Well this isn't my first rodeo but this is my first time laying everything out, and taking lead on everyaspect of the garden and it is like riding a bike you don't forget how, but you sure as heck can get sloppy, fall out of practice, loose any edge you had and just plain old suck at doing something you haven't done in a LONG time. All things considered i'm doing OK.  

My folks used to alwasy have a garden on a piece of land here in town(as opposed to thier place up in the mountain, where the soil is mostly too rocky). The plot my dad used to tend and taught me to tend has been used by various generations of our family for probably 50 years(i'll have to check on that for a closer and more propper lenght of time). Anyway, due to everyone becoming buisier and conflicting schedules my sister and I not being interested in our later teenage years etc. the soil hasn't been worked and the land had set fallow since sometime in the mid '90s(I don't remember when the last season we planted was).

I decided this year that I was going to plant on that old plot. There was a lot of work to be done! The land hadn't been touched in years, the garden shed is in poor repair after years of setting nearly unused and abandoned(seve as a bit of a storage building) the root cellar has flooded several times and needs a lot of work as there's still some water in it and a lot of broken glass from YEARS old canned jars that floated off shelves and broke and a LOT of general disrepair and neglect. The tiller had two very flat and dry rotted tires and didn't want to run. Fencing, poles, stakes, cages, etc. needed to be located and rounded up and they'd scattered to the four corners of the property.

Dad ended up paying a guy to bring his tractor in and disc the garden plot approx. 30' x 30'. The tiller was still down so I ended up breaking the soil with a 5 tined cultivator head on a bicycle tire style push plow. That shit nearly wore my ass plumb out, and it had to be done severl time to get the soil broken up fine enough(a single discing didn't exactly leave me with great soil). The soil hadn't had any fertilizer or anything added to it in YEARS, but it had set fallow with only grass growing on it the whole time.

This was supposed to be a family project and initially my wife and my dad were very interested in helping. The rest of the family wasn't nearly so enthused. Dad got a new job after a bit of unemployment from being downsized from his former job and ended up excepting a job working anything but "bankers hours". This has ended up being basicly my garden. Dad and my wife did each help with the purchaseing of some of the plants, and have each helped a bit in various ways. My sister did do quite well in keeping the garden watered while my wife and I were on vacation this past week. But this has ended up personally being a lot more work than I had anticipated, but then again working the hours i've been working isn't overly helpful with getting time during daylight hours to spend in the garden.

K.

It was really wet around here this spring, we got a lot of rain and as I mentioned already, crazy work schedule(got moved back and forth between 2nd and 3rd shifts a good bit) and scheduling conflicts with everyone else who was going to help out. I ended up not getting most of it planted before June 15thish(last frost date for this area is a full month earlier. I also got delayed for a while waiting for chicken wire, I felt we had to do a fence this year as I'd planted a number of luffa gourds and a few other things 2-3 weeks earlier when I did have a free evening, a week later the evil garden raiding critters had eaten most of it.

We went to war with those ravenous scavenging bastards using live traps to catch them then executing them with a .22 to the skull at close range. To date the body count stands somewhere around 8 Groundhogs, 5 Skunks and 4 opossums(including 1 Groundhog my father took at his place in the mountain. and 1 opossum I i managed to tag with my truck not far from the garden but on my way to work one day). In a perfect world I'd be putting those critter to good use in a compost pile but here in town I doubt the neighbors would appriciate that.

Potatos and ornamentals(gourds of several varities, indian corn, etc.) went in somewhere around the 20th-25th of June, running way behind schedule. My seed potatos were not "seed" potatos, but rather the remnants(about 1/2 a bag) of potatos originally purchased for a very nice surf and turf chowder I make for Thanksgiving everyyear. My wife and I got married in early December, Then came Christmas and all that foolishness, a lot of crazy times working crazy hours and moving, and we moved into a new house in January. Somehow the 1/2 bag of potatos never got thrown out but rather packed up and moved with us. I found them around march and lost them again until mid-June. It was getting to late to find "seed" potatos anyway and I remembered the bag stashed away somewhere amongst the clutter. Lots of folks told me they won't grow, and that it was too late but they're up through the soil and steadily growing.

