Garden help

[coachgrd]

Need some help here for what I hope will be a more productive garden this year. I will be putting mine in later this week (a bit late but I should be OK...we had a frost about 2 weeks ago.) My first garden attempt last year did not produce much. I strongly suspect it was simply because it did not get enough sun throughout the day. I have decided to move it this year to an area that will receive good sun from about 10:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m.

We're not talking anything big here...it's nothing more than a garden 8' X 16'. It's framed in with landscape timbers. I'm close to a water source.

My game plan is to till up the sod first, then mix in a goodly amount of a compost pile I've had brewing for a few years (looks like soil out of the Victory Garden!) I have 3 tomato plants, 3 bell pepper plants, and a couple of cukes for the area.

Any suggestions as to how I might make the garden more successful this year?

 

[LMTC]

Joy of Gardening by Dick Raymond. If there's a better book for the beginning or intermediate gardener, I haven't seen it in my 57 years. I used that book as a blueprint when we moved to the country 22 years ago, and went from zero to sixty in 2-3 years. For many years we were tending app. 1/2 acre of garden with a walk behind Troybuilt, using his methods and advice, and we were putting up app. 100 qts a year each of beans, tomatoes, and a variety of other things, storing around 200# of potates, and anywhere from 300-500 onions. His methods are very practical and highly productive. I love the raised rows, and expecially the bean plots...not rows....we'd grow an 8 x 30 area of beans...weed once, and by then the beans were high enough to shade out most weeds. Made good use of the area that way, and just picked the patch in sections.

HERE

 

[ToadHill]

Check the pH of the soil, if NW PA is like SW New York you'll find the pH is in the 5.4 range and garden vegys don't do well in that soil. You may have to lime the he## out of it this year and for a few years to come.

 

[jinman]

Cucumbers will take up a 8' x 16' area in a hurry. Think about putting them on the edge of the garden spot and give them a trellis to grow on. I have a coworker who uses old wooden fencing for a trellis and he says it works well.

 

[KaiB]

I would suggest that you lift the sod. If you till it in, it will use most available nitrogen, and you may also grow more grass than veggies. Your area is not so large that you couldnt just lift the sod out (I'm sure you have a place to re-lay it), then dig in the compost as deep as you can, then till. Payback will be in spades!!! Oh yeah, get a test kit and use it...pH, NPK should be all you need to know first year. bone meal into the tomato holes as you plant...

 

[BTDT]

Good luck with your garden. Get you some tomato cages. I made mine out of concrete reinforcing mesh, 6"x6" x 4'. I planted my tomato plant, put a tire around it, then set cage over tire. Here are some pics I took yesterday.

More garden pics herehttp://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/photos/97721-tomato-plants-survived.html

 

[coachgrd]

I would suggest that you lift the sod. If you till it in, it will use most available nitrogen, and you may also grow more grass than veggies. Your area is not so large that you couldnt just lift the sod out (I'm sure you have a place to re-lay it), then dig in the compost as deep as you can, then till.

Here's what I did yesterday...I tilled up the sod then scraped the area clean with a square ended shovel. I went at the ground again with the tiller to fluff it up before I added the compost material. My ground is basically bank gravel (there are countless gravel pits within a mile radius) and this does concern me. I added the compost material and it did improve the soil quality a bit but it would appear to need more, which I do not have at this time. I may have to get some of the good soil from last years garden spot and add it as well.

 

[jinman]

I just bought 10 bags of cotton burr compost a couple of weekends back. Two cubic ft bags were just over $3.00 each. It kinda smells like poo when you first open the bag, but the odor soon goes away. It is a nice fluffy compost that I put into flower beds, but I'd bet it would be great for a garden plot. I'm going to put some between my rows of sweet potatoes. If you have it in your area, it will probably be at a farm/ranch/feed store.