BYC gardening thread!!

[Beulah89]

LOL, it is 10,000 square feet that is a LOT of cardboard and mulch! But that is basically where I'm headed. My distaste for weeding is first and foremost my driving force behind some of what I'm doing. My goal is no-till after I get the pigs through there this year to add organic matter to our rocky, clay soil.

Hmmmm that's interesting...pigs destroy the land where I live....well they're not native. Apparently we have more wild pigs in Australia than people.

 

[lazy gardener]

Sunny, your garden is HUGE. How do you space your crops and rows? Do you use wide beds? Do you market garden? Do you actually use all of the veggies you produce? I can only imagine what I'd do if I had that much space that I could call garden instead of lawn. Fruit trees, perhaps some grains, lots of green manure crops. However, I know I'd never have enough time to tend it all or even harvest it all, let alone store it all. I'm hoping to toy around with making a solar dehydrator. Perhaps I'll get it going next summer.

 

[SunnySkies]

Hmmmm that's interesting...pigs destroy the land where I live....well they're not native. Apparently we have more wild pigs in Australia than people.

In uncontrolled situations, yes, they destroy the ground. But I use cattle panels fastened together and move their pen every few days. This keeps the ground from becoming compacted and from smelling. I just keep rotating them around the garden...we are about halfway through it. It should be done about the time the hogs are ready for market.

Sunny, your garden is HUGE.  How do you space your crops and rows?  Do you use wide beds?  Do you market garden?  Do you actually use all of the veggies you produce?  I can only imagine what I'd do if I had that much space that I could call garden instead of lawn.  Fruit trees, perhaps some grains, lots of green manure crops.  However, I know I'd never have enough time to tend it all or even harvest it all, let alone store it all.  I'm hoping to toy around with making a solar dehydrator.  Perhaps I'll get it going next summer.

Well. I have rows of varying spaces, and I learned that some were not spaced far enough apart (like I should have given the tomatoes even more space). I did a lot of winter squash, and those take a lot of room. I did corn, three seedlings, and that took a lot of room too. But I did have several beds of greens. The rows average 40 feet long, and I guess there are 30(?) of them plus the longer rows where I did corn, sunflowers, squashes, etc,all mixed together at the north side of the garden.

We ate entirely from the garden last year, except for milk, and I canned and froze an insane amount of food and gave a lot away. But it was not as productive as it should have been as I got sick somewhere around mid June and did not fertilize and care for it like I had planned. So the squash bugs got most of the squashes, which really cut production. I had considered selling veggies if it took off, and I might, or wholesale them to a local farm store or do the farmer's market, if it does well next year.

I'm only able to get away with it because I'm home except for Saturdays. If I was working FT, this would never happen. And I have a big family of all boys...they eat like locusts. They like helping out too, to some extent.

I could make it even bigger...I have more than an acre we haven't fenced in, and I could grow mushrooms in our woods. But this is way more than enough!

 

[lazy gardener]

My hat is off to you! Home schooling on top of it all. My 2 (grand kids) ages 7 and 12 are in public school. I'm watching the situation closely. Academically, the public scene here is ok, but, the PC agenda is getting very close to the edge of my tolerance, and there may come a time in the near future where I feel the need to pull them out and home school them. My 12 y.o. is like a vacuume cleaner. Once when we were traveling, we stopped for breakfast. We hadn't even finished the meal, and he says, "Can we eat lunch... here... now?" It's great that your boys like to help you. My 7 y.o. girl is my little farmer. The 12 y.o. could care less. But, he's my wood carrier.

 

[SunnySkies]

The lovely part is I use the gardens as school some days

"So, if we have 40 feet of row, and seeds should be 6 inches apart, how many do we plant?" "How do seeds grow?" "How do we make compost?" etc.

Helps that I'm very highly educated and have a goodly amount of experience in teaching, plus hubby is a physicist and can fill in where I lack (like math above add, subtract, multiply and divide, lol) and taught math and physics to middle and high school kids for a grew years as well as teaching at the college level.

HSing actually takes way less time than PS. Mine get their work done in about an hour, then we have computer work for another hour or so and that is that. We read a lot of books. It isn't easy, but definitely not because of the academics...more "I don't wanna...it's too hard...whine, whine, whine."

 

[urbanchange90]

Helpful

 

[Mr MKK FARMS]

Quote:

 

[lazy gardener]

There are a lot of HSers in our church family. From what I see 99% of them have a huge advantage over PS kids. They're way more socialized, advanced academically, and actually know how to think. In all of my years of observation, I've only met 1 or 2 families where the kids weren't getting a superior education being home schooled. I heard a radio documentary talking about a certain college that is a magnet for HS graduates. Their philosophy is to take the HS kid who is already well advanced above their peers, and continue that advanced education. Their grads are highly sought after for high end jobs.

 

[Mr MKK FARMS]

There are a lot of HSers in our church family. From what I see 99% of them have a huge advantage over PS kids. They're way more socialized, advanced academically, and actually know how to think. In all of my years of observation, I've only met 1 or 2 families where the kids weren't getting a superior education being home schooled. I heard a radio documentary talking about a certain college that is a magnet for HS graduates. Their philosophy is to take the HS kid who is already well advanced above their peers, and continue that advanced education. Their grads are highly sought after for high end jobs.

HS is awesome.

 

[urbanchange90]

I want to build an herb spiral next year. Does anyone have any experience with these?