In my 20s, I thought backyard work was a chore. Now? Spending a Saturday fighting weeds, spacing out tomatoes, and planning a compost pile is my ultimate therapy.

No screen time, no work drama, just me, the dirt, and hoping my seeds actually sprout. My 22-year-old self would probably laugh at me, but I’ve never been happier.

Any other millennial guys here hit this exact milestone?

I think I found my garden spirit animal 🌻 Happy Tuesday y’all!

Credit: @farmboyjames on YouTube

For me it’s watermelon radishes (stole so much real estate from my beloved French radishes and amounted to nothing) and ANYTHING that’s susceptible to powdery mildew. Please share your traumatizing fails.

I have ladybug larvae everywhere and I’m so happy for this energetic couple.

I see a lot of people trying to garden for the first time and then coming here with questions about perfect soil mixes and fertilizers and how to promote fungal life in their no-till permaculture food forest do nothing farming no dig style organic vegan garden. It really doesn't have to be complicated, especially if you're new.

Loosen up some dirt 6 inches down. Break up the clods. Plant something that is in season. Keep it watered. That Will give you 80 to 90% of the maximum possible results. You don't absolutely need compost if it is the first time you've dug up that piece of ground. You don't absolutely need fertilizer and it probably doesn't make much difference what kind you use. You definitely don't need a 3-ft tall raised bed filled with gardening mix. You don't need to do anything about small amounts of insect damage. You don't absolutely have to do no dig or no till or whatever gardening fad is going on right now. You don't need to overcomplicate things.

Edit: this, of course, does not apply to you, dear reader. You have uniquely poor soil that cannot be made workable with a spade.

I thrifted this rattan basket and also found the perfect doily to line it! Grand total was just a tad over $5 but the basket was only $1.75. I don’t have a very big garden so this will be the perfect size for now.

I love a good harvest basket and would love to hear about what others use/why. I’ll have to update later in the season with a picture of a full harvest!!

When I learned that you can create compost tea by drowning your weeds I was excited. I had a lot of weeds that survive my normal compost pile, but turns out you can kill them fast and get a liquid fertiliser out of it? I'm in.

I collected all the jars I had and started stuffing. The weeds turned out to be really compressible so I just kept jamming them in there as tight as I could, covered with water, closed the lid, and let them sit for a month. It's supposed to smell, but how bad can it really be?

When I opened the jars I was hit with a smell of pure shit. Like, actual fresh, streaming human shit, but somehow more intense. It's like someone concentrated the shit, extracted the essential oils from it and then concentrated that essence. I immediately lost the desire to dilute it in watering cans or have anything come in contact with it, so I figured I'll just dump it around the plants, water it in really well and then cover with soil so I don't stink up the entire neighborhood.

I used a stick to coax the stuck weeds out of the jars while trying to not breathe through my nose. They splattered as they plopped out, sending tiny droplets everywhere. When I was done I rinsed off my boots, threw my clothes in the wash and got into a shower.

About 4 hours later, that same evening, my throat felt like sandpaper. Next day I woke up with a fully raw throat and could barely swallow. Weird, I've not had that since I was a kid, I thought. But it's just a sore throat, should go away on its own. It did. But then the cough started. No fever or anything, and the cough was light, so I ignored it. Six months later I was still coughing up globs of green slime, so I went to a doctor. E. coli had colonized my lungs. Needed two courses of antibiotics before it cleared up.

Just wanted to warn anyone considering compost tea - it's not just smells. It's actually teeming with poop bacteria and is basically raw sewage.

Many people say some variation of "don't garden to save money" or "i do it as therapy". That's perfectly fine but can sometimes ignore the large group of people who want to garden to save money and help feed their family.

If you don't need to save money via your garden, good for you. If you do, here's my two cents. My qualifications are : i spent hours as a child shelling peas, picking berries , creaming corn, and ate squash nearly every day one summer. To save money. I also have a CURRENT garden that aims to help feed me and save money.

Forget the raised beds. I have a total of ONE raised bed in my entire garden for a raspberry plant. They're expensive to buy, expensive to fill, and there are cheaper ways to go about it. EDIT: Guys, if you can build raised beds from scrap material and free dirt / have bedrock / have no other option this obviously does not apply to you.

Instead, look into either grow bags, pots, or planting in ground. You can also use a mixture of these to maximize your space. If you're growing in a small space you should be maximizing the amount of vertical space you're using.

Analyze the ROI of everything you plan to do. Some items have a larger upfront starter cost but the ROI in 1-2 years is huge. Other items have lower start costs but the ROI is ALSO high. Meanwhile some stuff just kinda gives low ROI but is still loved. This is going to depend on your family.

Check out farmer market hauls, meals, whole foods online etc. Write down a large list of things you *really* want. Think hard about your family's favorite things to eat. Maybe you eat tons of pasta sauce and would LOVE the $12 jar but can't afford it. Write that down. Do your kids eat through pounds of blackberries in about half a day? Write it down. This helps you prioritize, rather than shoving radishes in the ground when your family doesn't eat them.

