Member profile for Gene

Gardening since 1985
  • Name: Gene
  • Location: Riverton, UT
  • Gardening experience: I'm a serious hobbyist
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  • Member since March 01, 2012
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The Back Quarter Riverton, UT

1/4 acre plot with fruit trees and a large garden with seven 10x4ft beds and 150+ spots for melons, squash and other large plants. I focus rather heavily on tomatoes, sweet peppers, watermelon, muskmelon, cucumbers, and beans.pH is around 7.8, soil is clay but has... » more
  • Last updated: February 01, 2013
  • Garden type: Grow It Forward: Heirloom

toppenish family organic garden Toppenish, WA

by JMTKMS
We started this garden in 2010 and could not believe the harvest!!!  We expanded in 2011 and now we are exhausted because the harvest was so much more.  We are completely organic and feel that this is so helpful for...

A Central Florida Garden Loughman, FL

by jhammond
I am currently interested in container veggie gardening, fruit trees, creating a tea & herb garden, and maintaining my daughters flower cutting garden.  Everything else is just an experiment.

The Back Quarter Riverton, UT

by Gene
1/4 acre plot with fruit trees and a large garden with seven 10x4ft beds and 150+ spots for melons, squash and other large plants. I focus rather heavily on tomatoes, sweet peppers, watermelon, muskmelon, cucumbers,...

The Back Quarter Riverton, UT

by Gene
1/4 acre plot with fruit trees and a large garden with seven 10x4ft beds and 150+ spots for melons, squash and other large plants. I focus rather heavily on tomatoes, sweet peppers, watermelon, muskmelon, cucumbers,...

The Yarden Lakewood, OH

by tfacey
About 6 years ago, we started on a journey to sustainability within the confines of our own urban 1/4 acre. Hence the dawning of The Yarden where we practice urban yardening. Each growing season we are adding, changing,...

Building my Dream Angels Camp, CA

by kimbakerink
I just moved to this house in November. The zone is 8b even though it says 7a. I can tell that the garden beds were not organic because of the undecomposed particles of blue here and there. I have been working on the...

My Escape Upper Sandusky, OH

by PYehl
My 30'x70' piece of paradise.  Nothing makes me happier than to work in my garden and get lots of dirt under my fingernails.  I spend almost every day in the cold Ohio winters dreaming of how I will plant my garden,...

Nola Farms Warrenton, MO

by Nolafarms
My garden is dedicated to my daughter Nola. It's purpose it to supply our little family with good food, to perpetuate an interest in gardening for her early on in life, and to provide balance in our lives.

Le Corone Otricoli (TR), Italy

by Tom
This is our farm. We bought it in June of 2005 and immediately started to work on it. This year (2012) I renamed Le Corone to Lisaland. Please visit there to see our garden this year. Happy Gardening!

Fig Creek Garland, TX

by jnntefend
A backyard garden trying to become something bigger and better than a patch of lawn. Plus lots of containers.

Millie's Heirloom Junction City, KS

by milliesgarden
Update: We just moved into a new farmhouse.  I'm hoping to make it a grand scale garden escape with fruit trees, vineyards, berry patches and flowers!  Can't wait to play in my garden for the next 20 years!I started...

The Peaceful Prayer Garden Goodview, VA

by linzelu100
We are a young family attempting to grow our food. It hasn't been easy, but has been rewarding to say the least. Last year was our first successful garden and this year we are expanding. We decided to move to a new...

East Texas Linden, TX

by RoriTx
We grow,can or freeze 90% of all the vegetables we eat. I've decided to start saving our own seeds so this year we will plant as many heirloom varieties as we can.Breaking News:Facebook you've been replaced!

Prince Snow Farm Mattapoisett, MA

by PrinceSnow
Our garden is a true extension of our desire to grow healthy food for our family and friends without the use of chemicals. And this year, NO GMO's! Wahoo!!!!

