What gardening mistakes did you make that I can avoid?

[framing fowl]

Well, this may not be popular but here goes! If you are looking at this as a food proposition, I would not restrict yourself to "heirloom" veggies. Just because something is a hybrid doesn't make it automatically bad. They can be good for disease and pest resistance as well as higher yields. If you want to save seeds, you can still do that as long as you look for open-pollination plants. I have learned that sometimes a plain old green bean is much better than some fancy French heirloom from 1823 that is traced back to some isolated monastary and discovered by a misguided hiker. They make for good stories, and there's not really anything bad with that but just don't be turned off from a newer proven producer.

Greenhouses won't necessarily solve all of your problems either. Last year I had my first inexpensive greenhouse. It was fun to start seeds in but keep in mind, it's a whole other learning curve! If you want to tackle it, go for it, but it is not a be all, end all solution.

Don't be afraid to buy some plants already started if you know you've had problems with them from seed in the past. No sense beating your head against a wall just say you did it from scratch. There's definately no harm, no foul in buying seedlings. Budget can be a consideration but also consider how many seeds you have to plant and how much time you have to tend it to get it to that point.

If you have clay soil, the compost will really help break that up with organic matter.

Take a look at your county extension's website. They are an invaluable source of free information for your microclimate. If you have a short summer, you might see if your library has a copy of the winter harvest handbook by eliot coleman. Good ideas on floating row covers and different ways of extending your season. Highly recommend!

Pumpkins -maybe try a different variety? Sunflowers-birds and all sorts of critters love to get the seeds of these before they have a chance to grow.

Hmmm... that's all I can think of for now!

 

[Denim Deb]

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.

Here's some info on eggplants.

Eggplant is a warm climate vegetable and is very intolerant of frost. Lengthy cool periods and even cool nights will slow down this vegetable's growing spurts. (If you have cool nights in your area during the growing season, consider creating a microclimate for these plants with simple brick/stone walls or ground covering to retain the day's heat).

Place your eggplant crop in rich soil with full sun, with protection from winds.

Eggplant can take up to 4 months to begin bearing fruit. Plant your garden planting dates so that you have time to enjoy your harvest, before the first frost of fall arrives.

 

[abifae]

Drat!!

Well, I know a lot of other toxins I can grow here. LOL.

Leafy spurge LOVES Colorado. It's actually an invasive, we're all supposed to be killing them as we see them

Well, tomatoes I know I can do. That's on the grow list. My basil isn't dead yet. *checks* Yep. Still alive.

If I'd remember to water them, the sage and thyme would have done well.

Do they make plants that come remind you when you forget about them? That's what I need.

 

[FarmerChick]

for my smaller gardens my mistakes were

planting things too close together...ya need room to work in a garden comfortably

don't use raised beds unless you need to, anything you have to build takes money. if you want garden on the cheap, go directly into the soil---and put the money more into fencing if required to protect from critter attacks

be near a water supply so you can get water easily to the garden

keep vine type plants way out of the way lol they sure can crawl everywhere

don't plant too much of anything....gardens start "out seemingly small and easy when planting" and GROW into a ton of work

plant what you love to eat and experiment with only 1 or 2 new items you might want to try


those are the basics for me when gardening
good luck to you

 

[hwillm1977]

Are you sure you're zone 1? That would be really really cold... Our summer lasts from the end of may until mid-sept (that's our first and last frost days) and we're in zone 5... I'm in Atlantic Canada... but close enough to the coast that it keeps us a little warmer in the winter (our coldest day last year was -34F, but that's not usual)

I failed miserably my first year, then built raised beds and used the square foot gardening technique and did TONS better... I've built some lasagna beds to try out next summer.

I found the best thing I did was starting the seeds inside. Because of our short growing season the first year nothing matured... then I started seeds inside and it helped a lot. If the pack of seeds says start indoors 6-8 weeks before last frost... choose the 6 weeks though... I choose the longer dates and found a lot of mine got tall and weak before they made it outside.

Row covers are easy to make with some sheets of plastic and old wire coat hangers bent into U-shapes... you could use PVC pipes too... then cover everything delicate (like the tomatoes and peppers) on cold nights or if you're getting frost.

 

[savingdogs]

I'm getting so many great ideas here, thanks!

I have also already learned I could buy organic veggies cheaper than what I spent in previous years, that is why I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong first.

I am NOT sure I'm in zone 1. The map says I am, but when I check my temperatures compared to down the hill, we are sometimes warmer. But we get a lot more rain and a lot more snow. I think I'm in a microclimate. But think cold pacific northwest rainforest, high elevation, we are just below 2,000 feet. It is warm from June-Sept.

I had great luck in the past growing my berries in raised beds, but it took a lot of wood. And here where it rains so much, it took good quality treated wood. Since I do not have an overabundance of rock or other materials, that is why I'm going with raised mounds.

