My first year, turned my lawn into rows by dumping a lot of mulched leaves on the grass and planting into it. No tilling, no amendments, no fertilizer. Very little weeding. I spent about 25 hours over the whole season on this project.
All in, got 150lb of veggies in 600sq ft of bed space.
Big Successes:
tomatoes
green beans
pumpkins
zucchini
ground cherries
turnips
Mild Successes:
radishes
cucumbers
dry beans
dent corn
sweet peas
basil
sage
sweet peppers
bell peppers
melon
Total failures (no harvest):
chard
cabbage
kale
brussel sprouts
okra
dill
cilantro
tomatillos
hot peppers
I cleared everything out and planted a winter cover crop, hoping to improve the soil quality over the winter. I might take next year off also and do another rotation of soil improving crops. I don’t really feel like tilling.
Im surprised chard didn’t work well for you; it’s basically the easiest crop where i’m at. No pests, grows basically year round (i kept a plant going for 3 years), and not too sensitive to heat.
Same thing with kale, but that depends on the cultivar. Lacinato is really thick and waxy, so it handles cold and heat and drought well.
Peppers, from what i understand, are actually perennial plants that we just grow as annuals, so you really gotta start them indoors early. Hot peppers especially seem to be slow for me, but then one day I realize I have 1,000. You can actually prune them back and overwinter them if you don’t mind digging them up and have a place to store them.
The chard just wouldn’t germinate. Finally I got a few to sprout but they died off within two weeks.
The hot peppers were in 5gal buckets so I could start them early, but they just struggled so much and didn’t survive the transition from inside to outside. Funny because I did the same process with some sweet peppers and they all survived (but I only got a few peppers total from them).
Oh yeah, I also tried lettuce and spinach a few times, none got past an inch high before dying. I suspect that’s because these weaker plants don’t like being planted in a few inches of leaf mulch.
A lot of my failures are due to that it’s just the first year, and the soil was just chopped up leaves and rotting lawn grass with heavy clay below that. Next year I hope the soil will have improved and some things will grow better. I’ve got a mix of of buckwheat, vetch, winter peas, and rye growing in the beds now. I plan to kill that with a tarp in the spring and use the plant matter as a mulch. I hope this will help break up some of the clay and make it easier for the less hardy annuals to establish.
I have very little time to spend on it, so gardening is my super laid back hobby. I come out and putter around, but generally try to grow things with as little effort as possible using cover crops, no-till, and tarps to kill off beds that get too unruly.
Meanwhile I’m also working on perennials to add to the mix of low effort treats. I’ve got a quarter acre yard with a lot of thick clay, so every year is just a good chance to break it up with deep rooted crops and nitrogen fixers.
My dream is in 5 years I’ll have excellent soil for the annuals to thrive, and perennials producing more fruit than I can possibly eat.
Chard has weird seeds. They are usually multigerm (so multiple seeds in one), and the seed is chunky and I’ve found it often doesnt want to let the cotyledons out. I start my chard indoors, and if it sprouts where the seed essentially raises up out of the soil, I’ll just make sure to keep them moist by spraying with water, and sometimes I’ll use tweezers to remove the shell of the seed off of the seedling.
I’ve heard daikon radishes are a great plant to break up the soil since they get so big, and you can just let them rot in place. I’ve never grown any since I don’t own any land, and everything I grow is in potting mix or soil that I’ve purchased.
I did do peas and rye as a cover crop on some bigger planters this past spring, with the intention that I’d kill it off in sections as I planted stuff. That was a big mistake cause it’s pretty hard to kill rye like that. If i do it again, it’ll have to be peas with something else to provide some structure.
Nice gardening project for you then! You’ve also got a nice big haul from your crops which is always satisfying seeing your hard work pull through, plus it’s fresher. Shame about the others that didn’t work well for you but hopefully you’ll be able to try again next year and maybe it’ll grow then, climate/weather willing.
I’m very excited to plant more perennials in the spring, this year I started grapes, asparagus, and ground cherries (I’ve heard they reseed easily so basically perennial).
I want to do more in the spring, thinking blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, elderberries, goji berries, maybe currants, gooseberries, service berries, mulberry, cherry, pawpaw, persimmon, and apple.
