Backyard Gardening (Is Fun)

Hello Everyone I am here today to start a thread for all us Backyard Gardeners!

I recently got into the idea of growing my own food to save money and even create my own compost. I have found it to be a wonderful thing to do in my spare time. In this post I am going to outline the literal BASICS of what you need to make a backyard garden.

A BACKYARD. duh
If you own a home you most likely have a backyard of some type. Large to small, filled with a pool or some horrible plants the house came with. Hopefully you have one or two plants out there you can eat.
Now if you live in an apartment lets hope you have a small patio.

ALOTTA POTS.
I heart pots. Since the area I live in fills in the ground with this horrible grass called Crab Grass, I have to use alot of pots for most of my plants. (Seriously Look up Crab Grass. It's a horrible weed and needs to be exterminated from all gardens. Dirt is better.)
There are many types of pots you can get. Plastic, clay, masonry and even those nifty paper kind that you can plant right into the ground with your plants to prevent shocking it when you transplant them.
I personally prefer clay pots. Not only are they cheap you can even make your own if youre into that type of thing.
Dont throw the others out the window yet. Even those horrible plastic pots you get some of your stock plants in can be of use to you. If you live in a cold climate keep those pots and plant seeds in them early in the year. They are lovely temporary pots for transplanting later in the year.

DIRT, GROUND, MULCH, SOIL, and FERTILIZER
No plant can grow without something to grow in. Now any soil can be used to grow a plant in, just some are better than others. Feel free to go out to some remote location and fill your car with soil to throw all over your garden. MMMmm, have yourself a dirt bath! Your plants will grow but depending on what youre growing they might thrive or they might not. I'm not saying they will refuse to grow at all, because they cant (haha). I am just saying beware of what youre growing, some plants are nutrient sucking machines! Research the plants you are growing and get the correct type of soil to grow them in.
Hint: Fruits and Veggies both give and take when growing.

WATER and SUNLIGHT
All plants absolutely need sunlight. Without getting into the science of it, its how they eat. Water is how they drink! Make sure your plants have enough of both of these things. Also remember some plants need more/less sunlight/water than others. Like I said before read up on your plants!

PATIENCE!
Your plants are not going to grow inches a day! (Cept bamboo) Take care of them right and treat them with love. Even talk to them! and they will grow up healthy and strong.

and now: COMPOSTING
Pretty much anything you throw away can be made into compost. That is minus metal, plastic and some types of paper. Here's a fine article on what you can compost: HERE
I have in my backyard an old trashcan mounted on an angle. It has small 1 cm slats cut every few inches. This trashcan is bolted to a wood frame and I rigged it up to spin. Now the reason for all this to the trashcan is so I can easily rotate all the organic waste I put into the trashcan and have the fine particulate fall to a pile below the wood frame for easy pick up. I also on occasion put earthworms into the compost to help the process along.

There you have it my BASICS to backyard gardening. Thank you for reading.

[edit on 5-2-2009 by Tentickles]

You forgot to outline your composting methods.

Another site with tons of info if you are interested in this sort of thing--->
tractorbynet.com...

reply to post by TAWonATS


Oh my goodness youre right! Let me edit that in.

I read this OP because I wondered how it was fun, but it doesn't seem to be addressed.

So OP how is it fun?

Really cool, keep us posted.

I have a small garden backyard. Two actually, one for food and one for herbs.

I also have a 15'x30' plot at the community garden that I just planted.

It is fun!

My father in law has a farm in Western Sydney, and he helped us put together a little garden in our backyard. The area's quite tiny, but I think we've done alright with the space. We started off with 5 cucumber plants, 4 tomato plants, 1 green pepper (capsicum), 1 blackberry plant, 6 strawberry plants. There for awhile we were getting about 10 cucumbers a day - we've since replaced the plants with 4 more.

It's a heck of a thing going to your backyard and grabbing something to eat with your meal. Very handy (and healthy).

I'm also gardening this year.

I'm fortunate that I live in the country and a lot of land to plant veggies.

My wife and I planted about 100 strawberry plants last weekend.

It's still a little cool for my tomatoes and corn.

I'm going to order seeds pretty soon. I'm looking at getting several different types of tomatoes and plant a bunch of corn. What I don't eat, I can feed to my chickens.

It's going to be a fun year.

Usually when I plant a garden, I also put lots of flowers in it as well. If you're spending the time to take care of a garden, you might as well make it pretty.

I put expired meat in my compost too, I don't care for the argument that it's an attractant for rats. Hey, if when the SHTF hits, you can hunt the rats as well

I don't know about putting Ivory soap shavings in the compost, I just use up all the soap.

Compost bins needs to be a certain size to do the job properly, a very good one should be a meter long all sides to help keep the core temperature needed for biological activity.

A more expensive compost setup will allow one to collect compost tea but I have a basic box dump and decompose system.

Chop up the compost thoroughly prior to putting it in the bin itself, it will decompose much faster.

Mix up the new compost with the old compost in the bin.

Keep your compost moistened all times, if it is too dry the organisms contained within will die or shut down, and covered to retain temperature.

Even during the winter our compost contents didn't freeze because there was much biological activity heating the compost up, however it does slow down during the winter.

I don't bother using a compost accelerator product. With such a variety of microbiological life teeming around the compost from a complete variety of raw/cooked foods, things should break down pretty quickly.

reply to post by lightchild



Im not the OP, but can shed light on your question. Having a garden to work truely is one of my favorite summer experiences. Yes, its a good deal of work, but its different work. You are accomplishing something with your hands for yourself. To take nothing but some dirt and a seed and help it transform into something you used to buy at the grocery store or flowers to make your home better really instills a sense of pride in oneself.

Finding ways to increase your harvest with the materials provided to you can be an entertaining challenge for some.

IMO, taking the time to plan, start, and work a garden from nothing to harvest time is one of the most rewarding and relaxing things one can do. And its a whole lot better than spending an hour at the shrinks office.

OP, on a side, that is the most messed up avatar I have seen on ATS. Kudos to you.