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Post by yankee on Sept 11, 2015 13:53:17 GMT -5
Welcome, yankee . Tell us what you're growing down in the Florida panhandle. Does your area stay warm enough for a winter crop of tomatoes? Thanks Phil, I haven't planted much of anything pass few years, but have a list of plants and project plans I want to do when I get more property and move up north. A winter crop of tomatoes might be possible where I'm at and depending how frost tolerant it is, which is zones 8/9.
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Post by haslamhulme on Oct 23, 2015 19:13:26 GMT -5
Hi,I'm relatively new to the forum,I thought I'd introduce myself properly rather this just snoop!.
I'm a youngish allotmenteer from the edges of Birmingham/the Black Country.I finally got my own space to grow 2 years ago after years of container and back garden growing and interested in all things I can grow to eat,the general rule is if I can't eat it I don't grow it,
The growing environment here generally consists of cool dry winters December to February,cold snaps March to May,with unpredictable snow and frost,hot dry summer between June and August and then wet cool mild Autumn September to November,but with the British weather being what it is(not extreme but a lot of it) it can be unpredictable.
I grew up in somewhat more predictable climes,nestled between the Wye valley,the Forest of Dean and the malverns in the west of the English midlands,completely different from the urban sprawl am surrounded by now.The allotment and growing in general is my way of getting back to my true self and away from the concrete madness,reconnecting with my agrarian roots and trying to teach my family the value of the skills,graft,heritage and in the greater scheme of things the necessity of knowing how to grow food.
I am from a farming family,the last land going out of my family's hands whilst my dad was still young,generations of skill and knowledge died out at the auction house.But growing up surrounded by nature and by small farms left an indelible impression and dispite having spent half of my life in cities now I am never happier than when I can't see a single square foot of concrete.You can take the boy out of the countryside but you can't take the countryside out of the boy.
The allotment I have is over a hundred years old,and the soil has been providing food for much longer,this was mixed dairy pasture and orchards until the industrial revolution swallowed up all of the land between the surrounding villages and towns.The allotment site I am on was saved by local people from development at the time the house I now live in was being built.My road even bears the name of the farm which owned the land and my house is built on and the land i now cultivate. Just 103 years ago if him you had stood on the street looking straight ahead at where where my house now stands you would be looking over a wooden fence at the side of a farm track and gazing out across gently sloping traditional meadow pasture dotted with apple trees and being grazed by dairy cattle.Amazongly 2 of the apple trees from the orchards still stand in my garden.
In a historical blink of an eye this area went from farmland stretching for miles to an endless sea of urban development in the name of progress and industry,I don't see why such changes should be assumed to be permanent and tas far as I can see for us believe they are is reckless
I don't believe the future is going to be any easier than the past,if anything we live with greater uncertainty and volatility than our parents generation(for me that's the post war baby boomers) and although my lifestyle for various reasons is like most people now far from sustainable or self sufficient I am making steps in the right direction.
I am sure give half a chance to indulge my inclinations I would be a full blown prepper!...now I just need to get my wife on board
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Post by louisiane on Oct 23, 2015 20:08:14 GMT -5
if I can't eat it I don't grow it, This is so important. I have the tendancy to grow things by curiosity. My husband hates zucchinis yet, growing them takes half of my garden space and instead of the zucchinis, I could grow carrots or beans that he just loves and the garden would be more productive that way.. I have been gardening vegetables for years but it is only this year that I realized how badly I use the space of it. Next year, I will grow onions - they are the start of everything in the kitchen, beans - they produce throughout the season even until the first frosts of fall, tomatoes - just a few plants because when they are in season, they are nearly given away by the commercial gardeners but the pleasure of picking one nice sunny rich tomato in the morning to serve in a sandwhich for lunch is a delight. I have a reserved space for my garlic - elephant garlic that is. I will also grow okra, it is a productive vegetable that takes little space in the garden, yet, it is a nice addition in summer dishes; peppers, love them in any ways; peas - also taking little space as the varieties that I grow are climbers; lettuces - all kinds, just picking a few leaves every day for daily cooking will be nice and I can reseed if needed. What else?? Leeks?? Sunflowers?? Spinach?? I will have to really take a good look at my list.
