Starting a garden for idiots

[57plymouth]

Yes idiots. Cuz it's about me.

I want to start a small garden next year. It will be about 3/4 acre or so. I need to borrow the neighbor's disc harrow to cut the sod under now that cold weather is here. My disc harrow wont' cut sod, only till open soil.

What would you plant in your newbie garden with an eye toward canning for off season eating. I am in South Carolina, so that may affect your choices.

My past experiences have not done well. I never took the time to hoe or plow weeds before I left for work, so they usually got over run. Now that I'm a SAHD, I have the time to work the garden before the mercury rises over 95, which is about 10:00 in my area during the summer. I have also thinned the deer herd that has historically eaten more than I did.

Thoughts and suggestions?

[Gardengal18]

cucumbers, toms, eggplant, zucchini, there's a start.

[Russ]

I thought this was a great thread >>> [ame="http://www.frugalvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105878"]dig here[/ame]

[nvmommyx6]

Eat the deer!!
When I was young I used to hunt with my Dad in Alaska, there, where we lived there was no such thing as "baiting" So, durring the hard seasons we would slather a tree trunk with peanut butter, this may be an option for you to keep them away if you do not get a licence and just kill them for meat!!

[Contrary Housewife]

I find that tomatoes are pretty forgiving to grow and you can definitely can them. Most of what I plant I plan to eat fresh, though. Bell peppers grow well without a lot of fuss. Squashes always start off well but they are susceptible to vine borers and I lose mine every year just as they start to produce well. Cucumbers are susceptible to mildew and will go right about the time the first fruit is ready to pick. There are chemical cures for both of those, if you want to use them.

I had good luck with carrots, the first time I tried them was this year. You need to have good soft, deep, well tilled soil for them to develop.

Getting lettuce seed in early will give you many weeks of fresh salad before it gets too hot and the leaves go bitter and bolt to seed. You can plant again in late summer for a fall crop.

I had good luck with chard. It grew well and was resistant to both the heat (though it did not produce in the hottest months) and has lasted through our first few weeks of overnight near-freezes.

Those were all plant it and forget it kind of crops. I just had to water and pull weeks every now and then. Like you, I don't want to be out in the yard in the heat.

[57plymouth]

Eat the deer!!
When I was young I used to hunt with my Dad in Alaska, there, where we lived there was no such thing as "baiting" So, durring the hard seasons we would slather a tree trunk with peanut butter, this may be an option for you to keep them away if you do not get a licence and just kill them for meat!!

Exactly what has been happening. 'Cept I'm lazy, so I let my neighbor shoot them Then we split the processing and the meat.

[The Muse]

I planted my first garden this year. I used the Square Foot Gardening method and had amazing success considering it was my first time out. I barely had a weed all summer and everything grew like crazy. My worst challenge was keeping the squirrels out of my tomatoes.

I did 5 varieties of tomatoes. green peppers, red peppers, romaine, spring mix, zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, strawberries, pole beans, carrots and a ton of herbs. I think it depends on what you like to eat. I'd recommend a lot of tomatoes because you can can them as tomato sauce, salsa, etc.

[Greebo]

I don't get it.

Why would you want to grow idiots?

You can get them free off the street!

[Minner77]

I'm doing my first garden ever, too! You at least not only know what a disc harrow is, but have access to one. Hope I don't need one.....

We also have tons of deer, and will build (it is winter here in the Black Hills) a 7' fence in hopes of deterrence.

Question for those growing pole beans: is this the type you dry? Sorry for the ignorance (guess I could go try to look it up somewhere in my mountain of resource materials).

Good luck to you, 57plymouth!

~Mary

[Ceashels]

Plant the things you will eat. I enjoyed watching the eggplant grow but I didn't eat it.

Zucchini and yellow squash dehydrate very well and are great for soup/stews in the winter. I liked growing carrots and parsnips and they froze well.

[nandmsmom]

Well 3/4 of an acre is a farm, not a garden. You might want to start significantly smaller. Like 10 x 10 ft to start. You would be amazed at what you can get from that small an area. Start by reading everything you can get your hands on. I like Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew and Four Season Gardening by Eliot Coleman. They both have a lot of great ideas. I wouldn't recommend taking any one system too seriously, but take what you like from each. Start with easy things to grow. Things like tomatoes,peppers and squashes are easiest and very productive. Green beans and peas are also good.

[sue s]

3/4 acre is a big garden! Mine was 50x60 ft. this year (my first). I got plenty of stuff out of it. Plant what you like to eat. Mine had tomatos (eating - Big Beef, Mr Stripey, canning - Romas), green beans, cucumbers (both slicing and pickling), swiss chard, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, and 2 rows of sweet corn. I put up over 100 quarts and there was more that could have been put up if I had room.

