Growing a garden

I have always grown a garden, now that times are getting tighter, are more of you growning a garden? If so what are you growning?
Do you dry your vegies, can or freeze.
I have a new dehydrator ( wore the old one out), and I do some canning and freeze also.
I grow, peppers, tomatoes, and I am trying squash and brussle sprouts.

DonDiego plants a small vegetable garden at the eastern-most corner of his house. The vacant lot next door is for sale. If DonDiego owned it he'd have a large garden, but the owner overpaid for it at the peak of real estate prices and is asking more than poor old DonDiego is willing to pay.

DonDiego drops a few rows of radish seeds into the soil early; they'll germinate and pop up in a few days and the wily gardener can enjoy an early feast before anything else is blooming.

Tomatoes and peppers did well last year after a slow start; all the old-timers in the area commented as to how most everything was very slow in producing fruit for some unknown reason last Spring.

DonDiego's Summer Squash did not do well at all; after a few tasty gourds the plant took ill, and the environmentally-friendly cure-all apparently was friendly to the disease as well.

Maybe he'll try Kohlrabi this year, . . . or carrots. Or whatever teechur requests.

No canning, but DonDiego did freeze a few peppers.
There's an older, somewhat infirm retired chef who lives at the end of the street which is DonDiego's neighborhood. He gets around in a golf cart. He grows vegetables all over his lot, and across the street on a vacant lot too. And during produce-season he harvests what he can't use and drives the length of the neighborhood once a week giving it away, . . . stopping and tooting his little horn every few houses. He produced some delicious Butternut Squash last year. He also picks up anyone else's excess production, like DonDiego's peppers and tomatoes, and redistributes that.
And teechur took some tomatoes and lots of hot peppers to the charity box at her Church on many Sundays; they'd all be gone by the time the service was over. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

We have no separate freezer, so that limits us to freezing herbs. I have never been a fan of canning or drying.

Should the shit hit the fan, as some predict, my wife and I have gardening skills we could call upon and a place to raise more food than the tomatoes, peppers, and garlic that we grow now. Also, I am a fair fisherman, although our local lakes are somewhat polluted thanks to the freedom exercised by many of my neighbors.

Can't wait for the weather to get nice enough here in Ne. to get out in the garden. A little hint for those who do not have a lot of room. Try a bucket garden, five gallon plasic buckets,have raised peppers,tomatos,carrots, beets, let your imagination go wild.

Since moving into our new house we have lots a lots a room for a garden again. It has been a couple of years since our last. Just did not find the time to properly spend in it. Nothing beats the fresh tomatoes and peppers.
We will freeze some peppers for later use, and maybe can a bit of salsa.

We have a raised-bed garden in our backyard, 12' x 4'. Last summer, we had great success with tomatoes, both salad and plum (roma) varieties, green and red peppers, and cucumbers. However, our onions and watermelon plantings failed miserably. Still, gardening is a lot of fun.

They say that basketball is the favorite pastime of the Hoosier state, but my personal opinion is that gardening trumps b-ball here any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

I used to grow mostly tomatoes, but now a friend with a very large garden gives me all kinds of veggies.

Now I just grow herbs for cooking on my deck. They are in pots on a 3-tiered-step-thingy that I made.


Rick

When we first moved into this house back in "98, it had a nice large feild up behind our house. I thought this was going to be great for a veggie garden. It was perfect! Of course I had to clear all the over growth first, that took alot of work.Next was purchase of a nice rototiller,not the little one,the big one. I made 6 '6x'6 raised beds that i planted asparagus and strawberrys(which i bought mail order) in. I further tilled up about a '25x'75 patch where I planted 24 tomato plants of diff varieties,beefsteak,cherry,you name i had it. I did the same with peppers, many diff varieties. A sizable amount was made for corn. Squash,couple of pumpkins a few watermelons and some other things i can't remember.

Well it turns out our new digs in the woods are full of animals.Hungry animals. Deer,rabbits,birds and squirrels seem to abound here. Out of everything I planted, all i ever got was a few tomatoes,and some monster zucchinis. I dont even like zucchini that much.

Unfortunately i've let it go and its pretty overgrown again.I keep saying im gonna try again,maybe this year I really will,especially since im home pretty much all the time. Also a question if i can do it physically. If I can,it'll be great exercise.

J

PS NEVER plant blackberrys! People that lived here before us did and those suckers will TAKE OVER any place you plant them. They're a major pain in the ass.