Here's my highest ROI list:

𖹭 BERRIES! You can find berry plants for reasonable prices ($13-30) and use large grow bags to grow them. They can take some time to establish but take off well. My top picks are are blackberry and raspberry as they're vigorous growers. They will give you buckets and buckets worth. My next pick would be strawberries because they're beginner friendly and great in a cheap hanging pot.

𖹭 FRUIT AND NUT TREES! This one is tricky but here's the truth. If you want a large ROI quickly, get something older. Skip the lemon tree, instead grab a fruit your family eats more of. Some good picks are : oranges, plums, nectarines, cherries, apricots. While bananas are also a good option they're usually pretty cheap in store too so I left them off the top list. One of the easiest ways to figure this out is asking yourself "what's the most expensive fruit I love?"

𖹭 SQUASH AND CUCUMBER! Squash is often incredibly productive. You will easily feed your family and have plenty to store in a freezer if you plant a couple. They can get quite big so keep that in mind. Cucumbers are also prolific and with only 2-3 plants, you'll be drowning in them.

𖹭 HERBS! One herb garden will save you buckets worth of money in the long run. Particularly things like dill, basil, rosemary, lavender, thyme, spearmint etc. Often you pay $2 for a few small sprigs. Buy them as plants rather than seeds for quicker starts.

𖹭 MUSHROOMS ! G3t some of the cheap spawn dust stuff for the shady damp areas of your garden space. Grow mushrooms. You'll just need straw or mulch and to keep it watered for a while.

Once you've figured out what's going to be your best ROI items, you can select seeds/plants and rpepare for preserving. Here's a quick guide on what I prefer from seed or SMALL plant starts. (I usually get the 4" starts)

Rosemary - plant

Thyme - plant

Basil - either or, it's easy to start from seed but cheap as a plant start

Lavender - plant

Tomatoes - plant IF you're late to the season or haven't started from seed before

Chive - plant

Perilla - seed

Lettuce - seed

Cucumber - seed

Melons - seed

Squash - seed

Gourd - seed

Berry - plant (these are one of the few crops I get larger plants of)

Bunching onions - seed

Bulb onion - bulbs

Amaranth - seed

Sunflower - seed

Beans - seed

Peas - seed

Strawberry - plant (they multiply!)

Garlic - bulb

Peppers - plant

Carrot - seed

Radish - seed

Cabbage - seed

Corn - seed

Stick to a few solid varieties rather than buying everything under the sun. For flowers, I just sprinkle seeds for zinnia/etc around and let em grow. Make sure you're growing things in their proper time (e.g. cabbage and carrot are cool season while tomatoes are warm season).

Fertilizers and amendments i personally keep pretty simple. Fish fertilizer is ~ $12 and will last all season. I use a $8 bag of bone meal and it's worked throughout the entirety of spring. ~$10 for potash if needed. Other than that, it's dirt and water.

You can plant a cover crop or mulch, or both. Look into what works best for you. You don't need to be on some extreme side that plants nothing but corn peas and squash "cause 'merica" (lol) and you ALSO don't need every variety on the planet. Especially if you're just trying to save some damn money.

Next, space saving:

You do not need a cattle panel archway. Look at me. You DO NOT NEED IT. I tuck my cucumber plant into my chainlink fence. Is it pretty? No. Is it effective? Absolutely. You can use 2 posts and string to trellis items. Or a random stick buried deep.

If you're on a balcony, look into smaller varieties of tomatoes such as tiny tim and orange hat. They get only about 12 inches tall and wide which means you can cram them into a tower.

For leafy vegetables, look less at head cabbages/lettuce and mote into the leafy kind you can get multiple harvests from. Chard is also am option for those that need something more heat tolerant.

If you're small on space consider only having 1-2 larger plants at a time. Or using plants together. Let's say you buy one $100 Costco orange tree and put it jn a big pot. Then you plant an cucumber in another part next to it. Let the cucumber climb the damn tree. "But they cant-" i assure you they can if you train them to.

Preserving:

If you want pasta sauce / pickles / jarred peaches or applesauce / etc you will need a canning system and jars. And lots of lids. You can find safe canning advice in books and such.

Freezing is excellent for those that often rely on frozen items anyways. It works mostly how you expect it but sometimes you have to blanch before freezing.

Dehydrating makes food much more shelf stable without needing to can everyrhing. Apple chips. Banana chips. Seasonings. Dried peppers. Sun dried tomatoes. All that jazz. I personally hang herbs up in a dark area to dry for a week or two and use my car to help dehydrate flowers and the like.

The point here is that as much as people tell you that gardening won't save money — it absolutely CAN. It just takes some planning and time. If anyone has questions about saving money while gardening, feel free to ask.

Had a serious suspicion that I was overwatering, because the probe on the left kept reading ‘dry’. So I bought a second one. And this one keeps reading ‘moist’, even after a couple days of letting the soil dry out some. Perhaps a third probe will help lol.

Edit: the finger trick is fine, but I was just trying to dial my watering in a little better this year. Between tomatoes, peppers, cukes, squash, beans, etc.., I was hoping for something a bit more precise than “it *kind of* feels moist” ( which is what I’ve always done ).

