MagiStream

I'm jealous of you guys and your gardens. We own about an acre of land, but most of it is wooded and hilly. Which is great for natural forests (which I also love), but not great for vegetable gardens. With composting and a little work we can have good topsoil, but deer are our main problem. We even have trouble growing ornamentals.

I once house-sat for a family friend that lives in a more urban area. All she had to worry about were the rabbits. She had a lovely garden filled with tomatoes, cucumbers, all kinds peppers, and okra. We had great dinners that week. Nothing like fresh veggies.

We have a few small beds around the house that are filled with tough, easy to care for plants that deer don't like, but I know my mother would love to turn them into vegetable gardens. Have any of you guys tangoed with deer? How did you fix the problem? We have dogs, but they aren't outside all the time. Their smell seems to do little to deter the deer.

Right now the only notable feature around our house is a 4000 gal koi pond. We have a few iris and some other plants around it. Most of the plants just appeared naturally. It has a very nice natural charm to it.

Rosenrot wrote::t-pout: I'm jealous of you guys and your gardens. We own about an acre of land, but most of it is wooded and hilly. Which is great for natural forests (which I also love), but not great for vegetable gardens.

Look into square/cubed foot gardening, container gardening, and sustainable gardening. We didn't want to cut our forest down (we own about five acres) so we planted between trees and chose crops which do well with acidic soil and partial sunlight. I have two raised beds so far and a bunch of things in pots and boxes. The great thing about this method is that you don't have to cut down your forest to make room for the garden; they'll enhance each other.

Thanks for the suggestions, cat. When I have a house without a vertical backyard I would love to try gardening between the trees. But at our current house the slope of the land is too steep to do anything between the trees. The only flat-ish part has my koi pond, so we just leave it to nature. Which often rewards us with blackberries. If the deer don't get them first

We've tried potted gardens before. The year we got the best crop of tomatoes was when we planted tomatoes in pots on our back porch. But even then the deer still found some tomatoes. One night I came down to get a glass of water and found deer on our back porch eating the tomatoes. We have a few small beds around the house that could be turned into something... if not for those bloody deer.

How do you guys keep the local fauna from eating everything?

There's really no good solution for squirrels. You can try a few of these things but nothing is guaranteed to work short of shooting them and putting them in the stew pot, which is what I do.

- sprinkle human hair clippings around the garden
- use a predator urine to same effect or your own
- move the feeder to a sturdier, higher place
- set up a squirrel specific feeder away from the garden and the bird feeder (they are lazy and will eat whatever is least effort)

The garden grows well. Have peas, beans, peppers, tomatoes, and squash ready to transplant. The wild blackberries have appeared but they're not ripe yet.

I live in apartment, and we have a small patio. My container garden expands every year! This year I'm trying veggies.

I have carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, squash, and zucchini planned, and all are starting to germinate indoors at the moment. The tomatoes are...well, I'm waiting on them to look better since they just sprouted. If they don't ake, I'll just buy seedlings. Also, I'd like to do green bean or snap beans, but I haven't seen any seeds or plants for that yet. I should probably go to a nursery or something.

I also have boxes of pansies and mini roses blooming right now, and a bunch of chrysanthemums that I found on said at Home Dept. Oh, and an azalea that is just alllllll flowers right now. I have snapdragons and 4 o'clocks inside sprouting as well.

I plan on putting up some lattice around part of my patio for privacy, and maybe digging up one of the bushes to put in a stepping stone walkway out to the grass. I'm sure my apartment complex owners will love that. >.> Whatever, if I pull a bush up (they are just small shrubs really) I'm just going to put it in a pot so I can put it back in the ground when we move. I'm actually really looking forward to my garden this year!!

A few of my bulbs are sprouting. One of the crocuses even has little orange flowers- they're just barely on top of the dirt, but they're there! I would say not even a third of the total bulbs planted grew. Maybe next year more of them will come up.
The two that I thought were bachelor buttons were! One even made a purple flower already, and both have several buds. Problem... the kittens decided the bachelor buttons made a great playground and proceeded to break most of the stems! >< Poor flower isn't too happy now.

Two wild blackberries were ripe (I ate them!)

The peas are about ready to come on in force and we put in the peppers, squash, corn, and tomatoes. The salad finished and so did the cilantro but we still have several basils, oregano, thyme, and rosemary. The cilantro's seeds are being harvested for coriander (the dried seeds are a different spice, go figure).

I have a thriving butterfly garden: several jasmine, jessamine, crown of thorns, and butterfly weed. They're starting to come in the morning to feed, so pretty!

Day before yesterday morning while I was outside deadheading some of my flowers I realized that I hadn't opened the drain hols in one of my new planters. Since I didn't have anything pointy handy to poke them out with, I just made a mental note to come back later and open them. Of course, I forgot, and we had a wild storm that night! I told myself that as soon as it let up I would go out there and open the drain holes so my plants wouldn't drown, but the storm just kept coming down. So finally at about 4:30 am, with all the thunder and lightning, I tossed on my flip flops and ran out there with a kitchen steak knife to pop them open! Huge, freezing cold raindrops all down my back! lol

I just quickly pulled one side of the planter (it was a small window box) off the table and felt under it to release the holes. As soon as I poked them, a stream of freezing cold water started pouring out - all over my feet. Whatever, at least my plant wasn't swimming anymore. I wedged a rock under the other side to put it on a tilt, and came back in. 5 minutes later, it was still draining in a very steady stream.

Of course, after I came in, dried myself off, and got back into bed - just as I got warm, my older dog jumped up on the bed and flopped down next to me - soaking wet. With all the wind and rain and lightning, I didn't realize that he had some outside with me! He's a SHeltie, and if you don't know what those are, they look like collies, just smaller. So he had soaked up a decent amount of water and wasn't shy about depositing it in my bed. So, up I was again, to grab some towels to put down. I was too tired at that point in time to change the sheets, and since my boyfriend works overnight...I just made the dog sleep in the damp spot. See? All this because of gardening!

Also, I noticed this morning that alllllll my 4 o'clock seeds broke the surface of their pot at the same time! They have good timing!