 8 ), that worked great and saves about $1200 a year, so decided to start canning vegetables too, I got a TON of canning equipment, including a all American pressure cooker for dirt cheap last spring, and last fall I tested the waters, I made jelly, pickles and salsa, as a trial run and all were delicious, this year we expanded the garden biggly, from 60x60, to its current 120x60 and I’ll be canning everything I can, probably about 300 jars this year, plus adding hot sauce this year too.


It’s work, but it’s rewarding and good exercise, and a motivator to get outside.  This rear we added landscaping fabric to help fight weeds, working well, so next year I’m adding actual green house style weed fabric, which should cut out 99% of grass and weeds.  Started planting corn in two plots, one a month behind the first for longer harvest and longer fresh corn.

I found elderberry plants at Walmart and bought 4, then discovered wild elderberry in a corner of the property, I cleaned it up, and took a bunch of cuttings, hopefully it will work and I can add 30 more elderberry bushes to my property, for health benefits, jelly, gummies, add to other jellies, etc.

Few days ago. Second corn plot just coming up.

I added the sprinklers yesterday, two sprinkler heads  mounted on 10’ steel pipe, to cover everything, and 100’ water hoses ran over head to allow ease to tilling to fight grass, remove trip hazards, etc. I’ll post more pics a few days from now. The chainlink and hot wires are essential to keep the coon army out, otherwise they will destroy the corn crop in one night. ( happened 3 years in a row, before hotwires , now no more coons !  The deer camera shows them trying every night though. About midnight Coons come in right to left in a mob, 5 minutes later they all head back out empty handed left to right.

Right to left… potatoes, onions, tomatoes, peppers ( red, yellow, green and orange bell ), carrots, peppers ( halapeno, cayenne, habanero, Anaheim, sweet and hot banana and pepperchini in all 75 pepper plants ! ), squash, cucumber and 5 rows of corn, in the back, peas, zucchini, and 5 more rows of corn, in a separate spot we have watermelons, cantaloupe, and pumpkins, but the coons don’t bother those, so we just use hotwires to keep out cows and deer.

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Looks great.

Can your trail cams be switched to video? I always wanted to see coons and deer smugly walking up to the garden buffet and get whacked by the fence charger.

In my mind they would make two or three attempts before leaving the area confused ??

Timely post - I've got a bucket full of elderberry cuttings that just came in I'll be planting today.

Also just found out that currants are propagated just as easily as elderberry, so I'm ordering some of those as well.

Buffalo berry grows wild here, have several stands of it.  

Walmart is clearencing their plants, bought 40 over last 2 days, elderberry, black berry, and  raspberry, paid $4.00 each.

Garden doing well !

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My backyard elderberry turned out to be sumac, a phone app identified it instantly.

So I’ll rip out the plants I thought were wild elderberry, and replace them with some of these 24 elderberry plants I just bought. 3-4 years from now I’ll be producing several hundred pounds of elderberry berries a season. Google says up to 15lbs a plant x 24 plants is over 300lbs of them.