Veggie Garden Porn.....XXX......Season 3...(Very Graphic)

[bvar22]

(Cross Posted from The Gardening Group)

<in best rural Arkansas accent>....Hey, Yawl. :hi:

Season 3 is underway


Everything is Late...Late...Late.
Planting this year was delayed by a Tornado in April followed by Monsoon rains.
We had no damage, but close neighbors did, and non-rain days were spent helping them clear up the damage.
We were also delayed by a garden expansion that became over complicated.


For those who may not know, Starkraven and myself moved from The Big City(Minneapolis) to rural Arkansas (Ouachita Mountains) in October of 2006. We are committed to a more sustainable, organic, independent, DIY, Anti-CorpoConsumer lifestyle. Of course, a large organic Veggie Garden is a BIG part of that commitment.

Season One:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x5729

Season Two:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x7979


The Beginning...Spring 2007....Hopes and Dreams from Season 1




Early Spring 2009



We extended the garden by tilling up a section on the downhill side. We originally had decided to simply mound up the earth in contours, mix in some compost, and plant a cover crop for next year. The project "complicated itself" while in process, and we decided to build terraces to prevent the new soil from washing down the hill in a heavy rain.


We were surprised by the amount of viable topsoil we found in this area while tilling. Two years ago, this was nothing but rocks and hard red clay. Nutrients from the fertile soil inside the boxes had undoubtedly run down hill to this area, and combined with the mowing/mulching of the cover clover produced a decent amount of viable soil. After sifting out the rocks through a shaker with 1/2" hardware cloth, there was enough soil to mound up.


To hold moisture, prevent run off, and begin soil enhancement, we laid thick newspaper in the walkways, and then covered with wood chip mulch.
The wood chips in this photo were formerly magnificent old Oak trees from Mena, AR which were knocked down by a tornado in April. Most of Mena will never look the same. :(
On the other hand, Firewood and Wood Mulch are cheap this year.


This is how it looks today (June 26th).

On the Left are Pumpkins and "Yard Long" Pole Beans.
The Middle rows are reserved for the Strawberries which we will split from existing beds.
On the right are Field Peas(Crowder Peas, Cow Peas), which we discovered do extremely well in Late Summer, and are excellent "Green Manure". We will be planting Field Peas elsewhere in our garden as Summer/Harvest moves on.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x9836


Squash

The biggest success this year has been the Squash.
This hasn't worked well in the past, and we were close to giving up on Squash. The Squash Bugs got them before we did.
We still Hand Pick the Squash Bugs (no pesticides), but isolating the Squash has made this task much easier and more effective.
We have already harvested some Zucchini (Yum!), and have some Butternut close to ripening.


How it looks today (June 26th)

The empty spaces in some of the boxes are from harvested Garlic & Onions.
We are preparing those spaces for either Field Peas, or other Fall crops.
We are going to attempt some Late Season tomatoes, and are starting the seeds now.
Last year, I attempted to Nurse Along the old tomato plants without much results.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x10193
This year, we will pull the Tomatoes, and transplant seedlings when the heat breaks.

Bush Beans

One of our favorites...Bush Beans.
These produce much sooner than the Pole Beans. I'm always amazed at the quantity of beans that come from these plants.

We have been eating daily from this small section of Bush Beans for about 3 weeks.
With a little Basmati Rice and Butter...Yum!


WTF?...Asparagus ?

Why yes, I do believe that is Asparagus.
I've never seen Asparagus growing, and don't know anyone who has grown it, but I have eaten a bunch of it.
It is difficult to photograph because it is so ethereal.

Starkraven ordered it online, and it arrived in a box. It looked just like a knot of brown cord. It sprouted several days after planting, and watching it grow has been a treat. According to Starkraven, I must be very patient. It will be a couple of years before we can harvest any.


Yes...We do have some Tomatoes (and Jalapeno Peppers)

Instead of one big patch of tomatoes, We spread them throughout the garden giving them plenty of space.
We have put them on the ends of the raised beds, and used Hogwire as support to spread out the plants and make them easier to tend.
We LOVE tomatoes, but decided to grow only enough for our needs. EVERYONE around here grows lots of Tomatoes....you can't even give them away.
The above is a Creole. We also have 3 Romas (for cooking and canning), a Betterboy, a Purple Cherokee, and a Brandywine.


