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Now is the time to start thinking about gardening for this year.

Started by porcupine kate, November 14, 2009, 12:01 PM NHFT

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Kat Kanning


Lloyd Danforth


porcupine kate

#47
Anton.

It sounds like containers or smaller raised beds would be the way to go.  I'm sure you can get away with both if you make them look good.

You can make these great earth boxes.  They water from the bottom and people I know have had great success with them here in NH.
Paint them or just buy pretty colored bins to make them out of.

http://www.gardenguides.com/90706-make-easy-earth-box-planters.html

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/contain/msg0501044214330.html

I like this site even better.

http://grow.lot-o-nothin.com/self-watering-container-instructions



jerry


Pat K

What you do is put some land mines around
the Pear tree, then you get Moose steak and
Pears. Just step carefully!

Russell Kanning

kat's earth box works great .... the dirt stays moist and we don't have to have holes in the bottom
i bet you could keep the deer and moose from eating all your fruit in a trailer park Anton :)
nothing ate our blueberries last year, but we had a great blackberry patch that we were going to munch on when it was just right .... then a couple days after we checked, every singe one was gone. Some critters were incredibly efficient.
I figure if the deer eat a lot of our stuph this fall, one of our local riflemen could fix the problem

our (still not completed) greenhouse is keeping things from freezing each night. It was 10 last night outside, but 29 in the shaded corner, so our plants were still happy. We have been taking in our tomato and pepper little ones in each night, so they don't get below 50. Last night was much colder than it has been for a while.

my worm composting is going well. we started them up 2 weeks ago. when people visit they can check the operation out and start their own before next winter. by summer i should be able to sell extra worms

porcupine kate

#51
In cleaning up the flower beds I was very happy to see a bunch of plants from last year come back.
This year cleanup was much easier than last year.  Not only do I have flowering bulbs this spring but the pansies have come back and are blooming already.  So I have daffodils, tulips blooming that I planted last fall.  The crocus are finished.  The irises are coming up too.
I had thought that I had killed the Rhubarb, thyme, and sage last year and was very happy to see them come back.
The rosemary didn't make it.  The mums from my wedding and bridal shower are starting to grow back too.  I do need to start pinching them back to get more blooms.  Though I am not sure quite how to do it.

I am going to mix a bunch of annual flowers and herbs in the front beds.  I planted some tulip and daffodil bulbs left over from last fall this week.  We will see if they come up next year of not.  Spring was early and Liberty Forum ate up too much of my time to get them in earlier.

I know I will do the peppers in containers on the deck this year so they get more warmth and sunlight.

I am still trying to figure out what to plant in the vegetable beds this year.  I want to build a cold frame for one of my raised beds.  I have to figure out what I am going to put in it first.  It will be made out of PVC pipe bent over the bed and covered with clear plastic sheeting.  I will have to open it each day to keep it from over heating.  I bought a nice large thermometer for it.  It will be 12' x 4'.
I figure I can start lettuce, kale, broccoli, bunching onions, leeks, carrots, beets, radishes, and spinach.  I don't know what else would be good to put in there this early.  The snow peas could go in early too.  I don't want to cover them since the need a trellis. 
The onion sets and garlic bulbs wont be here till late April.  They will go in as soon as they arrive.

Any other suggestions for early planting?


AntonLee

I salvaged a whole bunch of cinder blocks left from the previous owner and created a new raised bed that looks quite nice if I do say so myself.   I was dying to put something into it, so I went and got a raspberry and blackberry plant each.  I'm in the process of creating a walkway through my yard following the previous owners' former flowergarden with a nice young tree and a rododendron in it.  Mulched that up after breaking up the soil a little and mixing in some fertilizer.  Threw up one of those yellow japanese bushes (I don't know the name, it was given to me, and it is blooming now everywhere).

I don't care if it's against the rules, I'm planting a few rhubarb plants in with my rododendrons  :icon_pirat:

veggie gardens I've barely thought about yet, but I have the perfect spot.  I know I'm going to try onions, rhubarb, tomatoes, garlic, cucumbers, red onions, brusselsprouts and some herbs I'm sure.  Celery did well last year when everyone told me it wouldn't but I left MA before harvest.



porcupine kate

My rhubarb is mixed in with flowers.  :) 
I plan on mixing flowers and herbs in that bed since it is in the front of the house.
I don't want to plant tempting veggies where people can just walk by and steal them.  I have had that problem in a community garden near the pool in a previous apartment complex.  Two and four legged thieves would steal whole plants and ripe goodies.  I was very frustrating.

The back yard is fenced in so I have my own private garden.

Tom Sawyer

Quote from: AntonLee on April 07, 2010, 08:45 PM NHFT

I don't care if it's against the rules, I'm planting a few rhubarb plants in with my rododendrons  :icon_pirat:


Illegal rhubarb tastes the best!

Rhubarb is the first fruit you get to enjoy from your garden.

Lloyd Danforth

But!...But!...You need Strawberries to make it palatable!

Pat K


porcupine kate

I found a cute planner for laying out raised vegetable beds.
http://vegetableplanner.vegetable-gardening-online.com/

It doesn't let you split up a 1ft block for inter-planting but it sure makes it easy to figure out where to put everything.
It also doesn't have all the plants I want to plant.  So I picked similar pictures and will update my notes to the varieties.

I have three 12' x 4' beds that I need to rotate the plant locations from last year. 
I figured out how to lay them out to make rotation easier for next year and how to lay out beneficial plants near each other.  Here is the layout for my garden this year.  I haven't done any of the second planting beds yet.  You can see that bed #1 will be ready to have quite a bit of it replanted in the end of June.
 
Kate

Russell Kanning

cool
all of our beds in the front yard are 4x8 or 4x12
some of them actually look like they might grow more than small stones  this year :)

Kat Kanning