I have had a small one over the last 9 or so years.I have plenty of room now from a good sized one but lack the free time to care for it.I hate to see gardens with weeds in them.My small garden usally consist of tomatoes,green peppers,hot and mild banana peppers and spring onions.Which makes for some killer salsa.

4 tomato plants
4-6 green pepper plants
2-4 mild banana pepper plants
2-4 hot banana pepper plants
2 rows 8'-10' long rows on onions

I'd like too, but I don't really have the time to take care of a garden. My folks have always had one, and I love eating the fresh tomatoes and green beans.

My parents always had a huge garden.They canned alot too.The worst part of it was always picking up rocks before they planted.You would think after 2 to 3
years you would have gotten them all.

And what great punishment for being bad as a kid...GO PULL WEEDS!

My 15-ft. X 15-ft, layout will have about 1/2 dozen various tomatoes, 1/2 dozen large globe peppers, and a couple rows of blue lake green beans. I could plant more, but like others, hate weeding. I've planted banana peppers before, and was absolutely overloaded with 'em.

I hear that... I'm always bring stuff to work and giving it away...veggies of course

I used to put out a huge garden but I downsized this year I have about 40 Strawberry plants. But like the rest of you I plant tomatoes 2 types slicing and for sauce, peppers, bell , banana , jalapeno I too make salsa yellow and white onions Blue lake greenbeans, cucumbers, butter crunch lettuce, hearts of gold cantulopes, squash summer and zucchini. the girlfriend plants a herb garden and has blueberry bushes (I hate mowing around them things) a small garden can still produce alot of veggies if you rotate them. It keeps me busy and out of trouble. My onions and lettuce are already in the ground about a week.

I'll be doing about a 20 by 30 foot plot this year. We always had veggie gardens every summer growing up, but until I moved here the best I ever did was about 8 by 10. I've got a heck of a lot of seeds. I haven't been through them since I bought 'em a few weeks ago, but we're doing several varieties of a bunch of different veggies.

I can't wait to get started! It's one of my favorite things to do every Summer. For some reason nothing ever tastes better than something you grew in your own carefully tended garden!

I've heard that deer are a big problem with
gardens around here...how do you all deal
with them, or is it not a problem where you
are ?? I'd like to have a garden but never
seem to find the time to start one, plus, I'm
moving this summer and so it will have to
wait until next year.

Who's puttin' out!? Are we allowed to have a thread on that?

Oh...gardens.

My parents have several gardens and they co-exist in harmony with deer and other wildlife. I haven't adopted their flare for gardening, so I'm not quite sure about the specifics, but I do know they plant certain flowers around their veggie plants to deter the wildlife. I think marigolds turn off rabbits and deer. There are others. Something about the pungent smell or bitter taste, I think? They've also made a feeder to fill with corn for the deer at the other end of the yard, away from the gardens. Gets their bellies full so they don't feel like taking a nibble at the plants. They throw them apples from their apple tree as well. They take old chipped up terra cotta pots and put them upside down in the gardens to create little toad houses. The toads eat tons of bugs that would love to nibble your plants. Having barking dogs will help keep the deer at bay as well.

Good luck with your gardens everyone.

Hmmmmmmmmm....I don't have an apple tree,
and I certainly don't want another dog, and the
last thing I want to do is put out corn to attract
anything !!!

I like the idea of deterrents, though...do you
folks use any kind of fence or netting to keep
critters at bay ??

Maybe I'll just start out small and try a container
garden...I once grew some pretty healthy tomato
and green pepper plants in half whiskey barrels.

We like to attract and feed the deer so yeah, the corn and apples aren't a good idea for you. They've tried all sorts of fences and barriers, but to no avail. They always end up a hassle and don't really work.

I asked Jeeves and here's what he came up with...

