Any tips on gardening?

[Chickies11]

Hi, this spring and summer I'm planning to have a garden! I'm very excited about it! I had a garden last year, but I don't know if you could call it that. My neighbor had some extra tomatoes and a Tabasco pepper plant so I took those without knowing any thing about gardening. I had a big issue with animals eating my plants and I didn't get much in the end. Anyways, I'm planning to try again this year. I want to plan it out more and do research before I just get the plants! I have some space for a raised bed garden. It will probably be around 5x6 ft. My plan was to have one row with tomatoes, one row with peppers, one with lettuce, and one with strawberries. One thing I'm confused about is what soil to use! From what I've read, everybody seems to have the different soil mixes that they like and they plants need different things to! I have some leftover potting soil that I grew my plants in last year, which still looks pretty good I guess, but how would I know?I do need more soil now that my garden will be bigger, but I have no idea what to buy! Thank you in advance, any tips would be helpful!

 

[CluckerFamily]

I would recommend a raised bed or to start off with pots like you did. Soil is truly up to you. Your own compost is always best. If you use what you did last year, you will need to buy fertilizer to add to the soil since the plant last year used all the nutrients in the soil.

For the pot idea and animals, I did this for my Grandma when she moved to an apartment and it worked great!!
I put a rock in the bottom of the pot, then added my soil, then a tomato cage, then the I took the rack of a hanging basket without anything in it and flipped it upside down onto the top of the tomato cage. I then used fishline to put bird garden netting around the tomato cage with washers on the bottom to hold down the netting. It worked perfectly!!

 

[CluckerFamily]

For a couple years I did do the tilling of the ground for my garden but then settled on the raised bed idea. Raised beds can be pricey especially for all the vegetables I plant. So I decided to build 1-2 raised beds a year so it wasn’t so expensive at once. Now that I have all the raised beds I want, the next idea is to slowing make them taller so that when I am older, I won’t have to bend over to garden.

 

[Chickies11]

I would recommend a raised bed or to start off with pots like you did. Soil is truly up to you. Your own compost is always best. If you use what you did last year, you will need to buy fertilizer to add to the soil since the plant last year used all the nutrients in the soil.

For the pot idea and animals, I did this for my Grandma when she moved to an apartment and it worked great!!
I put a rock in the bottom of the pot, then added my soil, then a tomato cage, then the I took the rack of a hanging basket without anything in it and flipped it upside down onto the top of the tomato cage. I then used fishline to put bird garden netting around the tomato cage with washers on the bottom to hold down the netting. It worked perfectly!!

Okay, thank you! I am thinking of starting a compost bin! I have a few chickens, so would their poop and leaves and twigs and all their things in their run be good to put in the compost bin (if I get one) or straight into the soil?

Thank you for pot idea and the animals. I might try that! I was also thinking of putting hardware cloth around my raised garden bed, it would be attached to the top of it.

 

[CluckerFamily]

Okay, thank you! I am thinking of starting a compost bin! I have a few chickens, so would their poop and leaves and twigs and all their things in their run be good to put in the compost bin (if I get one) or straight into the soil?

Thank you for pot idea and the animals. I might try that! I was also thinking of putting hardware cloth around my raised garden bed, it would be attached to the top of it.

With chicken poop, it has to sit for a year before it can be used for a garden.
My compost bin is made up of wood pallets. I have two sections so that I can use one section while adding to the other. Then I switch for the next year.
And everything in their coop and run is great for the compost bin!!

 

[Chickies11]

Thank you! This is very helpful! So maybe I will start my compost bin now and use it next year, and then buy some compost for this year. I really like the sections idea, that's probably how I will do it!

 

[CluckerFamily]

You may like this Thread on BYC: What did you do in the garden today?

 

[Chickies11]

I will check it out!

 

[Offshoreorca]

I would echo that raised beds have many benefits if you are able to afford them - sounds like you have a good plan for this. If you can nail down exactly what is eating your veggies then there are lots of solutions for that to. Netting is good for anything large.

Even if soil looks good, it likely has been stripped of nutrients by last year's plants as mentioned. There are a whole bunch of different natural and chemical fertilizers available (I stick to natural ones). Many of these you can throw on the garden in the fall and it will be ready in the spring - seaweed, compost, etc. Really good compost can be used in the spring as well as deep bedding/litter style cleaned out from the coop (we use as a mulch). The important thing is that chicken poop or anything high in nitrogen can "burn" the plants if not let sit long enough, so make sure that whatever you are using is appropriate for fertilizer in the spring shortly before plants are planted

Another good way to get nutrients to you plants is to brew them a compost tea and water with this occasionally throughout the summer!

 

[Percheron chick]

5x6 is tiny and big enough for 2 tomato plants, a pepper or two and a few herbs. Enough to start with but not nearly enough for your wishlist.
If you don't have scrap lumber to build with, design your beds to use lumber as you buy it. 8' is a nice size to start with. 3 boards give you an 8x4 frame. 2 8' for the sides and one cut in half for the ends. I just built raised beds and they cost me $75 each for the lumber. Doubled up on 2x8x8 to make them 15" tall. So 6 2x8x8 plus 2 2x4x8 for corners and bracing. It will take most of a pickup load of dirt to fill. You can save yourself some work and put cardboard, shredded paper, raw compost (fresh horse poop in my case), grass clippings, leaves... in the bottom 1/3 and fill the rest with soil. Check on CL for free or cheap compost.