Congratulations on the massive personal evolution!!

My advice would be to scale back your plans for a vegetable garden a bit.
If you are a complete beginner, it's easy to bite off more than you can
chew. It can be a bit discouraging to do a huge planting, find you don't
have the skills or time to care for everything, and be faced with a big
weedy mess.

Much better to start small, or moderate, have a positive experience, and
then add on to your plot as you gain confidence.

My vegetable garden is about 900 square feet. A quarter of that is in
asparagus (a perennial vegetable). In the rest I grow lettuce, swiss chard
and other greens; sugar peas, bush and pole beans; tomatoes, peppers and
eggplants; onions and garlic, and other things as well. I have a row of
cannas, just for beauty, gladiolus for cutting, and nasturtiums and other
flowers here and there. I get plenty of food, some to share, and for me it
is the right balance of work and pleasure.

I concentrate on growing things that are best absolutely fresh and ripe, or
that I prefer unusual varieties of, and skip things like sweet corn that are
readily available at farm stands where I live. After having the plot tilled
initially, I now rely on a more or less permanent mulch cover, which keeps
weeds at bay and continuously improves the soil.

One of your early tasks should be to establish a compost pile, or ideally
two or three of them--one for "raw" compost, which is then turned into
successive piles for maturing and storage. This doesn't have to be anything
fancy, but you will appreciate having a dedicated spot for garden (and
kitchen) refuse, and you will love having the finished compost.

I can strongly recommend the book __The Natural Food Garden__ by Patrick
Lima. He and John Scanlan garden at Larkwhistle in Ontario. It's a
wonderfully written and photographed book, with clear explanations of WHY
and how to do things, good for beginners and more experienced gardeners.

Good luck, and have fun,
Sue

Zone 6, Southcentral PA


"Rev. J. Toad" wrote in message
news:3e807db2.258099250@news...
Hey there folks...

Just in time for spring, a month ago I was diagnosed with type 2
diabetes. Besides getting into an exercise regimen for the first time
in my life, this has necessitated a complete 180 in terms of my
eating. Gone are the days of frozen & packaged food, I cook everything
myself now. It's only been a few weeks, but I feel great.

Having read about how cool it is to grow and eat your own food, I'm
eager to try it out for myself this summer, especially since I'm in a
massive personal evolution right now and I'd like to tack on as much
good new stuff as I can.

So here's what I've got:

-a MASSIVE yard, which I hate mowing, and thus want to dedicate as
much as possible to vegetables, and maybe a few flowers.
-a burning desire to do this.
-absolutely no idea how to get started.

With this in mind, are there any good websites or definitive print
tomes I should check out? The snow is almost melted (I'm in Winnipeg,
Manitoba), so I should probably start this week sometime. I'll either
rent a rototiller or hire someone to clear out a big patch.

Also, if anyone is from this area and knows the best stuff to grow in
this soil/climate and can give me any area-specific pointers, much
appreciated.

So, if anyone can give me any advice on getting started on this, I'd
be muy grateful.


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