Anyone else enjoy gardening?

[Jeremy]

We decided to try our hand at gardening this year and it's been quite the adventure. A bunch of ups and downs lol but definitely rewarding. Our first attempt was definitely a learning experience as we dealt with a ton of various diseases and pests mainly due to our ignorance of proper watering techniques coupled with Florida's overwhelming humidity and prolific pests. 

If anyone has any pics of their garden past or present, I'd love to see them. Here are some various pics of our successes and failures lol. 



We battled worms in our corn from day one along with some type of mosaic virus which stunted the growth. The corn was an utter failure unfortunately.




 Another failure was our eggplant. It, along with our tomatoes got a fungus called anthracnose from improper watering. Thus caused stunting and the eggplant never recovered.




We also battled black spot fungus on our bell peppers and blight on our tomatoes which was finally resolved using an organic form of copper fungicide. Once this was applied, we finally started seeing growth especially from the tomatoes. 

[Jeremy]

We had decent success with our cucumbers. Only harvested 3 or 4 but decent size mainly due to the same fungus issues




We just harvested our first pineapple after 3 years and it was absolutely amazing. Tasted like a cross between a pineapple, orange and coconut. There was not a single bit of tartness just pure sweet. 




Since I eat so many sweet potatoes we also decided to grow them and since they love the heat and humidity, they are doing great presumably looking at the ever sprawling vines lol. The trick is to not allow The vines to take root while they spread otherwise they grow little fingerling sweet potatoes and take energy away from the main group. Oh and I found that the leaves are just as nutritious as spinach! They are very popular around the world but haven't caught on here for some reason. I seared some with garlic and they taste like a cross between spinach and chard. 



Last but not least, we are growing an edible form of hibiscus called sabdariffa or more commonly called sorrel. It's used throughout the world for its healing properties along with a tasty summer drink akin to a sweeter cranberry. I guess it used to be a big market here in Florida back in the 50's but fell out of favor for some reason. It's even called Florida cranberry because it was grown so prolifically. The leaves are also used as a chutney base in certain parts of India. I guess the plant is practically considered a religious part of their lives. 



These little yellow calyces grow into what you see below. Once ripe, you peel the fleshy portion and keep the seeds for further crops. The fleshy part is then boiled to make anything from tea, to jelly, and even wine lol 



This is what they will look like when they are ripe 

[MangusKhan]

Great thread, funny I was called to take some pictures of my yard the other day in order to share with the community at b4 some point. Now is the time it would seem. I didn't focus too much on specific plants, but across the yard there are all kinds of things.

Here we see congo beans flowering and seeding, as well as some herbs down below, and of course my poultry cage.



Meet Houdini, negative adept with powers of translocation and invisibility. She refuses captivity, and so I feed her alone on the roof of the cage. I love her.



My deputy gardener, Mordecai. A constant source of entertainment and cuddles.



And here's some uhhh... tomato seedlings? Yeah, tomato seedlings.

[Eddie]

I've been gardening since I was a child back in the 1960s.  It's been a good garden year for us and right now we're absolutely covered up with peaches, tomatoes and cucumbers.  Pepper and pear harvest is just starting, summer squash has run its course for the season.  Photobucket is getting ornery about letting people post their photos on other sites, but if you are interested you can PM me your regular e-mail address and I'll send you some pictures.

We also make plenty of pickles and preserves from the fruits and vegetables we raise; we will pickle about a peck of peaches this afternoon.

[Jeremy]

The great thing about Florida is that we can garden year round. We have ripped everything out except the peppers in preparation for the next adventure. 

Right now, I'm in the process of digging up the plastic barrier on the bottom to create a deeper bed. With the raised bed, we were only getting about 10" of depth which I'm not sure made a difference but it seems that tomatoes need at least 12". So I'm digging a good 2' deeper, taking out the ridiculously dense dirt underneath then filling it in with the existing top soil then going back and filling it with compost manure and soil from a local nursery. 



