I Like What You've Done With The Place Garden Thread

Back in the day, about 10 years ago, I used to post the garden thread every Saturday. Then KT took over and made the garden thread the juggernaut that it is today. Seriously, she does a way better job than I ever did. However, this week, she is unable to post, so I'm back for an encore. Welcome back to mediocrity!

I didn't have anything planned, so I'll just post about my garden. Y'all can talk about anything you'd like. Here is a picture of my garden:

The first year I lived here I did a regular garden with rows, but then I decided to put in raised beds, and I put them in with a vengeance. That's 21 8' X 4' raised beds. Originally, I had sprinklers on posts at all 4 corners of the garden, fed from a hose attached to the spigot on the side of the cabin, but in year 2 of the raised beds I got serious. I ran the hose into a bunch of splitters so I could water each bed individually. That was unwieldy, so in year 3 I got REALLY serious, and put in irrigation. I tapped the water line feeding the cabin spigot with 1/4” PVC, ran the pipe out of the cabin, buried it, and gave each bed it's own feed. It looks like this now:

Each bed has it's own feed, and I can turn the valves on or off as needed to water just what I want to water. I can only do 4-5 beds at a time or else the water pressure falls too low, but it's much more efficient.

Attached to each bed's spigot is a watering system customized for what that bed is growing. It can be sprinklers that water an entire bed, for crops grown in rows like corn, potatoes or onions, thus:

Or it can water each individual plant, as below, Betsy's boob okra*.

Finally, the tarps. The bane of my gardening existence, as I'm sure is the bane of yours, is weeds. Weeds, weeds, weeds. Baring buying a million dollar machine that targets weeds with a laser, I use tarps. I buy them from Billboardvinyls.com, and cut them into 4' X 8' sections. Billboard vinyls sells, well, billboards, after they've been taken down. The vinyl is thick and weather resistant. I cut the vinyl to shape, put grommets in the corners using a cheap grommet making kit from Harbor Freight (like $4.00 for 100 grommets), and then cut holes for where I put the plants. See the pictures above, I can cut rows or individual spaces, depending on what I want to grow. If I have a bed I'm not planting, I use a tarp with no holes. It's not perfect, weeds will sprout around the edges and in the holes cut for the plants, but it probably cuts down on my weeding chores by 80%.

So there you have it. That's my garden. Now tell me about yours.

Today's garden thread has been brought to you by this year's first harvest:

(That was a couple of weeks ago. Since then I've harvested a shit-ton of vegetables, Tomatoes, peppers, onions, Betsy's boob okra*...you name it. I've made salsa, canned hot peppers, and given a shit-ton of produce away. And this year I'm only using like half the beds. )

*Betsy's boob okra. I have a friend named Betsy. I was talking to her before the growing season, and I mentioned that I wasn't going to be planting all of my beds this year. She asked if I could grow something for her. The conversation went as follows:

Me “What do you like?”

Her “I like okra.”

Me, shrugging “OK, I'll grow some okra for you.”

Betsy “What will it cost me?”

Me “Nothing. I dunno,” (TOTALLY JOKING) “You could flash me or something.”

Betsy “OK” (Flashes me. And friends, I have to tell you, she has spectacular boobs. Like the Venus de Milo is jealous spectacular)

Me (stunned) “I guess I'm growing okra then”

Hence, Betsy's boob okra.

posted by WeirdDave at 01:00 PM

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