My cousin's husband is from El Salvador and they grow a HUGE garden each year which they somewhat depend on. They have 5 kids and accept no public assistance, they don't have a large income and like many of the folks i know are closer to poverty than a white picket fence around a mcmansion. With their garden and homesteading practices, hard work and some enginuity they get by OK and are likely a lot happier than most. I have a LOT of respet and even a little bit of healthy envy of what they manage to do with what they have. They gave me some very cool seeds and a whole lot of inspiration, but I'll speak some more on the seeds they gave me in a bit.

K.

Around the 20th of June my dad finally got the tiller up and running and I was able to till up the rows on the outside of the garden for the walmart bag potatos and the row in which i planted the Indian corn, most of the gourds, more sunflowers, more Bush and Wax Beans and a few other random things. This was kind of a "well i've got these seeds left I might as well see if they'll grow" row.

On the northish end of the garden I planted two rows of White Corn, a row of random stuff from my cousin including the weird foot long red Beans, Cushaw Squash and the Wierd White Pumpkins, and then two more rows of White Corn, with my row of Bush and Wax Beans on the southside of those. Giant sunflowers were interspersed and mixed in with the corn on the outside north and south rows and in the center row of random stuff. I don't know how well all this will work but it's my take on trying to take advantage of some of the great aspects and a modified version of the Native American "three sisters" planting mound.

Next year i may just try the planting mound in a more traditional manner as my garden is awfully cramped and is practicaly packed in like a square foot type garden at this point and I definatelly planted a lot of the plants to close. Next year I hope to double the size of my garden.

If any of you have hung with my not so exciting story so far I'd like to reward you with a few pics...

Here's what my garden looked like from around late June from a few different angles...







and here are a few my wife snapped form around mid-July right before we went on vacation, wether or not you can tell everything is about 1/3rd higher then in the last set of photos.






she snapped a couple of me patroling for any possible 4 legged invaders as well...




and here are two from two weeks ago of the small little tiny plot I started behind behind our house, the ground here hadn't been worked or touched likely even since the '60s when our house was built. It was INCREDIBLY had to even dig the holes to drop in my transplants. I also started a few seeds in this ground by digging out a bit of soil then filling the holes in with potting mix then planting seeds. I weigh in at right at 300lbs and i could pogo hop on the shovel and only drive in in the earth 2-3 inches at a time tops... I'll be doing raised beds here at our house for our my personal gardens in the future(that's what the landsaping timbers were for I just haven't gotten that far into the project yet...




While we were gone and since we've returned the Corn and a lot of the other stuff is about another 1/3rd taller(I'll try to get some new pics taken and posted up soon).



K.

I mentioned already my cousin and her families HUGE garden. It's actully a good bit smaller and sparcer than usual this year. It's still about 75' x 100' but they've been spending more time putting in fruit trees, expanding thier poultry and livestock endeavors, building fence for coming alpacas(my crazy uncles scheme) and working on lots of other projects that they've been v ery busy with this year so the garden is not quite as expansive as it has been in the past. here's a shitty pic from my cell phone from about two weeks ago...



Yes, those are sun flowers towering above and behind my truck, the opnes around the preemeter of the garden are about 9' tall, the ones that "volunteered" from seed spilled lastyear got a much earlier strout and are not visible in the pic, but would be measuered at over 12' already if they weren't drooping back down(they kind of look like a giant swamp creature, you can see some small/young ones above in my garden picture mixed in with the corn).

My cousin and her man also gave me some other very interesting seeds: The Giant sunflowers, Heirloom Cushaw Squash(tastiest squash I've even eaten, google them if you are unfamilliar), Some very interesting white and very segmented/ribbed pumpkins, some giant 1' long red bush beans, some variety of okra, peanuts, and a few others most of which came from his family in El Salvador. A few years back his family mailed him a whole bunch of seeds from plant varieties that they still grow in abundance down there.

