Gardening Thread - Show me your gardens!

I never had the urge to grow anything. I cant even grow grass. But on a whim i decided to try a quick little garden and if nothing happened then big deal. I would have top soil to level out my lawn.
So i grabbed a few Tacoma frame transport ends and filled them. i was very surprised they actually grew.
I do love cukes so walking by and grabbing one is pretty cool.
Tomatoes, Peas ( pulling the last plant. nothing else is coming up) Cukes. Green Peppers. Red Peppers. Blueberry plant did nothing. Strawberry is growing leaves like crazy so maybe next year..


Not to bad for a black thumb... lol

 

I was working on something of a budget, too, because when I set mine up I had just dropped nearly $100k on a fixer upper and was putting a lot of $$$ into work on the house. Doing the raised beds was cheaper because I could build a 4x8 bed and fill it with topsoil for around $30, and it was faster because I could scrape the sod with the tractor bucket, lay down two layers of weed barrier, and drop a bed on it. Then I just used the tractor to fill them with the topsoil I got delivered, and old manure from the farm down the road. Got the whole garden built and seeded in a weekend, lol.

As for a watering system, right now I've got soaker hoses on a really slow gravity feed. I'm tinkering with a low-pressure gravity-fed drip system as a replacement, but I haven't gotten the kinks worked out of it yet.

Great! I love that about having a garden; just walk by and grab something to much on.

The blueberries probably won't do anything for a year or three, depending on how old they are, the soil, and the amount of light that they get. This is the 3rd summer since I've planted mine and this is the first year I'll get any kind of yield out of them.

 

My strawberries are leafing good. My blueberry plant is still a stick..lol I may have to replant that one

 

You watch those berry plants. They take over everything if you don't watch em.

PS I want to see an update in about 2 years when that garden takes up half your yard. This stuff is addicting.

 

Oh great.. Another ongoing project......
But then again I would not be suprised if was a little bit BIGGER.......

 

Here is the garden I built earlier this season. The fence line used to be a complete row of junipers, I pulled the two middle ones with my winch. Redwood 6x6 buried 3' and concreted in. I still need to finish the top with two 20' beams that will be carved at the ends. Now we have some beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, some other squash, kale, okra, jalapenos, and anaheims.

 

Very nice. Give it a year or two for the boards to weather in and it'll look like it's been there forever.
Lots better use of space than growing grass, isn't it?

 

Yes sir it is!

 

Is there a reason for the indent and the rock?

 

I need some help. I planted some peppers this year both started plants from Burpee and ones from seed. They are not doing great. My pablano is over two foot tall but the tiny peppers aren't growing. My other peppers are like barely growing. Maybe an inch a week. They are a couple months old now so should be bearing fruit by now.
Everything else is growing fantastic. Tomatoes, zucchini, squash, broccoli, lettuce, pickles, beans. Some things are slow but producing super well once they get there.
I organically garden so my fertilizers include a granular organic fertilizer and compost. I fertilize once every three weeks but have not added compost in two months.

What to do?

The plants have super tiny peppers on them and have flowered.
It has been very rainy recently but sunny and I have good drainage.
I will say the smaller plants look like they may have some bugs munching on them.

 

Not sure if you've fertilized them or not, but peppers seem to do best (for me, at least) with a low-nitrogen, high-nutrient fertilizer like Pro-Gro (5-3-4), A seaweed/kelp fertilizer, or a fish emulsion when they're small. Usually they take off after a dose of that.

 

If it makes you feel any better, our peppers barely produced anything and now they're dieing off. My wife and I have spoken with a bunch of people who have nice gardens and they have said the same thing. Not sure if it is a regional problem or what is going on. I only pickled maybe 3 quarts of Hungarian wax, banana peppers, and jalapeños. We only got about 5 bell peppers before the plants just stopped producing.

 

My hot peppers got a slow start this spring because it was cold and rainy, then very hot and extremely dry. But once the temps moderated at bit they took off and are doing pretty well now. Not their best year by any means, but they've got an average fruit load. Everything had a hard time getting started this spring, though. My squash are about a month behind where they should be, so I'm hoping for a late fall.

I don't even bother with bell peppers any more; two years of no production from them made me decide that the bed space was better used for hot peppers, lol.

 

Step for the wife and I thought it would look cool, break up the plain long front. Lost a little bit of gardening area but I like it.

 

Nice idea with a hidden use. I was just curious.

 

Canteloupes and watermelons..

 

Very nice.

 

I had to reread this to make sure if it was ready..lol

 

Nice melons!

 

My raised bed is about 60 feet by 10 feet.
Got my first sammich sized 'mater yesterday. Bucket of bush beans too.
I let some of the early lettuce go to seed, get tilled over a couple of times, and next Spring I have about 100 lettuce plants sprouting.
English Cukes did nothing this year

2nd pic is the mandatory Horseradish. When the roots are pulled,you replant the tops and they grow again. These have been in my family for 3 generations!





This Bartlett pear tree in the back has only been in the ground about 8 years and has several hundred pears on it this year.
The Moonglow in front FINALLY has a dozen or so this year.




Bout time I get to see peaches ripen. Usually the tree rats clean em out before I can pick them.