I wish someone would set up a website where articles and instructions for example could be presented for general useage so that everyone might be able to do such things. Especially help for different people in different climates, instead of assuming that everyone lives in the middle of a large area of fertile and freely available land.
The closest I have come to is the Geoff Lawton series, as long as you can get past his almost hippie-esque attitude. He at least presents vids that show possibilities for differing climates with already-done examples. What I am looking for though is more specific instructions as well as help from others who have already had experience with similar climates of people who are trying to successfully grow things as well.
Start out with patio tomatoes grown in containers and learn your way through that. If your soil isn’t a good, rich soil it can be corrected with some sphagnum peat and Black Cow, both cheap at any home center such as Lowe’s. Keep the soil from drying out completely down beneath the surface, but don’t overwater either, you’ll drown the plant. Container needs drainage to help prevent this.
There are certain pests that bother certain plants. Tomato sornworms, etc., wear gloves and pick those off. Ladybugs eat most garden pests as do praying mantis. Wiping the plant with warm slightly soapy water will kill aphids without use of pesticide.
Branch out from there next year. You’ll probably kill one or two of the plants your first go if you’ve never done it. But, it’s not rocket science.
I have done intensive organic gardening for years. Only takes a plot of land roughly 20 x 15. Contact your local county ag agent or as I did the U. of Ky many years ago. UK offered a calculator that once you fed in the type of veggies you wanted to grow you got a estimated cash value of your efforts.
When you set up your garden produce the higher priced veggies so you can save the most money. Make your garden almost maintenance free with the use of black landscape material that keeps the weeds from germinating, plant your rows close to together and use boards to walk on. Green beans are easy to do by buying if you can find them in your area tobacco sticks. Take two sticks cross them at the top take two more cross them at the top and stick them in the ground lay on a cross bar and then tie strings to the cross bars and then use twigs as stakes. The beans will climb the strings and tobacco sticks and you end up with a wall of beans over waist high instead staying bent over to pick them. I have a bad back so this helps. Electric ties to hook together the cross bars and x’s you have formed work well as will string or pieces of cloth.
Something else I used was cattle fencing for cucumbers, just mound your cucumbers as you normally would and make a cylinder a couple of feet across, cut the cross wire at the bottom to secure the cylinder in the ground around the plant, tie two tobacco sticks to the column after driving the sticks in the ground and cut out an occasional square here and there in your column so it is easier to harvest the cucumbers. You then have a column of cucumbers instead of them taking a bunch of space on the ground and being vulnerable to being unseen by you and stepped on or something getting to them. The cucs will hang as they climb the column and there is much less bending over this way.
Run a water hose and attach a couple of sprinklers down the middle of your garden for dry days. Turn the hose on for 45 minutes and don’t worry about.
Use heirloom tomatoes as the skin is thinner and they are much better tasting tomatoes.
I could tell you other things you can do but that would take the fun out of it. The amount you can grow is only limited by your imagination. I did not go to school for this stuff it is just common sense.
I am basically a lazy person though I find gardening relaxing I have limited time and so I always look at my jobs and figure out how to do it with least effort. I raised a 40x20 garden and fed the whole neighborhood, no one was growing anything till I showed up, now they all are. Another way is box or terrace gardening if you have limited space. Purely organic gardening is tough unless you have knowledge of natural pest control. I know a little but a bag of seven dust goes a long way. There is tons of materials on the net and a zillion books on this subject. Just go to the college bookstore near you that offers the courses and buy the study materials. Cheaper and less time consuming than college.
I don't garden but am interested in starting a upright, self-watering, soda bottle garden in my condo. Just today, I reviewed several videos on how to do this.
Certification from a university? Really? My grandparents would have a good laugh at that.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3154134/posts
Weekly Gardening Tread, a regular Freeper feature for several years, with a LOT of members, at all skill levels, from newbie to professional, and all willing to help.
Liked your posting.
Why don’t these “genuises” of gardening ever publish anything about how people lived during WW II, when we were growing all types of fruits and vegetables in our Victory Gardens? Soil preparation, drainage, bone meal, etc., worked well then.
Every house on my street had a garden, but folks would grow different types of food so that it could be shared and swapped with neighbors. Women would gather at different times at each others’ houses to help can the food.
As a young kid, I recall taking the egg shells and coffee grounds to spread around various plants in the garden. I also worked in the plantings and harvests. We had peaches, plums, apples, grapes, figs, cherries, straw/black/raspberries, onions, tomatoes, carrots, turnips, etc. We shared with neighbors who grew corn, potatoes, etc.
Gardening is not a mysterious science.