Anyone have a garden going this year?

Pepper seedlings seem to take forever, so I start peppers in a large south-facing window in my solar heated house in February. Then in March, I start tomatoes, usually Gardeners' Choice variety of cherry tomatoes, because they hold up to the intense Arizona summer heat better. Also in March, I start sweet potato slips and some herbs in a little home-made greenhouse. Then, in late April I transplant all the seedlings and direct seed okra, squash, melons, dry beans, and corn in the field.

My garden provides about half of my food over the course of each year.

 

Getting the greenhouses ready!
Still a little early here!

 

is it just me, or does this guy look like Chris Martin from Coldplay? I guess that look is still in - along with flannel shirts.

 

Mine is just 6 feet wide by about 3 feet deep. It's like a big bay window mounted on the south-facing side of a sturdy wooden storage shed that I had for my tools. You don't actually walk around inside this mini greenhouse. The south wall of the greenhouse is a used 6-foot-wide sliding glass door that someone replaced at their house, and the east and west sides are used casement windows that were also discarded. It all sits on used 8-inch by 16-inch cement pavers

The steel casement windows provide the structure. Each one is attached to the frame of the sliding glass door on one side and attached to the wooden storage shed on the other side. The roof is used double-walled polycarbonate sloping to the south and attached to the top of the sliding glass door.

The whole exterior wall of the wooden shed that is inside this lean-to greenhouse is covered with planting shelves ranging from 14 inches high to 5 feet high. You access the shelves by opening the sliding glass door and the sliding screen door to the south. I can fit up to 16 flats of seedlings on the shelves. Ventilation is supplied with a large muffin fan that is hooked directly to a small 20-watt solar panel-- the more intense the sun is, the faster the fan spins. I open the sliding glass door all the way on hot days and keep it partially or completely closed on cooler days. The sliding screen door keeps mice and most insects out.

I irrigate the seedlings with drip irrigation bubblers that are connected to solenoid valve and standard timer. The whole setup cost less than a hundred dollars, and has served me well for the last six years.

 

Yeah. Oh, one more thing, I put lots of rocks under the bottom shelf to hold heat into the night. Occasionally I have to run a small space heater in there at night if it gets especially cold. Low tech solutions using discarded materials are the best.

 

Feeling adventurous?
Been thinking for such situations the "under the bottom shelf" could be a 100 gallons or so of water heated by one of those barebones black hose coiled under glass type solar thermosiphonish water heaters?
One of the to-do list things if I get around to finding land to put it on I'm not renting.
These have really nice threaded 1" ports inside the 2" caps that I'd think would allow laying on their sides, maybe partially burying till they really fit
30 Gallon Non Food Grade Drums - materials - by owner - sale

Have one now I'm using to store my "mesquite pond water and a bit of muck for later".
Having quite a bit of hope for it as an amazing and 100% free fertilizer.
The pods are loaded with tons of nutrients and the leaves are just so much more nitrogen so I chucked about 30 or so gallons into a kiddy pool and let it hang out about 6+ months.
All the seeds popped soall the organic solids are safe to use for mulching without fear of basically making a mesquite orchard



AND best of all the "tea" seems to be doing some wonders.
This damn thing went from near death following a few months of neglect to 10 blossoms in 5 days once I started feeding it my "mesquite juice"

 

Since I only really use my tiny greenhouse for starting seedlings between February and April, I go for the simplest freeze-protection system possible. I just use large (5" to 10") dark colored rocks that I stack under the bottom seedling shelf.

I do use hot water circulation for heating the slab in my house. That water his heated with two old 5' by 10' copper flat plate collectors on the roof, the kind of solar hot water heaters that were more popular 30 years ago. They still work great. I circulate collected rainwater through them, and they drain down to an insulated holding tank at night. The pump system is direct-powered with a small 30-watt photovoltaic panel, so the water only circulates when the sun is shining during the day.

 

I used old rail road ties, for raised beds. Very heavy to move into place, but once there, they don't move. Only 8 inches high, wish they were higher, but rest knees on ties with knee pads and still better than bending over. Should last many years, our raised beds have been very productive, the last few years.

 

Recently, someone I know wanted to get rid of some used half-width concrete blocks (4 inches wide by 8 inches high). I took all of them and built a 4-foot by 20-foot raised bed. I had to drive rebar stakes down the open cells of each block to keep them from tipping over, but it went together in just a few hours.

The other beds I had were made of scrap wood, which is rotting out. I grow all my sweet potatoes in raised beds with juiced up soil. It's so much easier to grow and harvest them in the loose soil of a raised bed. I mound the soil up toward the middle of the bed and run a drip irrigation line down the middle.

 

Last year I harvested over 100 pounds of sweet potatoes from a single bed which was about 14 feet long. The vines were growing everywhere, spreading out beyond the four-foot-wide bed. I was busy all summer and had no idea how big they were getting underground. Many of the sweet potatoes were huge by the time I harvested in late September and October. As big as they are, they still taste great. I'll still be eating them for months to come. I threw the discarded vines outside of the fenced garden, and the javelina ate all the leaves within 24 hours.

Between those potatoes, the winter squash, the dry beans, and the dried peppers I stored, my grocery bill has dropped significantly.

We've got a bit of a cold spell coming up this week, but right after that I plan to start my pepper, cilantro, and sweet potato seedlings for the next growing season. Then I'll start the tomato seedlings in March. Okra, squash, and tepary beans get direct seeded in the garden in late April.