Your garden is doing a lot better than mine. I hardly have anything in the ground yet. I start from seed indoors. For some reason the starters aren't growing much. They've been outside for a month or more and just aren't growing. Some are starting to look healthy, but they are so small.
I only have a few plants in the ground (cherry tomatoes), and a few more are ready. The rest are small. It's very late in the year. I'll have to get them in the ground real soon whether they are ready or not. I'll just cross my fingers that the small ones will survive the transplant.
The ground is tilled, cleaned and leveled. I'm just hoping the plants get a little bigger first. It's not a big garden - maybe 6x8 feet. That's enough room for about 12-15 plants. More and more I'm going to containers though. The big five gallon buckets are big enough for many crops. Plus I have several 2 gallon pots that are good for smaller plants like peppers.
This past winter I also tried growing cool weather crops indoors in coffee cans. They did pretty well. I have petite carrots that can grow in a coffee can, and radishes which don't need deep soil. Since they are cool weather crops, they do OK inside in the winter. I plan to expand it next winter.
The plants that aren't growing are the starters that I started from seed 2-3 months ago. They are in paper cups, which is how I've always done it in the past.
Yes, I have suspected the soil. I used a potting soil, not a starter soil, which are somewhat different. Plus I used a new potting soil that I don't really like. I don't know if that affected things or not.
The paper cups are also smaller than I've used in the past. But the plants should still be bigger, even in those cups.
Do you buy pre-started plants? Start from seeds indoors? Put seeds directly in the ground?
I bought seeds and plants, my soil has a lot of stones, my tomatoes suffer a lot. For the seeds, I made a furrow, I packed my seeds, and I covered then slightly with the ground and I watered. My radishes are not great, there are a few that were good but because of my soil the result was not excellent. The rest are doing pretty well.
Yea, I can see the rocks in your soil. You said this is your first garden. Over time you can work the soil and slowly improve it. You can gradually remove some of the rocks, and add other things to it. Tilling deep will also help a lot.
You should start a compost if you haven't already. It will take 2-5 years to get some good compost, depending on how you do it. But in the long run you can add a lot of good compost to your garden soil.
At least your soil looks well drained, which is important for most crops. I really want to start strawberries, horseradish and some other things that require well drained soil. I haven't done it yet mainly because I don't have a good place to plant them. My soil doesn't drain well. This is one reason why I'm using containers more and more.
Overall your garden looks very healthy. You just need to learn what grows well there.
When it's time for dinner, I love walking out the door and picking my food.
I've only had one year since then where I've not grown at least tomatoes and herbs.
In 2020 I started making my own compost from food waste and bonemeal from the carcasses as well.
My son is almost 5 and has asked for a chicken for his birthday so he can "grow" eggs. I'm cool with that, but his mum less so.
I've planted root veg I can't buy this year - swede and turnip as I can't get parsnip seeds. I'm expanding into raised beds next year as it's harder to work from a wheelchair when I have a bad day.
More power to you. You should consider getting a duck or two. They eat slugs and the eggs are much richer than chicken eggs for baking. Can't beat natural pest control. You can buy ladybirds sometimes too - they eat aphids - and remember you can eat dandelion plants from root to flower. The roots can be roasted and ground into a passable drink, the leaves tast similar to brassica and the flowers brew into a tea that can help blood pressure.
Hoping I can get a bigger place in the next couple of years and put a couple of bee hives on it.
i have a garden too! super small tho. yours is way bigger than mine. i just have some bell peppers, carrots, sweet potatoes. it's all that i can handle right now.
@spongebobssocks Does your apartment happen to have a balcony or any kind of an overhang outside the window? If so, you could have a planter box that hangs on/over the edge where you could grow herbs and flowers! It may not be a whole garden, but it's certainly better than nothing at all, and it gives you a little piece of nature to look at, nurture, and even harvest in the case of planting herbs. 🙂 Also, you can do hanging baskets or even a vertical or hanging planter if you have the room for that as well!