I thought about doing what's called solarization which kills any weed seeds along with soil borne diseases but after seeing how many earthworms we have in there, I'm unsure if it'll hurt them so I decided against it. 

This go around, we are going to attempt to do what's called companion gardening. This is an anecdotal technique whereby certain vegetables and herbs benefit each other either by improving flavor or repelling pests. Plus it really maximizes the the results within a restricted area of space. 

This is a rough layout and I'm sure it looks a bit umm muddled lol but I'm hoping there is a positive method to my madness lol. 



Apologies for the chicken scratch lol but if you make out an esemblance of legible words, we are going big this time lol. These are all heirloom seeds which will be quite the dramatic difference than what you find at a farmer's market or grocery store. The beans are completely different, the tomatoes are a deep purple almost black, huge Brandywine tomatoes, massive peppers, broccoli and cauliflower that looks like fractals lol. Here is pic of the  broccoli that we hope to grow. We aren't sure how it'll do due to our mild to warm winters but we hope it comes out half that cool.


We will have to grow most of the broccoli and cauliflower in it's own rows outside of the bed due to their conflicts with nutrients. Cabbage also is a no no so they have to be placed far apart. We are gonna try to sneak in some in the bottom box though and see how it does. 

Oh and we are also growing spaghetti squash and from the comments on the seed site, we will be practically giving these away because they produce so many lol. They also need their own dedicated area as it's a complete vine takeover from the pictures I've seen. 

All in all, we are very excited to see how we do. Now that we've learned quite a bit, we hope we can have a more successful harvest. 

[Jeremy]

I've been gardening since I was a child back in the 1960s.  It's been a good garden year for us and right now we're absolutely covered up with peaches, tomatoes and cucumbers.  Pepper and pear harvest is just starting, summer squash has run its course for the season.  Photobucket is getting ornery about letting people post their photos on other sites, but if you are interested you can PM me your regular e-mail address and I'll send you some pictures.

We also make plenty of pickles and preserves from the fruits and vegetables we raise; we will pickle about a peck of peaches this afternoon.

Odd because all these pics are linked from photobucket 

[MangusKhan]

I've been gardening since I was a child back in the 1960s.  It's been a good garden year for us and right now we're absolutely covered up with peaches, tomatoes and cucumbers.  Pepper and pear harvest is just starting, summer squash has run its course for the season.  Photobucket is getting ornery about letting people post their photos on other sites, but if you are interested you can PM me your regular e-mail address and I'll send you some pictures.

We also make plenty of pickles and preserves from the fruits and vegetables we raise; we will pickle about a peck of peaches this afternoon.

I used Imgur, because you don't need an account to upload photos. Just make sure you right click the images and select "copy image location" if you want to post on the forum, because just copying the url won't work. I'd love to see your garden too.

[Eddie]

I'm aware of several alternatives to Photobucket, I just haven't gotten around to registering with another site yet.  I'll get the pictures up here eventually.  By the way, there are pictures of my garden and fruit trees from previous years on other threads on Bring4th.

[Diana]

I'm aware of several alternatives to Photobucket, I just haven't gotten around to registering with another site yet.  I'll get the pictures up here eventually.  By the way, there are pictures of my garden and fruit trees from previous years on other threads on Bring4th.

You can upload photos directly from your computer to the image manager on your dashboard here. Once it's uploaded, click on the photo in the photo queue and then copy the url.

[Eddie]

I'm aware of several alternatives to Photobucket, I just haven't gotten around to registering with another site yet.  I'll get the pictures up here eventually.  By the way, there are pictures of my garden and fruit trees from previous years on other threads on Bring4th.

You can upload photos directly from your computer to the image manager on your dashboard here. Once it's uploaded, click on the photo in the photo queue and then copy the url.

Well, I'll be darned!  I've been on this board since its inception, and I never knew that there was an image manager here!

[xise]

Your garden looks f'ing awesome. I hope to have one, one day when I get a house.

[Jeremy]

Your garden looks f'ing awesome. I hope to have one, one day when I get a house.

