What gardening mistakes did you make that I can avoid?

[savingdogs]

Okay, so the budget is tight and we have a large garden planned to supplement the larder. I'm sure lots of you can relate. I know I could post this on the gardening site but I like all of you and know you better.

I'm a DECENT gardener. I'm good with landscaping plants and have had success with fruit trees. My houses have ended up looking like messy english gardens, with plants spilling out from everywhere.

However, I've never had good yields with vegetables. I've always blamed it on poor soil and irregular watering, but in the past, the garden was somewhat of an afterthought and not an important part of the diet.

I'd like to avoid pitfalls...........especially expensive ones........can you all share some of yours with me?

I already invested in three gorgeous kiwi plants here and didn't keep them warm enough the first winter so they froze. And we had nine fruit trees eaten by goats who we did not know could open gates. This cannot happen again, I could have bought a lot of fruit for what I paid for those plants. So I have to keep investments to a minimum and yields high without any further mishaps.

What has worked for you....trellissing? Fencing? Raised beds? What fertilizer (I have assorted barnyard animals including rabbits and chickens). Green house? cold frame? hot frame? What worked with wildlife?

I have ducks who could help me with bugs....

I'm looking for self sufficient gardening advice on the cheap......

 

[framing fowl]

Let's see, we've got some questions! Are you planting directly in the ground or in raised beds? How much room do you have? What zone are you in? Have you done any veggies on your current property that have or haven't worked? How much time do you have to invest? What part of gardening has gone well for you in the past? When you say you haven't had good yields in the past, does that mean the plants have died or not produced at all or just that you weren't satisfied with the results?

 

[Dace]

In my experience the most important factor is soil condition. Prep your soil and get a testing kit and properly check your soil. Even when you think that you have it right, you won't know unless you check.

Good luck!

 

[savingdogs]

I'm using raised mounds amended with rabbit droppings. I've never used that in the past.

I have tons of room, but not all of it is sunny. It is not a perfect square as this is a forested area. I plan to use up the only sunny area, the lawn, which is an irregular curved shape. I need to leave pathways through it, so I was going to map out as many "mounds" as I can in the sunny areas and plan a few things like spinach and lettuce for my mostly sunny-part shade areas.

This is called zone 1 but I don't think so. We are in a warm pocket. Cold winter, short summer. Winter temps down to 10 degrees, summer highs not usually over 100, or not for long. We can have early and late Frosts, but May is usually safe (although charts say till end of May).

In the past, I grew great potatos and zuchini. Tomatos were a failure. We have very little hot weather the last two years. No one around here was growing tomatos well last year. I've done really well with berries. Most of my vegetables ended up getting eaten by bugs since I did not want to use pesticides.

We have clay soil so carrots did not do well. Pumpkins and sunflowers, what I really must grow, did well at my last house, similar climate, but I had NO sprouts of either last year despite planting many, many seeds. I also had tons of nasturtium seeds that did not grow here, and I used to be the nasturtium lady, I had so many.

I think varmits get the yummy seeds?

Here, I finally got some silly nasturtiums to grow by planting them in a protected pot. I tried veggies in pots last year and they never got warm enough.

That is why I was thinking about a mini green house, to get started earlier. I have trouble starting inside the house because of my house cats, they tend to knock everything over!

 

[abifae]

Water them?

 

[patandchickens]

Agree wholeheartedly with Dace. YOU don't grow the plants, the SOIL grows the plants. Your main responsibility is just to get the soil as good as you can. Excellent soil will make up for a LOT (irregular or insufficient watering, presence of diseases and pests, etc)

Weeding is also big. If you have a lot of perennial weeds (including grass) it is really, really worth taking the time and effort to turn over every cubic foot of your garden with a fork and manually remove all visible weed roots. Otherwise even a heavy mulch and frequent weeding may not keep them in control well. And unless you have a row-based garden and are deliberately using them as a living mulch in the paths, they can really sap your veg plants' production. A little bit of weeding done early is much easier and much more *effective* than ignoring it until July and then having a jungle to hack through (pulling up large dense mature weeds is hard on your crop plants as well). Mulches can help but you need to carefully think thru the pros and cons and idiosyncrasies of the mulch type you use... there are no free lunches

Growing woody perennial 'crops' (your kiwi vines and fruit trees) is a considerably different kettle of fish than regular veg gardening though, because (as you have discovered) you cannot have ANY oopsies. Killing off your tomato seedlings by accident is easily remedied, or at worst loses you one year; killing off a bunch of late-maturing woody plants is expensive and very time-wasting.