Big on Berries

We added two different June Bearing varieties this year, and will split our plants in July, moving some to Raised Rows. We have found Strawberries to be High Maintenance, but I LOVE them, and want enough to freeze and make preserves.
In the far bed are Black Beans and Roma tomatoes.



More about "High Maintenance Strawberries"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=246&topic_id=11505&mesg_id=11583


BlueBerry Fields Forever

Over the Winter we planted 24 Rabbit Eye Blueberry bushes, 6 different varieties.
All 24 seem to be healthy and growing well. We are delighted.
We installed a drip system for irrigation.
This system is inexpensive, easy to install, and is working well. The pieces simply snap together. We are planning to install a drip system in the Garden over the Winter.

New Baby Blue

The Blueberries are outside the fenced garden, on the backside of the hill. The deer don't eat them, but out of curiosity they pulled several out of the ground the first week, so we put little wire cages around them.


Hard Work?...or Hardley Working.

Running the water line from the house (150') was not so easy, and required several days with a pick & shovel. It was worth it to have faucets in the gardens. We had previously relied on a long series of garden hoses.


As I mentioned above, we moved here to commit to a more sustainable, natural lifestyle.
The Garden is a part of that, and has grown to an extent where it is probably more appropriate to post to the Rural/Farm Forum.

We also Keep Chickens and Honey Bees, and are working to make our cabin and lives more energy efficient.

Starkraven and myself are old Hippies, and have always been attracted to this lifestyle. We realize that we are very fortunate to be able to do this. Not a day goes by that we don't experience a deep gratitude for whatever made this possible.

I will post updates to this thread periodically.
I working on some posts about BeeKeeping and Energy Efficiency that I will post in the Rural/Farm Forum, so come visit over there.

[create.peace]

1. my kind of pr0n. thanks for sharing

those pictures are dynamite, and you are to me highly commended. i used to have a great garden, and we are starting from scratch again!

[bvar22]

16. More people are "growing their own".

Driving around this rural area, we are seeing more and more Veggie Gardens.
Poverty is rampant in the Deep South, and a Veggie Garden is a good way to cut expenses.

Plus, it taste so much better than anything on the shelves the the market today....healthier too.

[Warpy]

2. If you think asaparagus is gorgeous

allow an artichoke to mature into a flower someday!

I am jealous. I didn't plant a garden again this year because the monsoon rains have fizzled for the last 15 and I just didn't trust them.

Needless to say, we've had daily deluges where I live for the past week.

[Adsos Letter]

3. Beautiful! and inspiring! Do you have a problem with rattlers in your area?

[bvar22]

7. Timber and Pygmy Rattlers are supposed to be common here,

but in 2 -1/2 years, I haven't seen one.

We DO have some of these:

We keep the grass around the house and garden mowed SHORT, and wear boots after dark.

We also have some really BIG Chicken Snakes (6'), but we don't bother them unless they get in the Chicken Coop.
Then we just re-locate them

[thunder rising]

4. So cool ... let me tell you about my bio mass generator...

You get a pool installed.
You test the water and keep it at 1 ppm chlorine and 7 on the ph scale

And BOOM you have the biggest bloom of green goo you've ever seen.

That's my luck with plants.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. I was expecting misshapen vegetables. :(

You know ... the kind that look like naughty bits ...

(Craig Ferguson showed some of these, and CBS pixillated them! They're vegetables!!)

[bvar22]

18. We have some of those:

Cantaloupus Bahunkus


Tomato Erectus

[eppur_se_muova]

31. Thanks! I loves me some produce porn!

:rofl:

[truedelphi]

35. Now I know I am in love!

Everything about your set up is so inspiring.

Too hot here today to take to the mile-away hillside and get another 60 lbs of organic loam for our hillside here. But whenever my energy flags, I think of how you turned your place around.

it only takes some hard work, joy and determination, right?

[bvar22]

37. Hi !

"Hard Work" is working for someone else.
This has been a Labor of Love.

