oh wow, a gardening thread. i wouldn't have guessed that from the thread title.
i was expecting talk about home improvement / remodeling projects.
but anyway . . . i love gardening; pretty much just vegetables. (this will be a long post because i'm playing catch-up.)
i got into it from living with my aunt & uncle for three summers a long while back. my uncle loved it and said to me, i like the idea that i can get so much from so little. it kinda stuck with me.
for the last few years i've had a variety of peppers and tomatoes and each year play with something else; beans, cucumbers, onions, cilantro, watermelon, eggplant, zucchini, strawberries, and grapes. each with their own successes and failures.
last couple years i haven't been able to work one though. last year we were selling our house and didn't have the time to put into it nor did we need the yard clutter. and this year, moving into a different house, getting settled in we don't have the time again.
i loved experimenting with different ways to water them. we watered it by hand at first, standing there spraying with a hose got old quickly.
so the next year we bought a couple sprinklers, which was well and good, but you have to remember to turn on the water.
the solution the next year was buying a timer to hook to the outside faucet. it worked incredibly well. but i ended up unhappy with how much i was also watering my lawn with the sprinkler.
the next year i put together my own irrigation pipes. no more spraying water all over the place and each plant got it's own drinking fountain.
i was getting ready to set up a rain barrel when we decided to move.
years ago, a house my wife and i rented for a couple years we had a small garden with just tomatoes and peppers and i decided to experiment with
vermiculture for fertile soil and worm-tea. i even got my own little setup with three totes and a prolific worm community going until we decided to buy our own place.
as far as insect and rodent control, we didn't really have an issue with it. we lived in the middle of town and didn't see much in the way of rodents. i noticed some half eaten cherry tomatoes once in a while but it wasn't ever enough for me to put a stop to it. once in a while i'd catch a moment of the little ground-squirrel eating a tomato, it was cute. plus, we have three small dogs. maybe there was enough dog pee & poop in the yard to steer rodents away. not a big problem with bugs either.
@"DigModiFicaTion" , next time you're in iowa, look me up. we can swap fanedit and gardening stories.
