Home made greenhouse mostly for peppers and more tropical plants and several tomatoes that will mature much faster than the ones outside.

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That garden has no weeds!

I suppose I should take the compliment, but there are plenty of weeds and it's a weekly battle.  This time of year however, most of the hard work is done.

Not a gardener (once had 1/4 acre before the divorce) but had aspirations of Grandpas garden.

I thought fallow was some kinda grain. 

To the Merediths: That seems to be a lot of unused ground.

To all: Do you have any 'mulching' practices/equipment?

I built a simple 'cage' out of chicken wire (about 3' diameter and 3' high), added all the yard waste (except most of the grass clippings), shredded paper from werk (yeah...), and it seemed to work great. Toss it a couple times a week and keep it moist. It steamed quite well.

Worm farms?

It is a lot of unused land, but when you have so much...


Was able to make mulch in Pasadena because I had a McLane reel mower with basket so collected the Bermuda cut.  Also had much more mature landscape, so always trimming hedges and banks, great brown & green matter.  Put the trimmings through chipper/shredder, mix in grass, add water and turn every couple weeks and we used to get some excellent primo good compost!

Your set up seems to work well!

As a kid my dad and I, really and our family all grew a huge garden.  You name it we grew it.  It was an amazing experience.  The neighbors would even come by to see how things were going as we were tilling and planting.  I truly miss those past times and they are fond memories with my Dad who I miss every day.

I tried to do it when I got a bit older, but when I moved to Florida the schedule is all wacky and I literally get the itch in May to start it up.  Maybe one day if I move more northern!

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Peppers are starting to develop nicely.

Looking really good. They are a lot of work keeping them that clean.

Looking really good. They are a lot of work keeping them that clean.

Why?

We just always fought weeds etc. We had pretty good yields but always seems like an awful lot of work. There are so many people that grow great fresh veggies that we have just started buying that.

Looking really good. They are a lot of work keeping them that clean.

It's part of the reason to go to raised beds.  Hopefully with raised beds and a heavy mulch, we can reduce the weeding -- and the raised beds will be a bit easier on the back!!!

I can remember when Victory Garden (maybe it still is) was on PBS.  They would show their garden and it looked like there beds were ALL potting soil, you know how easy it is to pull a weed from potting soil.  Then you have our soil, I had to weed 3 tomato plants, I have no analogy for how hard it was to pull them up from this VA clay soil!

All I know is I am going to keep buying the 500 lb. rolled bales of straw from my friend each Fall & Spring and will get this soil amended.  I have brought about 5 tractor buckets of soil up from the Evil Tractor Killing pond.  Tonight I asked my neighbor if I could have some of the sawdust his business produces and brought about 4 buckets of it and mixed in.  I am going to go get 1500 lbs. of sand in the Fall to mix into that and keep mixing the sawdust in over the next 5 months and by October, hope to really have some fine bedding material!


It starts at the 15:50 mark, and at 16:23, that is what I want in my beds!

Compost

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Only one watermelon so far, hope for a few more.

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Butternut squash staring to develop.

Sausages has been harvested, now waiting for the bell peppers to ripen to finish the dish!