What is your favorite gardening method, and why? Add pictures!

I like to have permanent beds and paths. The beds cultivated to the depth of a spading fork (about 11 inches) and sometimes dug out with compost added and recovered.

The 4 foot wide bed is then leveled. Paths are beaten down like concrete . . .

This is the way my dahlia, cutting and small veggie gardens are put together - except the dahlia beds are never completely dug out. It's more of moving all the dirt out of them over several years by using a post hole digger to plant the dahlias, each year.

The dahlia garden at one time had cedar boards raised beds but even cedar rots after a dozen years. Once I started falling over the broken and leanin boards - they were taken out. It didn't make a whole heckuva lotta difference.

The large veggie garden is just too big and the soil too rocky for me to put it in beds at this stage of my life. I've had the other gardens this way for almost 15 years. The big garden was too daunting 6 years ago when I started there. I just plant rows (sometimes double) with space in between to run the tiller . . . row cropping. It is not my preferred method.

You can see part of the gardens on my TEG page.

Steve
 
Mostly permanent beds and paths, 5-foot-wide beds. The beds are slightly mounded from lack of compression and addition of organic matter. I might plant rye this year for living paths, if I get around to it :) Also thinking about interplanting squash with corn for weed control and space saving.
 
Beekissed, your garden is gorgeous. I love how it is set up. It looks very old fashioned, it fits well with the whole setting.

Im not sure what you'd call my type of gardening! We call them ridges, haha. This is how I was taught and how I've always done it. If you scroll down to the 3rd photo, I believe, it shows what we do. We plant in the center of them, block the ends of the rows and fill the middle up to water both sides of the ridges!

http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=23228
 
Thanks! I thought your garden was very neatly done as well!

When I was growing up we used traditional row gardening and my folks still do this after all these years. My mother would like to try something different, but my dad is pretty stuck in his ways!

I'm pretty much changing a lot in the garden this year and it will look a lot different. The pic in the thread is when the garden was only half grown and there is another raised bed in the far right of the pic that you cannot see.

This year, those raised beds no longer have boards but will still be mounded. They will have fencing~of a type~around them and another permanent pathway right up the middle. This will give me 10~ 4ft. x 17 ft. beds to play with.

The bottom of the garden that looks kind of sparse in the pic, will be fenced separately and divided into four large blocks. Each of the blocks will have sweet corn with flowers along the outer edges. There will be beans planted within the corn on another edge and pumpkins in between the blocks and into the other edge of the corn. I will be planting some clover as green mulch around the corn as well, to fix the nitrogen into the soil.

I'm saving some space by planting most of my potatoe crop into my large compost bin in the garden. I will just keep adding mulching, manure, compost, etc. ~just like they do when they grow potatoes in tires. When its done, I will just tip over the bin and fish the taters out of the compost.

"Borrowed" the concept off a post on the SS. ;) When I removed the bin earlier this spring, I found very large and crisp potatoes in the bottom of the pile....so, the wheels started turning. Then I read a thread about the same thing on SS and the light went on! :D
 
Wow! There are sure a lot of different ways people like to do things! I love to see all the pictures. Mine is a work in progress right now, I am working on beds. I am digging them as I go, since its so much work. I am doing 4 ft x as-far-as-I-can-go-before-I-run-into-the-field-ditch. :lol:

I am putting all of the squash and melons in hills, away from the rest of the garden. And I plan to keep going untill I run out of room! :weee Which I am sure I will do before I run out of seeds. :D

I am also going to try for an annual cutting bed. I dont know how that will go, I have never done too well with flowers before. But I think if its in the veggie garden and I treat them like the veggies, they cant do too badly, right? :fl
 
Warmfuzzies, you just can't go wrong with zinnias! Even I can't mess up zinnias! :lol: And sunflowers! Heck, sunflowers are like the Little Shop of Horrors.....you plant them, two days later they reach out and grab your ankle when you walk by! :P
 
Beekissed said:
I really love mulched, raised beds(just mounded, like yours) and permanent pathways. Last year I did raised beds of one board high, which was nice but could have been done without the boards.
I also liked trellising my tomatoes and will be doing this somewhat this year....good-bye to all that staking!

I don't really have a good pic of these methods but I have one that was taken early on, before the garden was all full and tall.

[url]http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/uploads/5508_imported_photos_00009.jpg[/url]
I am loving that house and garden and landscape....beautiful place....
 
Beekissed said:
Warmfuzzies, you just can't go wrong with zinnias! Even I can't mess up zinnias! :lol: And sunflowers! Heck, sunflowers are like the Little Shop of Horrors.....you plant them, two days later they reach out and grab your ankle when you walk by! :P
I am going to try zinnias, cosmos, marigolds and mexican sunflowers. I am SOOOOO hoping I can do it... i tend to over-think things, so I am trying not to think about it. :lol:
 
Hey, I still got my fingers crossed on our sunflowers. I figured something insanely easy, and will blow my 2 year old's mind. No fun if they don't come up.... so far I've counted 3 sprouts out of 28 seeds?!!?!? :pop Still waiting

I wish you luck. :P
 
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