Starting a fall garden

[Zoisite]

Originally Posted by Cambium

Simple way to avoid that. Fill up the bottom half with leaves, grass and sticks so you're really only needing half the bed for soil.

Exactly, that's a great solution and it costs nothing. People just need to keep in mind that it will compress and pack down from the weight of the soil (and water) on top of the leaves and grass, so you need to use plenty of the leafy material. For that reason I prefer to fill in about 2/3rds of the frame with leafy organics before adding the soil on top. I don't use sticks unless they're just thin twigs that have been broken or cut up small, but that is because small twigs rot faster and every year I tend to lift and relocate a lot of plants and don't want bigger, un-rotted sticks tangled up in the lifted roots and damaging them when taking them up.

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[gentlearts]

Hubby and I saw some purple tradescantia at a house sale, he liked it, so I ordered some. We’ll try it as a ground cover at the back fence.

[memph]

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

If what you want to grow is smallish, you can buy food grade 5 gallon buckets from almost any bakery or deli. I pay $2 each for my food grade buckets from a local bakery. Clean them out and drill some holes in the bottom and there are many vegetable plants that are happy to grow i that size container. You won't be able to grow pumpkins or watermelons, but you can grow tomatoes and eggplant and lettuce and strawberries.

If you want the pumpkins, watermelon, and corn, you can plant those directly in the ground.

Most of us are pretty much done for the year, so you will have to find a gardener in NC who knows what to plant this time of year in your area.

Note: raised beds are the easiest on the back and for weeding, but you do have to come up with the soil to fill them. The raised beds themselves can be made out of free wooden pallets or bales of straw. The soil, however can end up being costly.

The small determinate tomatoes will work in 5 gal containers, but for the large determinate and for the indeterminate varieties, I think it's not ideal.

I tried that once, and the plants needed water constantly to avoid blossom end rot, and ended up small and with relatively few fruits compared to their potential. This was a large determinate variety called Mountain Merit - now that I'm growing them in-ground, they're 5ft tall and produce close to 30lbs of tomatoes per plant.