SwampRat's adventures in suburban gardening.

[SwampRat]

Thanks for the praise guys. Added some "cat netting " to the operation today.


Also got all my seeds started! I'll put up a whole list later.

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[Blast]

Looks awesome! I 'm curious to hear what you planted.
Good luck netting a cat, they can be good eating.
-Blast

[SwampRat]

Ok. I took the big wooden box and seeded it in carrots, lettuce and brussels. Using some composting pots, we started bell peppers, habbanero peppers, jalapenos and sweet banana. Also crook neck squash, zucchini, cucumber and bush beans. All of which are one apiece, going to trellace the vining stuff up the cattle pannel. Also started 3 Roma tomatos. Will plant all those in buckets in about a month. And then I have the onions, garlic and 6 asparagus rhizomes I planted in the smart pots. Oh, and 5 potatoes in towers. Projects for next time home include ripping out all the landscaping and making it edible. Front flower bed is being turned into an herb garden, and the bushes are all getting ripped out and replaced with blueberries. Still more to come.
My kid does actually have a head, I just removed it, er I mean blured it out to protect the innocent.

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[Crazy Wolf]

Good to know Plank's able to keep an eye on your crops, Edd.

[Blast]

Little Wooden Boy!!
http://youtu.be/B-TLe9iwWEs
-Blast

[SwampRat]

[SwampRat]

Everything is coming up great.









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[TacAir]

LOL

I am so envious - I still have 4 feet of snow in my back yard....

[SwampRat]

What's the growing season like out there? What sort of crops work best?

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[the_alias]

Looking great SwampRat!

[TacAir]

What's the growing season like out there? What sort of crops work best?

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Largest cash crop in Ak after the Herb Superb is potatoes mostly seed potatoes at that. Otherwise gardens do well with faster growing/cold tolerant foods - squash, peas, radishs, spuds, cabbage, kale, carrots.

I don't see any corn, soybeans, or oranges... in neighborhood gardens.

Berries, raspberry, blueberry, black berry, as well as rose hips are picked from what grows in the wild.

The season is short, but the days are long - so a bit of a tradeoff. Rain and cloudly weather is always a worry.

[Blast]

I'll be curious to see how your asparagus does in that tub.
-Blast

[SwampRat]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004S0KVF2/ref=cm_sw_r_an_am_ap_am_us?ie=UTF8

This is what that is. Its a similar material as landscaping cloth, but much thicker. I bought a few to see how they work. So far so good. There are two of them with 3 root crowns each.

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[slannesh]

Looking great SwampRat!

I'm hoping to do some container gardening this year myself (We just bought a new house and finally get to move in a few weeks) and your thread is giving me several good ideas that I plan on shamelessly borrowing

Still too early to do anything up here as we've still got snow and lows are still -10C but it's been getting progressively more springlike for the last few weeks. Can't wait!

[RoneKiln]

Anyone have any tips to keep the neighbors cats out of my garden? Damn cats...

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Scatter black peppercorns in the garden. Cats hate them and don't dig in soil where they've been scattered. I assume it's the smell, but don't know for certain. Might not keep them from gnawing at taller plants though.

[SwampRat]

Anyone have any tips to keep the neighbors cats out of my garden? Damn cats...

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Scatter black peppercorns in the garden. Cats hate them and don't dig in soil where they've been scattered. I assume it's the smell, but don't know for certain. Might not keep them from gnawing at taller plants though.

Thanks for the tip. I used to own a classic car, I would dust it with pepper for the same reason, never considered it for the garden.

Here are a couple of updated pics. I had to replace some of my seedlings due to poor root structure. Ill do further testing on that in a couple weeks. Hope its not the seeds, because I bought a ton.



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[SwampRat]

UPDATE: The missus sent me some updated pics, fresh from today, I couldnt be much more pleased!


Wide view


Holy corn Batman!


asparagus


Black berries


zucchini and squash.


Peppers in the foreground, blueberries in the big pots by the gate.


Potato tower.

After last years complete and utter failure, this garden makes me so freaking happy.


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[bladesman]

What a great looking garden setup!

I've been planning a garden for my back yard and I found a site called "Garden Girl TV" http://www.gardengirltv.com run by Patti Moreno.

