I moved into a house late last fall, so I actually have some space to do so. This scratches multiple itches for me.
Itch the first: I've missed having a vegetable garden since I moved out of my parent's place and into apartment life years ago. While a small garden plot can't wholly replace the need to go to the grocery store for fruits and vegetables due to the inherent seasonality of growing food at small scale, it's damn hard to beat truly fresh fruits and vegetables that were picked not an hour before they landed on your plate. And any surplus left when the growing season is over can be preserved and stored for the winter.
Itch the second: It's _my_ creation, not my father's with which I am merely helping. When living with my parents, my father had his way that he'd like to lay the garden out. Granting that a man who grew up in a rural agricultural community probably knows a thing or about vegetable gardening, watching how he did stuff did always leave me wondering if there wasn't room for improvement. Since this is my garden, I can make my own experiments and decisions on how the garden is to be arranged, and what vegetables I want to grow (e.g dad loves beets; I do not). I've been reading about companion planting, and am eager to try things like growing corn and beans together, or growing chives near my peppers and tomatoes to keep aphids away (seriously, fuck aphids).
Itch the third: It lets me develop useful skills outside of my career in tech. While I have no delusions about quitting being a sys/net admin and going and becoming a farmer, I do think it's important to nurture useful skills outside one's main career.
Itch the fourth: I have something to automate with tech. Gardens do need to be watered. Under-watering will limit your yield, but over-watering is also harmful to both the garden and the wider ecosystem of one's immediate area. There's a goldilocks-zone when it comes to watering, and the just-right amount of water depends on a number of things: what you're growing, your climate, the soil, etc. There is a real danger that before the close of summer, the garden bed will have an automatic, multi-zone drip irrigation system, complete with soil-moisture sensors, controlled by a Raspberry Pi or similar SBC.
During April I built a loft bed frame out of framing lumber. I can post about that too if any of you are interested.
For companion (and succession) planting I'v made quick referential page [1] that I have collected, so i can use directly in garden.
It is really basic/unfinished, focused on Central Europe (also I'm planning to make it more general - as I'm currently gardening in Norway).
At the end I want to make something that will automatically recommend list of plants that I can plant on specific plot based on what is/was there previously. At the moment it is just list where I have to search manually for specific plants.
Sources are not clear there because it is mostly just for my personal use.
But for example for companion planting I'v processed wikipedia page [2]. Now I manually review sources from there, because not everything that is stated in the table is really supported by the declared sources.
I have spent every quarantine weekend in the yard and it's been magnificent and extremely rewarding. We had previously built raised beds but had limited success due to lack of regular watering so my first priority was repairing my entire drip line system and then extending it to the beds. Success!
Glad to hear others have garden / yard side projects as well. best of luck with the harvest.
I have a different approach. I water the raised beds, with a hose. I guess whatever gets you outside in the garden, is good. As they say, the best thing for a garden is, the gardeners shadow.
I will be watering with a hose as well, at first. If I waited until I had a drip-line system in place, I wouldn't have enough warm season left to get very much yield from whatever I managed to get planted. But I absolutely do intend to spend time in the garden. Gotta keep watch for weeds and check the various veggies for ripeness.
Housemates are allergic to cats and the dog owned by one of said housemates has killed cats in the past. And even if that were not the case, I happen to like the songbirds in my area, which would mean the cat would have to stay indoors.
I moved into a house late last fall, so I actually have some space to do so. This scratches multiple itches for me.
Itch the first: I've missed having a vegetable garden since I moved out of my parent's place and into apartment life years ago. While a small garden plot can't wholly replace the need to go to the grocery store for fruits and vegetables due to the inherent seasonality of growing food at small scale, it's damn hard to beat truly fresh fruits and vegetables that were picked not an hour before they landed on your plate. And any surplus left when the growing season is over can be preserved and stored for the winter.
Itch the second: It's _my_ creation, not my father's with which I am merely helping. When living with my parents, my father had his way that he'd like to lay the garden out. Granting that a man who grew up in a rural agricultural community probably knows a thing or about vegetable gardening, watching how he did stuff did always leave me wondering if there wasn't room for improvement. Since this is my garden, I can make my own experiments and decisions on how the garden is to be arranged, and what vegetables I want to grow (e.g dad loves beets; I do not). I've been reading about companion planting, and am eager to try things like growing corn and beans together, or growing chives near my peppers and tomatoes to keep aphids away (seriously, fuck aphids).
Itch the third: It lets me develop useful skills outside of my career in tech. While I have no delusions about quitting being a sys/net admin and going and becoming a farmer, I do think it's important to nurture useful skills outside one's main career.
Itch the fourth: I have something to automate with tech. Gardens do need to be watered. Under-watering will limit your yield, but over-watering is also harmful to both the garden and the wider ecosystem of one's immediate area. There's a goldilocks-zone when it comes to watering, and the just-right amount of water depends on a number of things: what you're growing, your climate, the soil, etc. There is a real danger that before the close of summer, the garden bed will have an automatic, multi-zone drip irrigation system, complete with soil-moisture sensors, controlled by a Raspberry Pi or similar SBC.
During April I built a loft bed frame out of framing lumber. I can post about that too if any of you are interested.