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We, being in the UK, have a small-ish garden, with enough room for 2 raised beds and a bit of lawn.
So far, we have mixed into those beds:
Corn (baby and full, but we forgot which was which until they got too big),
Potatoes, all over the place,
Brocolli, Romanesco for the fractal-ness of it, and normal stuff, but it gets out of hand so fast and blocks the light to the other stuff,
Peas,
Courgettes, which need watching, or a weedy little courg tuns into a honking great marrows overnight,
Strawberries, which the slugs love, and we're trying in pots this year,
Cucumbers in the shed,
Garlic, but one plant lasts quite a while, and they all come up at once.

We built the raised beds from decking planks and a chopped-up wooden post to screw them to. It was filling them that took the effort.

This is all until next-door's footballs fly over the fence and land in the bed

Pictures from our front patio that we have worked to expand every year since we build the house 7 years ago. What we got from the builders was a small rectangle that was planted right in front of the patio, without any borders, and which just included a couple of shrubs, one of which didn't survive the first winter. The rectangle of clay ended right at the corner post and just wide enough to hold the shrubs. Over the years I increased the flower bed in size to actually go around the entire patio, then a couple years later I rounded it out to have something that looks nicer than just a standard rectangle. Last year I dug out the edges and laid down the new border with mortar to help keep some of the grass out of the beds, replacing a standard plastic "hammer it in place" border that I had before that. The new border is also higher, so the beds can hold an additional 3 inches of mulch, which helps with moisture retention and weed prevention:





The new additions this year are the baskets on the railing, and about 5 new pots in the bed itself. We have clay soil, and the plants do better in nicer soil in the pots. It also makes it easier to switch out plants for the seasons. Our permanent plants are the shrubs, some grasses that somehow haven't died yet, and this year I put in a Red Twig Dogwood in the far corner of the bed to give it some visual interest and a splash of color throughout the year:



And then there is the small bed next to the garage, that is covered in shade for a large part of the day. It just has a heavy cover of mulch and the new ground cover we planted this year. Flowers have never done well there, but the cover seems happy already.



The main project remaining for this spring is to finish the drip irrigation setup to all the pots and hanging baskets. It gets to 100+ degrees in the summer, and the pots will dry out pretty damn quick. So the plan is to put them on a drip irrigation and have them on a timer to irrigate every morning for now, and then go to twice daily when the summer gets here.

Just had the front and back lawns aerated this past weekend and we tilled a 4 ft. wide bed along my North fence line to create a wildflower/native plant border for that side of the back yard. I need to put some grass seed down to address some rough spots on the lawn, but it's still a couple weeks too early for that. Veggies, from the starters we have going in the basement, go in the beds in the back yard around the first week of May. Mowing still looking about another week away, methinks.

Built this today. I'm contemplating putting a small tree in there, like a cherry blossom tree. Or maybe just a bunch of nice flowers.

Nice. I want to add some areas like that along the back yard, preferably to make small areas of native plants to cut down on water and make it look nicer.

The stones and bricks for borders add up fast though.

 d-usa wrote:
Nice. I want to add some areas like that along the back yard, preferably to make small areas of native plants to cut down on water and make it look nicer.

The stones and bricks for borders add up fast though.

They do. That little project right there was $115 for just the bricks. I still have to get all the dirt to put in, and the plants.

I plan on building two more of these before all is said and done.

Have to be careful with trees... When I was a kid (like 7) I brought back a cute little 10cm sapling that my parents let me plant in the yard. I can only assume they expected it to die within a year or so, like many random-childhood-plantings. Fifteen years later we had to cut it down because it was crushing the plumbing. Moral of the story is to think WAY ahead when planting a tree.

Yeah, I went with a shrubbery instead.

Got a Blue Berry bush, and a few annuals to plant around it to make it look pretty.

So far I'm up to $150 on this project, and it seems the 20 cu ft of dirt/mulch that I got wasn't enough... Probably need about 8-10 more after it's done settling.

That's why I went with the dogwood in my front garden. It's more shrub like than tree like, so it should give me the best of both worlds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 djones520 wrote:


So far I'm up to $150 on this project, and it seems the 20 cu ft of dirt/mulch that I got wasn't enough... Probably need about 8-10 more after it's done settling.

Mulch is never enough, no matter how much math I do.

When I put in the better border last year I came up with needing 12 bags of mulch. I decided to just order 20, and barely had enough.

 d-usa wrote:
That's why I went with the dogwood in my front garden. It's more shrub like than tree like, so it should give me the best of both worlds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 djones520 wrote:


So far I'm up to $150 on this project, and it seems the 20 cu ft of dirt/mulch that I got wasn't enough... Probably need about 8-10 more after it's done settling.

Mulch is never enough, no matter how much math I do.

