Posted on 01/10/2009 6:05:11 PM PST by nickcarraway
I wonder if this will work for me.
Last spring we moved into a house with a great garden spot. Our new neighbors raved about the great vegetables that the old couple we bought the house from used to grow. I decided to set out some tomatoes and peppers only, since we were pretty busy with getting settled.
The plants did GREAT, and it was a lot of fun until about midsummer... when vines started growing everywhere! They were worse than kudzu, and would grow so fast that I couldn't keep up with them. They took over my tomato and pepper plants and "strangled" them.
One of my neighbors stopped by one evening when I was out hoeing the garden, and mentioned that the old man who had owned the house before us had planted gourds his last year there. He said that the old man couldn't keep up with them either, and that the vines had taken over nearly the entire back yard and had grown up the trees surrounding the garden.
I guess these gourd vines will just keep coming back year after year until I figure out a way to deal with them. Your suggestion sounds like it might just help.
Thanks!
I sell trees for a living. If you need any, let me know. I’ll have ‘bare root’ trees in stock come the end of March. :)
Shameless plug:
While I didn’t want to go into too much detail, the idea is to have an alternative to meat, when meat is either exorbitantly priced or scarce, both of which could happen in a serious depression.
But even worse, if there is an agricultural pandemic of the H5N1 influenza, whether or not it kills a vast number of people, it could also wipe out a vast amount of farm animals, leading to profound shortages of meat.
As an aside, I will note that Quorn has a major advantage over tofu in that it does not contain the high levels of plant estrogen that tofu does. While tofu is widely consumed without problems in southern Asia, this is because it has been fermented, which destroys most of the estrogen.
For this reason, it would be a good idea to limit intake of non-fermented tofu, as plant estrogen can cause severe health problems.
“To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch, their renewal of life, this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.” ~ Charles Dudley Warner
“I see many positive aspects of encouraging victory gardens today. “ So do I. Even for people who have been gardening all their lives, the produce you grow in your garden tastes much better than anything coming from a grocery store.
Yea Grammy, you are growing a garden this year!!! Let me know how the deer repellent works.
I’m going to double the size of my garden this year, and try to freeze, and maybe can some veggies.
I have a small garden in raised beds and fenced. Fencing is a must, because of the deer.
I think a lot more people will be growing gardens now, and getting seeds and plant sets may be a problem. I noticed it last year, when I couldn’t find onion sets. I live 10 miles from town, and everytime I’d go to the Coop, Walmart, they’d say they had them, but they were gone by day’s end.
Off topic, have any of you heard from gardengirl lately? I have scanned a few gardening threads and haven’t seen her in a while. Hope she is okay.
Think I am going to try to the newspapers in the garden, like the other poster suggested. Also, it would be neat if JustaDumbBlonde could post that photo again of her garden, and way of controlling weeds.
We had one in our old house when the kids were little, and they enjoyed it then. They ate more salads than they ever have in their life! The garden was off to the side of the yard, and wasn’t the main focus of the yard.
I’ve been resistant to put one in the new house because the only real place is a strip of dirt between our pool and our grassy area. It’s literally the middle of the yard.
I try to plant flowers there, but half the time it ends up being dirt, so I’m just going to use it for a garden. It will be prettier than dirt, and much more functional. I also want to add a lemon tree.
GG posted a soup recipe last night. I’ll bet she’s coming into her busy season at her garden center. She’s always a number of months ahead of me, up here in ‘Da Great White Nort.’ :)
Awesome !
We have smaller gardens, yet we get more from em with careful planning than most would in same area. My goal next year is to build a greenhouse. We would love to have about six acres for just gardens but our property is just 2 acres. But we gave up lawn 2 years ago to make room for more garden spaces. But we share a lot of our harvest is we that we can’t properly store due space or consumption etc ....
Good luck on your gardening !
Go squat yourself. Better yet, beat up on some troll on another thread. Arrogant idiot.
Oh agree ...... I used to snack on popcorn, salt butter etc and then someone told me to not add butter and salt for a few weeks of consuming my daily snack ! The popcorn alone was (is) actually kind of sweet. The popcorn alone is very very good , no need to alter the taste but it is just as good with or without.
