# new garden



## beats workin (Dec 30, 2009)

hi all i have started a new garden 65x25 approx i have never had a garden except for the few tomatoe plants last year. i rototilled it and i also have a spring tined drag rake that i pulled behind my quad , i have raked up all of the sod pieces and got lime (sandy soil) and organic fertilizer what else so i need?? im planning to plan corn ,pees,beans,squash,pumkin,watermelon,cantalope,radish ,lettuce maybee some others is there anything else i need to do? i have not planted anything yet i plan on soing that next week 11th or 12th? any info would help thanks!!


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## stickem (Oct 31, 2007)

id put some cow manure in it


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## agross (Jan 18, 2009)

horse manure


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## Wendy (Oct 6, 2008)

Ditto on the horse manure... it's better than cow!


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## Backwoods-Savage (Aug 28, 2005)

Horse manure should be stacked for a year before using on the garden. In addition to this there are almost always a big bunch of slugs in horse manure. Nasty things.


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## Sib (Jan 8, 2003)

Do a bit of research on the plants you're planting. Not all plants prefer the same situation. For instance, now's a great time for planting peas, as they prefer the cooler spring weather, but beans like hot long days, so I don't plant beans until labor day. The best gardeners know what each plants prefer and plant according to the species preferences. Now is a good time for lettuce, too. Seems a bit early for watermelon and cantaloupe. Remember it's not even May yet. It's been unseasonably warm and things could swing back around to average before summer gets here.


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## Riverdale (Jun 19, 2009)

Rabbit and goat pooh can be put right on the garden without burning the plants. We compost our chicken pooh for a year before we use it.


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## GERRYE (Dec 18, 2006)

Composted manure is the way to go. Horses don't digest the seeds in the hay (grass) they eat, so by using fresh manure you will be planting grass and possably other seeds in your new found joy. Radishes will grow well early on. I usaly wait till mid May to get the garden planted. The harder you work at keeping the weeds pulled early on the better it will be in the long run. You will also find as the summer goes on different weeds will start later in the season. Hope this helps. Good luck and enjoy.


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## Sib (Jan 8, 2003)

How everybody enjoying the weeding and hoeing? :lol: Haven't had to sprinkle this season, yet, thanks to nature, giving me lots of hoeing time. I think composted manure is a good product but it does come with plenty of weed seeds.

I did one garden with preen and one without, the preen probably cuts 80% of the weeds compared to the garden without preen.

Our peas are almost done, and have already had a few tomatoes and peppers. Been using fresh herbs in the kitchen, too. Not a great raspberry year this year, a little too much moisture, but rhubarb is growing like crazy. Overall a good 1st half to the gardening season.


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## William H Bonney (Jan 14, 2003)

This will be the second year in a row with NO WEEDING!!!:woohoo1:

I tilled mine, mulched it, waited two weeks, tilled and mulched again, then planted. After I planted I laid down newspaper as a weed barrier, then keep throwing the grass clippings on top of the newspaper every week!! It's kind of a PITA laying down the newspaper,,,, not as big of a PITA as weeding though...


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## Sib (Jan 8, 2003)

William H Bonney said:


> This will be the second year in a row with NO WEEDING!!!:woohoo1:
> 
> I tilled mine, mulched it, waited two weeks, tilled and mulched again, then planted. After I planted I laid down newspaper as a weed barrier, then keep throwing the grass clippings on top of the newspaper every week!! It's kind of a PITA laying down the newspaper,,,, not as big of a PITA as weeding though...


Used to do the lawn clippings thing as a kid at my parents place. Can't really get away with that today because of my "country lawn." Country lawn is a mix of about 50/50 grass to weeds. :lol:


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## PerchOnly (Oct 24, 2007)

I too am using the newspaper with good results this year vs. previous attempts.

Some things I am doing different, soaking the newspaper in a bucket first seems to help the paper conform to the ground. 

I don't skimp on the paper, I cover the area at least 3 or 4 sheets of paper thick.

