Good golly, I couldn't have said it better myself! :upsidedown::

I make the same declaration every year !!

Then, about December those beautiful seed catalogues full of glorious garden porn start arriving and my resolution wavers: what if . . .

 

I don't know how they manage it, but the seed catalogs have plants of a beauty not to be found elsewhere in the sidereal universe....

 

Same here. No more gardening for me. That will give me more time to workout! Yeah right.........

 

You certainly sound sure that you are going to stop.... or not! LOL I do the same thing...it is addicting
http://www.survivalistboards.com//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

 

Well, not me! I enjoy it. I can't wait to get home and tinker in the garden. (play in the dirt) Maybe it will grow, then maybe not? If it does, we got plenty, enough for friends.
Its a stress relief, free exercise room, and good food. Shucks, I was looking at a seed catalog just this week, planning next years garden. Hum.
I don't know what to tell you. Or guess I could say, "don't let the garden gate hit you in the a** on the way out." Good luck

 

Yep, I quit too... Until tomorrow morning. I have more herbs to go in, carrots, maybe more beans.....

 

I find it enjoying, but it is work thats for sure

 

I hear your blight, er, plight. I don't even do that much. The wifey does most of the planting and such. I do most of the grunt work.
Let's see. First it was raised beds to keep the weeds out. Then wire fencing to keep the varmints out. Then we started everything from seed and put the tender plants outside for a few hours only to have them flattened by a freak hailstorm. Bags of soil and compost. Hoses and various watering setups. Early blight, Late blight, Milky spore, tomato horn worms......
Our crop probably averages about$10.00/lb.

 

1) Till your ground
2) Shape your rows and valley's
3) Cover the entire Garden in Black plastic
4) Put slices in the lows of the plastic to let water seep through
5) Cut X's in the plastic where each seed will be planted. (tuck the plastic under from the X you cut)
6) Plant your seeds / plants
7) Cover with mulch

I saw the above in a commercial garden in South Carolina. The plastic / mulch keeps all weeds at bay. The plastic will not allow water to evaporate so it does not need as much watering maintenance.

 

I will try that. I may use silt fence. idk
thanks

 

I said I was going to stop gardening because I was working 12 hour days. But I still maintain a decent garden for a 2 acre suburban lot haha.

 

I switched to container gardening this year and im getting alot more yield then i had with traditional gardens

 

This and less stooping

 

Did you take on too much all at once?
If you decide to grow just a few things as you mentioned, keep to the simple things which grow easily in your region and which you like eating. Choose things which do not require too much work. A few things grown successfully is much better than a whole lot of plants which are struggling and causing you stress.
The part of your garden you are not using, MULCH heavily with any organic matter you can find. This will keep the weeds down and improve the soil if you decide that you want to do a little more in the following season.

If you decide you really can't handle gardening, that's OK . Just work out what you are good at and barter.

 

I lied...
I snuck out at dark and watered the tomatoes and chatted with the beans and eggplant..... Guess I'm still gardening.::::

 

Earth buckets........put in seeds and done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXEgJXec_Zk

 

I swear every year that I will quit gardening. But each year I think of a new approach that simply must be tried out. Just maybe (In my delusional thinking) by doing it different this time I will finally succeed and have endless bounty of foodstuffs that will awe and amaze everyone. I will be the man! Women will notice me, children will worship me and men will respect me.

Instead something new happens to wipe out most of my efforts.

 

I swear every year that I will quit gardening. But each year I think of a new approach that simply must be tried out. Just maybe (In my delusional thinking) by doing it different this time I will finally succeed and have endless bounty of foodstuffs that will awe and amaze everyone. I will be the man! Women will notice me, children will worship me and men will respect me.

ROFLMAO (with empathy) !! :::

 

We use lots of landscape fabric. It helps a lot with weeds.

I have focused primarily on perennials; build a bed once and harvest every year. No re-tilling or annual re-planting.

My wife likes growing beans, so she does a lot of annuals. She uses them for flour, we go through a lot of bean flour.

 

i agree!

But after I picked these turnips, and cut the garlic scapes, I made a spinach salad with snap peas and cilantro for lunch. No pain no gain!

 

I am PULLED to garden and it has been very productive, and people think I'm great!
But whew! I can't Not go out there.

I'm experimenting, growing stuff for fun, playing on the tractor, moving dirt, amending the soil, declare to scale back next year, and so far it has gotten bigger each year.

I'm not feeling all alone. I'm looking at using plastic, drip tape, or silt fence for mulch.

I think once I get it figured out "Enough", I'll scale way back. But it is dark. I see no light at the end of the tunnel.

 

The three you mentioned, tomato, cucumber and squash, are the only three I'm growing.

 

Use no till

Several years ago we switched to the "no till" method and have been overjoyed at the results!

Using traditional gardening methods requires a LOT of work, heavy rototillers (which require maintenance, fuel, oil, etc) lot of weeding, watering...all the things you mentioned that caused you to want to abandon gardening.

Using the "no till" method, we're not doing ANY tilling. Straw and leaves are laid heavily in the fall, then in the spring lay another bed of think straw, spread the straw apart to create your rows, put your seeds in the ground and, once the sprouts are coming up, put the straw back around them.

When you see weeds coming up, throw some more straw on it. The ground stays moist, the plants go crazy, yields are through the roof, worms are everywhere fertilizing and keeping the soil loose, and the work is cut by 75%.

Best of all, it's sustainable and workable even if the SHTF and you can't get gas or supplies for your tiller.

 

...

Best of all, it's sustainable and workable even if the SHTF and you can't get gas or supplies for your tiller.

Where do you get the straw if there is no diesel for the farmers tractor? Good dry straw without seeds is also not easy to find depending on how far you have to go.

 

A most excellent idea!! I give up gardening every year myself.....at least three or four times a season!!!!

 

I'm with you buddy. I'm not going to garden anymore. Trouble is it won't be any less either.

 

Your doing it wrong.



Do container gardening. Solves most of your problems. Better weed, water, pest control. And if you raise the containers. No bending over.

It sounds funny, but I think growing veggies in the ground is wrong.

 

I'm about ready to give up too! We did scale back a bunch this year due to everything else we've got going on. I'm glad we did too. We've had so much rain what we did plant is either standing in water or getting root rot. The area where we planted the onions resembles a small pond. Can't even get into it to see if anything has survived at the south end.

The weeds on the other had seem to be thriving.

 

Personally, I help the wife with her gardening, like watering, after I've been a "bad boy"...

That means, well, I've been down to the local gun store and saw something.....

Oh, wait, today's Fathers Day, so I guess I can be bad and get away with it..
Dang it, no LGS open today.. They planned that on purpose- didn't they?

 

I use several 6'x 24' raise beds in my garden. Plant and mulch with straw, no weeds. Any hardware store, box store or farm store stocks bales of straw. My garden is doing great this year. The last 2 winters I have raised tomato plants in 5 gal buckets inside my heated hanger that has a 6' patio door on the south side. Picked tomatos until the end of feb. I am now setting up to raise hydroponic tomatos, if it works out OK, I have glass panels to install in the south wall for about 24' of glass wall.



Pops