Ehh it was a bit of a let down but mainly due to unrealistic expectations and a through lack of gardening knowledge lol. I will say the start up cost was quite a lot. Hundreds of dollars on soil, the beds, fertilizers, organic insecticide and fungicide, etc 

Florida soil is more sand than soil but ours was extremely dense dirt as well. We had to mix in a ton of vermiculite which thins the soil to allow proper drainage. 

But it was a success as far as accumulating a wealth of knowledge for the next go around

[ScottK]

We have had very large gardens in the past, but life circumstances have reduced the size considerably.  We are renting a house now, and we didn't want to tear up the back yard, so my girl discovered the ingenious idea of putting the dirt in coffee sacks for some of our plants so we aren't destroying the yard.  But we got a super late start.  These were planted around june 10th, but they've been doing really well.  In Pennsylvania, we should be starting this in mid to late May.

The first two pics are Caspian Pink heirloom tomatoes (Both over 6 feet tall now). Note the makeshift tree branches with twine used as a cage extension for the 7 foot tall plants..:





And then this is a coffee bag with Red cherry peppers, swiss chard and onions on the side - we're not sure yet whether this is a good idea:



Then we were able to plant some stuff in the flower beds, in shadier spots:

Sungold (hybrid) cherry tomatoes - they ripen orange:



Genovese Basil with cucumbers in the back, and another Caspian Pink:



And another Caspian Pink tomato (the plant is close to 8 feet tall now) with some more genovese basil.  When this plant was a seedling, it was pretty curved, so I planted it at the shadiest spot - it has surprised quite a bit:



I assume, we will have plenty of green tomatoes come mid october (yikes!), but what we have, all things considered, is really growing nicely.

It's fun seeing everybody else's plants

[Eddie]

I tried to use the Image Manager, but it's only reproducing the photos as unfocused, very-low-resolution images.  How do I get it to copy the image exactly?

[MangusKhan]

I had a little forage today and came up with this. That's radishes, corn, a pumpkin, a cucumber, a small pile of congo beans, some wild tomatoes, a semi-legit tomato and, most exciting of all, the very first egg from my chickens. The corn is looking very meek, but it tastes pretty good. That's what you can expect from corn planted way too close together in mediocre soil.

[Jeremy]

So I just found out that our city is starting their first community garden! I haven't talked to my girlfriend about it yet but it would be a good opportunity to meet other gardeners in the area along with more space to grow without digging up more of our yard lol

I'm still not sure if the harvest is ours or we donate the food though.

[isis]

There was not a single bit of tartness just pure sweet. 

I've noticed that too. It's so great.

[Aion]

Yeah I wish I could but I don't have any land space in the townhouse complex.

[Bring4th_Austin]

I love gardening, it's been one of my number one hobbies since I started.

Yeah I wish I could but I don't have any land space in the townhouse complex.

If you have any outdoor space at all, you could always try container gardening. Here's a plot that my girlfriend and I had going a couple years ago. We packed a lot into a small space with containers.





We got some good ground space the past two years though. Here's a snap of this year's garden. In the shot is zucchini, beans, peppers, and cabbage in the background. We also have cucumbers, watermelons, carrots, beets, kale, lettuce, tomatoes and herbs going.

[Glow]

Another gardener here.
This year I moved the raised beds and didn't get everything up in time to get the whole garden going. Short growing season up here so this is my first year in quite a while with no fresh veggies to graze on out in the yard. I will appreciate it more next year.

I did plant lots of berry producing shrubs the last few years so am enjoying them and the birds they bring.
I got all my orchids outside this summer and they are loving being out in the rain and wind.

Thanks for sharing your garden pictures. I will be back on the ball next year.

[Bring4th_Austin]

Tomato harvest from this morning. Second one this week. We're drowning. Send help!

[Jeremy]

Wonderful looking tomatoes!

[Jeremy]

Here's our to do list lol

Cosmic purple carrots- they have a bright purple skin with a yellowish orange flesh. Spicy yet sweet.

Stuttgarter onion - and old variety with good flavor

Giant noble spinach - spread to over 2'!