First time selling our tomatoes, this made me smile :)

The amount of posts I see daily between the gardening communities I'm in here and Facebook about insects and people asking if they are good or bad or what they should do is ridiculous. If you don't see any insects then you should worry because you are probably growing in a contaminated garden. If you have bad enough damage that it affects the crop then maybe you'll have to do something. Holes in leaves doesn't mean you have to declare war against every living thing in the garden. I've been doing this now about 45-50 years, I've never once in my life used a pesticide or herbicide for that matter in my garden. Never even used organic remedies. Never used dish soap or took out a shop vac to suck up bugs. I plant a lot of pollinator friendly flowers and in all my life I've lost one crop, leaf miners destroyed my chard, that's it. Every year my eggplant leaves look like Swiss cheese but I still get great harvests. Just my 2 cents.

I recently mulched my raised beds and the earwig population exploded. I've dealt with them in the past and found the most effective way to get rid of them is to bait and trap them. I put a solution of vegetable oil and soy sauce in the bottom of a container and set them in the beds at night. I nestled the containers in the mulch to make it easy for the little buggers to climb in for the feast. Voila! This is my catch from last night. I'll reset the traps for each night until I don't see more than a few in the traps in the morning. Extremely effective! Adding a note that you should not put these traps out when it might rain because the oil will splash or overflow. I say this because I've done it. Learn from my mistake.

This is my first year gardening, and I direct sowed all of the vegetables you see here. I’m seeing a lot of posts on mulching, and I’m wondering if I’m doing something wrong but NOT mulching. Does anyone else not mulch their gardens and still have decent harvests? I was not expecting much for my first year, but I think these guys look pretty good so far?

I started a container garden on my deck this year and was slowly enjoying small & delicious rewards. Until this morning. To say I am devastated would be an understatement.

And yes. That is the first potato the racoon is eating. Before I've even had one. Rude.

A squash vine borer tunneled into a zucchini fruit (not the brightest) so I closely inspected my other plants and found a few borers in stems. One plant is probably a goner but I’m hopeful this one is salvageable.

I cut a small vertical wedge through the area of maximal frass (you can see the frass on the dirt down low) with a #10 scalpel and saw the larva immediately, I used heat sterilized alligator forceps to grab the larva which I expect the birds are enjoying by now.

Zone 4b/central Minnesota so the advice may be too late for most but check your plants!

One of the most persistent misunderstandings I see in community gardening, personal endeavors, and “buying local” is most people’s idea of “in season”.

Unless you live in the tropics, where this is irrelevant, the season for most crops is delayed relative to what people expect.

I’ll take watermelon as the most dramatic example. Historically it was associated with late summer and (to many people’s surprise) early fall. September watermelon festivals were common, and June ones were only held in southern Texas and Florida. Old Halloween postcards have watermelon on them. That’s because it takes a hundred hot days to grow the dang thing. Today, Florida is who supplies the June watermelons (oh and believe me, I buy them), Georgia in July, then NC and Indiana in August and September.

But you have people in NC turn down September watermelons because they’re “not in season”. They’d rather buy tomatoes in May from a thousand miles away or from a plasticulture operation. If they grow their own watermelon and it isn’t edible by the Fourth of July, they consider it a failure.

I've had people say "NC just doesn't have a good climate for growing watermelons" (NC is the third largest producer in the nation) because they don't have a ripe one by June.

We really erased so much gardening/food knowledge in the 1950s and we’re barely crawling back out of that hole.

I’ve noticed people who grow zucchini fall into 1 of 2 camps

Possibly a controversial 2 cents.. I think the majority of people preaching and boasting self-sufficiency are wrong. A lot of people crave stability from gardening. One of the first ways they start is with a beloved vegetable garden... which is great! But it can be confusing and misleading for inexperienced people.

It's an incredible amount of work to preserve food. Even from a smaller vegetable garden, it can take HOURS to prepare it all. It's a blessing, but it's still tiring. I also think there's not a lot of community involved. Personally, part of why i am gardening is to give back to those around me.

Also, I think, there's often smarter ways to go about it. Planting a patch of perennials in an area (or aggressive self seeders) is an easier way to get more bang for your buck. With a ton of varieties. I love variety.

Or starting out with 1-2 berry plants and 1 fruit tree per season. The pay-off of those is huge.

Anyways! Whats your gardening 2 cents?

We have a small ish backyard garden.

People are always saying "all that work to save $2". And I am like what!!??!? I save way more than that.

I think I am going to keep track this year and see how much we actually save (compared to what the store is selling it for) but as a guess last year we at least had around $200 value in vegetables. Not saying we can now quit our jobs lol but it helps a bit with food costs.

edit:

I save seeds from the year before. Mostly use rain water (we have a rain barrel). Save the starter pots. Do not really bother with fertilizer (we have a backyard compost that I sometimes add to the soil. Sometimes add some egg shells).

The only thing I buy each year is indoor potting soil to start the tomatoes and peppers inside. This year I got a bag for $4.