ignore bigots advice, hes indoctrinated by permaculture and if youre growing annuals in a garden it will lower your yield.

My tomatoes took a field trip to the window sill today. It's the first time they've seen the sun. Half of them have droopy, curled leaves. They're like that when they've been recently watered. They're like that when they haven't been watered in a while. They droop when they've been fertilized. They curl when they haven't been fertilized. They're like that all the time no matter what I do, but they keep on growing. I've concluded they're just petulant children who will eventually turn out fine.





I tested my soil and the nitrogen levels were "lol". Guess that explains why the grass looks like ****. I'm not trying to grow organic and there are much cheaper ways to raise the nitrogen levels, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to spread dried blood all over my yard.

What sort of bed are you planting your tomatoes in, just tilled soil? Perennial white clover is great as ground cover and nitrogen fixer. You could plant bush beans near tomatoes to fix nitrogen as well if you'd prefer something edible. Something to plan for next year if you dont want to buy more blood.

jalapenas always have grown really well for me in ohio. but, they werent always very hot. never understood why.

Yeah, I'm just sticking them in the ground along the fence line. It's all new soil in that part of the yard, to a depth of 4 feet, and it's crap. I think I'm just going to go for the lazy approach, mulch my leaves back there for the next couple years and hope that improves things a bit. I'll be digging it all up again sometime in the future to rebuild and expand the garage, so I don't want to put too much effort into it.

Gotta stress them a bit to get the heat up, cut back on watering especially approaching time before picking.

I'm curious as to what is wrong with permaculture? Seems like a reasonably sound system to me.

OK here goes nothing. I have worked personally for P2a3ul Whe4aton(he googles his name) and "Skeeter" pularski". I have volunteered hundreds of hours at other permaculture farms in California, Montana, and Minnesota. I have also worked and "conventional" organic farms(Thousands of hours) and can tell you that permaculture is dogmatic bull****. I promise you any actual argument a permaculturist can raise to me i can answer easily.

If you wonder what type of person buys into it read the flat earth thread and realize that that person is generally anti science, anti vax, anti logic.

you know what makes a good permaculture operation? Money.

gder you havent presented an argument against permaculture other than to take your word for it. Why dont you say a bit more about what you think is wrong about it and what you think is better.?

Gder, should I refrain from building the hugel mound Im planning with my scrap wood?

Bigot, how about taking the permaculture debate over to the FE thread so we can still have a nice place to talk about our gardens.

Big,

If you post outside the flat earth thread and it isn't a great post. Not good, not meh, I mean great. Your ass is toast.

gder is documented living/working on a farm, and you think the earth is flat.

Other people are fine to question things, but you have lost that privledge.

yea. Hugels seem to be OK, and i mean just ok. They get significantly worse the finer the wood is.

I should add that Hugels are one of the few aspects of PC i like but they require 5-10+ years of decomposing depending on the wood you use.

All my posts in this thread have been about gardening and helpful. I can separate topics and contain posts to them (perhaps you could stop being dicks and extend me the same courtesy?) . Asking gder why he thinks permaculture is trash and what he thinks is better isn't offensive or antagonizing, it is inquisitive.

Maybe it's clearer now?

Sigh I have procrastinated/been lazy and still haven't got any garlic in. Now I'm faced by so many types to choose from! I'm thinking Red Italian might be a good choice but I am going to the farmers market on Sunday so probably will grab something there so I don't have to wait on it being posted. I also went through my seeds looking for good things to grow now and have spinach, sorrel, radish and lettuce I want to put in. Which leads me to the dilemma of not having enough room to plant all I want without putting in a tonne of work to get some more raised beds happening (was planning to do in Spring). I wonder how Mr Rexx is going to feel being coerced into hard labour on his day off?

Oh I forgot pak choi and peas too.

great updates from everyone (except the flat earth guy), i'm excited to see so many people with productive gardens and very much looking forward to some more pics of the journey and the harvest. it's been hot as **** (and dry) here in SC- now that everything has gotten bigger, i'm hand watering like 20 gallons every two days from the spigot out back. the paired cucumber and tomato plants seem to be doing well together. i took a bit of a risk, digging out the bed a little deeper and trying to fit more stuff in the space, but it seems to be sufficient so far. jalapeno plant is kicking out a couple tiny blooms but it's a bit more slow going than the other stuff. the cilantro is flowering (no idea how normal that is), but still growing with good vigor

garden-

zucchini plants got bigger than i expected, i used a round 12 or 16" wire frame to kinda hold the big leaf stems back but they're pretty persistent, casting some shade on the catnip (which the kitties LOVE btw) now for a couple hours out of the day :/

baby zucchini bloom


baby cucumber


baby tomato


strawberries


been picking a lot of parsley and lemon basil, drying them out via microwave (GOAT) thanks to kenji at the foodlab and been using them for various things. strawberries are nice and sweet too, getting a couple every day- gf made some pound cake for mothers day and we used some for that, also made some strawberry syrup for pancakes one morning

fun stuff

nice watch

Looking good!

FYI- squash blossoms are good stuffed with cheese and fried:

Rep, lookin' good

I think you have a narrow view of permaculture, but I can't blame you because a lot of teachers make it to be about hugel beds, food forests and spiral herb gardens.

Nothing incompatible between pemaculture and growing lots of annuals. Permaculture is just a common sense approach to system design; unfortunately a lot of dogma has been inserted into it.

I think you're over emphasising the helpfulness of nitrogen fixers. A bush bean growing near a tomato won't help the tomato. It will still compete with the tomato, just not compete as much because it gets some of its nitrogen from the atmosphere (in ideal conditions).

If I get a crop from a nitrogen fixer (say peas/beans), I don't consider that I am adding nitrogen into the ground. Maybe I will give it less compost because the crop can handle its nitrogen needs a bit more. And then only if it's pretty fertile soil already.

I can't over emphasise how helpful it is to have a source of manure available to make compost.

I suggest getting in touch with a local pastured cattle operation; maybe offer some help shoveling poo in exchange for a truckload of poo/hay mix. Make a big pile (>1 cubic yard) , cover it with black plastic for a year or so, and there you have the best amendment for your vegetable beds.

It's been a ****ty year so far in the pacific northwest; lots of rain and flooded beds.

We did get our leeks and onions in recently. Looking forward to put tomatoes in. We might just have to till and plant lots of our crops at the same time now that the weather is turning.

I'm jealous of those who are already harvesting strawberries!

wow that looks incredible, thanks for the tip. v good video too

def gonna try that tmrw or the next day when the newest flowers start to open up