For that reason I'd suggest (I know this is not a popular suggestion around here though ) that if money is tight and you NEED the food, it is worth concentrating the vast majority of your energies on easier annual crops, and only installing woody perennial crops insofar as the initial investment is very low OR you are pretty darn sure you can keep the thing happy to bearing age.

Regarding veg gardens, then:

Whether to use raised beds depends on your circumstances -- there are very pronounced tradeoffs involved. Raised beds become usable earlier in the spring, BUT they take a lot more water (and have less of a sense of humor about lapses in watering). Personally I think that waaaaaay too many people use them when they'd be better off with good in-ground gardening, especially in water shortage areas... but, it depends on your particular situation and certainly they are SOMEtimes worthwhile.

I don't honestly worry about fertilizer. I do try to build up my soil in a balanced way, not too much of any one thing. A soil test would be real smart if you are concerned about fertilizer. That way you can have an informed picture of what's there and what's lacking and what if anything might be helpful to add.

Trellising is great if space is limited; it does however increase water requirements a bit, and I can't do much of it since it is too darn windy on my property and things blow over in storms so you have to watch out for that sometimes too. But in a suburban or sheltered area, with limited space, it is certainly useful for some crops. Beans especially (i.e. doing pole beans rather than bush beans)

For other things, check out The Easy Garden site (sister site to this one), link is somewhere donw at the veerrrrrryy bottom of this page.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Denim Deb]

If you want to grow asparagus, make sure you have enough room between the rows! If I had to do it all over again, I'd have them spaced a bit more.

Ditto on getting out the roots. That's what one of my biggest chores is right now w/the new section of my garden. Remember, grass spread in 3 ways, from seeds, over the ground and under the ground.

I grow all of my vine crops along a fence. It takes up much less room in the garden. But I also don't grow anything that's going to get too huge, like large watermelon or pumpkins.

Don't grow something your family doesn't like just because it's easy.

I don't know if you plan on growing egg plant or not, but if you do, you may need to do something to keep them warmer. They like hot weather.

 

[abifae]

I don't know if you plan on growing egg plant or not, but if you do, you may need to do something to keep them warmer. They like hot weather.

That's good to know. I was considering growing nothing but nightshades this year since my tomatoes did so well. But I don't know if we stay hot enough for an eggplant, if they really like heat. Colorado is funny about low overnight temps even in the summer.

 

[Javamama]

First we built raised beds in an area that floods. The wood rots and after replacing it 2x, we tore them out and bought a tiller. Second, I filled those dang beds with horse manure compost that my friend said had cooked, but wasn't and the beds filled with every noxious weed known in the tri-state area. Another reason I am starting from scratch. The goats get to take care of the raised bed weeds this year.
Third, I thought the weather would truly be on my side. It wasn't. We had an atrociously wet spring, followed by staggering humidity and heat all summer yet very little rain. My spring crops stunted, then went straight to bolting and can you say 'diseased tomatoes'? Oh yeah, it was bad.

I learned that I can buy organic spinach and greens much cheaper than I attempt to grow them. And they don't all ripen at the same time

What's good one year won't necessarily be good the next. It's a chance you take. I failed at cukes 3 years in a row and then last year they took over. I just opened a jar of refrigerator pickles this week and they are fantastic!

Every time I planted seeds last summer, it never failed to pour and/or hail and wash it all away. I seriously think a curse was upon my garden.

I also learned that I have diseased soil that will affect my tomatoes, so I need to be proactive about treating it. And I might have to use chemicals :/

 

[SKR8PN]

I never liked growing stuff in a mound. They always seen to sink back into the surrounding area. I have much better luck in raised beds. Easier to reach into, easier to fence off to keep critters out, and easier to amend the soil with compost.
My garden has been a garden spot for over 50 years. The soil started out pretty good, and I have added compost, lime, sand, wood ashes, etc to it over the years to keep it as healthy as possible. My raised beds are still a work in progress since I have only had some of them for 4-5 years.