Captain Caveman's First Vegetable Garden

Hi all! Welcome to my garden journal. I've never done any outside growing before so this will be quite a learning experience. All comments, criticism, advice and help is welcome!

I had the wife and kids pick some flowers for the front of the house. They picked Zinnia, Marigold, True Lavender and Canterbury Bells.

I'm also going to try my hand at some spinach, brocolli, corn, red corn, cucumbers, sunflowers, and sweet peppers.

Seed selection
Here are a couple Venus Flytrap/Pitcher plants Lowes had on clearance.

My first avacodo attempt.

looking good so far man, i like how your doing avacodoes. i now want to do some as well, but i dont think they produce the first year but that is a i think.
im subbed for the grow man, you should swing by my veggie thread some time, lots of stuff in theri. it is kinda a thread of 3 peoples gardens from RIU mine,whodat,and i forgot the other one but ya man im here and if you need help just ask and i will try to help to the best of my knowledge

Thanks mcpurple! Good to know I have a resource. I hope I'm not being too ambitious for my first year. I'm worried about the wind. Does corn or sunflowers work for wind block?

CaptainCAVEMAN said:

Thanks mcpurple! Good to know I have a resource. I hope I'm not being too ambitious for my first year. I'm worried about the wind. Does corn or sunflowers work for wind block?

Click to expand...

no your not to ambitious, my first real garden was last year and i had alot of plants and they all did great, and this year i plan on them being even better.
if the corn and sunflowers are in good soil and have good light then they should be strong enough to with stand winds, the sunflowers how ever when they get the heads and if they get big then the wind could knock them over, but i have not had a prob with wind.
what part of the world are you in, summer winds should not get to high

Southern Colorado. Seems like it's always blowing here. I assume the water bill will be astronomical!

im sure they will be fine and become accustom to the winds. my water bill is usally cheap. untill my irrigation gets turned on i am gonna be using rainwater that i collect ina 55 gal drum as to keep every thing organic. my tap water is full of bad shit.
do you guys have irrigation in CO.?

Tap water here, it's horrible stuff. You don't need a TDS meter to smell and taste the chlorine and who knows what they're trying to kill with it! I want to buy some giant trash cans (I guess) so I can fill them and let the water aerate for 24 hours before watering. Would also like to get some raincatcher barrels or something, they had some I saw that you hook up to your house rain gutters to catch it.

Hey do you know how many sweet peppers 1 plant will produce?

Here are my veggie sprouts.
Brocolli
Baby Sweet Peppers

After potting them all I started thinking maybe I have too many...


The Pitcher/Venus Fly Trap on the left is growing visibly everyday!

CaptainCAVEMAN said:

Tap water here, it's horrible stuff. You don't need a TDS meter to smell and taste the chlorine and who knows what they're trying to kill with it! I want to buy some giant trash cans (I guess) so I can fill them and let the water aerate for 24 hours before watering. Would also like to get some raincatcher barrels or something, they had some I saw that you hook up to your house rain gutters to catch it.

Hey do you know how many sweet peppers 1 plant will produce?

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i just bought a 55 gal barrel and placed it under a gutter spout with a screen to filter out debris. it was only like 15 bucks for the barrel.

as for the peppers well im not sure, ive never grown them before. my cayennes last year that produced about 100 peppers each. and my bell pepper about 5 a peice

Thanks for the water catcher tip. I think I'll try that too.

Here is my Venus Flytrap/Pitcher plant. They are pretty cool to watch grow!

The grey bucket is in the pantry for collecting compost material. Then I put it in an $8 Wal-Mart 32 gallon trash can with snap on lid outside with some yard waste.(leaves, grass clippings, anything with carbon) I have seen garden stores sell expensive fancy "compost machines" which were trash cans on fancy tumblers. So I figured that if I roll the cans over once or twice a day it is the same thing yet affordable. Those machines claim finished compost in about 4-6 weeks, so I'm going to have several different cans going. One will be almost ready, and another one cooking a few weeks behind that one and yet another one I'm currently adding material to. Prepetual compost system. I hope. I'll let you know.