Processed food is indeed different. We try and never use such. But we have canned goods, like soups and chili’s and stews on the shelf as emergency cache but we use it for lunches at work as it nears it’s shelf life and replenish with fresh. We buy cornmeal, all purpose flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, spices, cooking oils, tea, coffee in bulk a few times a year yet really try and stay out of the stores as much as possible. Saves fuel.
Squatting was not an insult but good advice. If you can find free land, claim it.
Glad to hear she’s still on FR. I bet she is busy, the garden centers here are getting ready for the spring garden season, which is only a few weeks away (thank God).
I have some tomato and bell pepper starts underway in the house. Last week I went to visit my brother in Knoxville and his neighbor had these little greenhouses, a four level wide racked shelf with a plastic zip up cover. He had beautiful Christmas cactuses growing in them. They are on wheels and you can wheel them inside when it is too cold out, then back out in warmer weather. I begged him to sell me one.
The weather here is crazy, we have 60 degree weather one day, then 15 the next. So these are perfect. Remember I told you we built a small greenhouse outside, but last year lost all my hanging flowers in there. The electric rates just went sky high here, and I can’t afford to heat it, plus can’t stand the thought of losing everything again. It is basically now a potting shed, but in April I may move everything in there.
Winter before last we had gorgeous weather, and everything outside budded. Then, in April we had about two days where it dropped in the teens.I’m going to try really hard not to get overanxious this year and plant too soon.
Do these work well? I’ve thought about putting some of those in my failed greenhouse, which is now a potting shed, and letting them grow till the temperatures drop too much.
My house has a lot of glass, and four of the windows get several hours of morning sun. Wonder if I could bring one of those in during the winter, hang it in the window and put a drip pan under it. I’d love to have fresh tomatos all winter.
I believe that it was Gabz that said that the landscape fabric would last longer if I put some straw or bark mulch on top, but I didn't have access to cheap straw and bark mulch was cost prohibitive. I did get 2 years' use though, as I planted a winter crop of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage on the '07 beds.
Hey y’all!
**Haven’t seen her in awhile. Hope she’s ok.**
Was just thinking the same about you, girlangler! How’s it going?
Still here, just enjoying the breathing space that is getting smaller by the minute! We do a lot of store cleaning this time of year, and inventory, and other fun stuff that we don’t have much time for otherwise.
We have to recover our greenhouse this year—the plastic is only good for about 4 years and then it gets milky and doesn’t let in enough light. Double layer, so it takes a few people, and somebody has to mind the store! Greenhouse plastic is like a fire—no matter how calm it is when you start, it attracts wind like moths to a flame, and then it becomes a sail. :)
We’ve got most of our seeds in, and we started some broccoli and cabbage Sat. Late start for us, but the last few years we’ve had a mild Jan and cold Feb and March. We’ve already had people in asking about onions and taters. They should be arriving in about two weeks. Gotta do some lettuce, spinach, chard, brussels sprouts, etc. Ran out of time and daylight—and energy!
We got our figs pruned and have several hundred cuttings started. About 2/3 of them will root. 3 varieties this year and another possible. Also have some yellow Angel trumpets started and some Confederate Roses. They’re leafing out really good.
The weather is up and down, like girlangler’s. 70 one day and 20 the next. I did notice the other day that the oak trees are bronzing up. They’re gonna get zapped next week. Calling for highs in the 30’s.
I really envy those of you that don’t have to fight weeds and insects so much. Here, it’s never ending. Literally, by the time you finish a row and go back to the other end, more weeds have already sprouted. And no insecticides? Forget it. Everything we plant would be gone overnight or ruined beyond salvage! Not spray fruit trees? There’d be no point in planting them. I love living in the sunny south, but it has a few drawbacks.
OTOH, if I could just figure out a profitable market for fireants... LOL Gbaby got into them today picking dandelions.
Where do you get your landscape fabric? Is this the same stuff I can pick up in rolls a Lowe’s or Home Depot?
Here's a link to the exact product I've been purchasing:
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