This is my first post on lemmy!
I’m new to this whole gardening thing. I got clean off hard stuff about a year ago, and have been adding to my “farm” in the yard. My SO is super happy in the dirt too, she’s realizing how green her thumb is, and it’s extremely therapeutic for both of us.
So far I have 4 apple trees. Golden delicious, 2 granny Smith, 1 honey crisp. Two of them are new this year. The other two I planted in a drug induced haze 😅. They had rust and wooly aphids last year, but after some preventative measures this year I’m all good besides the few aphids. Luckily there’s an abundance of lady bugs here, and neem oil seems to do the trick.
The raised beds I put in over the course of this past week. It’s just a top soil/compost mix. Right now I just have grape tomatoes in there. We have carrots, broccoli, spinach, romaine, cat nip, and kale all sprouting from seeds were gonna place in there as well.
Besides those things we have some potted fruits: blueberry, raspberry, grape, strawberry as well as potatoes all growing really well right now.
My next step is to map out the raised beds and plant the sprouts. Then I’ll see about maybe transferring some of the potted stuff in there as well. We definitely have to figure out a more permanent fencing solution too, and something for over top cause the birds have been eating each berry one by one right when it ripens. Lol oh well.
I’d also like to get some more local plants, especially pollinators, elsewhere in the yard, along the tree line, everywhere. I live in NE PA if you have any reccs!
Just realized we have a spotted lantern fly nymph issue on the raspberry. Sucks, they are new to the area /: but neem oil, dawn, apple cider vinegar all kill on contact iirc.
Thanks for reading my attempt at adding more content to lemmy! (:
If you have any tricks of the trade, please, I’m all ears!
Congratulations getting clean and finding a new passion! It’s definitely worth checking in with your extension office to see if there are any plant sales that the state nursery does, and to get information about gardening events in your area.
I’m a big proponent of planting lots of species fairly densely in perennial gardens, so a fruit tree might have a few berry bushes planted around it along with some tall herbaceous individuals and runners all around and between them all. When you do move things out of their pots, try to correct any circling or girdling root issues. Treesaregood.org has some really great resources for maintaining your trees as well.
Think about what you’d like in the areas long term, and what you can do in the short term to move those spaces towards your goals. One thing we did early in was get a giant printout of our property and move scale pieces of paper to represent different things like annual gardens, a greenhouse, orchard/food forest space, a chicken coop, and the like. Obviously those can be whatever aspects you’d like to have where you are. Once you know what the longest-term areas and buildings are, what can you do to grow things while prepping those spaces for their long term? Can you use grow bags or temporary raised beds where your bushes will go later, just to get rid of the grass underneath so your new berry patch is easier to establish? Can you set up a small composting system in between the gardens and house so you can make use of scraps from the kitchen and the gardens without needing to make extra trips?
Play around with ideas on paper with your partner, discuss what might be an issue and might be beneficial, and try a small scale experiment to test the placement before going whole hog. Having those plants in pots seems like a good opportunity to try out a few different designs before digging them in and practice some iterative designing.
Wow lots of great info! I really appreciate it. I’m probably gonna do all those things…or try. I do have a bunch of grow bags going, pretty much all the pots are bags until we figure it out. We have our compost going pretty good at this point, and we’re setting up a rain barrel this week. I’m gonna bookmark your comment for sure. I appreciate your wisdom and kind words.
It’s genuinely my pleasure! Just like recovery, you can’t do all the steps at once - it’s important to build on your successes and personal growth while respecting yourself for what’s not perfect. I’m excited to see how you and your space grow, so I hope you’ll keep posting!
Yes OP! Think of your zones and consider how the sun sits. You want to match your plants to the right spot for them. No good having a beautiful looking layout if nothing is growing where it wants to.