Vegetable Gardening Anyone?

[ncfarmer]

I am growing a vegetable garden for the first time in many moons in my yard this year. It started when
a neighbor gave me some free cabbage and broccoli plants. I didn't want them to go to waste so I
planted them. Since then, I have added tomatoes, watermelons, sweet peppers and eggplant. My
informal garden is looking all right besides the broccoli which got hit pretty hard by the insects. The
tomatoes are in bloom now and the eggplants are starting to grow blooms. This project has reminded
me of how much I enjoyed working in the much larger vegetable garden we had on the small family
farm when I was growing up. How many of you like gardening, especially growing vegetables?

[Smokewagon]

I don't enjoy it, except for the eating, but my wife insists on planting one every year. With zero rainfall last year, last year's garden looked way better than the mess I have this year. Probably too much steer manure.

[Shinsou]

My wife is currently growing radishes, beets and carrots. Soon she will have peppers planted, too.

[fishinkeylargo]

Here in the FL Keys, we start our gardens in Sept. early Oct., I usually only attempt to plant a couple tomato and bell pepper plants. The biggest problem is not having enough bees to cross pollinate the flowers. It sucks doing it yourself with a tiny paint brush. Last year was a good year, bees were everywhere. If you have trees in the proper places you can grow your plants in buckets and move them around for the proper amount of sun and grow all year round. I’m not that ambitious.

[oldhickory]

I'm with smokewagon on this one. I just don't enjoy it. But like the rest of you my wife does one every year so I'm out with a tiller, weeding, watching the water bill go up and wondering if the grocery store, farmers market, and the guy sitting on the side of the road all ran out at the same time.

[cassrh]

My place is where plants come to die.

[Slakev]

I usually have a fairly nice garden but with almost no rain last year the rabbits or something ate all of my of my plantings twice this year. Now it is too hot to plant from seeds and all the plants are gone at my local home center. I guess I will be hitting the farmers markets this year.

[treg]

My garden is 70' x 70'. Growing most of our own vegies, I raised a couple of healthy kids off it. Would not be able to guess the tons of cow, horse and dog manure, ash from the wood furnace, bark from processing wood, household scraps, dead animals and parts thereof, fish guts and scrap hay there is out there. In the past 14 years nothing has gone to waste that would benefit my garden. Now that the kids have pretty much moved on I cut back a little. Not proportionally, but the neighbors won't mind.

[GunsandNoses]

We are growing cucumbers, bell pepper, tomato's and green beans.

When it works well it is a joy but when nature decides to ruin your garden it really sucks.

[dugger1]

My wife likes it and it's a good together project. Got alot of greens out and replanted already and everything else is coming along great. Don't ask me what's in there, I opened the ground, she put the seeds in and I covered them up. That's pretty much all I know.