So i mean I want to start growning my own garden for the purpose of becoming self sustaining... I just dont know where to start, and like what are high protien things i can grow.... Idk Ima start slow this year and build up but tip and shit are nice? help a blade out
High Buzzwell What kind of veggies do you like to eat? Sauces? Salsa? For sauces I'm a big fan of San Marzano, and Roma tomatoes. For salsa I use a combination of sauce tom's and whatever else is ready at the time. It goes fast around here LOL! How much space do you have for your garden? Beans are good There are several types, so if you can tell us what kind of beans you like, that'll help everyone when making suggestions. What zone do you live in? There's a sticky on companion planting that'll be helpful when you're planning where to put everything in your garden. http://forum.grasscity.com/gardening/627966-companion-planting.html If you plan to save seeds from whatever you grow for the next growing season, I'd go with heirloom varieties. Hope this helps some
My aim is sustenance. So protein and vitamins I can get creative with it but now Ima start off small. Right now I am in the mountains of Arizona and theres lots of vegetation its high dessert i believe. It rains in the summer and its raining right now so ... I have a good chunk of space I could use the space in the planter thats like 3 by 15 feet, or go till up a 20by 20 spot in the yard. Im aiming for the smaller because Im in a halfway house and am here for six months so I just want to get practice, I am hoping to take a horticulture class this august as well. I figure I have a good three months before things start to get cold here, it snows but i need to find out when it starts getting real cold. and getting plants to produce seeds? whats up with that. I am getting like 100-120 dollars this check that can go to the garden. and again my goal is sustenance. So protien i get from beans can i grow spinach??? thanks for the help
Anytime! Glad I can help I like to use the Farmer's Almanac (Old Farmers Almanac: weather forecasts gardening moon calendar recipes) and Organic Gardening (Organic Gardening | Living lightly from the ground up) websites for reference / information, as well as the my State University garden extension. Here's one for AZ AZ Master Gardener Manual: Vegetable Planting Guide Spinach is a cool weather crop, generally grown in spring and fall in several areas. When temps cool down, it should be fine. When looking at seeds, check to see what variety of spinach does well in your area. On some of the seed websites, you can look at seeds by gardening zone. It's a good way to get information on the varieties of vegetables and fruit do well in your area. Beans - dried legume varieties (black, red, kidney, lentils, garbanzo, black eyed peas, etc...) tend to be higher in protein than say 'green beans'. Dry bean varieties need a long growing season to reach maturity. Personally, I'd go with the 3 x 15 foot planter. You can grow a lot in that space. You can check your frost dates and gardening zone on the Farmer's Almanac site. The information should be on the Arizona edu site as well. Seeds - you save seeds from mature fruit (tomatoes, peppers, etc), or let a couple plants go to seed (carrots and onions). Collect the seeds when they are mature. Clean, dry and store them for the next season. What you're collecting seeds from will determine how - hope that makes sense. Keep in mind that varieties and the time required to reach maturity vary. There are some tom plants that you'll get tomatoes from 1/2 way through the growing season, and others that don't start to ripen until the end of the season.
so it says like celery june 15 to july 15th? I mean thats when I plant it? sorry if this is a dumb question if this is the case then it says i can grow lettuce chinease cabbage? carrots what If i am a little late with some of these, like a month off... will it make a big difference?
i can grow somthing inside. this is for meditation and practice untill i have a place of my own where I can do it up big. how much is a light? and I mean would it be too hard ?
Yes, that's when you plant It's NOT a dumb question Planting late means, that it's going to take that much longer for whatever you're growing to mature. Pushing the grow season past frost dates (if applicable), which means that you may need to cover plants (row covers, blankets, etc...) to protect them from frost at night. Cooler temps for plants that like hotter weather can lead to lack of production / growth. Whatever varieties of veggies you decide to grow, you can check to see what the cold / frost tolerance is for each of them. It's pretty common for gardeners / farmers to extend the grow season using row covers or cold frames without issue. Yes, you can absolutely grow something inside. I'd recommend looking at T-5's for growing veggies indoors. Lights run $200-400 if I remember correctly. You can probably check ebay or something like that to find a better deal. HTG Supply has pretty good deals most of the time if you're interested in checking them out. There were a couple threads in this section where blades were growing indoors, you may want to check them out and see what lights they've been using too. No, it wouldn't be hard, IMO. If you need help with something, you can always ask here
if you're looking for cheap lights and you are able to solder this might be just what you're looking for. honestly I've never bought anything from them, just found this on google 14 Watt Grow Light Kit - HomeGrownLights.com
well since hemp is still illegal to grow on your property, for protein grow beans of any kind, whichever you like amaranth or try your own grain, wheat, barley, corn, whichever you feel like, if going for substainability, learn how to save seed if looking to produce the MOST food possible out of what space you have, look into aquaponics and look into square foot gardening i suggest an aquaponics system that is PLANTED according to square foot gardening, i.e. you set up your grow beds accordingly talapia are popular in aquaponics because they are realtively easy to care for and they taste good i would also recommend some kind of 'sucker fish' to help clean the tank as well as some prawn, or red claw freshwater lobster and some mussels may be good in your sump tank the reason i say aquaponics is great is because it's organic so there is a great flavor for your plants its hydro so the plants grow much faster than soil, this means more regular harvest and less wait between each one you get a lot of protein from the fish without having to grow a lot of high protein plants problems with it: start up costs(obviously more than simply throwing seeds on the ground, but after the ecosystem is running and balanced it pretty much cares for itself) maintaining the ecosystem, this requires at least one pump, if designed right, that may be all you need but this takes some great understanding it takes at least a month to set up to where you can grow plants, but thats fishless, its even longer with fish in from the get go and then you're risking their lives... when its setup it is best to have it in a permanant location, these systems are like fine wine and get much better with age, after three years they are good enough to grow tropical fruit trees without any issues but ot me the benefits FAR outweigh the problems with it, and of course i'm always working on trying to fix the problems so that its easier for me