GardenWeb.com

A compilation of suggestions from our readers:

I've had pretty good luck using bird netting. It's been especially good if I stretch it over a pvc pipe framework (which I spray painted green to be less obvious). I use it over some raised bed planters. I've watched the deer react to it from inside my house.
They apparently don't see as well as they hear and smell. They poke their nose into the netting and it startles them and they shy away. Anything protruding through the netting, of course gets trimmed off. It's fairly inexpensive but sort of a nuisance when you want to work in the bed, since you have to roll it back out of the way. It also keeps out the wild turkeys. But the gophers still come in from below. I lost an entire bed of asparagus to gophers after keeping the deer out all season with the netting.

I've battled deer forever and these are my tried and true working solutions to the problem....My favorite is grating Ivory soap or Irish Spring all around the items you need to protect. It's good to do this before the deer establish their trails in the very early spring. I also buy small drawstring bags made of a loosely woven material (from a local garden supply store) and fill them with Milorganite (its a fertilizer with an odor that repels deer). I hang these on the bushes and shrubs the deer love to munch!


The scent of humans is repulsive to wild animals, or scary as natural enemies, and marking your territory with your scent is a natural deterent. It may be a bit unorthodox to have your husband use the garden as a toilet,
but you can accomplish the same thing by soaking rags in a bucket, and then ringing your garden with the rags (using plastic gloves of course) and bury them at the outside rim of your garden with some mulch.

Here's something that works great, is cheap and environmentaly safe - Mix one slightly beaten egg with 1 quart of water and spray onto anything that the deer eat. You have to re-apply this about every 4-5 days or after a rain but it really works! We've tried many things - and we have a dog but the eggs work the best.


Here's what worked for me: coyote urine. They have all different types of urine drops at Agway (and probably similar stores-find out what the local carnivore is and give it a try. I also sprinkled my stuff with a ton of black and red pepper, garlic and curry powder-nothing went near my tomatoes! Spray with a little water first so it sticks to the leaves and such. You do have to redo it though-every time it rains.


I've been trying everything. Here's just a few: 1) Human hair clippings from your local beauty shop sprinkled around the plants. 2) blood meal. 3) Moth ball flakes sprinkled all around. These seem to work but eventually I let any of the treatments lapse and the deer feast.


. One year we had a deer problem and after the first feasting in early spring wiping out everything, we lined each bed with chives. It seemed to work and we had flowers the rest of the year, but you have to stay on top of the chives or they can take over the garden.... but when you weed the garden you can just weed out some of the chives as well. (chives bloom adding a nice variation...)


Here's my list of plants that deer won't eat: for annuals use:ageratum,snapdragon,salvia,nicotiana,petunia,
alyssum,marigold,begonia. Do NOT use impatiens,geraniums,pansies.

For perennials, I have excellent luck with these:columbine,coreopsis,foxglove,aconitum,lavender,
salvia,nepeta,daffodils,hyacinth,rudbeckia,beebalm,babysbreath.Do not use hosta,daylily,any type of mum or shasta daisy,obedient plant,echinacea.


*Note* Any native plants are high risk too, except for the poisonous plants. Deer proof trees and bushes are hard to come by because the ones they don't eat can still be damaged severely by a buck. For evergreens try Spruce,hemlock,Pieris,Leucothoe,and boxwood. Do not use Yew,Arborvitae,pine,rhododendron,and azalea. There are more deer proof plants out there. Actually alot more than people think. I just can't think of them all at this time. Also, plan on using a deer repellant. I use an excellent one called Deer-off. It is completely organic and is comprised of eggs,pepper,and garlic. It is sprayed on the plants and lasts up to 3 months depending on rain and growth rate of the plants. Keep this in mind when it comes to deer: Any plant in the herb family is usually disliked. Any plant that is native is usually eaten with gusto! Any fruiting plant like an apple tree, cherry, or berry bush will be devoured. Hope this will get you started. I deal with deer on a daily basis so I am speaking from experience.

I have excellent luck with; Dragons-eye pine, any ornamental grasses, butterfly bush,
caryoptoris, anything with really fuzzy leaves, any mints, asiatic lilies, barberry,
artimesia, gold thread juniper, trumpet vine, scotch broom, St. Johnswort and contorted hazel.


