I was looking at some great posts on you guys building onto your houses. How about big vegtable gardens. Florida has too many bugs and bad soil. Who has a big garden. Some of you guys have lots of land.
I have lots of land, if 8.6 acres is considered "a lot", but the garden is only four 12' x 4' raised beds as well as two 4' x 4' raised beds. Plus throw in eight 5 gallon buckets used for Tomato plants, Broccoli and a Cucumber bush.
Since it is just the wife and I, that is all we really need, and we can some of it.
Since I got old I garden a bit now. Carrots and radishes are my favs, but try out new things. I've got 1000 year old tobacco going inside now, supposed to be lots of flowers for the bees, but not a good smoker. Gave up on kale and cabbage as the cabbage moths eat them first. Not a real big garden though.
Since I'm Canadian I was growing my 4 weed plants the last 3-4 years but I don't really like the outside stuff that much, besides it's real cheap to buy now. I did have some big pot plants though.
We just got two 4'x8' raised beds, I filled them with a mix of topsoil and compost, then we planted some tomato plants, bell pepper plants, squash and zucchini, cucumbers, and green beans. Planted them at the end of April just as we thought temps were starting to get mild around here but a week after the plant, temps cooled down again. The greenery has persisted but nothing has fruited as of yet.
Next year (if my wife decides she wants to try again) we'll wait until mid-May to make sure temps are more stable.
Well...things have changed slightly in our garden.
My wife asked her uncle - who is part of the local farm bureau - what we might've done wrong, if there's anything we could do different...he said to try throwing some 10/10/10 into the soil. So we went and bought a bag, mixed a bit into the soil and now things are kinda starting to happen.
All the plants are really greening up now. The cucumber and squash plants have really started growing...there's one cucumber starting to fruit and a zucchini...one of the tomato plants is starting to fruit, and the bell pepper plants are starting to get some blooms on them.
Meanwhile, her mother had started some plants from just seeds around the same time we planted our garden bed and they're doing very well in just pots. WTF.
Planted one year and they grew like crazy. Bush was 6 feet tall and I had to tie it to the fence. 8-10 plants growing like crazy.
Subsequent years, can't get them to grow. They are getting smller and smaller. This year, they have barely grown more than 5-6" more than when i planted them. I've mixed in some different types of ferts. Not sure what i'm missing here