Thu, May-29-08, 11:08
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Senior Member
Posts: 273
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Plan: High fat LC
Stats: 437/349/134
BF:Next/Goal/350
Progress: 29%
Location: Live Oak, Texas
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Growing your own and pests
Been at this gardening thing for awhile in California, had to quit because of health problems that are now solved by LC. Now I am in Texas and getting started again, having to learn how to do it here.
Growing tomatoes in the plastic buckets that you hang upside down? Best thing I ever did. Don't have to stake, little effort to watering, keeps my cat Kipper out of them (my avatar is baby Kip). He used to ambush the other cats from the tomatoes and at 22 pounds he would crush a few plants. Keeps the cats out of the "litter box" that a raised garden can be. In CA had to have raised gardens with screen underneath because of gophers.
As for varieties, just Google heirloom tomatoes. The number of varieties is amazing. Better tasting than anything in the big box grocery and it agribusiness tomato. We loved the zebras and the brandywines, sweet slice cucumbers, and an Italian bell pepper I don't remember the name of.
Second best thing I ever did for the garden was to spend about $40 (on eBay as I remember) to buy my first Contech Scarecrow which is a battery operated motion activated sprinkler. In CA, just buried the PVC pipe and attached the Scarecrow. That really kept the cats, dogs, and coyotes out. Havahart makes a similar device. Amazon sells both and I think the Scarecrow has a lot more and a lot higher rating. Were it just my cats bothering the garden, I could have turned the water off after awhile, but there were critters at night.
Just some ideas. With gas prices boosting the price of food, home gardening would be great for our personal finances and our health. Oh, and I just "lurve" Gardener's Supply.
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