Tell us about your garden!

I would love to see pics of and hear about your gardens! What are you growing this year? What do you do to keep the weeds down? How do YOU trellis your tomatoes? do you prefer raised beds over in-ground beds (if so, why)? Post pictures! We are planning on expanding our garden and having some containers and raised beds next year and I would love some fresh ideas! People who love to garden love talkin' about their masterpieces!

Oooo, so pretty! What do you have growing? Anyone else?

We switched up to container gardening this year, and I'm not looking back... Weed control was much easier, nearly painless...

The only drawback to container gardening is the initial setup, we had to move 15 yards of top soil into the container and mix in untold yards of llama/goat droppings and old straw bedding to get a better 'growing soil'...

Tomato and pepper trellises are the common cheap round hoop ones picked up on sale early this year... Been and pea trellises were concrete remesh panels...

Nice! I'm thinking of doing something like that next year for carrots and other root veggies, apparently they don't like our soil a whole lot...

ChickenBuzzards said:

Nice! I'm thinking of doing something like that next year for carrots and other root veggies, apparently they don't like our soil a whole lot... 

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I really wanted to work more sand into the rooting containers but ran out of time, but even so it worked great this year, the only changes we will make for next year is adding more depth for the carrots as they bottomed out in the existing container this year...

But, as you said you can easily tailor the soil in each container to exactly what the plants want another positive...

Anyone growing tomatoes in the north needs to know about using water walls in the spring, I have been getting tomatoes since the end of June, where my mother just started getting them. I do raised beds, use grass clippings as mulch, never till, I think of myself as a worm farmer and soil tender first, and a gardener second. Bad arthritis, so the less work the better.

MeepBeep said:

I really wanted to work more sand into the rooting containers but ran out of time, but even so it worked great this year, the only changes we will make for next year is adding more depth for the carrots as they bottomed out in the existing container this year...

But, as you said you can easily tailor the soil in each container to exactly what the plants want another positive...

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I read somewhere that you can use ashes left over from a bonfire instead of sand. A regular sized storage bin would probably be ideal for carrots and such.

ChickenBuzzards said:

I read somewhere that you can use ashes left over from a bonfire instead of sand. A regular sized storage bin would probably be ideal for carrots and such.

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If I hit up a local gravel pit with my trailer and self load sand is so cheap it's not worth looking elsewhere... My containers this year were 12" tall, with about 10" of soil, that was a little shy of what the carrots I grew required, there are of course shorter varieties but I like growing the multicolored mixes and they easily exceed 10" in length...

oldhenlikesdogs said:

Anyone growing tomatoes in the north needs to know about using water walls in the spring, I have been getting tomatoes since the end of June, where my mother just started getting them. I do raised beds, use grass clippings as mulch, never till, I think of myself as a worm farmer and soil tender first, and a gardener second. Bad arthritis, so the less work the better.

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What a beautiful garden! What is a water wall? Sounds interesting. we don't have raised beds yet, so I guess I'm stuck with tilling for a while... Wonderful gardens, guys!