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Welcome!
Oct 25, 2015 8:19:39 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by haslamhulme on Oct 25, 2015 8:19:39 GMT -5
Hi Louisiane,I have to admit to not making the best use of my space too,I grow things out of curiosity,sometimes they work well,sometimes not so,but I always eat what I grow.
It takes time to learn what works and what doesn't,what the rest of the family will and won't eat,what works well in your garden and what doesn't.A good place to start is to look around your kitchen,see what you have that you could grow in your locality,and then prioritise by price and how much you use.For example if potatoes and onions are cheap but they are your kitchen staples and grow well in your area they are worth it,conversely,broccoli or asparagus might be expensive so worth growing but do poorly in your area and need lots of input toi get a good crop so they arent worth the space X hassle.I suppose my main concern is a balance between saving money and growing what we eat.Courgettes are a fine example,you only need a few plants and they take up a lot of space,first year I grew 8 and that was far too many,they don't keep,I did discover they are great grated into salads to bulk them up though.This year I grew a marrow and harvested all but 2 young to use as zucchini/courgette and the other 2 are now hardened off and will keep for a while.
Gardening books and seed sites are great but I always buy more than I need and the stuff which could be most practical tends to get overlooked in favour of the weird and wonderful.
I also grow other things out of curiosity,I have plenty of seedling Apple,pear and plum trees which I need to transfer into a nursery bed soon,they will take up space but we eat a lot of fruit,they are all from varieties I love and the ones that come true enough I will keep,those that don't I will try to graft over to the others.Curiosity is a great thing,sometimes it pays off,sometimes it doesn't,but if the result is edible,even if small,not very tasty,ugly or a glut it's still food.
It sounds like we're both learning but that's the point,growing food takes knowledge and experience and as I for one haven't had it handed down the only way is to learn by trial and error.
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Post by rangardener on Dec 7, 2015 15:21:05 GMT -5
Hello,
I have been reading this forum for years but never posted because I was not sure I had any to contribute. Have learned a lot here, enjoyed good humor, too, and I feel guilty not to at least say Hi and THANK YOU ALL.
My location is in the southern Willamette Valley, typical Pacific Northwest maritime weather. It has been 10 years that wife and me (try to) grow all sort of things for our own consumption/enjoyment: a garden for vegetables and a very young polyculture orchard. Since I save seeds of certain groups, maybe I will become a plant breeder unknowingly. While not having anything I’d call projects, since last year I have started fooling around with winter squashes, oriental melons, and some Brassica greens, among others. (I call that “practical biology.” :-) ) Learning by doing, I guess, and obviously this forum has been just great for that.
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Post by philagardener on Dec 7, 2015 18:28:15 GMT -5
Welcome, rangardener ! You are in a great location - hope to hear more about your growing!
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Post by rangardener on Dec 10, 2015 12:04:47 GMT -5
Welcome, rangardener ! You are in a great location - hope to hear more about your growing! Thanks, philagardener. Before coming to our current location, we lived in SW Pennsylvania for several years, very different climate, obviously. With the maritime climate here, now my challenges are often from my wife: she likes things that do better with warmer summer!
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Jan 10, 2016 1:25:48 GMT -5
Welcome Casey6400CO! Glad to have you and so many other new people join the forum lately! Tell us a little about yourself and/or what you are growing (either here or in the "a little about yourself" sub-forum. ...is that a watermelon i detect from your profile picture grown at 6400 feet in Colorado?! ...If so... I'm impressed!
