We're Gardening Again! Is Anyone Else Into Gardening?

We started gardening a bit back in February as we wanted to grow our own food. I used to have a nice garden back in 2013, but I moved houses and didn't have the time to start a new one.

So we've been talking to @t2van who offered some really good advice on which plants to start growing for our region. This is what we have so far:



Not all of these were from scratch, but they have been growing nicely over the last couple of months. There's pesto, rosemary, lavender, tomato, and a couple of pepper plants (I need to check which ones specifically later).

They're all cluttered around each other right now as I live in the desert and many of these plants would die fairly quickly in direct sunlight. This is really one of the few areas of shade we can use.

They're also cluttered around each other for another reason. You see, I have a solar-powered water timer attached to the spigot that runs for about 30 minutes every day. A single sprinkler waters all of those plants, so I ran some vinyl tubing from the water timer to the plants just so we don't have to go out there and water them every day.

We also have these potato plants growing right now, which we grew from potatoes we bought at the store. The first one is a little hard to see as we need to remove the weeds and the second one is growing a little wonky as you can see.


That's our backyard garden so far. We have one in our front yard, but it's just desert plants.

It's been nice to have the time to do this again, even if we're a little rusty at it. Is anyone else here into gardening as well?

Gerry is an awesome guy

A person who every lady would like to have as a husband

He is so versatile

TheVigilante said:

Gerry is an awesome guy

A person who every lady would like to have as a husband

He is so versatile

Click to expand...

He’s awesome! It’s been nice talking to him about all of this and he really knows his stuff.

TheVigilante said:

Gerry is an awesome guy

A person who every lady would like to have as a husband

He is so versatile

Click to expand...

Zwielicht said:

He’s awesome! It’s been nice talking to him about all of this and he really knows his stuff.

Click to expand...

Thanks, guys, but I'm straight.

Man loves too much to take for a Monday.

Zwielicht said:

We started gardening a bit back in February as we wanted to grow our own food. I used to have a nice garden back in 2013, but I moved houses and didn't have the time to start a new one.

So we've been talking to @t2van who offered some really good advice on which plants to start growing for our region. This is what we have so far:

Not all of these were from scratch, but they have been growing nicely over the last couple of months. There's pesto, rosemary, lavender, tomato, and a couple of pepper plants (I need to check which ones specifically later).

They're all cluttered around each other right now as I live in the desert and many of these plants would die fairly quickly in direct sunlight. This is really one of the few areas of shade we can use.

They're also cluttered around each other for another reason. You see, I have a solar-powered water timer attached to the spigot that runs for about 30 minutes every day. A single sprinkler waters all of those plants, so I ran some vinyl tubing from the water timer to the plants just so we don't have to go out there and water them every day.

We also have these potato plants growing right now, which we grew from potatoes we bought at the store. The first one is a little hard to see as we need to remove the weeds and the second one is growing a little wonky as you can see.

That's our backyard garden so far. We have one in our front yard, but it's just desert plants.

It's been nice to have the time to do this again, even if we're a little rusty at it. Is anyone else here into gardening as well?

Click to expand...

Plants are looking good to be fair.

The peppers id keep in the pots, you tend to get a larger harvest might not be so much the case as your heat will help them thrive anyway but I've found restricting the roots does better for us and our climate anyway.

The potato plant falling over like that needs two things:

1. More water

2. You need to earth the soil up around the plant to create a mound. It will help provide more potatoes for you you want to cover say 75% of that back up with soil think of it like an ant hill is the best I can describe without doing a shit illustration.

Funny enough, I moved a few days ago and also asked @t2van for advice lol..
What a legend

GAAS

Gardening as a service

Nice, but really, ain´t gardening for girls and really old people Well, as long as you have fun, that is what matters.

Dopious said:

Nice, but really, ain´t gardening for girls and really old people Well, as long as you have fun, that is what matters.

Click to expand...

you couldn't grow a fart anyways!

I love Gardening.. and I'm into Gardening.. !

Let me take our backyard Garden Pics in the morning..

There isn't much space for gardening where I live right now but I'd love to if there was.
Whenever I visit my parents... I enjoy working in their garden.

Growing up, I did a lot of them and they also have some small livestock.

SirTop said:

There isn't much space for gardening where I live right now but I'd love to if there was.
Whenever I visit my parents... I enjoy working in their garden.

Growing up, I did a lot of them and they also have some small livestock.