When I put in the better border last year I came up with needing 12 bags of mulch. I decided to just order 20, and barely had enough.

When I did my food garden this spring, I ended up with 8 more bags then I needed. I used those today, bought 4 cu ft of mulch to help fill space, and then got 8 more cu ft of soil while I was out. I think I'll let this settle overnight, pick up the rest that I need tomorrow on the way home from work, and get all the plants in tomorrow.

I helped my girlfriend tear apart some pallets to build a raised garden earlier this year. It's only about a 3' x 3' space, but we're already growing several herbs in it.

I build a fence/raised bed combo the past couple of months. Requirements were to keep my sis and broinlaws dog in the back yard and not roaming.. and to make it accessible to both my girlfriends daughter in a wheelchair and her other daughters kid being able to reach things. If any of you know about square-foot-gardening. ive got 27 squares in one section and 45 in another.

Right now ive just got Tomatoes, Peppers and Taters (red ones) in the one side. and some more peppers/eggplant/raspberry/strawberries and some hens and chicks while we figure out what else we are planting.

I'm happy with it. covered all the bases. Instead of linking all the pictures here.. if you wanna see my WIP and learning process.
http://squarefoot.creatingforum.com/t21344-bryan-greenbeard-of-minnesota-s-2017-plans


please don't attach non wargaming photos to Dakka, you need to link to an off siye host if you wish to share any such images.
Reds8n

Nicely done. I got two small raised beds around a small patio I build a couple years back. They are not tall, maybe 6 inches off the ground, so I ended up having to put chicken wire all around the boxes to keep the rabbits out. I didn't plant anything this year, and I think I'm going to give it the black tarp treatment to kill everything before planting stuff next year, but what I would like to do is to use bricks or blocks to raise it up to maybe raise the beds up to 2 or 3 feet and extend it all the way around the patio. Be a more defined space, keep the rabbits out without having to use fences, and maybe have a small ledge to hold drinks and things when sitting on the patio. Will I get around to it, probably not. But it's on my wish list for the garden.

Another thing I would like to do, which I am reminded off every time I mow the lawn, is to do something about the small strip of yard that runs along the side of my house:



It's a really awkward piece of grass there. It's the furthest away from the hose, so it's a pain to water. It gets no morning or evening sun, just a direct blast of midday sun, because the plot runs east-west and both buildings shade this patch, and when it does rain the water drains through there and just pools up. The grass really doesn't like to grow there, but the weeds love it. The builder put down Bermuda grass, so maybe I just need to come up with a better type of grass and try to seed it there. What I have thought about doing in the past is to just take up all the sod there, and then put down a nice path (maybe gravel/stone) that goes from the driveway to the gate, and then put down some sort of ground cover between the path and the house. The trashcans should actually be behind the fence, although the HOA has yet to complain about that to anyone in the 8 years we've lived here, so it would also be nice to have a path to bring them in and out for trash day.

If you're going to be wheeling heavy trashcans along it a couple times a week I wouldn't recommend gravel, that would be a real PITA.

The chicken wire around mine is more to keep the dog out of it.. and deer from grazing. Bunnies here max jumping height is 40" according to state DNR. The plants surface is about 32" So really only needed ~a foot of the chicken wire. Its mostly cosmetic

if i had a slightly higher budget or no timelimit i would have used paving stones to make an awesome display.. when the current one rots will be doing so. But i had from march1-may1st to get it done, as bro-inlaw and doggy niece were moving in 01may. which gave me 1500 bucks to get it done, ended up costing about 1200 or so.. The stone pavers i liked would cost about 4x-5x as some of them were solar bricks..

If you do a walk with gravel.. you could rig something like this picture. We used just a couple of the pickets to make rolling the wheelchair over the hemp walk easier. They come in 6' lengths, Could nail or bolt or screw one crossways so you can just pick up and drop the whole 6' section before ya run the trashcans down to curb. may end up being a PIA. But this works for us here.

 feeder wrote:
If you're going to be wheeling heavy trashcans along it a couple times a week I wouldn't recommend gravel, that would be a real PITA.

+1
The people in our neighborhood with gravel driveways tend to leave their trash cans by the curb all week long because wheeling/dragging them along gravel is a PITA and it's also noisy as hell. If pavers are too pricy one alternative that I've seen people do is take tree trunks and cut slices off and use those as pavers. It's pretty quick and easy with a chainsaw and there's enough trees in our area that we always have fallen ones to cut up so replacing them is never a problem.