Alsdo a pic of the yard and sunning the babies.

Sounds like a good idea on doing your own compost or making your own tumbler. There are some good DIY compost tumblers posted on the site also.

Here's one of them ~~~> https://www.rollitup.org/do-yourself/425314-my-diy-tumbling-composter.html

You have a nice size yard to work with.

Hey fellow members! Man I've been so busy lately in the cave I haven't kept up with this. Friday the wife called in sick so I decided to rent a rototiller and get the beds ready. I've never done this before. Damn it was hard as hell! I thought when I rented it that a 4 hour minimum was excessive and that I'd be back in less than 2 hours. HA! It took me all 4 hours to try and loosen up the hard compacted sandy soil. I had the wife bring up 12 5 gallon pots of previously grown in pro mix from the indoor side. That and the 5 bags of compost that the guy at the garden store recomended is what I mixed in. I can now see why plants would have a hard/impossible time growing in native soil. I can also see how after a few seasons of working theese garden beds they will be rich fertile black organic goodness!

Thanks for the tumbler tip God!

Sup cave man,
Id recognize those Mtns anywhere.
Pikes Peak ,WHOOOOT.
Spent 11 yrs in Colorado springs.
Wish I was still there...

I found an old Phototron at the goodwill in Cospgs an used to grow Venus fly traps, picture plants an sundews. I also got em from the Lowes on powers.I wish Cannabis was carniverous.

Gardening was hard in colorado.
2 seasons winter an summer llol

Im doing a garden also,Got my tilling done this week..
Ill be watching.

wow what a back yard for a garden. it looks a bit hard though like you said but that can easily be changed. if i had that back yard my whole yard would have to be a garden. any ways its looking good so far man. and dam 29$ for 4 hours kinda spendy where your at i guess. we have a rental place here that does 25$ for 24 hours.

also wont the acidified compost drop the soil pH?

SCARHOLE said:

Sup cave man,
Id recognize those Mtns anywhere.
Pikes Peak ,WHOOOOT.
Spent 11 yrs in Colorado springs.
Wish I was still there...

I found an old Phototron at the goodwill in Cospgs an used to grow Venus fly traps, picture plants an sundews. I also got em from the Lowes on powers.I wish Cannabis was carniverous.

Gardening was hard in colorado.
2 seasons winter an summer llol

Im doing a garden also,Got my tilling done this week..
Ill be watching.

Click to expand...

Right on Scar, glad to have you along! Yea if you've ever seen the front range you never forget that view! Are you doing a garden journal?

mcpurple said:

wow what a back yard for a garden. it looks a bit hard though like you said but that can easily be changed. if i had that back yard my whole yard would have to be a garden. any ways its looking good so far man. and dam 29$ for 4 hours kinda spendy where your at i guess. we have a rental place here that does 25$ for 24 hours.

also wont the acidified compost drop the soil pH?

Click to expand...

This is my first season at this house so I bet if I stay here for a few years by the time I leave it will look like a botanical gardens! I am ambitious but need to learn more and am restrained by money just like everyone else.

I don't know about the ph. That stuff is what the local garden store recomended. They are just a garden store not Lowes or Home Deopt so I guess they should know about local soils. I need to learn more about garden ph. Should I spread dolomite lime or something? I want to grow mostly organic as I can and will be making and adding my own compost.

Whats up MR CC

T here and a fellow outdoor gardener for a few years now

Here are some of mine items I mix into my soil


Some garden pics










My latest thread

https://www.rollitup.org/subcools-old-school-organics/404123-making-test-run-tgas-dairy.html

Stop by & check it out I would be more than glad to help out

T

Thanks T, nice pics. What is the bottom pic? Red spinach or something?