YourGardenShow Busy Bee San Francisco, CA

by The-Busy-Bee
YourGardenShow.com - the social network for gardeners, by gardeners

Coming soon!

Favorite gardening books: Melons for the Passionate Grower, 100 Heirloom Tomatoes, The Heirloom Life Gardener
Favorite vegetable: muskmelon
Favorite flower:
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    • Gene replied about 1 year ago
    		Paper is only the beginning of what I mulch with <Grin>. See the black in the rows in my garden? That's UV stabilized vinyl billboard.Anyway, the paper. Paper works great for me in beds. I'm sure it work great in my holes as well if I decided to use it. The most difficult part is getting it in place - near impossible if it's a windy day. The paper I use I get from the newspaper company. They're end rolls. You can pick these up from most newspaper companies. Sometimes they're free, sometimes they'll charge, but they're always cheap relatively speaking. Mine are 4ft wide which make them a good fit for my beds. I'll lay down around 6 sheets (really I just roll it back over the other without ever cutting it). Once you have it in place, wet it to help it stay in place. Don't wet it before it's exactly where you want it. You can wet each layer separately if you need to to help fight the wind while you're putting it down. It will dry out quickly. Once it's in place, to keep it in place, I lay down 2x4s on the long edges of my bed overlapping the paper. My wind here is truly awful, but the 2x4s are enough to do the job. Naturally this requires that your beds are at least somewhat flat - if they aren't you can level them easily enough. They don't have to be perfect, just close.When you're ready to plant - WET THE PAPER! If the paper isn't wet when you plant, you'll have difficulties making your holes and you'll tear the paper much more than necessary. If it's wet, you can slice right through it and make all of the neat holes you want. In truth, mine normally aren't that neat but that's because I cut what is roughly a U shape in the paper, lift the flap, dig out the hole (I just put the dirt on the paper), transplant in such a manner as to cause almost no root disturbance, put the dirt back in the hole around it, and then flip the flap over to cover as much of the hole as I can.This works great for my beds for the most part. Things can be a tad complicated with certain veggies like beans where instead of planting transplants, I'm planting seeds. When planting seeds, the new seedling will _normally_ find the hole, but you sometimes have to keep an eye out and provide aid. Probably easier if I made the holes biggerAt the end of the season, I've been tempted to toss it in the compost pile, but it's not quite broken up enough for my taste, so I tend to toss it. I would feed it to my worms, except they already have more than enough paper, and I've found they like paper best if it's been through a shredder first - and I wouldn't want to attempt running dirt covered paper through my shredder :PIt is pretty tidy for me. Given that I'm sloppy enough to put my dirt on top for a moment while planting, it's not exactly pretty, but I don't have any problems with it blowing out of the bed. I do run my micro irrigation across the top of it. This may help.Any other questions?
    UnusualFarmChick replied about 1 year ago
    		@Gene:Thank you Gene! One last question to bother you with...where does one find UV stabilized vinyl billboard?
    Gene replied about 1 year ago
    		@UnusualFarmChick...:There are expensive places to find it on the Internet, but you typically don't want to pay that much for it. The best thing to do is head to either the Internet or your phone book and find out what companies provide billboard advertisement in your area. Then call them up and find out what they're doing with their old billboards after they've run. If you're lucky, they may even GIVE them to you. I had to pay for mine, but picked them up fairly cheap. There are a few different sizes, but the ones I found tend to be around 48x25 feet. Typically they'll have either a while back or a black back. Go with the black - even if your area gets hot, go with the black. The only time I'd consider the white is if I lived in a place that had no real winter and was hot all the time. Then the white could be a benefit because it would keep the heat from getting to the soil and would reflect the light back up under the plant - good for both plant growth and disturbing the bugs. What the black does for you is NOT heat up the soil like many claim, but AVERAGE the temperature soil. In essence, the soil will stay warmer at night and cooler during the day. This does mean your overall soil temperature in the spring will be warmer, but more important, if you've got a hot summer, it shouldn't have a negative impact on your plants. Most people worry about it