I am concerned about the grass growing back over the area, there are no weeds where I'm planting currently.

I planted once with non-aged horse manure one time, I already knew about that one! It was supposed to be aged. We grew some interesting weeds that year.

Any ideas how to use the chicken poo to kill off the grass without making the soil unusable in the spring?

 

[AL]

here's some help finding your zone:

http://www.garden.org/zipzone/

http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/hzm-nw1.html

I don't have many hints because, except for my peas, my garden was an epic fail
I did learn to mulch to keep water from splashing up and encouraging mold / fungus/ other weird ailments my veggies came down with!

 

[Mackay]

This is going to be lengthy cause I am also writing it for my personal record..

This was my first garden this past summer, 2010.. we are in zone 3 to 4

I decided since we have voll problems to do raised beds with 1/2 wire mesh on the bottom. My husband built them out of redwood that he found on a good sale... since this is a generally dry climate I expect the wood will last longer than in perhaps some other parts of the country.

I used the Lasagna gardening method that I learned mostly about on Youtube.. In this method you essentially build your own soil.. so in doing this you really don't need to have it tested..

After the bed was built I lined them with cardboard. This keeps weeds from the soil below from coming up. Then I made alternating layers of compost I had made on my own, staw, tree leaves, an inch of topsoil we had brought in for some lawn work, a layer of alfalfa hay, green grass clippings and I repeated this two times. The order this stuff goes in does not really matter, It came up to about 4 inches below the top of my 18 inch tall beds.

I also mixed in some paramagnetic minerals and some bioactive soil stumulator that stimulates the soil with micro-organisms.. Its about $20 a bag and I still have some left... I probably used more than I needed to. This stuff, though the microbes, pulls the minerals out of soil form and makes them bio-dynamically available to plant roots.

On top I mixed some of that top soil with a large bag of planting mix and coverd all the beds with about 2 inches.. This is what I put my seeds directly into. ( stocked up already in planting mix from fall sales for next year)

Over the summer the contents of the beds sunk down as they composted on their own with the plants growing on top. In the end I had about 5 inches of good soil.

This did not work out well for the carrots who all grew L shaped as they grew up against the wire mesh. Next year I will fill the beds all the way up to the top... so I think I will have about 7 inches or so of good soil at the end of the season and maybe my carrots will have more room... or I may put them in a different kind of bed

I planted things too close together and was afraid to thin.. next year I will be vicious!

All my plants were spectactular and only suffered from being crammed in.. but the suffering did not affect their abundance.

I had no pests except for a couple of cabbage worms.. or what ever those green things are that like cabbage.

I also made a ground level bed for potatoes. I did this by laying my 1/2 wire mesh on the gound and securing it with a rock at each corner. It was about 18 feet long by 2.5 feet wide and framed it in with 4 x4 square lumber my husband had, only one panel around so it was only 4 inches high. I did the lasagna layering again and shaped it in a mound for easy harvest of potatoes.. I did harvest some of my potatoes too early. They need to be hit by a good frost so the tops dye then you harvest the potatoes about 3 weeks later. They will then double or tripe in size in this time.

I also did a ground level bed for sunflowers and flowers, zinnias. Because of the volls I encircled the bed with icicle (sp?) radishes, the long white ones, which I was told would keep volls out of the beds... and they did. The birds never bothered my sunflowers either. I have them hanging in the garage now.. I was going to feed them to my neighbors chickens but they got rid of them all for the winter.

Into this sunflower bed soil I added the soil amendment micro-organisms and a few shovels of compost.. I also planted sunflowers on the edge of the pasture in the same type of soil with out ammendments and was surprised to see that they only grew half the size... I think this soil ammendment stuff is great.

Too cold here for zinnias.. won't plant them again.

We also planted a potato and corn bed about 20 feet by 30 feet without ammending the soil... the corn did not do well at all, the potatoes did OK, all kinds of reds and purple ones, but hey, Its Idaho... next year the soil ammendment stuff goes in. Our neighbors use it all the time with their corn, never add nitrogen or anything chemical and they get spectacular corn results on the same plot year after year.

I used seedlings started by a neighor in her green house for the broccoli and caulifower and they had difficulty transplanting but then they picked up and produced. I planted more of these directly in a little later and they did great. I also used seedlings for zuc and parsley. I dug the parsley up in the fall and will transplant it back in in the spring. I think I need 4 zuc bushes as they are very susceptible to the cold.. and although they sitll produced after a partial freeze they slowed down.. just gotta get out there and cover them at night. They also take up too much room in a raised bed.

Next year I will plant more beets as we found out that we love borstch. More cabbage too. I still have a couple of heads in the fridge. I want enough to last till spring next time.

I need to also remember that right after harvesting potatoes to get them fully covered out of light. Some turned green and the green parts are toxic.

Onions did well but I still don't understand how to get those greens to shrivil up and close down on the onion. Onions are so cheep here in the fall I may not bother next year. I was able to purchase them for 17 cents a pound.. but I like having fresh onion greens in summer.