@spongebobssocks Oh, sweet! Well, every balcony is a little different as far as hanging planter boxes off of them, but depending on the size of your balcony you could do hanging baskets or planters, or a vertical planter (or two) in the corners. There's all kinds of options, and just because someone lives in an apartment, that doesn't mean they can't grow herbs, veggies and flowers too! 🙂 Just look into various baskets, pots and planters for balconies. There's all kinds of stuff you might be able to do. Check and see what other people are doing and get a little creative! 😊
@spongebobssocks I also forgot to mention: with everything I said, your success will also depend on what side of the building you're on, and whether your balcony gets enough sunlight during the day. An east-facing apartment would be more challenging, but a west-facing apartment would be the next best thing, as it would receive the warmer sun's rays from roughly 12-1PM in the afternoon until sunset. However, if you're lucky enough to have a south-facing apartment you'd have plenty of sunlight to grow anything (as long as it's not a shade-loving plant). Anyway, best of luck to you! 🙂
@spongebobssocks Well, yay then! 😄 If you have the means to, you still have enough time to grow certain plants and herbs - even in Sweden - so you could start if you wanted to! Anyway, hopefully you'll have a little balcony garden of your own soon! 😊
It looks awesome! It's a wonderful garden, Julie. Way to go!
My wife and I grow some veggies and herbs. We have a small orchard next to our house with a deer fence around it. We have some raised beds there with potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, green onions, garlic, zucchini, various kinds of squash, radishes, tomatoes, peppers, and a few other things Not massive amounts of anything in particular. Outside the deer fence in our front yard, we have some herbs that the deer won't eat, including a huge rosemary bush that is amazing. Behind the house, on the south side below the kitchen window, we built a circular, 16' diameter fence with potting benches inside. We grow some veggies and starters in containers there.
My wife grows a lot of stuff from seed inside the house under a grow light and transplants them to pots.
Nice! Your garden looks great! Seems you have a green thumb! 🙂 Unfortunately, I have very limited space for growing veggies due to there being a lot of trees around me, which blocks out the sunlight, but I do have just enough room for 4 tomato plants (in large pots), kale, lettuce, basil, oregano, rosemary, chives, cilantro and cayenne peppers. I wish I had way more space to have a much larger garden though. If I could, I'd grow tons of veggies, herbs, fruits and fruit trees, as well as native flowers and plants to benefit pollinating insects and birds. It's my goal to do homesteading, so hopefully someday soon! 😊
It looks good Julie! You can get quite a bit out of a patch no matter how small and I really enjoy watching the progress. When I was a young boy on a farm the first thing I did after school was to check my patch and I got a kick out of seeing the seeds sprout, then the plants flowering and the fruit growing. Still do and occasionally run a pagan harvest festival celebration in the park.
I have to be content with a hydroponic unit on my balcony now and it is the southern winter with only 4 days to the winter solstice. My objective is to coach my tomatoes through winter. I have some ripening on the vine right now so it is sort of working.
That's pretty impressive. Actually, we just have flowers and decorative plants in our garden. We get vegetables and the like either from the grocery store or every Saturday morning our town has a Farmer's Market that sells fresh produce.
Anyhow, from the photos, you have got one green thumb. Oh, and by the way, I hear that plants grow even faster if you play rap music in the background. That probably explains why your garden looks so good.
Ornamental plants are great too, and with watering and so on, it takes time to look after them. As for the rest, at least you use local producers, which I think is great.
I had some difficulty making this garden because there were lots of stones and I broke a nail 😭 there are quite a few plants that managed to grow but the melon was a total failure , I think they didn't appreciate the Rap music.
@nightdrot Just goes to show that being in politics allows you to sign excellent treaties. I can't imagine Julie listening to that kind of music, such a well-educated young woman can't listen to that, a myth goes out the window. ( JUST KIDDING, JULIE )
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