Including my small plot behind my house and everything in and around my larger plot on family property (including the short time to harvest and fall crop seeds I put in early on the day I left for vacation) I am growing the following varieties of plants in varying numbers:

* Heirloom White Corn
* Two different samples of Heirloom Indian Corn
* Walmart bag(?) Potatos
* Russian Banana Potatos
* Sweet Potatos
* Red Onions
* Long Handled Dipper Gourds
* Small Ornamental Gourds
* Luffa Gourds
* Yellow tomaoes
* Large red Heirloom Tomatoes
* Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes
* Green Bell Peppers
* Jalepenos Peppers
* Habeneros Peppers
* Bhut Jolokia Peppers(courtiousy of ArmedSuspects kind wife)
* Zuchini
* Cucumbers
* Cushaw Squash
* Bush Beans
* Wax Beans
* Wierd El Salvadoran foor long red string beans
* Wierd El Salvadoran pumpkins
* Giant 9-12" Sunflowers
* Peanut Plants
* Sugar Baby Watermelons
* Cantelope
* Radishes
* Brussels Sprouts
* Seven Top(?) Turnips
* Purple Globe Turnips
* Broccoli
* Lettuce
* Cabbage
* A potted hanging Strawberry plant that did very well and which will be in a dedicated strawberry raised bed next year
* And I'm positive that I'm forgetting at least something, but I can't for the life of me figure it out right now...


I plan on possibly yet putting in a a few more things like a row of yellow squash and more zuchini as well as okra and maybe a few other fast growing crops that I can harvest before the frost in the fall or that can take a bit of frost. I may also do a Winter / cover crop. And it turns out that the Rhubarb and Garlic I planted should have gone in the ground in the fall not the spring. So i made a few beginers mistakes and still have lots to learn, considering how long it's been and doing it mostly on my own I'm feeling pretty good about things so far. I just wish i had more time to spend tending my garden. I've got a bunh of stuff that needs to be picked and processed now but I've got a lot of job related work coming up and I don't know how much time I'll have to spend playing int he dirt in the coming week or two. Hopefully not too much of it will go to waste even if I've shalked this season up to a learning expierence and training exercise for next year...

K.

Nice looking garden you have, I sure wish I had that much room. I just have a very small lot and make do with what I have. THe soil here is not very good, lots of sand as you might have guessed.after several gardens in this soil with mixed results I have started putting in a raised bed garden, hope to have it done soon so I can start thinking about what I will plant for the fall.
I bought my timbers for the frames and have trucked in some good soil, lots of work, hope it pays off. I am still thinking about how I might do the irrigation.
Since we have very mild winters here I will build some kind of frame to cover tender plants this winter, with a good cover and a drop cord light under the cover at night you can protect most anything thru the winter here, I had tomato plants well into January, just covered them up, that third frost did them in.

Looks good OP!

I'm AMAZED at how green everything is (lawns,etc)

We are about burned up here.
I haven't moved in almost 2 months.
Seems to rain all around us, but NOTHING here.

Dave15, the wife, her family and I vacationed in Rehoboth. Wife and I drove up[ a day early and stayed the night in Dover before heading bak South to the Beach. I got to see a fair portion of MD and DE on the drive up and back. The wife's family is mostly from MD and DE so I also got to expierence and hear all about the heat up that way!

It's been about as hot here this past week according to what my parents told me but we've gotten more rain obviously and it's probably been a bit cooler in the preceding weeks. It has been hot enough though that i've been doing a lot of my gardening at night. I have drop light bungie corded to a pitchfork with 100ft of extension cord. I just move it all around the garden while I'm working. I'm sure anyone driving by and the neighbors think I'm looney but that set up and a headlamp have worked pretty well for me and kept me out of the hotter part of the day while letting me actully getinto the garden and do some work when I do have some time.

We stopped by Elmer's Produce and Adam's Fruit Market on the way home, both had a lot of good looking fruits and veggies for sale but they are in the buisness and have extensive irrigation inplace. I will say that that MD/DE/NJ white corn is some of the whitest sweetest best corn I've havd the pleasure of consuming(had some execellant, maybe the best tomatoes I've ever eaten, while up there to from a guy my wife's Grandmother bought them off of in Caroline County) some folks do grow yellow sweet corn around here but it's not nearly as tasty IMHO...

P.S. Certainly nothing personal but fuck MD gun laws! The wife and I were traveling with a pair of glock 19s we were GTG in VA and DE but had to download and stash and stow guns and ammo seperatelly through MD what a bunch of BS!

K.

Another bushel of zucchini picked, about to fire up the deyhdrators. Lots of this will hopefully be used in soups, stews and zucchini bread later this fall and into the winter, I'm also toying with the idea of zucchini hardtack!..



Here's a little mint plant I nursed back to health from a single small stalk, I love mint tea...


