I grew baby red potatoes in a 5 gallon bucket last year. The thrill of seeing what I grew was enough for me to expand my buckets lol, and my gardening. This year I plan on trying Kale, lettuce and onions and they will be complimentary to my flower garden. I will be trying tomatoes in a bucket. Let me also say, baby reds keep growing and growing. I must have left one in the bucket and got another crop before Christmas. What a great suprise!
Where there's a will, there's a way! I'm excited to hear how you are expanding your growing little by little. It sounds like your experiment with the red potatoes built confidence! That's what it's all about. When we try something and succeed it's always a boost to our confidence level and reminds us that we actually can do much more than we think we can. And every time we do... we add just a bit more liberty to our lives. Thanks for sharing your story! :)
The answer to, "why in the world are you writing about gardening in January?", is simple. That's when the seed catalogs come out!
Great post. I'm looking backwards at over 3/4 of a century, and I can't recall ever NOT having a garden. My mother's gardens varied from a few hundred square feet to, when I was about 12, half of an acre. (Five young kids on a hardscrabble ranch. No garden = no food!) When Mum was in her late eighties, her garden shrank back to a couple of hundred square feet. But there was always a garden!
I don't recall a time when my siblings and I were not involved in spring prep, planting, weeding and watering, the harvest, and of course preserving the produce. I did not enjoy the dubious pleasure of "boughten" produce until I left the ranch to go to school in my late teens.
Other than a few years in my early twenties, when I was exploring the world, I too have tended a garden. And just like my mother's, my garden has grown and shrunk depending on what was going on in my life. But I have, with the help of my wife and kids, (slave labor - just ask them!), always been able to eat mostly "real" food.
You left out the physical benefits - gardening is damn good exercise. Other than the occasional sore back, a garden provides frequent light workouts for the whole body.
Really good post. Great gardening tips. Thank you sir.
Thanks for sharing your story AndyinBC. It sounds like we have had similar experiences. My Mom also did the slave labor thing with us kids. Haha. She is still living and doesn't have a lot of room now, but her very tiny little back yard/patio/deck area is nothing but a sea of flowers and vegetables. She lives in a better climate than I so she never has to buy greens of any kind. Thanks so much for stopping by AndyinBC. :)
Great post, Rob. Really interesting tip about planting the tall plants at the back. Some of my baby plants got burned by fertilizer last year, so I'm doing it all natural this year. Fingers crossed.
I think another under sung benefit of gardening is that it teaches you how to plan. Most people aren't thinking about their plants in January, but unless you start getting things in order *now* you're not going to get things in the ground in time.
Oh yes... fertilizer... it can be our friend or our foe. I try to be very careful with fertilizer whether chemical or organic. (I do use both because of the horrible soil I inherited which I have been working on for 8 years). I'm not sure how large your family is, but if it's small, you may want to invest in a compost tumbler. There's no better way to begin improving the soil than adding back in the organic matter that we may just throw in the trash. We get about 10 pounds of compost a year from the tumbler we have. I don't like compost piles because they attract too many critters where I live. My yard would be full of raccoons and other interesting animals. Haha. Oh yes... the planning! Excellent point. I sometimes "re-plan" my garden several times before I actually plant it and then sometimes I may even do "on the fly" re-planning once I put it in for the season. I may even re-plan my re-plan depending on what's going on with my plants. Thanks for your input Fat Rabbit Iron.
I've been using a compost bin, but not a tumbler. My wife has been bugging me to get one because my compost only ever half decomposes. She says it just looks like I threw garbage in the yard. :-)
I don't really care about the aesthetics, but if it produces a better product then I'm all for it.
You're welcome Brian. Oh yes... that kid is me... and I was very happy even though we had very little in the way of "material" garbage. I look back on how incredibly fortunate I was to grow up where I did and experience the insane amount of liberty I had as well. That happy kid is still in my heart and I embrace that liberty and the memories of living free, gardening, playing, chasing wild horses and catching them and jumping on them and being taken for the ride of my life and bucked off... lol. It's all like a dream to me now... but it was real and I'm a better person because of it. I'm glad I was able to make you smile a bit. :)
Thank you, and that last bit about freedom... SO RIGHT ON.
I'm a terrible gardener, because I've never really done it, tried to a little bit last year, and failed miserably. I'm gonna keep trying... Thanks!! xo
Keep trying Word Herder. I know your climate is a bit damp where you live (to say the least), but if you ever need a tip, I'm here and if I don't know the answer, I'm more than happy to help find it. Don't give up. Food freedom is as important as almost every other freedom in my opinion. Thanks so much for stopping by again. :)
I'm sure I'll be asking... And I have Rick Larson as a resource, too... The soil here is just CLAY, it was a glacier long ago... Rick told me to put something in it, and I have that somewhere, but... I'm renting, and thinking of moving, so I'll probably try to do pots, big pots, maybe, for a while...
I grew baby red potatoes in a 5 gallon bucket last year. The thrill of seeing what I grew was enough for me to expand my buckets lol, and my gardening. This year I plan on trying Kale, lettuce and onions and they will be complimentary to my flower garden. I will be trying tomatoes in a bucket. Let me also say, baby reds keep growing and growing. I must have left one in the bucket and got another crop before Christmas. What a great suprise!
