Greetings, Steemians and welcome to my post. Today I wanted to do a basic blog type post that gives you guys a little more background on me and the garden I post about. As a private estate gardener, I don't actually own the garden and greenhouses that I work in. That being said, I basically get paid to treat it like it's my own garden. Which is kind of a win-win situation of sorts for me. I do get to make a vast majority of the decisions as my boss gives me a ton of autonomy and relies heavily on my judgement when it comes to the garden.
I actually took over control of the garden and greenhouses last spring (2016), rather unexpectedly. Not really sure what exactly happened but the guy who had the job left suddenly (fired or by choice, I don't know), and my boss offered me the promotion. I took it with all of these high expectations of how wonderful of a job I was going to do.
And promptly fell flat on my face. Over. And over. And over again. It was a very humbling experience. I may have a horticulture degree, but knowing things and being able to actually apply them are two very different things. I had minimal hands on experience with gardening before accepting this position. I had been more in the landscape maintenance end of things for the previous 6 years. My only real experience with vegetable gardening was from when I was a kid. It was just one hit after another pretty much all year. It was so embarrassing I didn't even really take many pics. The ones I did take weren't in the garden. Like this big water turtle.
Now, in my defense, when I took over, it was very unexpectedly in the spring. I didn't have a garden plan. Didn't know what half the plants that had been started were because they hadn't been marked. Had no clue what the fertilization schedule looked like. Didn't have any idea what pests to expect. The guy who had the job before me was actually supposed to be mentoring me, since he only worked 4 hours one day a week, and having me do most of the actual work under his supervision. He essentially refused to do so. Told me not to worry about anything other than watering. So I was basically just kind of winging things by the seat of my pants last year. And it wasn't good. At all.
It was also a bad year weather wise. We got tons of rain. Even many experienced gardeners around here had kind of crappy gardens last year due to the excessively wet weather. Lots of disease problems.
Aphids, Whiteflies, Japanese Beetles, Squirrels, Squash Vine Borers, Asparagus Beetles, Cabbage Loopers, Grasshoppers, Mites, Pill Bugs (yes they can actually be a pest when they overpopulate), hornworms, molds, mildews, bacterial problems, fungal blights. It was a REALLY bad year lol Found out later that apparently the guy before me had the approach that you're just going to have those kinds of problems when you're doing organic and wasn't doing ANYTHING other than spraying with insecticidal soap once a week. We had extremely large populations of pretty much everything. The aphids and whiteflies were already out of control in the greenhouses by the time I took over.
And crap was so disorganized. Compost bins full of organic wastes infested with pests that hadn't been emptied in months sitting next to the greenhouses. Dirty containers piled up next to the potting shed. A 5 gallon bucket of osmocote had been left open and gotten a ton of water in it. Same with some all purpose water soluble fertilizer. I had a lot of "wtf?!?" moments last year.
But I've also learned a lot. I always have learned better by doing anyways. The garden this year looks a lot better. These are some of the purple podded peas I experimented with this year.
It's still not quite what I was hoping for. But I'm actually making different mistakes this year than last. And there are some things that I haven't had a whole lot of control over so I've had to improvise quite a bit. I have a lot of control over things, but that doesn't mean my boss doesn't drop a wrench off in the middle of my plans somewhat regularly. And I didn't find out until last week that the "soil" we have in the beds in the garden isn't actually soil at all. It's some kind of bagged potting mix with tons of sand and some gravel in it that has had compost and elephant dung added to it. I kept wondering why I wasn't seeing any worms in the soil. And why it was so danged hydrophobic when it dried out even just a little. It has definitely been an interesting experience.
Thanks for visiting my post. If you're interested in hearing more about my gardening mishaps, learning experiences, achievements, and headaches, give me a FOLLOW.
Suggestions, comments, questions, etc are always welcome and appreciated.
Gotta say it was a little too long of a read for me to finish but I liked the pics. I read up until the turtle pic and you have a pretty cool job btw :) just my friendly 2 cents
I do have a tendency to be a bit long winded. I'll keep your suggestion in mind for future posts. I'm still pretty new at this so I'm still trying to get a feel for what works best. Thanks for the feedback!
Yea experiment for sure, because there are lots of different types out there who like different formats. I was just giving my 2 cents, I thought the content/writing was good and I followed to see future posts :) I will end up finishing the article because now I'm kinda curious lol keep up the good work.
Thanks! I followed you and look forward to seeing your future posts as well. =)
Isn't it fun having to jump into the middle of someone else's stinky pile of "compost" and having to figure it all out?
I had whiteflies in my greenhouse last year toward the end of summer. Those things are hard to get rid of if you can't use any spray. I didn't want to risk contaminating the water in the aquaponics system and killing the fish. I ended up using the yellow sticky traps, and that did help to some extent.
I have actually put together a three ring binder with my garden plan, plant info, pest stuff, etc to give to my boss to hand off to the next person so they don't end up in the same position I was in.
I've come to loath whiteflies. I use insecticidal soap and the yellow sticky traps, but they only help reduce the numbers temporarily. My boss is supposed to be ordering some ladybugs and lacewings for us to release which should help. It's my understanding that lacewings can actually be used in the greenhouse to control whiteflies. Might be a control method you could use around the aquaponics.
I really should check into that. I know I'll have whiteflies by fall, they invade my greenhouse every year.
You may find this link helpful http://www.rinconvitova.com/lacewing.htm
Thanks for the link!