Next year I will make my garden bigger planting directly on the ground and make a raised bed like I did with the potoatoes but with no metal mesh under. Will plant the iciscle radishes around it instead and get a couple of outside mouser cats to patroll and knock the volls down. People who have cats don't have volls.

Spinach did well and I should have planted more at the beginning of August instead of late August.

Endive is more durable in cold temps than lettuce. Black seed lettuce is too frail. Bib did ok. Red cabbage did poorly, don't know why. I should plant more varieties of endive.

Wont bother again with chives.. they don't have a very stong flavor and I found myself using onion greens instead.

Tomatoes was really the big problem. I got hold of a large tractor tire for fee and used that to form my bed. Did the lasagna layering thing but added bone meal also. It was our cold temps that kept hitting them back and bees did not come around early enough to pollenate. I did do some heirloom tomatoes but I don't think I will bother with them again.. they produced little, way less than the others.. As soon as I finally got a nice little crop fo green tomatoes a freeze came... what I found out is that a green tomatoe that has froze can still ripen. We ate a quite a few. I fretted over this bed more than any other. They really need a green house around here unless you luck out with the weather... volls did come up in this bed as I put no mesh down but they didn't kill the plants! guess they don't like tomaotes.... oh I also learned from a neighbor that you have to practically strip your tomato branches from most of their leaves, then they will start to put out...and they did after that.

My favorite plant of all this year was my borage.. although I didn't really know what to do with it it is so beautiful and it attracted lots of bees and it is fairly cold hearty so I may start some inside for early transplant to get bees coming earlier. Its just an exquisite plant that blooms and blooms! Next year we will eat some of the flowers and I will dry some of the leaf for medicianal herbal.

I started Bokoshi composting methods for kitchen waste and even some garden waste and weeds, as well as Star Bucks coffee grinds which they give freely away... and meat bones,, this stuff digests bones. Now after a full season of doing this I am very pleased with the method... especially that NO compost turning is required. Instead of burying the compost in the garden as directed for bokoshi, as all my garden space was occupied with plants, I put the innoculated and seasoned Bokoshi into a large black plastic trash pail with a lid. Each 5 gal bucket placed in there gets covered with a few shovels of dirt.. and there it cooks in its very own special bokoski way. In the fall after harvest I started lasagna layering for next year and dumped the full trash pail in amongst the layers of other stuff. Come next spring I will have another full trash pail of the stuff for the other beds.... my goal is to have no compost bins except for the bokoshi pails.

All my beds needed to be covered at night for the first 3 weeks or so in the season.. and what a muddy mess it was going out there in the rain or snow.. so this fall I placed gravel between the beds hemmed in with some boards... guess all the walk ways will get this eventually.

I used plastic sheeting tacked to long thin boards to cover the bed with but after about 4 weeks of UV exposure it started to tear big time... just when the weather got warmer thank god.. don't know what I may use next year insead. of cours the corrigated plastic works but its kinda expensive.

The sunroom on the house may be ready by next spring so I may do some of my own starts in there. I also want a raised bed to start asparagus... and a bed for perinneal root veggies like burdock and jeresulem artichoke

So thats It. I did learn a lot.. and its funny but it seems like I learned so much more than these words say... I think on an intuitional level from going out there every day, just sitting and watching and waiting and sensing the miracle of plants.

 

[ORChick]

Savingdogs - I think you might be in the Sunset zone 1, not the USDA zone 1 (that would be parts of Alaska and northern Canada). Here are sites showing both:

http://www.sunset.com/garden/climat...zone-western-washington-state-00418000067159/

http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/hzm-nw1.html

Get a copy of the Sunset New Western Garden Book at the library - it is an invaluable resource for those of us in the West.

You might also look for other books/sites dealing with gardening west of the Cascades. What works for other parts of the country doesn't always work for us - and vice verse

Abi - Try growing Japanese eggplant - the skinny ones. They don't grow so big as the Italian type, and don't seem to need the same length of time in the heat. I have successfully had some ripen here, and our nights get fairly cool as well.

 

[savingdogs]

here's some help finding your zone:

http://www.garden.org/zipzone/

http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/hzm-nw1.html

I don't have many hints because, except for my peas, my garden was an epic fail
I did learn to mulch to keep water from splashing up and encouraging mold / fungus/ other weird ailments my veggies came down with!

It gave me 6B and 5A. Zone 1 is in Sunset garden book zones.

The problem is my zip code encompasses a mountain, and I'm on top. Also, we are right next to Mt. St. Helen's, which is so huge it tends to capture wet moist air here. But we are in a valley on the mountain top on a south facing slope. The low spots of our property is very cold but here by the house, not so much. We have seen it down to the low teens a few times, but the entire Portland area had extreme cold on those same days, and we are more than an hour from there.