wow, that's awesome!

nice little garden, you grow anything besides tomatoes?

Not yet. I will expand next year.

looking good there, nice tomato plants and the compost looks like it will work well. just remember to turn it.

Onion, Garlic, Cilantro, Kale all growing in this box with a large amount of sand



I grow broccoli in these large pots to move around and kill weeds in corners



Same with carrots, sandy soil, lots of compost, just a bit of top soil, and in cheap ass pots

Side shot of the front half, new trellis for cucumbers, all covers off the raised bed hoops.



new nesting boxes for my chickens with a hinged roof. much easier than my previous setup. currently getting 6-8 eggs a day from my 9 birds



Black raspberry bush. i have about 50 bushes all this size (thanks to the previous property owner mostly, i only expanded them a bit)

generally get about 1 gallon every few days of black raspberries once they mature. and 2 gallon of red raspberries. aaaaaaand the season lasts about a month or more. so we make wine, jelly, eat them like crazy, freeze some for baking, raspberry butter, etc.



This post was edited by thesnipa on Jun 17 2020 11:28am

peppers and some cherry tomatoes planted directly into chicken compost. i spent 30$ or so on the treated lumber, but zero for the soil inside. its a mix of leaves in the fall, compost, and more compost. plants already inches taller and its only been a few days.

the smaller tomato in the bottom right was an early trimmed branch off my biggest plant, aka free tomato.



for potatoes we use reusable grow bags. they were i think 20$ for 5x of them. and we're on our 3rd year using them. dont waste time digging rows of potatoes, just dump this bag into a wheelbarrow and pick the potatoes, then dump dirt back in for next year. i generally get 2-5 lbs from each bag. growing potatoes isnt for savings, you'll never beat store price, but home grown fingerlings are really nice in the fall.



this is my pea/bean trellis. i do my first 2 plantings here, and it's L shaped. 1 panel beans, 1 panel peas, then wait 2 weeks and do 1 more panel of each. next week ill plant my last crops of each for actual peas in the fall, early plantings are just for the pea pods. i have 2 more fences like these.

new strawberry bed im trying this year. nearly all compost. PVC hoops for when bird netting is needed, and had plastic covers in early spring to jumpstart them. another 5$ fix to a "problem" greenhouses fix for 50$ + tax.



you can really see the staggered progress of the pea/bean plantings in this one. and inside the L are planted tomatoes



for tomatoes i till with a hoe by hand, remove all roots and small plants, use Preen on the soil, plant, and cover with a milk jug for 2 weeks (until it gets to 70s daytime temp consistent). remove the milk jugs, and cover the entire area with 3-4 inches of solid chicken compost. i use the same level of compost on and around all plants. kills weeds, is like steroids to plants, and im well supplied with a new batch every 2 weeks or so. i use hay and grass clippings on all walkways. tried rocks, tried wood chips, but it just wasnt economical and grass composts better over the winter.



This post was edited by thesnipa on Jun 17 2020 11:31am

I am trying to establish a ~2,000 square ft wildflower plot in the corner of my front yard, but it's been a struggle year 1. I am in Maine, and the growing season has started unusually hot and dry. The plot is about 350 ft from the nearest spigot, so we have not watered it as much as we should have given the conditions. When we tilled, it appears to have chopped up a bunch of horsetail rhizomes, which are now dominating the plot. I have an idea how I should have done it for better results, but no going back now. Goal was to establish a plot with all natives, so my preference was not to just let it go feral, but I think maybe I should have.

any time you're looking to establish a wild prairie type zone its usually best to go feral. we did several prairie projects in high school and management is really hard. only thing we did was to stock some seeds if that variety died out we'd broadcast seeds all over to try and give it a second do. it can range from simple to impossible, so good luck!

Yes, I think I should have let it grow feral and then transplant natives gradually, but almost every flowering plant we have growing in the feral areas at the periphery of our yard are weeds. Most are reasonably pretty, but still weeds. Ox-eye daisy, hawkweed, sweet rocket, etc. We have some native milkweed, buttercup, fleabane, bluets, but mostly out-competed by other crap. My hope was to establish something that's all native, but man... can't compete without nuking your soil.

Most annoying actually, I seeded Canada wild rye with my wildflowers as cover, but dick all of that has even germinated. I was under the impression that it could pretty near grow in concrete. I blame the god awful growing season we've been having. The few I put in a planter to test the seed germinated in about a week and grew very quickly. I think if the rye would have taken properly, it would have sun-choked the evil horsetail out eventually.