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Post by eastex on Jan 10, 2016 12:35:32 GMT -5
Hi! I have come to homegrown goodness' boards for a few years for information and to follow some breeding processes. My live in East Texas, obviously, and me and the husband bought our first house last year. I've grown a garden anywhere I have lived since I got out on my own. We've moved around, but I've been an avid gardener for over 15 years. I'm pretty much of the "only grow what you can eat" philosophy, although I have a soft spot for some flowers that I got to take cuttings from my mother and grandmother's garden. I just don't want to devote precious resources to plants I can't get any food from. My neighbor is an avid flower gardener and we try to slowly convert each other. I will say that he talked me into a pink Quietness rose bush when he found out how sad I was that they don't sell Majolika roses to everyday folk and my attempt at rooting from the boquet the hubby gave me wasn't successful (it was a long shot from the start). Anyway, he said it's pretty much a carefree rose, and the blooms were similar but with more fragrance. We shall see. I started out with traditional veggie gardens using OP and heirloom seeds and have gradually become more of a permaculture grower. I still grow a few annual veggies in a few spots in the forest garden that I have growing in my front yard. The back isn't graded very well right now and I need to fix that before I do anything back there. We took down two 30 year old ornamental pears and a crape myrtle and a dead star magnolia before putting in the beds and trees. It's a challenge putting in a new layout with fresh roots still in the yard from the old trees, but not impossible. I currently grow two super mini dwarf apples, two elderberries, an almond, two peach seedlings, and a 4-in-1 cherry that I'm still dubious about the success of. I also have a few jostaberries, several types of raspberries, a blackberry, several blueberry varieties, a rosa alba, purple passion asparagus, a honeysuckle vine, and some runner beans in the front food forest in the making. I am about to restart all my perennial veggies in a few weeks because when we last moved, I was unable to take any of the ones I had with me. I'm a little nervous because I'm starting them from seed where before I had starter plants. I've never started perennials from seed before, so we shall see how this goes. It's different from annual veggies because pretty much all of them need stratification... I've half a mind to throw them in the ground right now and see what comes up, but they were too expensive not to try and grow a handful of each in proper pots like instructed to.
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Post by richardw on Jan 10, 2016 13:31:20 GMT -5
Hi eastex and welcome from extreme downunder (New Zealand), Australians think they own the word downunder but we're more down under than them Sounds like you are a keen gardener alright
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Post by philagardener on Jan 10, 2016 13:32:01 GMT -5
Sounds like you are off to a great start, eastex ! You might look into wintersowing for some of those perennials. By planting part of your seed now and letting it experience the change of seasons, many perennial seeds will respond well to the cold treatment and germinate naturally with the coming of Spring. You can plant the other part of your seed following the instructions you have been given and let us know how the comparison works for you. I bet you will be amazed at how well wintersowing works. Wintersown.org is a great website to help you get started. (Trudi is reworking her content, so some of the links are not working at the moment, but should be shortly.) Good luck!
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Post by eastex on Jan 10, 2016 14:00:19 GMT -5
Nice to meet you, Richard. I lived next door to a Kiwi once, man did she have a green thumb! Maybe you all do? I swear New Zealand is one of the prettiest places I've ever seen, even if it has only been in pictures. Seriously, lush is an understatement! Phil, thanks for the link! I'm gonna go read that right now. I think I probably will do half in pots and half outside. I mean, we've hardly had but a few frosts here so far and the next few months should be enough frost and thaw cycles, I think. But I will do half in pots just to be safe.
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Post by flowerweaver on Jan 10, 2016 14:34:28 GMT -5
Hi eastex, welcome to the forum. I grew up in east Texas and still have family there. I'm on the western edge of the hill country where it meets the desert. Sounds like your garden is off to a great start.
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Post by eastex on Jan 10, 2016 14:37:37 GMT -5
Thanks Flower! I've lived out in NM and a short stint in west TX too. I can't say I miss the dry and the dust, but some of THE nicest folks I've ever had the privilege of meeting were out in the desert. I'm thrilled to be here with the rain and the trees. My favorite has to be NC, tho. There's just nothing in the world like those Smokies. I could just sit and watch the valley and peaks for hours.
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Post by flowerweaver on Jan 10, 2016 14:46:30 GMT -5
I've enjoyed traveling all over NM. More recently, during the worst droughts, I spent a couple years looking at farms for sale in western NC. I have made many friends there and find the food culture, art, and music delightful. I find the area where I live now very comparable, at least in views, of the Smokies. People are always astounded when I show them photos, thinking Texas to be mostly flat.
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