I've become a gardener since buying my first house. We have a big back yard that gets plenty of sun, so it only made sense.
The first year i did only potted plants, but it went pretty well. The second year I decided that i would till up a nice little 10'x10'ish spot and have a go at some basic gardening. However, word got to my wife's father (a farmer) and he decided to do the tilling for us. He showed up at my house with a tractor on a trailer, and a 10' wide tiller attachment. My little 10'x10' starter turned in to a 25'x16' bed instead. Suffice to say, I'm still growing into it (slight pun intended).
I'm on year three now, and the local rabbits have become the bane of my existence. I've had to start almost everything twice over because those furballs keep finding ways into the beds ><

The only time I did green thumb was while I was painting some Dark Angels and accidentally touched the brush while I was doing the armor. Oh, wait...

I'll see myself out...

City finally came and took down a dead Ash tree on my parkway...thanks again China, for the Emerald Ash Borer import! Tomorrow, I haul away the debris and ground up stump/roots and lay some sod. While I do this, I'll be thinking of this...

http://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/celebrity/christie-brinkley-says-she-gardens-in-a-bikini-to-avoid-weird-tan-lines/ar-BBCaLXW?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=ASUDHP

I pulled my first bag of potatoes today, and I deeply, deeply screwed up: despite lush foliage there were virtually no potatoes, a tiny little yield.

It's possible I just had one bad bag and I'll know for sure when I keep digging but I think they're all going to be like that. Last year I mixed compost in with the fertilizer and this year I didn't and I think I learned a valuable lesson.

with my batch of potatoes. i learned abit about them this year.

They flower, then the foliage dies off a few week later. I pulled them when the greenary was about 2/3 wilted.

Mine were supposed to take 120 days, mine grew in the ground for exactly 60 days.

I was disappointed in the yeild. Very happy with quality, just not quanity. I had 12 squares in the garden a foot squared with 4 tater plants in each and averaged 1/2 pound of those taters per square. which is totally normal yeild.

I used the mel's mix (1/3 vermiculite or perlite, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 5 different types of composts) only watered no chemicals at all. kinda pricy mix as the vermiculite is a tad much) as my grow material. I did not cover up the plants when they grew so they only had the 8" of soil to grow into.

I found my taters all within 3" of the surface. basically nothing below my "seed tater level"

Last year I did great - I probably got 2 pounds of potatoes per bag. The only thing I did different was instead of straight soil, I used 2:1 soil and compost. Otherwise just as you did, only water.

Well, next year I will be smarter and do it right. As for this year, at least I can try planting some garlic in October.

I LOVE gardening and farming but have no real experience rather than some little flowers and indoor plants, most of which died...

We heard that cutting the branches off the potatoes a week or two before digging them up gets the skins a bit tougher.
We'll be digging them up this weekend.

let me know how yer tater yeild was.. i was kinda disapointed with mine, then again i did pull them 60 days early but the tops 3/4s were dead of the flower Not disapointed enough to give up growing taters.. infact im planning a 4'x12' bed or them next year..

Same with the peppers. Ill keep the tomatoes in the first 3'x12' bed as im the only one that eats toms here.

The spuds came out quite well. Some are 3x the size of normal ones, so Herself is sorted for baked potato lunches.

Does growing vegetables via aquaponics count? Last year I had lettuce, celery, and tomatoes growing indoors. The tomato plant was massive, but yielded average fruit (inexperience on my part I think), the lettuce and celery were outstanding though. Leading to the family joke "do you want lettuce on that", every sandwich in my lunch box had lettuce on it.
This year it's chilies, as you can only eat so much lettuce.
Outside potatoes did OK, my gooseberry bushes died due too my dog digging.
So green thumb probably not.

Almost forgot about this thread. Let's see, we've had 1 harvest of 6 Eggplants which were turned into Moussaka...nom, nom...and also sliced and fried as a side. Tomatoes, forget about it! We did Roma(Plum), Cherry and Beefsteak. I've made and canned more sauces than I can count. My wife found a recipe for Cherry Tomato Pie using the CTs, herbs, Parmesan and Ricotta which was just beautifully savory. Still some stragglers ripening on the vine, but the rush is over. Bell Peppers, Jalapenos and Chili Peppers have flourished. Herbs have been great, but the Rosemary has been woefully disappointing. Leeks aren't ready yet, but the Cucumbers have given us about a half dozen medium sized pieces...probably haven't watered them enough.

We only do organic. The beds are Top Soil and Compost mix. The bulk of the compost is from our own bins, but we buff it with some mushroom manure from the garden shop. My wife uses some stinky ass organic fish liquid for feeding the plants. I forget the name and I'm not going out to the garage to find out, but it comes in a large Clorox bleach-type bottle.

Anyways, that's it for the veggie garden. Next on the agenda is deadheading the seed pods from the Milkweed and spreading the seeds around the alleyways of the neighborhood to help out the Butterflies.

cleaned out the garden yesterday, as snow will be falling on friday.

ended up with so many tomatoes, alot alot of them. a few peppers, and a butt load of pumpkins. bigs ones i had 7 or 8 of them.. and little ones 9 of them.

One jack be little still growing.