Gardening Thread - Show me your gardens!

Damn, that brings back memories

 

bahahah

i remember eating a hotdog wrapped in a slice of bread.

 

well more like a weenie.. but you get the point

 

Well....
I grew up with home-cooked meals made from farm-raised meat and veggies every night for dinner. Going from that straight to a diet of Ramen and Mac-N-Cheese.....after a month I'd had enough. For a couple of years after that I felt like whenever I even looked at a box of Kraft, haha!

 

They make sriracha flavor now.

 

Anyone ever make tomato jam? My wife is a teacher and is home for the summer, so she's been experimenting. She used 32 tomatoes to make 2 pints of jam (such patience!), so we wont be giving any away Has a salty/sweet/tomato-ey taste, really good with cream cheese and crackers. I guess you need to peel and core the tomatoes so only the flesh remains, then it's a lot of boiling down. She froze the seeds and skins and guves them to the chickens on hot days. Got the recipe off the interwebz.

 

Nah. I make ketchup, which is a similar process but a different recipe. 25lbs of tomatoes plus two onions and two green peppers works out to about 6 pints of ketchup, after a LOT of simmering.

 

hmmm.. share she ketchup recipe?

 

Hm...
As best as I can remember it's as follows:
25lbs of tomatoes, skinned and de-seeded (I use one of these, which is SOOOO much faster than doing it by hand. Just run them through three times or so to get everything

$76 Weston Food Strainer and Sauce Maker for Tomato, Fresh Fruits and Vegetables ,White

http://www.amazon.com/Strainer-Sauc...F8&qid=1437659913&sr=8-2&keywords=tomato+mill)
2 onions, chopped fine
2 green peppers, chopped fine
3-4 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
3 cups cider vinegar
1 teaspoon of ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
1 cup sugar (optional; if you're growing a sweeter variety of tomato you don't need it)

Then....simmer the crap out of it. Tomatoes have got a LOT of water, more than you'd think. I usually have to simmer it for close to 24 hours to get it reduced to the right consistency. Then I'll usually run it through the blender to smooth it out, and can it up.

 

ive never canned before. I have been wanting to give it a try.

last year i bought a bunch of canning stuff. still sitting there.

 

I might actually use ketchup if I made my own. This sounds like some work but also really good!

 

I'll have to double check the recipe when I get home; I might be off on the quantities for the spices, or I might have forgotten something. But that's the basic recipe, at any rate.

 

I see a lot of people have square foot gardens. I understand why someone might do this in areas with HOA's or when renting, but why not just till up the yard? Seems easier.

My garden is very small right now because of where I live. Plan on getting my first home soon and the goal is to have a very sizable garden. That way I can get into canning and preserving. Right now my garden is about the size of a parking lot so I'm not really getting fast enough yields with my current # of plants to can. I'm totes jelly of those of you with great big gardens.

 

i have it because theres poor soil drainage in my area. one inch of rain and soil is saturated and flooded.

 

I have a similar problem with my property; I'm on a side hill with a clay base, so when it rains my yard is wet. If I dig a hole in it, the hole will fill with water, and it'll stay full for 3 days after a rain storm because new water is draining in.

Raised beds are also easier to control the weeds in.
Plus, my garden is in (most of) my front yard, so I wanted it to look fairly presentable. And the raised beds help to keep the dog out of them when she gets excited and starts tear-assing around the yard.

 

...tear-assing lol

 

What about digging out the clay and putting in new soil?
I've had to do that with my garden because nothing grows well in the dense clay. Seems the square foot gardens are more expensive and more maintenance.
Basically what I want to do probably falls more into the farming category which is why I may feel that way lol.

I organically garden as much as I can and this year I have had zero problems with weeds. I've old weeded 3 times this year. Not sure what I'm doing but it's working.

 

If I dig out the clay and fill the hole with topsoil, it's still got clay on the bottom layer and surrounding it, so it's not going to drain. So I'll just be trying to grow my garden in a swamp, basically. And if I dig it deeper, install drainage pipes, crushed rock, and a filter barrier in the bottom of the hole to help pull off the excess water, I've got more time and expense into it than if I'd just stuck with raised beds in the first place.
So, for me, raised beds were the better choice.

 

This ^

 

Well then you are surely right.
My garden did miserably the first year, so I stupidly, by hand, dug out about 8 inches of clay and put in new top soil. Used buckets to carry it all out, dumped it in my truck and did a redneck dump out by some new construction area (go back wards really fast then slam on the brakes).
I had to have hauled at least 3,000lbs that day in clay. In the future will be renting a Bobcat. It significantly helped drainage because I tilled the underlying clay before putting soil and compost in. But I also installed french drain on the other side the fall before because of saturation near the patio. That probably helped. But yes, a lot of work and $$$.

I joke that I spent more money establishing my urban organic garden than if I just bought 100% organic the whole year from local farms LOL.

Have you guys installed portable irrigation using PVC or something like it? I'd like to get something rigged up that I can set up and just turn on a hose to water everything near the base of the plants, but then also take it apart and store it inside for the winter.
That might be were raised beds are nicer because it's probably easier to water everything in small, raise sections and not worry about getting the plants too wet.