Gardening Thread- Show me your gardens!

What, these things?
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Suntuf-26-in-x-8-ft-Clear-Polycarbonate-Roofing-Panel-101697/100021329?N=5yc1vZar5fZ1z0ubbv

I helped my girlfriend's dad install them as a roof on his woodshed something like 5 years ago and they still look brand new; no leaks, discoloring, cracks or anything
You've just got to make sure you install them with the "UV" side facing out...

Why do you say they're junk? Did you have bad luck with them before? Not trying to be argumentative, just curious.

Yeah, during the summer I move them outside. The buckets they're in have holes drilled in the bases so that they can drain easily. I'll have to try that with the leaves! I'm not really expecting fruit out of them; it was just an experiment to see if I could get them to grow, and then I figured I'd keep them. At the very least, they convert CO2 to oxygen and improve the air quality of my house during the winter.

The one that looks like a Plymouth Barred Rock is a Dominique; the blonde roo is a Buff Orpington. They're both older breeds that free-range well and they pretty much feed themselves during the summer; the 12 birds will only go through about 1/2 a feeder per week, unless it's rainy (then they usually won't even come out of the coop; they'll just stand in the door and complain)
They definitely don't intimidate easily. The blonde one will go out of his way to chase my girlfriend around.

 

Yeah, the clear soft poly works ok here, but you've got to keep it cleaned off all the time, and it still is susceptible to tearing.
Shrug. Like you say, it's all fun. Maybe by the time i get around to building one the cost of that double-layered acrylic stuff will have gotten more reasonable and I can just use that!

 

A video I made in Jan of my garden

http://youtu.be/gua-09rQWnk

 

Cool!
What breeds did you get for chickens?

 

That is awesome!

The chickens sounded funny in the background.

Is there anyway around having to tend so much to the fish, like changing the water so much etc?

 

I know I have two RI reds dont recall the the other two breeds But I get about 4 eggs a day out of the five girls.

 

Are you kidding me? hahah the fish are almost no maintenance. The garden/Grow beds filter the water all you do is feed the fish. I actually had issues with the water being too clean. Only thing is if you live in an area that gets cold below 55 at night then you have to worry about heating the water which could be expensive. The other option is kois who can live in near frozen water.

Thanks, I love this kind of stuff. In the past the farmed live corals so this came really easy. Very similar in concept.

 

Haha no I wasn't kidding, I just heard you say something about having to change the water every four days or so, I guess I misunderstood or didn't hear everything. I did hear you talking about the filtration etc.
But that's awesome it's like it all takes care of it's self. I bet it's calming to have the sound of the water too, I noticed that in your video.

As far as the temps go, I was thinking how having a setup like that inside of a greenhouse would be awesome. I guess how well the greenhouse would effect the over all temps would be determined by a lot of different things like how it's setup and the materials used and location. But if you had it all dailed in, that would be awesome.


I guess when it comes to Koi, you would only be needing them to help fertilize the waters for the plants.
Which leads me to ask, do you eat the Tilapia?

 

Yeah it's the black and white speckled one, he was 100% not give a crap, I'll flog your ass Rooster. Ole Bubba.

 

Ohh Yea the issue was on the very first few weeks of winter temp were in the mid 30s at night so I have to move the fish out and into the house in a more traditional aquarium. I'm actually looking into a green house for this winter. Only issue right now is the 70mph santa ana wind we get around here. I wasn't confident it would hold up on a budget green house.

 

Got my seeds started this weekend! The flats are sitting in the front window right now, absorbing the sunlight.
I found Garlic shoots poking up through the last of the snow in their garden bed this weekend; I figured that was an indicator that it was time to start my seeds.
I planted my tomatoes (beefsteak, brandywine, and amish paste), peppers (jalapeno, habanero, cayenne & piquin, plus some sweet bell peppers), broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, and a new experiment this year for three varieties of melons (watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew). Not sure how much of a yield I'll get out of those, but figured I'd give them a try. If worse comes to worst I can always set up a hoophouse around them to get a couple of extra weeks this fall.

 

Turned over the garden beds today after work, to loosen up and work the soil from having three feet of snow on them all winter. Added some compost and some aged manure and tilled it all in!


Now my arms are sore and my back is stiff. The joys of growing your own vegetables!
Tomorrow I'll set up my hoops and start warming the beds up. Can't wait to get some plants in the ground!

 

Peas............... won't be long to start stringing them up

 

And here's what it looked like by June of '13



Great looking garden! I have a house but the yard is under mainly shade so I use the backside of the house where we have a 3' run with lots of sun. I have many raised planter boxes. Been gardening this way for 3 years now. This year have 6 zucchini plants, 6 Kentucky wonder pole beans, sage, cilantro, basil, 17 tomato plants (sweet 100 cherry, sungold cherry, early girl) and am thinking of what else I want to eat this summer. There's nothing better than grabbing fresh veggies from your garden for dinner. It just tastes so fresh and feels so good! I wish I had chickens although I don't think living in a city in a rental house allows that. But great looking garden!

 

Great! What variety do you grow? I usually do Sugar Snap because I like eating them whole; pod and all. Haven't even gotten mine in the ground yet, though. Soil temp is still only about 40 degrees.

Thanks!
From what I've read, you can get a lot of veggies out of the planter boxes if you do it right. I grow my peppers in boxes in front of the house (the brick facade lets me plant them sooner and keep them growing longer) and they did well last year.
If you like hot peppers I'd recommend growing some jalapenos. They're pretty easy and they produce all kinds of fruit. I usually grow 4 plants and I get enough peppers for two batches of jalapeno jelly, plus enough to dehydrate and store over the winter for stews, chili, etc.
I'd say you could try beets because they're pretty easy, but they take up a pretty good amount of space for what you get.

 

these are sugar snap. Got them from walmart for 20 cents a pack not many in each pack but I think they all came up.

 

Love sugar snaps.
I need to build my trellis higher this year; last year mine overgrew the 5 foot trellis by I made by about 2 feet.

 

Got my water storage system hooked back up this morning. Built a platform for it this year; last year was our first year using the totes and they weigh a lot more than the 50 gallon rain barrels we were using before. By the end of the summer the tote bases had sunk about 3 inches into the ground and I didn't have as much pressure at the end of the hose as I did when we started. So this year they got a 7 inch lift kit.

Gutters from the roof

Flow into a 3" pipe which dumps the water into a pair of 275 Gallon totes

Which we hook the garden hose to and use it to water the garden so we're not draining the well to keep the beds watered in August.

Saves on the power bill too, since we're not running the pump. There's a second set of gutters that goes on the back of the house and feeds into the tote on the right, but I haven't gotten that side re-installed yet. The bottom pipe cross-feeds, so both totes will fill even if I've only got one side hooked up, but it takes more rain because I'm only collecting from half of the roof.

 

Congrats on the house! Hopefully it's not in some neighborhood with stupid zoning rules like "nothing but grass and shrubs on the lawn."

 

From what I've read, a lot of the zoning against chickens is actually against Roosters. Odds are if you have a roosterless flock the neighbors won't really care (especially if you use your idea of egg bribery). Chickens are quiet; Roosters aren't. Before my roo's started crowing we had a hard time keeping track of where the chickens actually were on the property because mostly they just cluck to each other and scratch around. Of course, now the roosters crow, so you pretty much always know where the hens are.