My hanging basket of strawberries did really well, though upside down part of the plant blommomed a lot it would not fruit, the upper part of the plant gave us a suprising amount of strawberries for one little plant. Very impressed with this little plant, I'll be unpotting and splitting it and planting it in a raised bed come next year. The grow tomatoes in a hanging basket thing may work for some, and maybe i just had too many plants in their but I wasn't impressed, I'll be sticking strictly to more conventional inground planting methods for tomatoes int he future...


K.

New picks from this week...
One of my Zucchini plants rotted and died, and the Zuccs and Cucs in general gave me another big batch I harvested a few nights ago but look like they don't have a lot of buds left and probably are now about done for the season. My Luffa gourds are finally starting to come on nice after I had to go to war with the local critters that ate the first early planting. My row of random and ornament stuff is coming up nice but with surprisingly little Indian corn in the mix(only a few stalks came up). I need to get a fence up for that stuff to trellace on as they're mostly climbers, I need to try and see if it's not to late to trellace my beans in the main part of the garden as well as they and the mellons are trying hard to comingle(that'll make a huge mess to try and harvest).I got the Fall harvest stuff plpanted right before I went on vacation. Brussels Sprouts, Broccoli, Lettuce, Cabbage, 2 types of Turnips, Radishes, Kholrobi, Red Onions... The Turnips and Radishes are already starting up.











And my little garden behind my house with more Cushaw squash, peanuts, Ghost pepper, Yellow and Cherry tomatoes, etc.

Yeah, my corn is torched, my potatoes are dead, onions were a bust.....

Another personal first for me. While I've helped others on occation in the past as a very kitchen proficient(I was a kithen manager and ran the food side of a 600+ person occupany bar) marginally trained monkey, stepping and fetching for those whom knew what they were doing.

I'd never actully attempted to can anything all by myself before. I've had a pressure canner a waterbath canning pot a half dozen flats of quart jars and some other goodies setting on a shelf for a while. Well I got to feeling a little frisky and decided to bust my canning cherry tonight. I don't know if they'll be worth a shit or not, but all the dimples popped and hopefully they'll still be sealed and tight when I wake up!

I decided to go with a very simple and hopefully savory recipe: Mrs. Wages picking spice packet, white vinegar, water, fresh cracked black pepper, a healthy dollop of minced garlic and a just picked prior to canning halved jalepeno in each jar.




K.

What kind of beans am I growning(aside from the regular old wax and bush beans mentioned above)? These are the beans I mentioned that came from my cousin's extended family in El Salvador with a G-19(with TRL-1s and a 17 round mag with magpul speedplate) for comparrison. My cousin's husband just says they're "beans"(apparently as common to them as green pole beans are to us) and neither one of them know what variety they are or what they are properly called...

Crappy cell phone pic and all, the color of the beans is kind of a maroonish mauve(purplish) hue...


I'll try to get some more(and current) pics of my garden up in the next day or two...

K.

Probably yard long beans.......
http://www.kitazawaseed.com/seeds_yard_long_bean.html

Yard Long Bean (Vigna unguiculata subsp sesquipedalis)

Also known as:
asparagus bean, Chinese long bean, garter bean, snake bean, yard long bean

REELDOC, you win the internets!.. that's them, thanks!..

K.

If I can ever get into the garden during the light of day I'll get some more pics of what the gardens as a whole look like currently.

I did manage to get in the larger garden for a while lastnight. I harvested a right good batch of tomatoes, large and and grape sized. I also pulled a few more zuccs and cucs(by the looks of the plants this'll probably just about the last of both. I pulled a few jalepenos and green bell peppers and a few more yard long beans. While I was running the sprinkler and watering the garden I decided to pick some apples.

I sliced up and dehydrated probably a 1/3rd bushel of what if i recall correctly are beefsteak tomatoes. I need to start thinking about drying and canning and or pickeling all the grape tomatoes(lots here lots more still on the vines). And next week a good friend and fellow arfcommer LethalPastry is coming in town to visit. I think the plan is to put him to work helping me pick the rest of the apples and start on the pears and do what we can in the garden. Time permitting we'll be making a bunch of pints of apple and pear butter...

Fresh goodies flanked by two dehydrators worth of just finished drying tomatoes...


K.

I grew them last year. They are pretty good cooked like a green bean when they are kinda short, but once they start getting big they are pretty much good for seed only. Your mileage may vary but one crop was enough for me.