I've watched a bunch of the vids on her gardening plans for urban locations and it is quite remarkable.
She bases her principles on Mel Bartholomew's "Square Foot Gardening" (I have a copy of this book, too.)
Her raised bed designs are mostly 4'x8' made from 2x8 planking. She then tops it with a generic, moveable chicken wire frame she can rotate out, to house either bantam chickens or rabbits to manure the beds and provide meat/eggs (nothing like fresh rabbit eggs!) She also stacks 2 beds on top of each other to get a deeper growing area. Her videos provide instructions on how to make the raised beds and frames - thare are no PDF plans, but how hard is it to build a box? I saw in a couple of vids that she actually has some dwarf fruit trees growing in the raised beds in a city garden.

I have a large piece of property (8 acres: 5 acres of woods and 3 acres of grass with a shallow stream seperating the two) but I was a little overwhelmed with trying to plan a garden on a large scale. My soil has a high percentage of clay and rocks, and is difficult to work, so I thought I'd try the raised beds. By using Patti's ideas, I can start with a more manageable size close to the house with good soil and then grow more things as I gain experience.

I've priced the lumber at the local home improvement store and it would cost about $20 per 4'x8' bed compared to the $30 pre-made plastic 4'x4' beds (that are only 6" high) at the local store. Time to fire up the drill!

Hope you can use some of this info in your green thumb journey.

Overall, I can't recommend this site enough for some great ideas and some good info to get started.

[SwampRat]

Thanks for the link, I'll definitely check it out later. Most of my experience is with open ground farming so the last year has been an experiment in containers and raised beds. I'll take some better pictures when I get home to show the diversity better. I actually have a raised bed, buckets, smart pots, potatoe tower, SIP's and just plain bag plants.

Glad you like the garden.

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[SwampRat]

Looking at my last update made me realize how much my garden has grown! Everything is doing pretty good. My brussel sprouts have been ravaged by some unknown critter.... But I didnt think they'd make it anyway before the heat. So if they are keeping it off my other plants I don't care.

I've got the demon ants hangin around my corn and some stink bug variety on my potatoes. They dont seem to be harming them though, just hanging out on them. I could be wrong though.

Lastnight I released a bag of lady bugs into the garden to do battle. And I also purchased two praying mantis egg sacks. Which I mounted in my peach tree. Trying to keep things organic. I am going to expand later this week and add some toad housing in for the toads I've seen. Which reminds me, I put in a solar spot light to attract bugs for the toads to eat as well. While taking these pictures I also found a few honey bees in my cucumber blooms and a random night spider nest.

Here are some pics from just now.


The mantis eggs.



My lady bug army.


my watermelon in a potting soil bag "planter."


The squash like things.


Edward the unfortunate crawfish...


Edwards cousins.



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[curryman]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004S0KVF2/ref=cm_sw_r_an_am_ap_am_us?ie=UTF8

This is what that is. Its a similar material as landscaping cloth, but much thicker. I bought a few to see how they work. So far so good. There are two of them with 3 root crowns each.

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Thanks for answering my question before I asked. I like the plant directly in the bag of soil idea(it has now become part of next years plan).


My squash like things.


Curryman

[SwampRat]

Thanks Curryman. Your squash is looking good! I wish I could claim the potting soil bag idea, but I got it from a Mother Earth news mag . I took a long screwdriver and poked about 8 holes all the way through the bag into the ground for drainage. Then just slashed the top open and inserted watermelon seedlings. MEN mag recommends cutting the whole top off leaving a little 1 or 2 inch lip to keep the bag together.

I decided to go ahead and install a drip watering system. I'm pretty happy with it. It's hooked to a timer, and is going to make things much easier with our various summer plans. I also added a few square feet to the garden by shifting which wall the gate was on. This allowed me to add a banana plant and a couple of sage shrubs that dont have a home yet. I was yanking some tall grass out by hand (daughter fried my weedeater) for the expansion, and had an encounter with the biggest Rabid Wolf Spider I've ever seen. Man, I never come across one of those back in Florida. I couldnt get a picture because the thing was so frickin fast, and I was worried about my toes (barefoot). Apparently, they are bad little dudes, and physically over power other insects. I'm glad to have a few around my garden. I also found the damn caterpillars that are chewing up my Brussels...


The addition.


dwarf Cavendish banana.



New drip system.







And my next project.....



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[SwampRat]

And one of my weekend projects was setting up a small container garden in a half whiskey barrel.

It's got a little cheapo fountain pump for aeration with a course filter. And the peace Lilly is just for shade and a little place holder until I get some cattail. There are also some water Lilly bulbs in a grow basket down in there. And the whole opperation is home to two goldfish. I already have plans to expand.


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[tripleryder]

Nice work! Great budget innovation, and gives me good ideas as well