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What are you growing in your fruit/vegetable garden?
If you're comfortable with listing your country or hemisphere maybe include that for context
If you're comfortable with listing your country or hemisphere maybe include that for context
I don't have a fruit/veg garden yet (though I do intend to put in one this spring), but about 5 months ago I got an Aerogarden (tabletop hydroponic+grow light station), and have been growing herbs in and around it (since the light reaches far enough to support several additional potted plants).
So far I have 2x Genovese Basil, 2x Sweet Basil, 1x Thai Basil, Mint, Thyme, Dill, Chives, Flat-leaf Parsley, and Curly Parsley. However, I plan on replacing the parsley (which I never use, since I hate it) with Cilantro and Rosemary, and adding a few more pots for Sage, Oregano and a few other herbs, if I can think of more.
Pic from a few months ago, though it's all grown A LOT since then. In a household of 3, cooking all our own meals every day, we can barely keep up with the production... so I have resorted to making things like pesto (which uses a lot of basil), and adding mint to all my daily cocktails+smoothies, just to make use of all the herbs we're growing. :P
p.s. I'm in the northern hemisphere (Ontario, Canada)... so we can't grow much outdoors right now. ;)
That indoor herb garden you have looks amazing! I always hear about people growing stuff like that indoors, but never realized how lush it could be until looking at your photo.
If you think that's amazingly lush, you should see it now! (pic from a few min ago)
It really is kinda crazy how much it produces even in the dead of winter here. We genuinely can't keep up with it, even with me going out of my way to use the herbs in every dish I can think of, and giving a fair amount to my sister and her family too.
Despite that, I honestly do have a hard time recommending it though, simply because it was insanely expensive (over $300), and you can probably DIY for significantly less. But it's been great for us, especially with the lockdowns and grocery supply chain disruptions here in Ontario, and so I am glad I purchased it.
One could DIY one of those if they were inclined, but looking at that last photo, and knowing how much the cost of fresh herbs can be, I'd say that economically it's a win (if one has the upfront money of course).
My house is so cold through the winter months that I'd have to convert a closet to a grow room and heat it to see that kind of growth.
Yeah definitely. It's been 6-ish months, and we have easily gotten our money's worth out of it already, for sure. Especially since we're an Italian-Canadian household, so typically go through a buttload of fresh basil, thyme, etc. anyways. And that's also why a tomato heavy garden is my plan for a spring project too... We ❤️ Bruschetta! :P
p.s. Why is your home is so cold in the winter, do you just prefer it that way? My mother would probably love living with you, if that's the case. She keeps her bedroom window wide open, even in the dead of winter. ;)
I also plan on a tomato heavy garden this year. It's been a few years since I've done so, and I am looking forward to making sauces to bring out through the winter months.
We've always kept our house on the cooler side. When we had central heat, we kept it around 65 during the day and 58 at night and when no one as home. This house is heated by wood, and we're in the middle of "who's job is it to keep the house warm" drama. The house seems to naturally keep itself at 55 degrees unless the outside dips into the 30s for a couple of nights or more, at which time the inside temps dip into into the 40s.
I would love to keep my bedroom window open year round, but the winter is so wet here that the bedroom becomes a moist, mildewy mess if I leave it open.
By DIY, I meant just building a simple hydroponic station with a grow light, which you can do relatively easily and cheaply, and would likely get you pretty similar results in the end. See: Instructables - Hydroponics.
But yeah, if you want all the same fancy features as the Aerogarden, that would definitely be significantly more difficult to DIY. :P
I'm in Australia and I've currently got the following currently in the ground/pots/grow bag:
Today I planted these in a seedling tray:
These are a bit early but we've had a relatively mild summer so I'm hoping to get the jump on Autumn/Winter crops.
Next weekend some friends are going to run me through pickling some of my radishes. I'm excited to get in to preserving what we don't eat immediately!
Ooh, ooh, pick me!
Very Northern Hemisphere here, 45° N and not too far from cfabbro's locale. I'm just getting indoor seed-starting underway, with estimated last frost date in mid-May. Climate change has made this an erratic prediction; winter is running 8 - 10°C warmer than historical norms so far this year.
We have about 30 m2 of raised beds to fill, and a rolling, partially wooded half-hectare of sandy loam, mostly trees and landscape plantings.
We're working to build an edible permaculture landscape. So far, there are immature fruit trees - 2 heirloom apple varieties, a mulberry, and a couple of cherries. We have blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus. Planned perennial plantings for the coming year are hedge blueberries, plums, gooseberries, currants, hazelnuts (filberts), elderberries, and Nanking cherry. We may give hardier peach or nectarine tree varieties a try. Longer term, and with some construction, a vine arbor for grapes, kiwifruit, and ornamental clematis.