Hauling dirt IS tough in this heat, but pays off in the end.
We wore out a wheelbarrow filling the raised boxes the first year.
We were lucky though...we only had to haul the dirt 40 yards across the hill top.
Now its not so bad.
We religiously compost everything the chickens don't eat, and the hay from the chicken coop gets added to the compost twice a year....sort of a closed loop.

About the only thing we have to haul off is plastic, and we take that to the recycling bin in Mena every couple of months.

Take it easy in the HEAT.
We do.

Starkraven says "Hi".
(We've followed your posts).

[kath]

33. They pixillated them?!?!! Are you SERIES??

Man, is this puritanical country friggin' nuts, or WHAT??

{shaking head in disbelief}

[Mind_your_head]

6. Awesome!

You and starkraven are to be highly commended! This post really made me smile. All of your hard work is paying off and it's encouraging to see how every year you've learned, built upon what you've learned and improved from there. As it should be...well done (even though I know you two are not 'done'....it's a lovely process).

Cool beans! :-)

[bvar22]

15. Thanks for the kind words.

Starkraven Pressure Canned 32 pints of Green Beans last year.
We were able to ration them out over the Winter.
This year, we are going to double that amount, nature permitting.
I could eat them everyday.

We are growing lots more beans this year.
Black Beans, Field Peas, maybe some late Purple Hulls or Black Eyes.


Homegrowns are so much better than store bought.

[mntleo2]

8. Do you have slugs where you are?

They often eat the squash plants and you would never even know you'd planted them. If you do have them, here is something my grandmother used to do in her Victory Garden or Truck Garden as she also called it:

She took 1/2 grapefruit rinds (where the grapefruit was cut across and eaten and then the rind was saved). She would put these out around the edge of the garden upside down, dome up. Every day or two she would go out and look under the rinds, the slugs loved them and would crawl under them. Then she would salt them but not with much salt as you know too much salt will kill other plants. the rinds became compost as they decomposed.

Yes this was a good way to eat A LOT of grapefruits all right, but perhaps your neighbors will oblige and give theirs to you too as my grandmother's neighbors did (it was worth it because they often got the produce for their troubles). It was a good way to control slugs ecologically because that population could decimate a new garden in a matter of hours, it really does look like you never planted, anything there and I am talking overnight! I am not making this up!

Just an FYI

Love
Cat In Seattle (who misses summers of sitting on the porch and laughing with the other women while we were schucking snap peas together, and canning tomatoes and making jam with Gramma who has been dead for 30 years now) :(

[bvar22]

11. Slugs haven't been a problem so far.

We mulched the Strawberries with Pine Bark this year, and that introduced a small black slug that ate the bottom off of some Strawberries that were partially buried in the mulch. Pulling the young berries up out of the mulch mostly solved that problem.

We haven't seen any of those big gray slugs.(Knock on wood)

Thanks for the kind words and suggestions.

[lumberjack_jeff]

27. We tried something new this year

Last year we placed half-filled beer cans in the garden. The slugs climb in and don't get out. Since that seems a big waste of perfectly good beer, this year we're filling the cans half full with the grossest sweetest nasty soda we could find: Shasta pinapple soda. The slugs love it. One more reason to hate slugs.

[eridani]

29. If Seattle is the Emerald City--

--then Toto is a slug. Think of them as escargots without shells.

[zeemike]

9. Looks like things are progressing nicely.

And you are going to love it when that asparagus starts to come in...there is noting better than fresh asparagus from the garden....well unless it would be the strawberries.
I just got back from picking a bunch of cherries from a friends tree today....god they were good...have you started any fruit trees?

[bvar22]

10. Yes.

We have 3 Peach Trees, 4 Apples, and a Plum.
Peaches generally don't do well here because of capricious Spring weather (late frosts), bugs, and deer.
This year's crop has already failed.
We aren't giving up on the Peaches.
We might try bagging next year.

