I want to start a veggie garden but I have never done it before..help?

[halo]

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/

Theres a forum here for every single kind of gardening you'd ever want to read about. I frequent the Florida Gardening forum and the Soil and Composting forum a lot, great info here.

 

[sheaviance1]

Somebody already beat me to it, but I will second the advice of a cover crop. Mine this year will be hairy vetch and winter rye. Last year I used clover and oats. There is nothing better for weed suppression than a cover crop. Not to mention that the root system of the ones I am planting this fall will drill down deep into the soil to help loosen it, they will add a wonderful source of nutrients to the soil when I mow it down in the spring, and prevent erosion all winter.

I will never forego a cover crop again. When I first started gardening, we tilled the ground, planted, and grew the prettiest weeds you ever did see with an occasional tomato plant thrown in for good measure.

You have a ton of wonderful advice in this thread. Have fun with it! We have grown so many different things in our garden. The kids love peanuts and popcorn the best. They are pretty fun to grow. I would recommend at least portioning off a section for perennials, berries, herbs, garlic and onions. It is very rewarding to grow these because they almost always do well.

 

[krcote]

I didn't have a chance to read through everyone's replies but check out the Square Foot Gardening Thread https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=490540 If you have the time, read through all the posts. There are many folks just like yourself on there experimenting for the first time. Good luck!

 

[Peaches Lee]

Since we have a surplus of horse manure LOL, we put the manure in our garden area, just heaped it right up on top of the ground--grass and all. Over the winter months it collected and got snowed on and by spring we worked it with an anitique harrow and got beautiful soil, we did not till into the ground and the amount of manure in effect made a raised bed. The squash and pumpkins loved it and we had an excellent crop (there is a picture of it on My Page if you're interested). This year our soil was beautiful but we had crazy, crazy weather so our results were mixed.

So I would definitely suggest adding horse manure as it does wonders for heavy feeding plants.

Good luck on your gardening adventure!!

P.S. Chickens love it when it's garden clean up time...

 

[woodmort]

Quote:
There is one problem with horse, cow and pig manure--weeds. Depending on what the animals are eating you may end up with vegetable material that is hard to eradicate. I'm still paying for using cow manure in my garden 49 years ago--have soldier weed that I can get rid of.

 

[7L Farm]

I use mushroom compost & bat guama in my garden plus aged chicken poop.

 

[Carols Clucks]

We just added a load of horse manure to our cleaned out compost pile. (my bosses horses so I know what weeds are in their area and what they eat)

We have added layers of leaves and grass and it is "cooking" really well right now. Hopefully we will have cooked out any weeds by spring.

 

[IRChicken]

Quote:
You should have planted your winter root crops in that manure. Carrots, Parsnips, turnips, Kholrabi, Kale.
As it decomposes it heats up keeping the veggies warm. Maybe throw a quick hoop or low tunnel over it.
This is what the French Intensive system was built on, horse manure.

 

[Peaches Lee]

Quote:
There is one problem with horse, cow and pig manure--weeds. Depending on what the animals are eating you may end up with vegetable material that is hard to eradicate. I'm still paying for using cow manure in my garden 49 years ago--have soldier weed that I can get rid of.

Well you wouldn't be the first to show opposition towards manure LOL!! We hear "You can't do that!" a lot...

What we have found though is that weeds are very easy to get out of the soil as it is very soft and loamy. All gardens will have weeds at some point and the raised bed method of fresh and composted manure works very well for us.

IRchicken--oh boy does it grow root crops!! The turnips were huge! In the manure we over-wintered a Mangel beet to see if it would produce seeds on it's second year, since it's bi-annual, and it did!

 

[galanie]

I've been gardening for some 30 years and the best gardens I've ever had were made using horse manure. Chicken is good, any manure is good, but horse poo seems to be the best ever! And for sure pile on the mulch.