Click to expand...

Don't need space there's small space gardening trend that's really popular

t2van said:

Don't need space there's small space gardening trend that's really popular

Click to expand...

Thank you... I will have to check that out.

This should be the end of my excuses for this

t2van said:

Don't need space there's small space gardening trend that's really popular

Click to expand...

Yeah, a closet is all you need nowadays.

t2van said:

Plants are looking good to be fair.

The peppers id keep in the pots, you tend to get a larger harvest might not be so much the case as your heat will help them thrive anyway but I've found restricting the roots does better for us and our climate anyway.

Click to expand...

We'll keep that in mind!

t2van said:

The potato plant falling over like that needs two things:

1. More water

2. You need to earth the soil up around the plant to create a mound. It will help provide more potatoes for you you want to cover say 75% of that back up with soil think of it like an ant hill is the best I can describe without doing a shit illustration.

Click to expand...

I have the timer set to run for about 40 minutes in the backyard right now. Because of the heat, it might be best to bump it up to 60 minutes and see how well that goes.

The water around where I live is really cheap. Even though it’s the desert, it’s cheap because of all of the golf courses around here, so I can bump the timer up quite a bit without it adding much to the water bill.

I didn't think about creating a mound. We’ll do that next time we’re outside. We can only really do this stuff in the early mornings and evenings right now.

As always, your advice is appreciated.

Ehhhh, it's such a cool thread. Idk shit about gardening, though . Which shows - our neighbours right next to us have fab gardens while we just have overgrown grass that gets trimmed by a gardener once in a while . BUT I enjoy beautiful garden views from neighbours' gardens so yeah . First place we rented here for a year had REALLY lush garden, beautiful, our landlady was into gardening and she allowed us to walk in the garden, used to play with her pets there, there was also spring with mini waterfall, had to go through the garden to get there. My mini-office was a desk next to a window from which I could see all the plants and curtains flowing in the wind. Ahhhh, it was nice. Here gardens have to grow first, I think . But already pretty nice on one side. Not disturbing the neighbours though, just enjoying the view from windows/balconies.

SirTop said:

Thank you... I will have to check that out.

This should be the end of my excuses for this

Click to expand...

Its essentally anything you can grow in a pot in a small location like a balcony. It's a downsized version of container gardening. Essentally most if not all salad crops will grow in pots or buckets without limited to no support. Once you get past that stage you want to focus on dwarf beans, peas anything that does not require trailing but if there are crops like that you can grow some up poles.

But there are 100s of dwarf type crops now, can be endless Tiny Tim tomato for example can be grown in a 9cm plant pot and give you around 15-25 cherry size tomatoes while taking up almost no room at all!

Zwielicht said:

We'll keep that in mind!

I have the timer set to run for about 40 minutes in the backyard right now. Because of the heat, it might be best to bump it up to 60 minutes and see how well that goes.

The water around where I live is really cheap. Even though it’s the desert, it’s cheap because of all of the golf courses around here, so I can bump the timer up quite a bit without it adding much to the water bill.

I didn't think about creating a mound. We’ll do that next time we’re outside. We can only really do this stuff in the early mornings and evenings right now.

As always, your advice is appreciated.

Click to expand...

What you want to do is called hilling next time... You dig a set of trenches a few inches deep and mound that soil either side of the trench.

Then you plant your potato in the base of the trench and cover with a bit of soil or straw.

As the plant grows then you take soil from the sides and place that over the plant, and keep doing that till you start to get the opposite of what you just dug.

This works as you can then flood or water the trenches either side to aid in watering.

It also helps you to dig over an area slowly ready for planting again next year or a follow on crop.

Shit illustration I hope explains

Dopious said:

Nice, but really, ain´t gardening for girls and really old people Well, as long as you have fun, that is what matters.

Click to expand...

Viking meant to be pirates stealing things not much use at growing things.

My ferrets grow wild raspberry for me and pick them for me.

When I was younger I found a love for cooking and that got me into making my own small herb garden patch that I kept for years. Since a young adult though I've moved around so frequently I never really had the opportunity to establish a new one, but it looks like we may be finally setting up a spot to "retire" here in Italy and I would love to start again. I've been really keen on doing one of those vertical farms out of PVC pipes.. a friend of mine had one that went up along the fence for various herbs at his restaurant in Taiwan and I absolutely loved it, so that would be my first project.