Who has a family garden?

[mudmum]

Hello, we have a big vegie patch where we all have our own little plot, I have my tomatoes and basil etc, Ed has his tomatoes and corn and Mikey has his carrots!!!
Wow, im the first in this category , yeeeehaaa!!

 

[Rio_Lindo_AZ]

sadly,
I'm the only one in my family that likes to garden

 

[Smitty's Farm]

We have a huge veggie, herb, flower garden. We (my husband, daughter, & I) all work together to get it in shape in the spring. Sometimes my daughters friends will come over for a day and help mulch.

 

[silkiechicken]

I have a family garden of sorts... I pretty much do all the gardening but can get some help for the heavy work like fence moving and tilling. Got about 500 lbs of goods from it this year. About half a years worth of veggies. Our freezer is full.

Tomatoes, corn, zucchini, potatoes, green beans, snow peas, pumpkins, japanese squash and that's about it.

 

[hsm5grls]

I have always had a small garden that I have maintained myself. But this year we are putting in a huge garden about 150' by 30' and it will be a family garden. The girls got so excited when I started talking about how big it would be and that we could all plant things of our choice and that we would be canning the harvest. so that it goes well and that they stay interested. LOL

 

[sgtsheart]

Right now the verdict is that I am free to use all of the family's old garden space I want for anything I want; but can't expect any help. It's over 2 acres and I plan to not only have vegetables, but something I'm calling my secret garden; where I can grow anything that suits me or brings me pleasure. I'm also going to put all the old farm implements laying around to use in my secret garden; as benches, trellises, etc.
At this time, my SO is adament that he wants nothing to do with gardening, having done nothing but caring for chickens and gardens as a child. I have a hunch that once I actually get started he won't be able to keep his hands outta the dirt for long.

 

[hsm5grls]

sgtsheart that sounds fun. I think it would be so exciting to plan out a secret garden. you are giving me an idea. I think a sall pond or fountain in the center so you can hear the running water would be beautiful. I am soo gonna do that. A place to hide away and de-stress.

 

[Blisschick]

We have a fenced in garden area, but we didn't do anything with it this year. Before, we had all sorts of veggies going, including watermelons, but when the hubby opened his business, we didn't have the time to do it. He's talking about trying again this spring, so maybe we'll get some fresh veggies this coming spring. I really miss the fresh tomatoes.

 

[mudmum]

I love secret gardens, My vege patch contains lots of strange objects, like a gnome, little marble stepping stones, and a bed head which I grow the cucumbers upon.
Then I call it my "garden bed" get it??I collect old cane bits and pieces to grow things up on too.

 

[digitS']

I have a little trouble finding old posts on this forum. Probably its just me and my unfamiliarity with this sort of thing. But, I wanted to return to this subject because it interests me and maybe some of the newbies to Easy Garden, as well.

First off, I get LOTS of help in the garden from my dear wife. I used to say that the big gardens were MY gardens but mobility problems and her own "sneakiness" has changed all that. I'm important out there but much of my importance and pleasure exists in my mind. (Gotta tell that to my back when I'm runnin' the darn tiller or schlepping around harvest buckets and workin' from Can't See until Can't See

Anyway, on the subject of "secret gardens" I'd like to comment on how easy this is given the right odd circumstances. Here's the idea - got an oddly-shaped area of the yard or an oddly-shaped corner of the garden? Make that your Secret Garden.

Here's what I did: My old large garden was on a bench above a river. It couldn't have been in a much more idyllic setting in that regard. I used to say that I could cast a fishing rod from my garden and catch trout! The difficulty was that I could only do that during Spring run-off but, always, that river was just a short walk down the hill.

The ground was almost perfectly level and this was a fairly large area - about one-quarter acre. The odd thing about the gardensite was that it was in the shape of a triangle! Yep, it was almost an equilateral triangle with a fence along one side, a gully filled with small trees on another, and the river on the third.

Now, I'm a believer in gardening with permanent paths and using nice, deep beds of soil if I can get the job done. Over some of these beds, I set up trellises of various kinds. In the veggie garden, there are tepees for the pole beans and A-frames for the peas. So for the most part, I want my garden in rectangular beds!! Well, that wasn't goin' to work in a triangle, or was it??

I went down to the office supply store and bought a pad of graph paper. I've said that everything in my gardens is measured out "by the foot" - - MY foot! Of course, it helps that with my garden shoes on; my big old foot is exactly 12 inches long! Oh, yeah

Anyway, after pacing off the area and drawing my lines on the map - it was easy to fit rectangular beds throughout probably 80% of the space. Out I went with a collection of stakes and a hammer and marked things off 3 large rectangles with beds but that left 4 little triangles along one side. What to do with the remaining ground?

Well, I turned those triangles into odd-shaped beds with the permanent paths extended into them. For 7 years, I grew things like sunflowers, pumpkins & squash, and all sorts of flowers in those triangles. Even tho' the rest of the garden was lined up like soldiers on parade, these odd-shapes and including a tiny area of lawn with a bench behind one apple tree and under another became my secret garden. The neighbor across the fence would sometimes drive by on her lawn tractor but my comfortable bench in the shade was behind her plum tree also. During the early Spring when we'd both first show up out there, we could just barely see each other thru the flowering fruit trees. Me under my apple blossoms, she buzzing by on her tractor - I'd just smile and wave

Garden planning's important - that's why God made January.

Steve