Garden Centre The Last Throw Of The Dice?

Adamc

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Hands up my interests in no particular order are:
Motorbikes
Fishing
Shooting
Music - Live & Recorded
Drinking - Usually Alcohol

I have NO interest in gardening! Other than sitting in a nice one drinking Wine or beer.

Every year around this time Mrs.C asks me to take her to the Garden Centre, and considering my other interests I feel obliged to endure the request.

This year I noticed something that maybe I had ignored before; every one in the bloody place pushing their trollies around with bits of half dead plants, we’re at least a hundred years old and members of the ‘blue rinse’ hair club! I‘m only freakin’ 62 and felt like a nipper in there. After a lap of the plants and water features (what the plastic fu(k are they?). I wanted a little bird bath for the garden….£35.00! we made for the exit.

On to the Farmers Market Shop.
Now I like quality food and ingredients, and happy to pay a little extra for quality, but I was in for a shock. Small Cob loaf of bread £4.50. A cabbage £3.90! A Whole chicken £18.00! Mind you it was dead and had been plucked! Taking the p*ss or what. I feel they are ripping off the gullible old age pensioner.

Getting old…… don’t let it get you!

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Personally I enjoy a bit of gardening, as long as I can do it on my terms and my schedule. Some veggies, but mostly flowers.

Anybody that thinks they're "saving money" by growing their own veggies is delusional. Never mind the work, just the inputs alone are more expensive. You've got to convince yourself that the quality is worth it...

And don't even get me started on this "organic" horsehockey.
 
I do container gardening every year. Plastic baskets/pots from the dollar store with holes drilled, free compost and mulch from the three neighboring villages. I grow tomatoes, peppers, petunias, marigolds, begonias and my favorite is red and blue morning glories. Gonna swipe some wild strawberries for pots this year. If the strawberries do well I may start a small patch next year. I buy 6 packs of plants and seeds, never more than $50 per year spent on gardening. Nothing organic about my method, it's really quite hydroponic, with hundreds of gallons of Miraclegrow.
 
Personally I enjoy a bit of gardening, as long as I can do it on my terms and my schedule. Some veggies, but mostly flowers.

Anybody that thinks they're "saving money" by growing their own veggies is delusional. Never mind the work, just the inputs alone are more expensive. You've got to convince yourself that the quality is worth it...

And don't even get me started on this "organic" horsehockey.

In general on a small 1 plant scale that may be the case.

We have avocados, grapes, blueberries, blackberries, boysenberries, cherries, figs, nectarines, apples, oranges, lemons, limes, plums, apricots, loquats, peaches and pomegranates all of which produce more fruit than we could ever eat and do it year after year. Well worth the initial investment.

We also do potatoes, onions, squash, cucumbers, carrots, peppers, tomatoes and eggplant every season as well. Quite possibly based on my location, these are very cheap to grow once you’ve got an area set up. Almost set and forget. Quality is always better than what you can buy at the store too.

The hardest part of growing a bunch of fruit/vegetables is eating it before it goes bad. We give a lot away and trade with neighbors as well.

I’ve found that dialing in a system and growing the same stuff for a few years really helps.
 
WideAWAKE's post reminded me of my Grandpa and Grandma's farmhouse. They had pears, apples, vegetable garden and my Grandma had grape vines growing on an old fence at least 100 feet long, solid green wall. Grandma canned zucchini preserves that you would have thought were orange marmalade. And oh yeah, the plums were the juiciest and sweetest that I've ever had, they grew beside the outhouse.
 
WideAWAKE's post reminded me of my Grandpa and Grandma's farmhouse. They had pears, apples, vegetable garden and my Grandma had grape vines growing on an old fence at least 100 feet long, solid green wall. Grandma canned zucchini preserves that you would have thought were orange marmalade. And oh yeah, the plums were the juiciest and sweetest that I've ever had, they grew beside the outhouse.

I wish I had the time/energy to can/preserve things. Hopefully life slows down at some point and I get to.
 
