Tried my hand at a vegetable garden in the past, and had miserable luck with it. To be fair, it was in some pretty crummy Maine soil that was full of rocks. Might have more success now though. Just curious what everyone is growing.
What I really want is a yard of just wildflowers. Better for the environment, less effort to maintain, and much more in keeping with my personality. I hate the fully manicured look. Only downside to that is ticks…so many ticks in New England…walking through it would likely be a horror show.
Do mushrooms count too? I currently have multiple blocks of Lion’s Mane and King Oyster going. I also make chickpea tempeh. Since I only have an indoor space, I can’t grow large-yield food plants, but I like to grow spices and teas. At the moment I have mint, turmeric, and very young chamomile plants.
Oh really! I’m so fascinated with mushrooms. I started a log with oyster mushrooms but it hasn’t produced anything yet (after a year)
I grow in bags indoors so I don’t have experience growing mushrooms in logs yet, but it is something I want to try
Is it like those kits you get? Those are great
Yes - they are like some of the kits! I buy a culture once and then use the culture to make the blocks myself.
Here is a picture of one of my Lion’s Mane:
Oh that’s growing great! I tried the lions mane last year and also oyster. Oyster was super easy but my lions mane didn’t grow well. So you are propagating the mycelium?
Hmm, maybe the the Lion’s Mane was contaminated? 🤔 When the colony is clean it tends do well over a wide range of conditions.
Yes, I do propagate the mycelium in agar plates. I grow the mycelium on the plate, then inocculate a jar of cooked grain, and once the grain is colonized I put the grain into the fruiting block (oak hardwood pellets, wheat bran, and water)
I bet that’s hard to get right. Lots of ways it can go wrong I would think, right? How did you get into that?
I grow all kinds of plants, some weird experiments including. I am a very chaotic gardener. I love my vegetable garden, as well as my houseplants or stuff I grow in hydro. I want to grow more flowers outside.
I’m probably not the target demographic of this community, but I’m a big believer of whatever plants I have need to give back more than what I put in and be self-sufficient. Rhubarb, raspberries, wildflowers are good because they mostly take care of themselves. I’m kind of an anti-gardener I guess?
I, too, consider myself an anti-gardener. My long term goal is a good forest. In the meantime while the fruit trees grow I’m not relying too much on production and focusing on soil building, and increasing insects.
I’m not mowing this year, and I left the acorns and leaf litter over the winter. Not sure if it’s confirmation bias, but it feels like I have more lightning bugs than last year. I know my yard has enough to support a number of snakes, rabbits and possums; a box turtle; and at night when I go out with my headlamp, it’s a sea of wolf spider eyes glaring back at me!
Oh wow, sounds like you have a thriving ecosystem in your yard! I’m right in the city so can’t commit to no-mowing (there are bylaws about it) but the slow conversion to less maintenance and more enjoyment is a worthy one.
You can get around those with mulch & perennials! Unless the grass itself is required, which sounds awful
I’m an obsessed landscape gardener with perennials, shrubs and a few annuals making up my flowerbeds. I garden for pollinators and birds, mostly, with a few purely ornamental things I can’t give up (roses, clematis). I grow a few edibles every year (tomatoes, some greens, and cucumbers, usually), but it’s not my focus. It always took me by surprise in r/gardening that the default seemed to be vegetables in mist people’s minds. :)
You know for me the perennials took some time to get into. With veggies and annuals you get instant gratification but it takes more patience to grow perennials- but man once they start they can’t be stopped! My foxgloves are new new favorite thing
I’ve honestly haven’t really put much effort into growing food but always loved the idea and I have been planting some cherry tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber and lettuce. I was lucky that the soil in my yard was good enough to produce medium-good results. I have come to love cucumbers in the late spring and summer, which I used to not really eat before.
Overall I do very little. Mix some compost on top of old / depleted soil and plant young plants I get from the garden centre. I don’t really know what I’m doing to be honest, but I still get to eat my own salads!
Got a suggestion for your wildflower conundrum. Consider creeping plants or vines that flower. Can be quite beautiful and low maintenance. Also rose bushes. Really pretty, really hardy.
really hardy
that’s going to be key, lol. Thank you!
Strawberries are great ground cover! Also ajuga & creeping Jenny.
This year I tilled up some of my lawn and planted a wildflower mix. So far it’s a complete miss…it looks like a pile of weeds with random grasses and clover all over. I have some small flowers starting now so things might turn around but I’m a little disappointed with it. The random parts of my yard that I neglect to mow tend to have more flowers and look nicer.
I mostly stick to vegetables and fruit, gardening is my hobby but it’s great to get better tasting produce than I can buy and I can plant unique varieties to experiment with. Home grown garlic and tomatoes are in another dimension compared to grocery store vegetables.
Would you mind sharing a picture of the wildflower mix? What mix did you use specifically, and what zone are you in? What’s the sun and rain situation like where you’re at? When I look for wildflower yards, all I really see are examples of where it looks incredible, so that’s inspiring but not necessarily realistic :/
I used this mix from a local seed company here in Nova Scotia. I’m in zone 6 and the space I chose for the wild flowers has direct sun for most of the day. It’s been a very dry spring but I’ve been watering it because I really want it to succeed. I know people say that wildflower meadows are a “mow once a year and leave it alone” kind of thing, but it really seems to take a bit of care and management to get good results.
I usually stick to vegetable gardening and this is my 4th year. I have two raised beds with tomatoes, beans, eggplant, squash, okra, and peppers. I’ve also interplanetary some flowers in them as well to provide some more color.
Pretty much exclusively food! Right now I am growing strawberries, snap peas, bush beans, and potatoes. Just put in some blueberry bushes too, but those will take a few years to get up and running. Hoping to try my hand at winter wheat come fall.
You just reminded me that I bought snap peas the other day and now I need to go eat them before I forget again and they go bad -_-
My veggie gardens have always been gangbusters the first and second year, then the critters find it and it’s downhill from there.
Perhaps it’s that the yard has gotten more shady over time too. I overextended myself and planted too many fruit trees and vines ( in the case of grapes) and now I struggle to maintain them. At least the pawpaws don’t need maintenance, but I don’t know if they’ll ever produce fruit.
I still have a a few containers with edibles, but but the parsley and Brussels sprouts I planted in my raised bed got eaten by rabbits I guess? I have chicken wire around it but something has found a way around it. If I plant seeds, very few germinate. I have a feeling that squirrels or insects are eating the seeds before they have a chance to sprout. I’ve seen birds pecking up my sunflower seeds. The sunflowers that sprouted were eaten by a groundhog. 😕
I’m starting to look for rabbit resistant native ornamentals. Growing food is hard, yo!
I mix everything in my garden beds, edibles, perennials and wild native plants.
Outside the beds, it’s mostly wild native plants and a ground cover of veronicas and moss (so basically more wild plants). The grass is minimal. It looks a bit chaotic but I love it. My garden is not very large though (~9x5 m). I use a manual mower for the overgrowth maybe once or twice a year.
That sounds wonderful. Please consider sharing a picture!