i need a garden. no, really!

[armedoldhippy]

been helping the church out lately. (i grew up in this one) they can beans, make peanut butter and chocolate eggs for Easter, make applebutter, etc, trying to make ends meet. it's a small, old, slowly dying church, where my mom played the organ while all of us kids created havoc, crawling around under the pews. (last minister was no help, "retired" NYC cop) these little old ladies refuse to quit. i spent all morning pulling up bean vines to pick from in the shade. tomorrow, i'll be breaking and stringing those same beans, then helping can them for sale. "little ol' lady" (should be a brand) canned green beans sell well here, lol. both sets of grandparents had HUGE gardens, my parents had a big one, now...i'm getting the urge to buy a rototiller & join the parade stretching backwards into the past. i already grow tomatoes each year, when my groundhogs will let me. but i want green beans, enough corn to fill my freezer, and a truckload of taters...

 

[armedoldhippy]

ah, NOW i'm in the right spot. thanks, Ms. Giggles. gotta ask a ? or two. anyone here have experience/preferences RE rototillers? front tine or rear etc. will my wish list (corn, beans, taters) be a peaceful co-existence? i seem to recall one of my grandmothers raising them all in one row. she let the beans climb the corn etc... i'm looking at turkey craw beans. they've got strings, but anything worth having has its issues.

 

[goingrey]

Ingenious idea with the beans climbing the corn

 

[Cuddles]

I know exactly how you feel, mate. I´ve been dying to have my own big garden for sooooo many years and this wish got stronger over the past years.
I´d just love to be able to just pop outside and get my own apples, cherries, carrots and so on.
Not to mention all the money I´d end up saving!
I only have a balcony. I may try growing some lettuce this year. That is assuming I can find someone to help my get the soil from th store over to my place

 

[moose eater]

ah, NOW i'm in the right spot. thanks, Ms. Giggles. gotta ask a ? or two. anyone here have experience/preferences RE rototillers? front tine or rear etc. will my wish list (corn, beans, taters) be a peaceful co-existence? i seem to recall one of my grandmothers raising them all in one row. she let the beans climb the corn etc... i'm looking at turkey craw beans. they've got strings, but anything worth having has its issues.

I have an older Troybilt Horse, from back before they were bought out by Yard Machines or what ever fly-by-night department store outfit purchased them.

It's a brass worm-gear-drive (on the tines), rear-tine tiller.

What kind of tiller do you need? How big is the area you're tilling? How 'tough' is the ground there? How deeply do you wish to till? Deep-sinking moon-walk experience, or a light dusting of loose debris?

If you're looking at serious tilling, but don't want to go all the way up to a heavy-duty PTO-driven tiller with a tractor, then I'd recommend a rear-tine tiler like the older Troybilt Horse. But if it were me, I'd shop for a pre-Yard Machines Troybilt Horse.

Mine was owned by an older guy who did a lot of spuds (like we have) and other limited garden items down in the Mat-Su Valley. He passed away, and left the thing in a ditch on his property, from what I was told. Got it at a half-decent price, but the gear case needed drained and refilled a time or 2, due to being left in the ditch.

(My tiller currently needs an output seal on the left drive axle).

The older Troybilt Horses, in good shape, can run the continuum price-wise. I think I paid close to $700 for mine, used but in overall very good condition, maybe 20 years ago. That same time period, I could have just as easily spent twice that on one.

If you can find a deal on one these days, of the older, more solid vintage, especially looking at estate sales and old farm foreclosures/auctions, I'd guess that you'd probably be looking at between $500 and $1,200 or so.

Of course, with our current rates of inflation and the supply chains being fucked up, it's possible that my 'guesses' are off, but I'm betting they're close.

 

[Nannymouse]

...or get a Bobcat with a bunch of other useful attachments! Of course, a VERY large garden would be needed to get between rows, ha. Don't know what we would do without ours. Post holes, snow removal, lifting stuff up to the roof, there's just so much that machine can do.

 

[armedoldhippy]

i'm not going too big. not enough yard space (or light because of trees) despite having two lots. i may forego a tiller at all, since i an also considering raised beds (old, back not happy) for most of it, and possibly growing in straw bales for the rest. part of the yard (best lit) could be in-ground. hell, part of my yard is so compacted that it really needs tilling so GRASS will grow! needs stirring, much lime added, fertilizing etc. folks owned it before kept piling oak leaves up out front, and NOTHING grows there for very long...

 

[X15]

Hey hey! Have you considered a hugelkulter? Any material around that you can layer up and mound over the existing soil? Can sometimes help with the ground critters as well.

 

[X15]

But from a mechanical standpoint. I maintained many acres of turf grass and really grew found of a number of different machines over the years, but a my aeration tools where my favorite. I preferred to punch holes and manicure the surface by hand when possible.

 

[armedoldhippy]

But from a mechanical standpoint. I maintained many acres of turf grass and really grew found of a number of different machines over the years, but a my aeration tools where my favorite. I preferred to punch holes and manicure the surface by hand when possible.

i've got an aerator to pull behind my lawn tractor. damn difficult to get enough weight on it to work properly. may mount a big-ass water tank on it...does anybody here have experience with raised beds or straw-bale gardens? the straw bale idea looks like it would be killer for small-scale stuff. shoot, you could get 2 or 3 bales in a small trailer & move them around in the yard if trees blocked sunlight at times.

 

[Betterhaff]

lol, reminds me of a guy that used to grow his herb in pots in a wheelbarrow and chase the sun around his yard all day.

 

[laszlokovacs]

Try just putting a tarp down over winter/for several months until spring. I did that last fall and set up a garden just under 1000sqft this year. Just planted everything directly in the ground, minimal work and doing reasonably well, occasionally using cardboard to smother weeds or to put on top of cardboard. I have tons of tomatoes, peppers, egglants, beans, peas, zucchini, lettuce/spinach, watermelon, strawberries, tomatillos, Tzimbalo melon, Garden huckleberry, asparagus and a couple small blueberry plants all put in this year. Also a flowerbed with two Australian Bastard Cannabis crosses hanging out. Very minimal if any tilling, just digging and transplanting and working in a couple cubic feet of compost into some of the rows. Still very much a work in progress and I slacked off a lot this year being as I'm only here 2-3 days a week. Fucking asshole groundhog though, was feasting on a couple tomatoes a day until i put this fence up.

Been harvesting 5+ pounds of food pretty much every 2 or 3 days at this point.