[dilligaf]

Yes idiots. Cuz it's about me.

I want to start a small garden next year. It will be about 3/4 acre or so. I need to borrow the neighbor's disc harrow to cut the sod under now that cold weather is here. My disc harrow wont' cut sod, only till open soil.

What would you plant in your newbie garden with an eye toward canning for off season eating. I am in South Carolina, so that may affect your choices.

My past experiences have not done well. I never took the time to hoe or plow weeds before I left for work, so they usually got over run. Now that I'm a SAHD, I have the time to work the garden before the mercury rises over 95, which is about 10:00 in my area during the summer. I have also thinned the deer herd that has historically eaten more than I did.

Thoughts and suggestions?

slacker or lazy(as i believe you stated later in the thread ) and 3/4 acre garden simply do not go hand in hand.

That is a dang big garden for someone just starting out. How many people are you going to try and feed from this monster?

Being this is the first year attempting this, you will have plenty of weeds especially if you are discing and harrowing rather than tilling and hoeing. hope the children are at an age they can help with some of the chores you will have in this venture you are are embarking on.If they are still too young to help out, you are likely to find yourself in over your head.

This is not meant to belittle or discourage you from this but perhaps rethink the size garden you are planning on for a first year effort. The worst thing in gardening or any thing to do with homesteading is jumping in way over your head and finding it all too much trouble and then becoming discouraged with it and never wanting to do it again.

I would suggest scaling it down a fair bit like to a 1/4 acre for starters, then if you do well with that you can expand it the following year. On the 1/4 acre you should be able to plant plenty of food from the garden for 6 people all year round and even still have some extras. Being you are in SC you can probably grow all year round too if you chose.

For late winter /early spring plantings i would recommend peas, carrots, broccoli, greens of many varieties, lettuces , radishes, spinach onions, potatoes, cabbage etc.

Spring time i would suggest tomatoes , squashes of many varieties, corn , beans, cucumbers, eggplants etc

Early summer plant some winter type squash, peppers, okra, pumpkins, more beans, green onions,

Fall cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips,greens and lettuces, carrots, etc.

If you rotate and keep on planting you can eat fresh from the gardens all year round without a greenhouse .You are always having fresh produce coming in to preserve in some way as well ensuring you and yours if nothing else good food.

SFG is really not the way to go when you are going with a larger scale garden. The concept is neat and yields are great but if one does this according to bartholomew it is simply not an economical means for growing in large quantities. These beds require watering every day but you dont get the weeds. I would suggest looking at the way the spacing for SFG is done and how intercropping can help but i would suggest using more traditional till methods and using your own soil rather than buying all the components that are suggested. I do this here on the farm and it does well. When one crop is near done growing i throw another in as quick as i can pull the plants till and amend the soil . It works well

I would also suggest getting your self a nice compost pile or two going as soon as possible. Go on out and rake all them leaves in the lawn up and enjoy the beautiful fall days and chuck all your good kitchen scraps on in and get your own soil amendments going. I would also suggest maybe a worm bin or two (look up vermicomposting) in order to keep your amendment costs down especially if you dont raise any livestock. Fertilizers and such beyond being chemicals are going sky high in price so doing what you can to keep the costs down will help you immensely in this.. Good luck and holler iffin you need anything

oh and buy heirloom seeds so that you can also seed save and never need to purchase seeds again..

[57plymouth]

Thanks for all the responses!!

First off, if I'm going to bother to hook up the plow to the tractor, I'm going to make it worth my while! So big is really better.

My weed control method is to plant the rows far enough apart that I can plow between them. This means a 2-3 foot open area between rows. By simply moving the entire garden over one farrow, I keep moving the crop across the plot. Plus, I will have a harrowed area around the border of approximately 6 feet ( the width of my disc harrow).

Plus, although I shoot as many deer as I can out of the garden, they still eat a good portion of the produce. Therefore I have to overplan a certain ammount to offset varmint loss.

Also, there is an economy of scale. Since I am willing to use a tractor to maintain the crop, I can spend less time to work a much larger area. All of my previous gardens have been small (1/4 acre). Because of this, they have suffered because I had to work harder by hand to maintain them than if I had made more room and used the mechanical resources at hand.

Plus, I can give food to my neighbors, both of which are also self employed and struggling.

Besides, I just got done harvesting kids, so it's time to plant something that is tasty.

[Greebo]

Besides, I just got done harvesting kids, so it's time to plant something that is tasty.

That looks like a good crop! I recommend deep frying at least one of them!