I figure if even half of that does well, in a few years I’ll be swimming in nightly berry desserts.
Maybe I’ll just improve the soil in the annual beds for at least another year before trying them out again. We will see
My first year, turned my lawn into rows by dumping a lot of mulched leaves on the grass and planting into it. No tilling, no amendments, no fertilizer. Very little weeding. I spent about 25 hours over the whole season on this project.
All in, got 150lb of veggies in 600sq ft of bed space.
Big Successes:
Mild Successes:
Total failures (no harvest):
I cleared everything out and planted a winter cover crop, hoping to improve the soil quality over the winter. I might take next year off also and do another rotation of soil improving crops. I don’t really feel like tilling.
Im surprised chard didn’t work well for you; it’s basically the easiest crop where i’m at. No pests, grows basically year round (i kept a plant going for 3 years), and not too sensitive to heat.
Same thing with kale, but that depends on the cultivar. Lacinato is really thick and waxy, so it handles cold and heat and drought well.
Peppers, from what i understand, are actually perennial plants that we just grow as annuals, so you really gotta start them indoors early. Hot peppers especially seem to be slow for me, but then one day I realize I have 1,000. You can actually prune them back and overwinter them if you don’t mind digging them up and have a place to store them.
The chard just wouldn’t germinate. Finally I got a few to sprout but they died off within two weeks.
The hot peppers were in 5gal buckets so I could start them early, but they just struggled so much and didn’t survive the transition from inside to outside. Funny because I did the same process with some sweet peppers and they all survived (but I only got a few peppers total from them).
Oh yeah, I also tried lettuce and spinach a few times, none got past an inch high before dying. I suspect that’s because these weaker plants don’t like being planted in a few inches of leaf mulch.
A lot of my failures are due to that it’s just the first year, and the soil was just chopped up leaves and rotting lawn grass with heavy clay below that. Next year I hope the soil will have improved and some things will grow better. I’ve got a mix of of buckwheat, vetch, winter peas, and rye growing in the beds now. I plan to kill that with a tarp in the spring and use the plant matter as a mulch. I hope this will help break up some of the clay and make it easier for the less hardy annuals to establish.
I have very little time to spend on it, so gardening is my super laid back hobby. I come out and putter around, but generally try to grow things with as little effort as possible using cover crops, no-till, and tarps to kill off beds that get too unruly.
Meanwhile I’m also working on perennials to add to the mix of low effort treats. I’ve got a quarter acre yard with a lot of thick clay, so every year is just a good chance to break it up with deep rooted crops and nitrogen fixers.
My dream is in 5 years I’ll have excellent soil for the annuals to thrive, and perennials producing more fruit than I can possibly eat.
Chard has weird seeds. They are usually multigerm (so multiple seeds in one), and the seed is chunky and I’ve found it often doesnt want to let the cotyledons out. I start my chard indoors, and if it sprouts where the seed essentially raises up out of the soil, I’ll just make sure to keep them moist by spraying with water, and sometimes I’ll use tweezers to remove the shell of the seed off of the seedling.
I’ve heard daikon radishes are a great plant to break up the soil since they get so big, and you can just let them rot in place. I’ve never grown any since I don’t own any land, and everything I grow is in potting mix or soil that I’ve purchased.
I did do peas and rye as a cover crop on some bigger planters this past spring, with the intention that I’d kill it off in sections as I planted stuff. That was a big mistake cause it’s pretty hard to kill rye like that. If i do it again, it’ll have to be peas with something else to provide some structure.
Nice gardening project for you then! You’ve also got a nice big haul from your crops which is always satisfying seeing your hard work pull through, plus it’s fresher. Shame about the others that didn’t work well for you but hopefully you’ll be able to try again next year and maybe it’ll grow then, climate/weather willing.
Oh I loved it, it was great fun!
I’m very excited to plant more perennials in the spring, this year I started grapes, asparagus, and ground cherries (I’ve heard they reseed easily so basically perennial).
I want to do more in the spring, thinking blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, elderberries, goji berries, maybe currants, gooseberries, service berries, mulberry, cherry, pawpaw, persimmon, and apple.
I figure if even half of that does well, in a few years I’ll be swimming in nightly berry desserts.
Maybe I’ll just improve the soil in the annual beds for at least another year before trying them out again. We will see