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Past Vegetable Gardens

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 4:25 pm

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Hello:

Here are some pictures and history of some of my past gardens in response to Gardenstew's question.

Gardenstew wrote on Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:19 pm:
Is this your first attempt at vegetable gardening?

Lets start with 2006 and work back. 2006 is easy to show because I apparently took NO pictures of the actual garden.

Now lets jump to the end of the season Last year I grew only seeds from heirloomseeds.com and these were some of their Giant Italian Paste tomatoes. I tracked the weight of 41 of these GIP maters and they weighed in at a total of 20.62 pounds with the biggest single one weighing 12.7 ounces.

Here is a couple more pictures of my harvest.



I took this batch of paste tomatoes and made and canned some sauce from them and here is a shot of the results.



I entered my canned goods from 2006 into the North Carolina state fair. I entered 5 items the tomato sauce as well as Strawberry Preserves, hot peppers, green beans and a spaghetti sauce with meat. The Tomato sauce is the second jar from the right.
I managed to pull three second place ribbons at the fair. All items (except the preserves) were just judged on appearance of proper canning processes and standards. They actually opened the preserves to check the taste and the consistency of the fruit and the jelly. I was pretty excited to get three red ribbons at the state fair, but now I have to defend my ribbons and try for blue ribbons this year.

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Well that was enough for 2006 garden now here are a bunch of shots of a group garden that I did a couple of years ago with my two best friends (one of which has also just started his own blog on gardenstew as well).



Tim Tilling the plot



trying to solarize the weed seeds.



young lettuce



picking greens



veggies galore



pea trellis



peas and horse



lettuce & carrots & potatoes & Peas & Beets



harvest



Lots of goodies

That was the spring garden and here are a couple of shots of the summer garden as it was first being planted.









I dont have any pictures of the community garden after this. The garden grew well and apparently we never took any more pictures.

That's all for now.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba


Last edited: Thu Jan 18, 2007 3:01 am

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Answers to questions

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:21 pm

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Hola Y'all:

Here are some answers to the questions in the comments to my initial blog post.

Where are you that you are starting a garden now?

I am in Central, NC (also know as the piedmont) where the weather was in the low 70's this last weekend.

The dirt is beautiful. Is it naturally like that, or did you add amendments?

The dirt is definitely not naturally like that here. I have been gardening this spot for about 5 years now and prior to that this was a rose garden for three years or so. I have been adding my homemade compost the whole time as well as adding commercial bags of composted manure, topsoil and truckloads of leaves. I have not added any commercial fertilizer to this plot for over 4 years. Last year I did start using an organic fertilizer. I am also planning on sending in a soil sample this year for analysis to see what may need to be done to further amend it. Also, at one point or another the entire garden has been hand dug down two to three feet deep to turn in the good stuff into the natural existing sand/clay mixture the comprises the rest of the yard. To plant a tree one time I dug a hole using a pickax, a roto-tiller and a shovel to make the hole. After only getting down 6 inches or so I gave up for the day and decided to fill the hole with water to help make it easier to dig. That did not go so well....it took DAYS for the water to be absorbed.

What are you going to plant?
This is a vegetable garden and will be filled with Heirloom and organic seeds. Early Spring crop will include Snow peas, radishes, beets, fingerling carrots and maybe some greens of some sort. I will also be planting lettuce as soon as possible. Summer will include more lettuce/greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, beans, peppers hot and sweet. Fall will bring back the spring items and hopefully some collards, kale and such in the winter. I hope to run a 4-season garden this year. In the past I have only done spring and summer plantings.

Thats all for now.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba


Last edited: Thu Jan 18, 2007 11:02 am

This blog entry has been viewed 616 times

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The Street Corner Garden

Category: My Front Yard Garden | Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 3:36 am

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Welcome to my street corner garden. This blog is to document the progress of my garden this year. We will see if this blog is like the way my garden weeding goes...great at first and by the 4th of July I'm done doing that. But I hope to keep up with both this summer. January 13 & 14 were Winter garden prep days. On Saturday my wife moved out all of the old rocks we had been bordering the garden with while I played with the tiller. We are going to edge the garden with timbers this year. On Sunday I had my garden boy over to till the garden. By the way my garden boy is known as "Jose Madre" but you can call him ""Jo Mama"". Here are some pictures of Jo Mama and my garden placement.









Those are my my kids wandering around the garden having a great time looking for worms and rolly polly bugs in the dirt.

Thats all for now.

Seeya,
Uncle Jabba

Last edited: Tue Jan 16, 2007 3:28 pm

This blog entry has been viewed 729 times

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