Try Deeroff: Rutgers University ranked deeroff number 1 out of 35 repellents tested. Now labeled for rabbits and squirrels.

The third suggestion doesn't work, because
my nephew has a nasty habit of dropping
his drawers and relieving himself out in the
yard whenever the urge strikes him, yet we
see deer in the yard all the time.

(he's related by law, not blood, btw !!! )

I know there are deer everywhere, but where
I'm moving to, their are far fewer trees because
it was once farmland...my current house and
the entire subdivision was carved out of a hardwood
forest, so I'm assuming that there's probably alot
more around me right now because of the cover
they get from the trees....maybe it won't be a
problem when I move.

Darn it! I thought I had found a new career! Garden protector... I'd finally have it as good as the dog - nothing to do but eat, sleep and, uh, you know, protect the garden.

... and it would save my septic tank from having to be emptied as often, so I wouldn't have to pay as much of that silly flush tax.

Couple questions for the garden experts:

How do I get my soil tested -- are the test kits you get at Lowes any good?

What is the best corn to grow? I tried silver queen, incredible, and silver king. Silver queen seemed to grow the best and give me the best yield so far.

What is the best way to stifle the &%$# weeds? I've tried the fabric and the weeds come up through it or around it. Hoeing -- I never seem to keep up. Any special ideas?

We just rented a tiller this afternoon! We'll have peppers, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, sunflowers, and who knows what else. It's so good to see the sun again!

I've got 9 buttercrunch lettuce in the garden now, and a dozen each of beefsteak and paste 'maters, and 9 bell pepper plants about 6" tall in the greenhouse now, just waiting for it to get warm enough. I'll put in the peas this weekend. The rest of the garden will be jalapeno peppers, hot wax peppers, bush green beans, butter and sugar corn (the very best kind!), zucchini, onions, baby pumpkins (for my little grandson). Already have established blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, apples, peaches, pears, cherries, and walnuts in the yard. I can a lot every year. We live way out there, and it's a hike to the grocery store, and I believe it's healthier for us than eating all the preservatives in the stuff you buy from the grocery store. Although, the occasional slug you find in your salad because you didn't wash the lettuce quite as good as you should have sometimes makes me think otherwise!

I've also got angel's trumpets, petunias, alyssum, geraniums, lobelia, and last year's hanging baskets ready to go into the ground or be hung out around Memorial Day.

As far as keeping critters away, we've got alfalfa planted in the fields, and the deer don't mess with the gardens as long as there's alfalfa. The goats stay out of the gardens in favor of the alfalfa, too. For the bunnies, I go to Sam's and get one each of those big containers of cayenne pepper and garlic powder, and mix them together. Then, in the morning when the plants are still damp, I sprinkle the ones the bunnies like with the cayenne/garlic mixture. It usually does keep them away, but if not, they are well seasoned! Of course, you have to re-apply it occasionally because of either longevity or rain.

Depends what you like the taste of...I vote silver queen.

Weeds:Get some kids and see my previous post...

I garden in raised beds so I don't have get on bended knee.I can sit. I've had 6 tomato plants in the ground for about 2 weeks now,they're doing real good(love that manure).This year I've put in 4 green pepper plants because we eat so many Fajitas and tacos.
As for the Deer,I use the hair out of our brushes and just tie it around the different plants and fence(if you have one).Works out here! I use marigolds up and down and across the whole space because they do cut down on thw amound of cut worms and such. The toads just naturally hang out in the beds so I havn't done anything special for them,maybe I should start hmmm.

I use Roundup to get rid of the weeds in the beginning of the gardening. Spray the area where your going to plant It disapates in 3 days. Then you can plant what ever you want . It will not stay in the ground and hurt your planting. To keep deer and varmets away put an electric wire fence about 4 inches off the ground and put peanutbutter on the wire. When they lick the wire they get shocked and wont be back.