The Garden Thread 2024

[Hovannes]

The Magnolias and Camelias are blossoming, so I guess it's not too early to contemplate this year's vegetable garden.
I have three rebuilt raised beds in a sunny location, loaded with mulch from the ground up stumps of two Mexican Palms which I had to remove.
There's still a lot of work to do to get the beds ready.
I've been contemplating mainly tomatoes and peppers.
My biggest issue always seems to be getting a strong enough support structure for the tomatoes.

What shape is your garden in? What are you planning on doing with it this year?

[Del]

This warm thaw in Wisconsin is lasting too long. Annuals are sprouting, trees and vines are budding.... all to be killed in the coming frost when winter returns. Fairly typical for an El Nino winter.

Not devastating, but it's not going to be good for our spring.

It's good to have all the snow melted off of our roofs.

[joegoat]

Making plans for this year. I want to try the "three sisters" to maximize the space I use for corn. Trying to decide on popcorn again or a flint corn to make cornmeal from. I need to pick a climbing bean that can be dried on the vine and shelled and a squash of some kind. We like butternut squash.

[Hovannes]

Driving in to town today we noticed hives being set out for pollination, but few blossoms yet.
i probably won't get around to planting anything until mid April (it will take that long just to finish up the raised beds!)
I have a huge pile of composted leaves yet to work into the soil
For Tomatoes, Morgage Lifters, San Marzanos, Romas and Sweet 100s currently hold my attention.
The Mortgage Lifters I'll have to start indoors from seed.
In the non vegetable universe, I'm planting an experimental plot of Mini Clover lawn.
We'll see if it's all it's cracked up to be.

[Hovannes]

Here's a humorous essay on growing tomatoes:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/i-can ... fa0&ei=100

[Brigid]

Someone just gave me black hollyhock seeds, which will go in the moon garden—all my white, black, silver and purple things go in one quiet spot.

I get really excited at the thought of planting 1 million things. Native plants! Roses! Camellias! Trees! More trees! Roses again! But the truth is, what I actually need to do is dig up and move a bunch of things and weed the rest of it. So much less exciting.

Lucky for me, Anthony’s already on it.

[Hovannes]

Moon gardens are cool!
I wish I had the space for one.

[Hovannes]

For several years I've gardened in raised beds usually with a minimum investment.
The only drawback I've experienced with raised beds that occasionally they need rebuilding and repositioning, and when they do,
the bigger the bed the bigger pita it is to rebuild and reposition.

I stated out with using old redwood fence pickets and 4x4 fence posts for corners and a layer of cardboard fridge box for the "floor". These easily lasted for a decade until they were too far gone and repurposed about the time our 14' stock trailer needed new floor,
so the redwood pickets became the new "floor" the planks from the stock trailer became the sides. The 4x4 posts were suffering so I eventually replaced those with these cement chingaderos from Lowes


This year I repositioned one raised bed by joining it with another and noticed that the old Douglas Fir stock trailer planks haven't aged well even though they were coated with a preservative.
So next year, I'm thinking the rebuilding project will again continue.
Three used railroad ties should yield a single 4'x8' raised bed---not very large, but large enough to get the project rolling

[Hovannes]

Several old-fashioned gents I knew were gardeners, and in my memory, they are connected with the crops they grew because in season, they'd always provide us with a bag of home-grown groceries.
Sometimes I think I should plant "their" favorite garden crops in their memory, but I don't know if I could do them justice.
Still, the memories haunt me:
Jerry always had Japanese Egg Plant and Italian Curly Peppers. These were planted in proximity to his BBQ grill and were picked, oiled with EVOO and grilled as a side to whatever meat was on the menu.
Jim would grow White Onions (huge ones) Anaheim Chilis and Sugar Snaps.
Henry was proud of his Black Beauty Zucchinis, Ace VFN Tomatoes, and Big Jim Peppers.
I remember after my dad passed; I came across a tiny vegetable Winter Garden we didn't even know he'd planted---green onions.
They were thriving, too.

Do you associate vegetables with the people you know who delighted in tending to them?

[Hovannes]

As soon as the current atmospheric river skedaddles out of here, I'll turn the soil in the #1 bed (this season's tomato address, as I rotate crops)
and I'll be ready to plant the first of the 'maters.