so like i wanna grow coffee some day, and tabacco ... just enought so i could eat a dank salad and fuck now that you say some fish... smoke a cig and drink a cup of coffee all that i grew... so my dad sent me some old school tomato seeds. Im look more into hydroponics thanks for the help... also soon to come... plant grown from soil and seeds bought from recycled cans
coffee sounds fun, i have seen someone grow a banana tree right next to an aloe vera plant and they both were doing great apparantly desert plants are just fine with wet feet, so long as the water is very well oxygenated... good luck with your growing adventures and substainabilty efforts, looking forward to some pics after you get there
yo so i got an update i got all these seeds but no soild... there is dirt in a planter in the garden with all these white rock things... Idk shit has been planted there in the past? I have alot of seeds so can I get dirt for free somwhere or should i wait
the white rocks are called perlite, they could also be vermiculite but from the description more likely perlite are the beds laid out in grids at all or just there? you could certainly use that, just mix some compost in, about 1/3 of the soil total if its a raised bed, however its already been used i would recommend you grid it off into square feet, you can do this with just about anything, i just use some string and staples mix in about a trowel-full of compost into each square foot then plant according to sqftgardening for instance, if the seed packet says plant spacing: 12in then put two-three seeds in the center of a square foot if it says every 6in, then put four holes in there like you see on dice and put two-three seeds in each of these, then cover if it says 4in, then do 9holes and put 2-3 seeds in each, draw a lil tic-tac-toe and do a hole in the center of each drawn square to evenly space if it say 2in then you can fit 16 plants per square foot divide the sqft into four parts and each part you put four evenly space holes in again you only need two-3 seeds in each hole if you interplant, rather than devoting an entire bed to one plant, you make your garden not only more pretty, but more resistant to disease and bugz devote whole beds to a plant if its really invasive like asparugus, strawberries, mints stuff like that, or if you plan on leaving it in for more than one year when you harvest, just pull the plant out, put a trowel-full of compost in and plant something else there to rotate your crops just plant a leafy plant like spinach or lettuce where you previously had a fruiting plant like tomatoes or peppers, just don't do the same plant in the same sqft each year and it helps keep your soil really fertile mulch with grass clippings or wahtevers easiest for you to retain moisture and put a slow realease fertilizer from nature on the top of the soil also, if you have little space and want to grow everywhere you can, then rather than composting, simply throw and scatter your food scraps out as a mulch over your entire garden, this is a no till method so theres no digging, ever. it helps provide mulch if you have no room to devote to a lawn for grass clippings, if provides your plants with nutes if you have no room for a compost pile and (not from experience) it probably doesn't have ANY smell look up the one straw revolution on youtube for interesting video that you can take knowledge from to apply towards growing your own grains and for tobacco seeds: contact chicken on this site, he has TONS that hes giving out from what i hear...
got airloom(sp?) tamatos in one of the cups on the chair. basil in the blue cups and a bunch of diffrent types of peas in the bucket. got organic soil says it will feed for 2 months??? my dad sent me fresh tamato seeds(dry) got em all planted? i punt a bunch of seeds to increase chance of sprouting....?? hope some love and a green thumb( in progress) will help
as i believe i've said on this thread before, when i started out i started with square foot gardening all i would do is have my rasied beds filled with my soil mix, which was: 1/3 perlite/vermiculite 1/3 compost 1/3 peat moss and then i would plant DIRECTLY in the box, by putting two or three seeds in each designated spot, TOPS, that way i wan't wasting many seeds and i knew exactly where my plants were sprouting and could easily weed while they were still young(which i didn't do much of anyway lol) what i'd like to do in the future is a small permaculture garden as opposed to a square foot garden, the plus's of this are, if you do it right, all you do is harvest and plant and thats pretty much it, kinda like aquaponics but you can start with nothing from a very interesting permaculture video i recently watched, i was converted to the idea that rocks are actually a great thing to have in a garden: [ame=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=727825431796194016&hl=en]Farming_with_Nature.mpg[/ame]
i fucked up i put all the same kinda of seeds in the pot together..... and i dont wanna put into the ground cause its gonna get cold here at night later on and i wanna bring em in side> they have been in there three days will any sprout or what> fuck
excuse me for the ensueing questions how many seeds did you plant in the same pot? if you are growing in a small scale plot, its not gonna hurt you much if all your plants are in seperate plots, especially if they're in pots = off the ground more, and gonna be moved around a bit, simply expect a slightly longer amount of time being needed to tend to the crop - in the end, it shouldn't be much to worry about 3 days? sounds ok to me.... they should germinate within two weeks, mostly in a week or so though, if their heirlooms, could be the breeder wasn't breeding for germination rates, rather taste or speed of maturation... also, its not nessacary to put things in the ground for an organic garden, permaculture is really more advanced organics stuff, getting into making nature work for you and sry if this comes across like i think im a pro or anything.....