Any of you folks growing gardens?

Man i live in the middle of the southwest arizona desert and it's hard to grow anything--would love to have a garden:mad:
 
The girl and I built a couple of "square foot gardening" raised beds and a rainwater harvesting system this spring. The plants are growing like crazy but not much production in mn yet. All of our tomatoes are the size of marbles still!
 
I had planned to plant somethings outside my dorm room window, but turns out.. if you take just the screen off the window.. your butt gets fined. One day when I have my own house, I plan to start a garden. My GF and I were actually talking about it the other day.

My grandparents that live here in big D have a big garden. Squash, Corn, Okra, Tomatoes, and plenty other things. I have tasted no better veggies at any resturaunt.
 
I'm preparing a patch for next year. We got fairly sandy soil, so potatoes will grow big (my grandma used to have potatoes on that spot, I had it grow over for 5 years, so all potato - eating insects that came in over time have now died in that spot.

My grandparents also had asparagus, but asparagus is a lot of work, so I'll go for peas and beans and I'll try tomatoes (this year it is too cold and rainy for them, hope next year will be better).
I also thought about getting some rabbits.
 
I have a small orchard with two or more each of the following trees:

Pears
Plums
Apples
Apricots
Peaches
Mulberries
Quinces

I'm thinking of putting in a few lemons and mandarins.

I also have a small grape vine that I'm hoping will do good things in a few years.
 
This is my first year trying lettuce and it turned out well for me. Two different kinds of lettuce. The romaine came up great and grew back three times. The leaf lettuce got destroyed by bugs.

My jalapenos are coming in nicely and my bell peppers are slow starters. The tomato plants are freakin' trees right now. Cucumbers did well but I had a bad year for zucchini this year for some reason.

I can't get cilantro to grow and stay good to save my life.

I can't log into photobucket right now or I'd post a pick but I use an L shaped raised bed garden. I don't have good soil so a raised garden was imperative so I could choose my own soil.

If you guys have any tips on cilantro, I'm all ears. The parsley didn't do that great either.

Next year I want to try beans.
 
R.A.T. said:
I know this is off-topic (which is actually on-topic for RC) but my girlfriend and I have been canning a lot of food this year. Potatoes, green beans, Lima beans, tomatoes, etc. Also growing okra, squash and corn. We have a pretty big garden every year and save a ton on food costs throughout the year. Just wondering if yall are gardening.
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I prepared a little garden in the backyard for my wife, using top soil, manure, and garden soil from Lowe's. She did the planting of some cucumber, squash, tomatoe, lettuce, and chili peppers. She sent me pictures of her garden and the veggies from it ... pretty nice!!

With just the little garden that I prepped up, I can tell you that farming is hard!!! Hats off to all the farmers out there!!!
 
Well we WERE going to have a nice garden for veggies this year, right up until one of my asshole neighbors saw me starting to mark off the area for it and called the town. Seems that my area only allows for flower gardens. Anything else is off limits. (WTF?!?). But they can't say nothin about my grape vine, Pear trees or Apple trees, cause they are already in place.

So all we are doing is Apple's Pears, and Concord Grapes. Grapes are comming in nicely, but I am worried about the pear tree, lot of damage from the ice storm this past year.
 
My grandmother grows tomatoes,cucumbers,peppers,green beans and other vegetables.They're tasty and healthy :thumbup:
 
MrCoffee said:
Well we WERE going to have a nice garden for veggies this year, right up until one of my asshole neighbors saw me starting to mark off the area for it and called the town. Seems that my area only allows for flower gardens. Anything else is off limits. (WTF?!?).
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WTF indeed ... that sucks - hope your pear tree will survive though.
 
Jake Bauer said:
I had planned to plant somethings outside my dorm room window, but turns out.. if you take just the screen off the window.. your butt gets fined. One day when I have my own house, I plan to start a garden. My GF and I were actually talking about it the other day.
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Hey Jake, You'd be surprised at what you can grow on a window sill. Cactus, fresh herbs, and tomatos can do very well inside on a sill. Also, my wife grows aloe vera inside so that when either my boys or me burn, cut, or scrape ourselves, we can apply that to the injury.
 
Nice Romas, Milani. We grow a lot of these every year as sauce tomatoes.
 
This year was our first at vegetable gardening and we tried strawberries, cantaloupe, watermelon, eggplant, green bell peppers, cukes, romaine and two different kinds of tomatoes. Oh yeah also a little herb garden with basil, mint, dill and something else I can't remember. :rolleyes:

I think we planted a little late in the season but still got a decent amount of tomatoes and eggplants as well as some strawberries. The cantaloupe and cukes didn't last long and we never got anything from them, the watermelon produced one small fruit, the peppers only gave us two small ones and the romaine was tasty before it bolted and then...YUCK!! I think it just got too warm and the lettuce grew too fast.

We also have two small citrus trees (tangelo and orange) and should hopefully get at least a few fruits from each this year (first year for the oranges). I also have more coconuts than I know what to do with. They're good for knife testing though!

Hoping to try again with the fruit and veggies this winter, but plant everything earlier this time.
 
Thanks Jeff, although I cant take much credit for it. My wife has the green thumb. She tells me to "cut this here" "build me.." "I need.."

But I sure do enjoy the "fruits" of our labor:D
The peppers are very nice too. She got a humidifier from a friend and we've been grinding them into powder. I about cried last night because I put too much on my dinner...
 
I have been growing a garden for years but every so often I will open up a new plot. It usually takes a couple of years of TLC to get that plot so it will grow good. Around here the soil is way too acidic (lots of Pine trees). Grows Irish potatoes great but needs Lime to do good on tomatoes due to blossom end rot. So, it's a balancing act but once you get that soil PH right for what you're growing and keep the right amount of water you can grow the hell out of some groceries! The only other thing you need is a good hoe. Not the female type but the rakes, tools and implements of destruction type! Make sure you and your hoe spend a few minutes each day in the garden to keep the weeds at bay and you will amaze yourself.
 
milani74 said:
Thanks Jeff, although I cant take much credit for it. My wife has the green thumb. She tells me to "cut this here" "build me.." "I need.."

But I sure do enjoy the "fruits" of our labor:D
The peppers are very nice too. She got a humidifier from a friend and we've been grinding them into powder. I about cried last night because I put too much on my dinner...
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Looks like you had some sweet potatoes growing also.
 
jeff_c said:
No sir, the land kind of drops away there, so thats actually a giant retaining wall garden. Its about 6 feet high on one side and ground level there on the front.

There is a gravel walk down the middle for picking and weeding...

Here you go...
(Kind of funny seeing it like this now). This was when it was planted this year. Notice its still too cool in the pic for the centipede grass. :)
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This was two years ago I think. You can see we switched from the wood bark and steppers to the pea gravel.
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Damn! That's a nice little plot!
 
I think so. Thats the other side of the back yard. My wife said she wanted to try them this year. I dont like sweet potatoes so I dont take much intrest in them. Over by that area we have spearmint, chocolate mint, basil, and blueberries. The blueberries were plants that we brought with us and are on their 3rd year.
 
jeff_c, I like your plot :) My backyard is pretty flat, but the soil down where I live has a ton of clay in it. Not exactly ideal for growing anything. I've began slowing digging it out so I can replace the clay with good soil, but I've been traveling pretty extensively for work for the last three months. I need to finish with my plot :) Any recommendations on how deep I should be digging? I've heard about 6 inches, but that doesn't seem like it would be anywhere near enough.
 
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