Welcome to the gardening forum. This is where we share gardening experiences, share information, resource references and build a base of knowledge to actually use plants to open doors for Jesus. After all He built Earth and it's garden home for us, how about we use His handywork to glorify Him as well as load our pantries with good food.

Gardening/growing things is fun but painful toil is not. So how many like the idea of gardening with as little weeding and digging as possible and using soaker hoses & inexpensive timers to water and other practical stuff to keep the fun, dump the heavy toil, increase the gardening satisfaction ?

Have you ever thought of plant/gardening evangalism ?

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Edward F. Sutton

I don't garden to raise food or to save money, or for any such "practical" reason. I garden because I love gardening, and because it is good for my health to be outside in the sunshine and fresh air. I like weeding and digging. What I really dislike is not having anything to do in the garden! I keep my garden small enough so that it is not a source of stress to get it all prepared and planted in the spring, and harvested later on. Once everything is planted and growing well, if I didn't have weeds to pull, there wouldn't be much to do out there!

But my gardening methods do tend to keep weeding to a manageable level. I have part of my garden in framed-in beds, 4'x8', with 18" paths between. This prevents anyone from walking in the planting area, thus eliminating soil compaction. In the spring, I till the beds once before I plant. From there on, it's hand weeding only. But I keep the paths weeded with my trusty Mantis, and the more compacted they get, the better - weeds don't do so well in compacted soil either!

I plant my framed-in beds using the "square foot" method. The larger, open garden area is for squash, etc. This year I have crimson clover growing in that entire area, which tends to keep the weeds down a bit too. My garden is totally organic. Now that I finally have a Vita-Mix, the garbage is blended and applied directly to the garden. Much more pleasant than a smelly compost pit, and the plants love it! (Less bother too!)

I don't water my garden, except when absolutely necessary, as our water is very high in iron and other minerals, which tends to poison the soil if used too freely. I prefer to preserve moisture with mulch in dry seasons. However, this year, we have had adequate rain throughout the growing season to date, so I have not done any mulching.

This year, I am growing more flowers than vegetables. Besides for my always-included tomatoes (6 varieties this year) and lettuce (8 varieties), I have 10 varieties of pansies, 3 of violas, 6 of snapdragons, 2 of nemesia, 2 of African daisy, 2 of nasturtium, as well as bachelor buttons, nigella (love-in-a-mist), dianthus, and marigolds planted among the tomatoes. This year I also planted an herb bed, with catnip, chamomile, 2 kinds of parsley, bunching onions, chives, and basil. However, germination of most of these herbs has been very poor this year, so I am planning to start them indoors next year, instead of planting them directly into the garden in the spring, and hoping for better results.

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The Lord is the strength of my life and my portion forever.

If fellow gardeners want to swap info or web sites and such online but off the forum- idea - get an e-mail account at one of the free places & send that e-mail into a thread I will create - gardners e-mail pipeline. If they wish their e-mail to stay private - then look in my profile & find my e-mail and e-mail their private e-mail address to me with the request to keep it private.

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Edward F. Sutton

[This message has been edited by Edward F. Sutton (edited August 13, 2000).]

If you want to place those URLs on gardening in this forum, that is fine with me as long as the URLs are appropriate to this Gardening forum.

As I said, there are exceptions to this particular rule.

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In His Love, Mercy & Grace

Daryl Fawcett :)

I suppose all you folk are gardening in the Northern Hemisphere. Being from Australia it is now time to get serious and plant some seedlings out. We have just put out 30 tomato plants with about another 100 or so to go out before Xmas, not all at once. We put out 200 pumpkin seeds, they are not up yet but will be soon. My wife being from Papua New Guinea, we grow a lot of green leafy vegetables, silver beet, chineese cabage, sugar loaf cabage, pak choi, plus some that I have forgotten the names of, peas, beet root.
Do you have to use chemicals in growing or can you get by using natural sources such as cow manure.
I am not a person that likes weeding too much so we use "Round Up" it stops the weeds and does not hurt the soil. Without it we would never control the garden. Water or lack of it is our big problem, we are in the middle of a bad draught and need rain urgently.
I believe it is possible to come closer to our maker in the garden.

Happy digging.

Clive

Clive,
Try getting the book "Lasanga Gardening" from Amazon.com, it will build the soil & stop a lot of weeding & hold water - bigtime. The idea is layer different compostable materials over the flattened or mowed weeds & let the squashed weeds rot while the garden grows several layers above the weeds. Try putting a soaker hose with a timer on a pressure tank on a water line or well, then heavily mulch over the soaker hose - around the plants too. All chemical herbisides are toxic to plants & people & soil. Research the brandnames online for sourses of information not conected with it's manufacture & marketing. Happy gardening. P.S. plant some Brandywine tomatoes for me-I have some @ home & they are huge & great tasting old-fashioned heirlooms. Contact Johnny's Selected Seeds online & see if there are supplies of seed "down under" - would love to visit, but can't figure how to physically travel over cyber-space. Bye for now.

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Edward F. Sutton

Our soil is acidic, needs alot of lime. We have used Dolimite which decreasesd the acid content of the soil.
Most mornings I am able to collect a few barrow loads of cow manure, it seems to hold the water and acts like a mulch.
Never heard of those tomatoes down here, but then I have not been gardening for very long.
We are gearing up for a dry summer, we hope and pray that it rains.
Brother Ray has some flowers in, popies, snap dragons, pansies, roses, sweet peas, etc. they look good. He is hoping to go into a gardening competition, he should go OK.
Happy digging
Clive

Clive,

Hi I just got an Idea, why not look up the web url's of really good Austrailian Gardening Suppliers with online catalogs & post them where I've already put some gardening url's then we could all brouse the Aussie catalogs & I will start doing the same or some of the best catalogs from here.

Ed

Ed
I will try and do that, only trouble is I do not know that much about computers so will have to travel slowly.
Still very dry here, dam is holding up so far, should be OK till Xmas, then things will be bad if it does not rain.
Planted some tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet potatoes and more leafy greens this week.
The kids have some flowers in, took some to church last week, makes it look better with fresh flowers.
Clive

Clive sends these Australian gardening url's

1.Australian gardening magazine Global Garden free ezine for
gardening in - An authoritative gardening magazine particularly relevant to Australian gardens but also to areas with a similar climate eg California
http://www.global-garden.com.au/
[Translate]

2.THE Directory - THE Directory - gardens sheds, greenhouses,workshops, storage buildings, garages, gazebos and childrens
playhouses; worldwide!
http://www.gardenbuildings.com/directory/index.htm
[Translate]

3.Garden Links & Gardening Links : The WWW Virtual Library for Gardening - The
World Wide Web Virtual Library: Gardening. Links to Web resources, discussion
areas, botanic gardens, Cooperative Extension Services, etc.
http://www.gardenweb.com/vl/
[Translate]
4.Australian Gardening - Suite101.com - A brief description of what happens in May
in a Western Australian garden. 22 Mar 2000 The Approach of Winter A short
piece on what to do in autumn in Western Australia's gardens.
http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/australian_gardening
[Translate]

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Edward F. Sutton