Vegetable Gardening!

abutt421

New member
Feb 16, 2011
12
0
0
I am moving to the Barahona region in two weeks!!! Counting down the days....
Anyway, I want to start a vegetable garden in our huge back yard. The purpose is not for complete sustainability, just to have someting on hand in the week so I don't have to make the drive into Barahona.
Where can I buy seeds, and what else will I need? I am thinking of doing it all in containers to cut down on the bugs. Will I need to buy soil from a store? Can I use horse manure as a fertilizer? What about protecting my veggies from bugs? Are there any plants that do particularly well or poorly? I am specifically wondering about some of the cold weather plants like carrots (my favorite) and lettuce and broccoli. We don't have air conditioning so I am thinking those are out?
Tell me everything you know!!!!
 

donluis99

Bronze
Jul 12, 2004
721
16
0
how grows the garden?

Gardening here is a bit tricky, lots of sun good for plants, but soil temperatures get fairly high.

Seeds are available here, I do not know from wenst you come, but me as an American, like certain veggies you may not find, and instead of hassle looking to buy here I order all mine every year on line, comfort of the house all done every December, more or less.

I grow all my leaf veggies under a shade cloth, 10 feet high, 80% shade, going great with all types of mixed leaf lettuce, cabbage, pak choy, spinach and kohlrabi! Anybody nearby can come get some leafy lettuce, it is over abundant...

Plan to put up 40% shaded over the rest, where now I am in full sun, for cantaloupe, watermelons, egg plant, cucumbers, just did 8 quarts of B&B pickles, mmm, of course lots of tomatoes, lot and lots of peppers, sweet and hot, I pickle the dickens out of hot Hungarian bananas, 20 - 25 quarts per season!!!! Jalape?o, habeneros, Chiles etc. etc.

I do not do carrots, they should be good under the shade cloth with the other leafy's, but the carrots here are good, plentiful and are cheap enough.

I only grow either what may be expensive, some times tomatoes here peak at 40 - 50 pesos a pound, so tomatoes are easy enough, and of course great garden fresh!

As far as soil, you only buy dirt if you can not condition yours, horse manure is fine as long as it is composted, otherwise it may well burn your plants, learn about soil preparation!

Start small and work up from there, I started with a 12' x 24' raised bed, now I have 4, I learned that a raised bed should be about 6' wide at the most, if you have access from both sides, 3' foot wide if from only one side.

Water, know your water situation, like now, rain has been very scarce here in SD since December, I gotta water every other day.....luckly I have good steady water supply thanks to CAASD, really here water is on for 363 days per year....

g'luck