Fruit trees in general have to be fenced from the Deer. We planted two Apples inside our garden fencing, and are planning more fruit trees for next year with some expanded fencing. That is one of the reasons we have made a stronger commitment to Berries. In addition to the Strawberries and Blueberries, we have planted experimental Raspberries and Boysenberries. We have already harvested about 5 quarts of Raspberries, but they don't seem to be tolerating the Summer heat very well.

[zeemike]

13. While I was living in northern Florida I planted Dorman Red

Raspberries that did very will in that southern climate...and it gets hot there in the summer
They produced very well there And I had raspberries to give away...you might look into the Dorman Red.

[bvar22]

14. Thanks for the tip.

We may give them a try.
We certainly aren't ready to give up on Raspberries.

[xchrom]

12. recommend because this is a great way to get good food.

and that's the best reason to do things like this.

[bvar22]

17. Thanks.

Starkraven is a cancer survivor.
Part of the reason we are doing this is to get away from all the chemicals that have corrupted our food chain. After NAFTA, there was really no way to know if the lettuce in your salad was grown in a Mexican sewer. The USDA used to provide some oversight of our food chain, but "Free Trade" changed all that.

We don't even trust the Farmers Markets anymore.
Many small farmers will use MORE pesticides and herbicides than a large commercial farmer, especially if their crop is threatened.

[babylonsister]

19. Rec'd and bookmarked for later, to dwell on all your hard work!

I'm very impressed! Thank you!

[Sanity Claws]

20. All that hard work. How's your back?

I automatically think of back pain seeing all that physical labor. LOL.
All that fresh produce is worth the work.
Good for you!

[bvar22]

38. We're both lucky, and have healthy, strong backs.

The Raised Boxes are easy on the back. We don't have to stoop over so far.
We've built little stools to sit on while working in the raised beds.

Cutting and hauling Firewood during the Winter is harder on the back.
We've both has sore lower backs after a couple of days of that.

We are grateful for a number of things, and good health is only one, but probably the most important one. It is east to take that for granted. Neither of us has been to a doctor or taken a prescription drug in years, but that can end abruptly. We are Hoping that the Democrats don't fuck up Health Care so that we can actually afford some decent coverage.

Starkraven is mid 50s, and I'm looking at 60.

[ClayZ]

21. B E A U T I F U L

Bravo!

[Hissyspit]

22. Oh, you are going to so enjoy your blueberry bushes when they mature.

[chill_wind]

23. Awesome images! They certainly capture the beauty

of your hard work and devotion. The both of you sound like you are good at many, many skills. I'm a city dweller now (with no serious garden space) but I was farm-raised and I know fastidious, hard work when I see it. My hat is off to you both for following your hearts and minds-- and for finding such wonderful independence.

[femrap]

24. k and r

butter nut squash is soooooo yummy. Your garden is amazing. I love it.

But was there something about 'bush' beans? Can't we rename those?

[UpInArms]

25. thank you so very much for the great garden porn!

:yourock:

[bertman]

26. That shot of the CUCUMBER and the BUSH beans made me all horn---hungry.

But seriously, this is a beautiful thread. Thank you for posting all the pics.

Are you close to growing enough to sustain yourselves?

[janet118]

28. XXXX HARDCORE XXXXX NO ONE UNDER 18 XXXXX

Oooooh! Mr. Potato Head . . .

From VE's Fantastical Nonsense blog

[fight4my3sons]

30. breathtakingly beautiful

I used to help out on an organic farm in Virginia back when I was in college. Just weeding and stuff like that. They grew asparagus. I haven't thought of them in years until I read your post. What nice memories you brought back on this dreary morning. Thanks :hi:

[Left coast liberal]

32. Wow, garden porn is right.

Very, very nice!

[eppur_se_muova]

34. Next step: heirloom vegatables.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/1885183887

[HCE SuiGeneris]

36. I'm too late to recommend, but thank you for your inspiring work.

Wishing you much success... :thumbsup:

[Enthusiast]

39. Yup,

you ain't nothin' but a bunch a god danged hippies!

[ixion]

40. very nice!!

You've done a great job. It looks very organized, and from the looks of it, produces some yummy veggies. :woohoo:

[rocktivity]

41. Your favorite is BUSH beans?

Mods, please lock this thread!

:rofl:
rocktivity