Thank you for all the tips and inspiration.
Where there's a will, there's a way! I'm excited to hear how you are expanding your growing little by little. It sounds like your experiment with the red potatoes built confidence! That's what it's all about. When we try something and succeed it's always a boost to our confidence level and reminds us that we actually can do much more than we think we can. And every time we do... we add just a bit more liberty to our lives. Thanks for sharing your story! :)
The answer to, "why in the world are you writing about gardening in January?", is simple. That's when the seed catalogs come out!
Great post. I'm looking backwards at over 3/4 of a century, and I can't recall ever NOT having a garden. My mother's gardens varied from a few hundred square feet to, when I was about 12, half of an acre. (Five young kids on a hardscrabble ranch. No garden = no food!) When Mum was in her late eighties, her garden shrank back to a couple of hundred square feet. But there was always a garden!
I don't recall a time when my siblings and I were not involved in spring prep, planting, weeding and watering, the harvest, and of course preserving the produce. I did not enjoy the dubious pleasure of "boughten" produce until I left the ranch to go to school in my late teens.
Other than a few years in my early twenties, when I was exploring the world, I too have tended a garden. And just like my mother's, my garden has grown and shrunk depending on what was going on in my life. But I have, with the help of my wife and kids, (slave labor - just ask them!), always been able to eat mostly "real" food.
You left out the physical benefits - gardening is damn good exercise. Other than the occasional sore back, a garden provides frequent light workouts for the whole body.
Really good post. Great gardening tips. Thank you sir.
Thanks for sharing your story AndyinBC. It sounds like we have had similar experiences. My Mom also did the slave labor thing with us kids. Haha. She is still living and doesn't have a lot of room now, but her very tiny little back yard/patio/deck area is nothing but a sea of flowers and vegetables. She lives in a better climate than I so she never has to buy greens of any kind. Thanks so much for stopping by AndyinBC. :)
Nice. I read a book yesterday about how the natives gardened.
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/buffalo/garden/garden.html
Thanks so much for sharing that with us Rick! Excellent.
Great post, Rob. Really interesting tip about planting the tall plants at the back. Some of my baby plants got burned by fertilizer last year, so I'm doing it all natural this year. Fingers crossed.
I think another under sung benefit of gardening is that it teaches you how to plan. Most people aren't thinking about their plants in January, but unless you start getting things in order *now* you're not going to get things in the ground in time.
Oh yes... fertilizer... it can be our friend or our foe. I try to be very careful with fertilizer whether chemical or organic. (I do use both because of the horrible soil I inherited which I have been working on for 8 years). I'm not sure how large your family is, but if it's small, you may want to invest in a compost tumbler. There's no better way to begin improving the soil than adding back in the organic matter that we may just throw in the trash. We get about 10 pounds of compost a year from the tumbler we have. I don't like compost piles because they attract too many critters where I live. My yard would be full of raccoons and other interesting animals. Haha. Oh yes... the planning! Excellent point. I sometimes "re-plan" my garden several times before I actually plant it and then sometimes I may even do "on the fly" re-planning once I put it in for the season. I may even re-plan my re-plan depending on what's going on with my plants. Thanks for your input Fat Rabbit Iron.
I've been using a compost bin, but not a tumbler. My wife has been bugging me to get one because my compost only ever half decomposes. She says it just looks like I threw garbage in the yard. :-)
I don't really care about the aesthetics, but if it produces a better product then I'm all for it.
That kid in the picture looks very happy. I needed to read something positive today and as usual you came through. Thanks for this Rob.
You're welcome Brian. Oh yes... that kid is me... and I was very happy even though we had very little in the way of "material" garbage. I look back on how incredibly fortunate I was to grow up where I did and experience the insane amount of liberty I had as well. That happy kid is still in my heart and I embrace that liberty and the memories of living free, gardening, playing, chasing wild horses and catching them and jumping on them and being taken for the ride of my life and bucked off... lol. It's all like a dream to me now... but it was real and I'm a better person because of it. I'm glad I was able to make you smile a bit. :)
Self-reliance dispels fear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acQSRBCPExc
Being free is your birthright.
What an excellent, wise, and helpful post!!!
Thank you, and that last bit about freedom... SO RIGHT ON.
I'm a terrible gardener, because I've never really done it, tried to a little bit last year, and failed miserably. I'm gonna keep trying... Thanks!! xo
Keep trying Word Herder. I know your climate is a bit damp where you live (to say the least), but if you ever need a tip, I'm here and if I don't know the answer, I'm more than happy to help find it. Don't give up. Food freedom is as important as almost every other freedom in my opinion. Thanks so much for stopping by again. :)
I'm sure I'll be asking... And I have Rick Larson as a resource, too... The soil here is just CLAY, it was a glacier long ago... Rick told me to put something in it, and I have that somewhere, but... I'm renting, and thinking of moving, so I'll probably try to do pots, big pots, maybe, for a while...