Elephant dill - wonderful herb that repels certain pests and enhances the flavor of certain veggies

Genovese basil - enhances the flavor of tomatoes and repels pests

Buerre De Rocquencourt - a bean that grows as a bush and a favorite of cooks!

Chives - excellent flavor enhancer and pest repellant

Dragon tongue bean - a favorite Dutch heirloom that has an incomparable flavor, pods are yellow with purple streaks! Quite popular with chefs

Purple beauty pepper - very popular pepper!

Borage herb - another excellent pest repellant

Black vernissage tomato - perfect for tasting sauces

Spaghetti squash - this one is a doozy. From the comments, we will be giving these away because they produce so much so be ready for some!!

Romanesco Italia broccoli - this one is quite crazy looking. It looks more like fractals than broccoli. A staple in northern Italy! Simply Google the name and look at how cool these things look. Due to our mild winters, we aren't sure how well this or the cauliflower will do but we are gonna give it a go!

Green macerata cauliflower - another Italian variety with a similar appearance to the romanesco broccoli

Elderberry - this one will be grown in the backyard rather than the garden. It a bush that provides elderberries which we use to make elderberry syrup. This is a great flu treatment and even scientifically documented during a flu outbreak in Panama.

Black beauty tomato - world's darkest tomato!! Some proclaim it as the best tasting tomato in the world!

Blue curled scotch kale - very hardy plant!

Spanish mammoth pepper - introduced around 1860! Disease resistant 7" long pepper that's both sweet and flavorful

St. Valery carrots - The Vilmorins of France mentioned this variety in 1885 and said it had been grown a “long time” then. A large handsome variety with bright red-orange roots; 10”-12” long & 2”-3” in diameter. Sweet & tender. Rare.

Thyme - another pest repellant

Pink Brandywine tomato - the most popular heirloom tomato! A variety from 1885 that yields 1.5lbs tomatoes !!

Diamond eggplant - we are gonna give them another go now that we have learned more.

Glory of enkhuizen cabbage - introduced in 1899 and excellent producer

Jicama - very healthy root that has numerous health benefits. It has a sweet flavor that I would say is a cross between an apple for crunchiness and a raw green bean/pepper for taste. It's also an excellent carbohydrate source without affecting insulin levels.

Phew that's it lol.

[ScottK]

 Another failure was our eggplant. It, along with our tomatoes got a fungus called anthracnose from improper watering. Thus caused stunting and the eggplant never recovered.

Hey Jeremy,

I was just looking at the picture of your tomato harvest. It looks to me like some of your plum shaped tomatoes had "blossom rot", which would indicate, I believe, an acidic soil. You might want to put down some lime or calcium before you plant tomatoes again, if my read on that picture is correct.

Blossom rot, to the best of my recollection may also hit zucchini - not sure about eggplant, but I think it would probably be a good thing to research..

[Jeremy]

Yea we definitely had some once all the tomatoes started popping. I used a foliar calcium spray to remedy it but we are defiinirely planning to amend the soil.

Due to an unexpected surprise, we will be getting our house ready for a total restoration which means we will have to move out while the construction takes place. So we are putting out fall garden on hold

[Nía]

Just in case.

How to Share Extra Bounty from Your Garden with the Community

[Nía]

Oh, and...
The Benefits of Barefoot Gardening  

[Eddie]

Our dining room table (and most other horizontal surfaces in our house) look like this all summer long....produce from the garden.



Still life photo:  a bottle of white Burgundy, with peaches and herbs from our back yard:

[YinYang]

The mirror (shaped like a ball) on the wall is an interesting artifact from another era. A servant would stand in front of it with his/her back to the guests, because facing them would elevate him/her from a subservient position, and was considered intrusive and rude by guests. By facing the spherical mirror, he/she had a clear view of all the guests in a large room in order to see when someone lifted their hand, and required service.

[Eddie]

Our house is modern, but much of our interior is Victorian/Edwardian; we have Queen Anne furniture.  Fin-de-Siècle stuff appeals to me.