After I spread the paper out, I lightly toss dirt on top to hold the paper down. Not a lot, just enough to hold it down. I have had to go back and toss on a little more dirt after some rains, but that is a lot easier than the hoe.


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## William H Bonney (Jan 14, 2003)

PerchOnly said:


> I too am using the newspaper with good results this year vs. previous attempts.
> 
> Some things I am doing different, soaking the newspaper in a bucket first seems to help the paper conform to the ground.
> 
> ...


Yeah, I would just lay down a row of paper then soak it with the hose, then throw the clippings on to keep it down.


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## Landsend (Dec 22, 2006)

Call me crazy but my grandma had the secret recipe for her garden. When dad and I would go fishing she would demand we throw the scraps in her garden. We would dig a hole and bury the fish in various spots and WOW :yikes: she had the best garden on the block!

I tried that with our garden and my wife said she would punch me in the face if I did it :sad:. So we just use Miracle gro with decent results.


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## Backwoods-Savage (Aug 28, 2005)

After we plant our gardens and the crop comes up we then cover all the bare ground (after hoeing) with straw. We live on sand. Sand doesn't hold moisture worth a hoot but having the straw down does help to hold more moisture and it also stops most grass and weeds from growing.

In the fall, we rake off what straw we can and just pile it up (some will go to covering strawberries) and then till in the rest. The following spring we then repeat the process. 

Not only does this cut down on growth of grass and weeds, it holds moisture and helps to put something back into the ground, rather than just taking from the ground. We also have areas around the fruit trees, strawberries and raspberries. It surely saves us a lot of work in the end. 

This year is a good example. I was away from home almost 6 weeks straight. We got the gardens covered before I left. It was really dry when I got home and I was ready to haul water to the gardens but fortunately we've got rain just in time. But can you imagine what those gardens would have looked like had we not covered them with straw?! Not only would they be ridiculously dry but the weeds would have totally taken over. Instead, all is well in the gardens.


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## RDS-1025 (Dec 1, 2008)

Definitely agree with the straw.
Started a new tomato patch this year and went from scraping the grass layer off, amending the soil a bit, tilling, easyweeding, planting, covering with straw, and forget. Have not had to weed once this year and the moisture it holds is awesome with this heat lately.

P.S. Landsend, the pain only lasts a short time and the results of fish over miracle-gro are worth it.:lol:


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## Ausable Junkie (Oct 2, 2002)

I composted our chicken manure, alternating it with layers of chopped up oak leaves. The people I got the idea from call it "The lasagna method". I started with about a 4" layer of the leaves then wetted it down with the garden hose......wetted, not soaked though. Next went a similar layer of the fresh full-strength chicken manure, also wetted with the hose. I kept building the compost pile up in layers like this. Each layer got dampened with the hose.

In 3-4 days I stuck a long thermometer into the pile and got a temp of about 160 degrees! The microbes were definitely doing their job breaking the materials down. After about a month, I shoveled the pile into my finishing bin in 3-4" layers wetting it once again. After another month of composting, I ended up with some super rich composted manure ready for use in the garden. This layering & wetting gets things composted much faster than just putting the poop in a pile.


The maure started out smelling like the potent ammonia odor that cat litter boxes get when they've gone too long without being cleaned. The finished product smells earthy and has no trace of the ammonia smell. "Hot composting" like this kills the bad pathogens that people are afraid of when they think of manure. Instead of casting the composted manure across the whole garden, I just used it in the soil under where the plants were. A big heaping shovel under each of the seedlings (tomatoes, peppers, etc.) has done wonders for us. Not a single plant showed any signs of fertilizer burn.

Like Backwoods, we are in very sandy soil here too. The oak leaves in the mix have really helped with water retention. 


Results?? I'm afraid to walk around the tomato plants for fear that I might get mugged.:lol: This is the best our garden has ever looked. We're not just getting giant plants, but also buku fruits and veggies.


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