When the new wife and I moved into our first home together 9 years ago I started a little 10' square garden plot. Grew some tomatoes, squash, radishes, hot peppers and some leafy things for salads and it did ok. Soil was so stony I tilled up a 5 gallon bucket of racquet ball sized quartz rocks but added manure, and other things. The next year I increased it to 10' x 20' and tilled up another bucket of rocks.
Same crop items and adding cukes for her did this for the next 5 years.
In the end she doesn't like tomatoes or hot peppers, I don't like cukes, not the first time I swallow them nor the next 6 times I burp them up. Relative cost of yearly soil additives, plant starts and all the time required for tilling, planting, weeding and closing it up at end of season I figured I was ahead to just buy from grocery store.
Last year I skimmed off the excess soil and filled low areas in the yard and sodded the whole spot. Best looking grass in the whole yard.
 
Allison has many beautiful flowers, mostly perenials. I grow ONE pepper plant, Allison a few tomatoes, The horses require a row of carots. There's a horse apple tree, they return "organic" horsehocky in short order.
Typically some butternut squash.
Been VERY dry here, getting some light showers now, prolly not enough to make a difference. Four horses on a just a couple acres of pasture we need some rain.
 
I believe I've posted pictures of my flower beds in the past. They're much the same now as then. The odd change here and there as I get bored with something or it croaks or gets overgrown.

Last Fall I shitcanned a Montauk Daisy that got beat up during a remodel and never recovered, this Spring I ripped out a patch of Shasta Daisies that had gotten overgrown and clogged with grass. That spot got a Rhododendron and some red Peonies to go with the white ones. The spot where the Montauk was got something that I planted last Fall and has come up but I'm damned if I can remember what it is. Guess we'll figure that out when (if...) it blooms.

Garden is primarily a couple of short rows of potatoes (nothing better than new potatoes right out of the garden) a couple of hills of cukes and some tomato plants, usually Big Boys and Sweet 100 cherries. Tomatoes are a crap shoot here. If we get the right weather they do from okay to great, a lot of years they never get ripe.
 
We started a small garden in the onset of the Pandemic. Three raised beds in a U-shape, all 2'x8'. Just some basics that the wife wanted: cukes, cherry tomatoes, jalapenos, and some herbs. The wife wanted some wild flowers for clipping too. Well she never tended to the garden, so I took over the duties. I never would have imagined that i enjoy it as much as i do. In the past we over-committed and planted all too close together. We gave away far more than we consumed. This year I dialed back to 2 zucchini plants, 1 jalapeno, 1 sweet heat pepper (new to me), 2 super sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, and some herbs and wild flowers. Despite how hot and dry it's been, they are fairing quite well. I was shocked at the prices for starter plants at the big box store this year. I'd like to build a greenhouse at some point, but cost will prevent it this year. I may just start stockpiling wood and windows for next year. My wife has an addiction to house plants though, so I know she would really enjoy it too. That will be a significant project though.
 
I'm a real gardening freak: When we built this house back around 2010 we planted lots and lots of rock plants, they're still,there, but no how much we water them they don't grow any bigger, similarly, if we do forget to water them they don't die, very, very hardy. Our garden hasn't changed one bit since we planted all these rock plants. I highly recommend rock plants they are great.
 
I'm a real gardening freak: When we built this house back around 2010 we planted lots and lots of rock plants, they're still,there, but no how much we water them they don't grow any bigger, similarly, if we do forget to water them they don't die, very, very hardy. Our garden hasn't changed one bit since we planted all these rock plants. I highly recommend rock plants they are great.
They're quite common here. Most varieties are classed as a weed.

I've spent most of 70 years trying to find a rockicide that will kill them without success.

Manual methods don't work either. In fact, casual research indicates that picking them actually stimulates dormant rock seeds and encourages new growth.
 
It’s funny; I started this off as an ‘ageist’ thread.
Now we’re are all going a bit Alan Tichmarsh / Percy Thrower!
I’m not complaining it’s one of the most posted threads I‘ve started.
Long live the veg patch I say.
🌶️🥕🥬🥦🥒🥗🍆🌽🥔🍠🧄🧅🍅🫛🫑
Tee Hee!
 
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