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Digging in the dirt (that is, Gardening)
Geod
swim, swim, hungryRegistered User regular
swim, swim, hungryRegistered User regular
I'd like some tips advice about gardening. I usually do my veggies on my 11th floor balcony in pots, but this year my apartment complex has plots actually on the ground. This is a whole new experience for myself, I usually just dump potting soil in a few containers so I'm a bit lost. My plot is 6x6, so not huge, but should suit my needs. I'm assuming that I should get some sort of fertilizers and soil to mix in with the normal soil. Correct? What type of fertilizers and junk should I put together? Any other advice? Should I worry about some way to control weeds? I'll probably be putting tomatoes, peppers, pole beans, strawberries and some other stuff in there. Thanks!
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(I may be wrong about that last part)
I have picked up a book that I am in love with, The Vegetable Gardeners Container Bible. The same author has a regular Vegetable Gardeners Bible That i'm going to assume is just as good as the container one that I picked up.
Lots of great advice and knowledge. He's pretty keen on organics and things, so you might have to nip and tuck here and there, but still.
personally? I would grow at least 1 tomato plant, Roma or Plum variety, because they're so useful in everything from salads to sauces and so on. I would try to plant some carrots and maybe also trellis up a cucumber and some pole beans. Also, bell peppers are fun and fairly easy.
i'm down in the southern hemisphere right now, so i'm planning my containers for next spring (start planting in october) and it should be rather fun to see what I can get to grow.
Good luck!
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Strawberries don't produce much the first year either.
For a 6x6 plot, I'd recommend a row of Tomato plants, a row of Onions, half a row of Jalapenos plants, half a row of Garlic, and a row of Potato plants. Maybe some corn, if you're feeling nasty.
Weed-wise, I'd recommend just pulling them out every 2-3 days, I mean 36sqft isn't very much territory to deal with.
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I was about to post that first book. It is good shit. It is all about maximizing gardening space to provide the best yields.
Thirding this. Square Foot gardening is much more efficient than your traditional rows.
So far I've planted out two lettuce and that's it
My best advice is to plant things you'll actually eat. And that burying a plastic cup and half filling it with beer is apparently an effective slug trap, only just tried that so not seen for myself if it actually works.
Some people recommend weed control by laying either cardboard or a weed control membrane and planting through that.
Another tip is to bury empty plant pots or the top half of plastic bottles (upside down) next to where plants are going to go in and once the plants are established watering through these, send water directly to the roots rather than the soil surface. You lose less water to evaporation that way.
We eat/use lots of tomatoes and onions in our cooking.
We've had horrible storms this week and plenty of tornados popping up in the state, but all of our stuff is still standing and they are growing like crazy. Just glad we decided against potatoes since we've had so much freaking raining lately, I hear that's not good for potatoes.
I'd recommend sq ft gardening because really it was easy, doesn't take up much room and seems like it's going good so far.
our 4x4 sq ft garden box we alternated a layer of soil then a layer of fertilizer, back and forth until we had the right level in our box, the last layer being soil.
I'm interested in growing fruits/veggies but I don't know a thing about it. So I'm looking for some Farming 101, Farming for Dummies-esque books.
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Like myself and others above have recommended for the OP I'll again say, Square Foot Gardening. This is the book I have: All New Square Foot Gardening
Tells you what you need to know, and you'll always continue to learn extra little tidbits as you go along from others, some good tips, some bad, but at that point it's like cooking a good chili, you tinker and tweek and ultimately develop your own recipe of what works for you.
And just as someone said earlier, try to stick to planting what you eat a lot of.