I found a book for gardening. It is a raised bed idea that uses no dirt, it is a mixture of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost. The book that I found it in is the "2nd Edition All New Square Foot Gardening, the Revolutionary way to grow more in less space." It is a raised bed idea, and I will be doing it soon as I can get some more extra money put together for the "dirt" mixture. It uses none of your local dirt it is all bought, minus the compost if you make your own. You can enclose it for a greenhouse start, then have a shade cloth for lettuce, and they show ways to heat up the soil using water bottles, black cloth and it is just chock full of ideas that I really can not wait to try. I got a retired sandbox that I am going to use probably next year.
I have noticed that my potted tomatoes don't do as well as my flower beds, and my flower beds don't do a quarter of what my Grandpa and Dad's garden does. But they have been gardening the same plot of 60+ years and put the horses in the garden in the fall to clean up the squash so they are well fertilized every year. We have a lot of sand, so we try to get a lot of fertilizer in and we would love to add chicken poo or bunny poo but we have really shallow sprinkler lines running right in the middle of our beds and we really don't want to fix that if we get it on accident.
We have to buy strawberries this year, it is going to be my first time doing strawberries, but with my husbands job he goes right by the fields where they are picking them. So we can get a box of strawberries for $20, and sell 10 pound bags of onions for $4. Last year we had a bad frost right after the trees bloomed, so I had to buy pears, I spent $32 on half of a box of pears, I almost puked, but that was from a small family owned farm that I wanted to support just because it was local. I wish now that I had waited a week for my dad to bring me a full box for $20 from a couple of hours north of me, that is a little bit bigger. But a lot of times if you live where they have the road side stands next to the field, you can get a pretty good deal, or a friend who has a tree or vine that decided to go a little nuts; grapes, apples, and raspberries seem to always over produce around here.
I have noticed that my potted tomatoes don't do as well as my flower beds, and my flower beds don't do a quarter of what my Grandpa and Dad's garden does. But they have been gardening the same plot of 60+ years and put the horses in the garden in the fall to clean up the squash so they are well fertilized every year. We have a lot of sand, so we try to get a lot of fertilizer in and we would love to add chicken poo or bunny poo but we have really shallow sprinkler lines running right in the middle of our beds and we really don't want to fix that if we get it on accident.
We have to buy strawberries this year, it is going to be my first time doing strawberries, but with my husbands job he goes right by the fields where they are picking them. So we can get a box of strawberries for $20, and sell 10 pound bags of onions for $4. Last year we had a bad frost right after the trees bloomed, so I had to buy pears, I spent $32 on half of a box of pears, I almost puked, but that was from a small family owned farm that I wanted to support just because it was local. I wish now that I had waited a week for my dad to bring me a full box for $20 from a couple of hours north of me, that is a little bit bigger. But a lot of times if you live where they have the road side stands next to the field, you can get a pretty good deal, or a friend who has a tree or vine that decided to go a little nuts; grapes, apples, and raspberries seem to always over produce around here.