baking the soil during the summer, but that's not a problem. It would be a problem if the billboard was clear. If you plan on covering a large area like I did, you're going to want to look into a substance called HH-66 vinyl cement. I used it to glue several billboards together to get the size I needed (I covered almost a 1/4 acre with this stuff. Also, I would recommend digging a small trench around the outside edges and then burying the edges of the vinyl to help keep it in place. From there, just cut holes in it for things like melons, or big squares for things like beds. If you intend to do beds, I would cut it a bit smaller than the bed. That's the one mistake I made. My beds are 4x10 so I cut 4x10 holes. I would have been much better off had I cut something closer to a 3.5x9.5 hole - that way I could get better overlap between the paper and the vinyl and keeping it all in place would be a bit easier. If you get much wind at all, you're going to want to get pavers, rocks, something to weight it down with in places. My wind here is REALLY bad. I've been through two hurricanes when I was down in Florida, and sometimes the wind around here very much reminds me of that. As such, the wind has no trouble shifting this around on me if I don't anchor it. The other problem you'll have to fight is drainage. That's not as bad as it sounds though. I'd suggest you do nothing about it until it's had a few days to settle and you've had your first really good rain. Once you've had a good rain, I'd wait for the first sunny day, and then towards the end of the day, go out with one of those box cutters (thin blade that you can break off or replace when it gets dull), find the biggest puddles of any concern, and poke holes (don't cut out holes or slice or any of that - just stick the blade in so that it makes a slice the size of the blade - when you pull the blade out, it should be either difficult or impossible to see where you made the cut) in the offending puddles. You'll probably need a hole every 1-3 ft or so in the puddle. In my experience, this is a big enough hole for the water to drain over time, and a small enough hole that the weeds won't find it (nor will you). You wait a day first because any water that manages to bake off in a day (the sun is heating the vinyl which speeds the evaporation) I don't consider to be a concern. You may need to do this a few different times until you get your drainage to a place where you're happy with it. Do keep in mind that with the vinyl, you're doing something you probably haven't done previously with other methods - you are making your ground intentionally uninhabitable in places. Some people take issue with this. I'm all for it. The problem with fertile soil is that either you're going to grow something in it or mother nature is going to grow something in it - but something WILL grow in it. The billboard is restricting both water and air access to parts of your ground. If, like me, it's a footpath and you don't intend to grow there, that's fine. I'd be hesitant to employ this method to close to trees you're trying to encourage to grow or certain types of bushes (like raspberry) that have a reputation for really spreading out their roots. That said, I suspect the real problem it causes isn't as bad as we think. From what I've seen, I suspect that water and air both get around under there much better than we might think they do, but I'm still being cautious with how I use it given that I'm not certain. That's why there is good spacing between this billboard and my trees, and I don't use it with my brambles. I both cases I wish I could though because those weeds are a pain. My goal for this is for it to last 5 years. I've got a method of adding stuff to the soil without removing it, so in 5 years when I remove it I'm going to check the soil and see what the effect has really been like. Depending on what I find I may extend it out further. If you do plan to remove yours every year, put careful thought into whether you want the micro irrigation to go over or under. It's easier to remove if the irrigation is under - assuming you plan to leave the irrigation in place. If you don't, it doesn't matter. I ran my main 1/2 tubing under, and once I'd cut my holes I then had enough access to add in the dripline and emmitters and make sure I got it where I wanted it.
    UnusualFarmChick replied about 1 year ago
    		I read that you mulch with a paper method. Would you mind explaining your exact method and items used? How do you keep it "neat" and not covering the rest of the yard? How thick do you have it? What about at the end of the season. Do you till it under or remove or...? My appologies for such an amount of questions but I have contemplated this method which in my findings I have yet to find someone who has had a "tidy" experience with it. lol. Please do share!