The perennial herbs are in landscape plantings - multicolor bergamot, several thymes, oregano, sage, chamomile, rosemary, lavender, yarrow, multicolor echinacea, tarragon, winter savory, verbena, wintergreen, mints, juniper. Actually, the mints are kind of all over the place, as they are wont to be. It's a shame the cats are immune to catnip.
There are a few traditional medicinal/ornamentals - foxglove, hellebore, artemisia (wormwood), milkweed, etc., though I don't recommend messing around with these at all. Standardized doses of active ingredients with high ratios of dose to toxicity threshold, under medical supervision, please.
We've got an oyster mushroom bed started in a wooded area, and shiitake plugs on the way for spring. There may be other medicinal🍄 beds coming, though grow bags work great for those.
Planned annual seeds so far are:
Hot peppers - Thai, chocolate Poblano, ghost peppers, etc. These are weirdly hard to get locally. I need to start them very early indoors, as we've only got about 100 reliable days of frost-free growing season.
3 varieties of kale (Lacinato, tender curled leaf, and something purple)
Rocket (arugula)
5 kinds of leaf lettuce
Tatsoi, Mizuna
Spinach, two varieties
Fennel - Florence and bronze
Nasturtiums (pretty, tasty - nearly all parts are edible, useful for companion planting to repel insects, and super-easy to seed-save)
Peas - snow, sugar snaps, and shelling
Multiple varieties of bush and climbing beans (mostly heirlooms, but a few hybrids because mildews and bean viruses are problematic here)
Tomatoes - about 20 varieties, because just-picked garden tomatoes are nearly as good as sex
Tomatillos
Parsley, curled and flat-leaf
Cilantro, chervil, dill
Basil - Genovese, Thai, Chinese, lemon
Carrots, 4 varieties
Radishes - daikon and multicolor globe
Japanese eggplant - not a fan of the woodier, tougher European-style eggplants
Red burgundy okra
beets - bull's-eye and yellow
rainbow chard
3 varieties of garlic
Shallots
Scallions
A couple of smaller onion varieties for pearl onions, and cipollines
Chives
Marigolds
Zinnias
Sunflowers
Sweet peas (not edible seed, unfortunately)
Snapdragons
Nigella (edible seed)
Cosmos
I've found it's mostly not a good investment of scarce raised-bed space to plant brassicas (cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts) and sprawly vines (zucchini, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, melons). I'd love to plant corn and potatoes, but there's not really enough level, unshaded area. We're fortunate to live near farms that can provide these in abundance, if not every variety I want to try. I might carve out a little space for Oriental vegetables like Japanese cucumber, Chinese long-stem broccoli, and baby bok choi that are otherwise hard to get.
I'm going to try lemongrass and ginger in containers, brought inside for winter. We've got thriving windowsill bay plant and English lavender.
Gardens are a life's work and the basis for physical and mental health. Everyone should have access to a space where they can grow and cultivate at least some of the food they consume.
I'm in Canadian Plant Hardiness Zone 5 and in suburbia! My entire front yard is a flower garden, and I have a small raised bed in my side-yard for vegetables. I have a large backyard, but my house is on a hill and my backyard faces a private street so I need to do some landscaping to make it accessible and nice before I invest time there.
Decoratively I grow all kinds of things that kind of came with the house - so I'm not sure what all of them are, really. I do have a huge abundance of daylilies. I also have a ton of hostas, bleeding hearts, tulips, salvia, poppies, and plant with bell-shaped white flowers that I can't remember the name of right now (I think it's "Saint" something). My favourites are the peonies, which are well-established and huge, and my cheery forsythia bush.
For gardening for food, last year I planted a bunch of stuff and this year I'm going in on what I was most successful with. I am doing more tomatoes and peas and basil and kale. I'm going to give squash another go - last summer I didn't get a single female bloom until too late in the season for it to develop properly, so I don't know what that was about. I'm going to try beets and peppers as new plants this year. Oh, and outside the raised beds I have rhubarb and ground cherries.
I'm dropping stuff I was less successful with. I'm not doing lettuce (didn't like it much anyway) or broccoli, and potatoes turned out fine but I don't think the effort/reward there worked out... I live in potato county anyway, and the local farmers have me fully outclassed in terms of quality.
In the future once I have more space I'd like to do strawberries! I think tomatoes and strawberries are two crops where industrial farming just doesn't cut it.
I haven't started anything yet... last year's weather was weird and caused some issues, so I am being a bit more patient this year. I am trying to keep it local as well by engaging more with my local "seed library" program. It's a cool program! Most of the stuff I am planning on is from the library.