A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Vegetable Gardening I may have found land to rent!

An acquaintance pretty close might rent a field to me. I don't have all the details yet. It is an old farm where the old folks died and the estate is shared by three (older/middle age) siblings. I have even been making a few diagrams of how I would plant. :wink:
Any ideas or suggestions for things I should know and do in this endeavor? I am still putting up flyers in town in case there is something else better out there. I had thought either to rent OR to split the produce, but in the above situation of being 3 siblings families, I couldn't share that much. Does anyone know how much the renting should cost me? I am hoping for around 50x100 feet this year and I don't want to spend more than $100. Any information would be helpful!

Gee, wish you were close. We leave people use our land for free.

Wow, that is too bad. A question: do you have water access then? I absolutely must have a spigot or something to use here in the dry sand. Is that the usual?

We never have to worry about water...It rains all spring and summer and snows all fall and winter. Our land used to be all farm fields so we have rich topsoil as well.


Is there community gardens in your area?

Wow, never worry about water! It doesn't rain so regularly here. A lot of times rain clouds will be heading here and split into two and go north and south of us and not rain a drop here. Sometimes I will drive through pouring rain on the way home (I work 12 miles away) and once I roll into town it is sunny and dry. Kind of creepy! And we have sand here.
We don't have community gardens in my town but I was thinking about trying to get involved in starting some. A couple towns over has them.

So I haven't heard back from the person with the land yet. I don't have her phone number so I will stop in again and ask. Sometimes things just get forgotten and maybe she told her brother to decide and he didn't think about it. I sure hope so!!! The land that I want looks so good right now as the snow melts. I think it is just perfect! I never got that horse I always wanted so maybe now I'll get this land to garden on.

Sure hope you get the land..

You can play in the dirt daily , just like usuns..............

Jeeks. Now it seems they have to ask the brother-in-law that grew pumpkins on the property last year. I pray that he doesn't want to do it again! I know it didn't go as well as he wanted and he had no plans on how to sell them. I just hope they decide soon because I suppose the onions and potatoes I want will be sold out!

Hey a fellow Minnesotan! What part are you in? Im WAYyyyyy down south...An appartment dweller...sucks not to have a garden patch...I'm limited to the desk space in my bedroom and shade loving plants....Tried tomatoes once, but they didn't look so good...Had 2 in containers that I took outside, but someone stole 'em...:-|

I snuck 2 other tomater plants between the shurbs....no one seemed to notice and I got a few small tomoatoes....

LOL. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Show off........

Any word yet, Tamara from Minnesota?

Nope!

Yipee! I finally got a call back from the place I had asked and they said okay. About a 100x100 spot will be what I'll have. Yesterday I was totally reconciled to NOT getting it. I had to order earth boxes so I could plant tomatoes and peppers here at home and today I got my garden ready for onions and then lo and behold the guy called and said I can rent there after all. I almost called him yesterday but didn't because I figured it wasn't going to happen. So now I have to SCRAMBLE to get ready and plant. I have to quick order more potatoes and all sorts of things and figure out how I will do all this. I was starting to be fine about not gardening much this year. I was going to do more backpacking and biking and so it would be ok. But now I am very excited to get let loose in a big garden! I will grow sweet corn for the first time (I spent summers at my dad/grandma's sweet corn farm but have never grown in myself) and I will plant several other things I don't normally: sweet potatoes, melons, parsnips, rutabagas, sunchokes, and broccoli. I will need some advice! My head is sort of spinning. If I hadn't worked outside so hard I don't think I'd fall asleep tonight.

Congratulations. That will be a big garden. Mine isn't that big yet and still alot of work. But don't imagine you have to water as much as we do. I don't know you area. Here we plant like two rows of sweet corn on the south side of any above ground flowering and fruiting plant. Then about 8 foot of the plants then two more rows of sweet corn. I do let some of my tomatoes sprawl here. As long as you mulch we have no trouble. As we don't have the rain and wet ground so many do. So sure others more familiar with your climate will chime in. JD

Hooray ...........something good happened today.
Happy planting.

Alright!
Let us know what you'd like to grow, and I'm sure that between all of us here, we can get seed to you for most of it!
Start a list, add to it as you have time...
BTW, don't order potatoes, they should be available locally without the extra cost of shipping, or just use storebought...lots of people do that, with no problems, you just can't get the variety you can from catalogues.
There are some neat tricks for growing potatoes more or less on top of the ground, if you don't have access to a tiller, just dig the soil a bit, plant the potato, and then pile straw over it...I'm sure the members here will help you all they can!

Congratulations.

You said the land was planted in before, so it should be tilled(I'm hoping...it will be easier for you).

Buy most of your seeds locally if you can, it'll be easier and quicker that way.

Don't forget to plant your corn in rows for pollination purposes. Leave lots of space between your rows for air circulation and light as well.

Oh, I am so excited for you. Do you live far from your new gardening area?

Sorry, lots of storebought potatoes are sprayed with a chemical solution that stops them from aging and growing eyes. They won't re-seed because of it, it's better not to take a chance. You can buy a box of seed potatoes for a few dollars from any gardening store. I've seem mixed boxes as well that had a divider and different kinds together. Red and white, purple and yellow etc...

I agree, many places sell good quality seed potatoes for cheap. If Tamara can find them this late in the season, that would be a best, it's kind of late to be ordering potatoes. I've heard that before about grocery store potatoes being sprayed, but I've grown them, and lots of people do. Just look how fast they sprout in your home, when you don't want them to.
I know that in my area, they sold out of seed potatoes over a month ago.

Thanks all! I usually grow specialty potatoes and I do have some from last year to plant but I will now need more. I like "All Red" the best. I just ordered my stuff from Pinetree seeds and they did have Jerusalem artichoke bulbs still and all the potatoes and seeds I wanted! So this is where I am going to need advice.
I am growing:
tomatoes
herbs
peppers, bell and hot
summer squash
garlic
shallots
melons*
cucumbers (up sunflowers)
lettuce, napa, bok choy, swiss chard, broccoli rabe
scallions
onions
peas
beans
carrots
parsnips*
rutabagas*
sunchokes*
potatoes
sweet potatoes*
broccoli*
leeks
radish
corn*

The things with a * are what I usually don't get to grow and possibly have never grown. I have plotted out a plan but I am trying to make it to scale and I now think 100 square is too big. I am probably going to ask for 60 square instead. I have to do everything myself and have no tractor or anything, just my MIL's little tiller to borrow (if she wants produce!). So I am trying to measure out how many feet I really need for each thing. Woof! I have a lot of work to do. I will make some new threads about specific veggies and how to grow them later. Right now I need some sizing help. I am BAD with dimensions.

Parsnips......I grow .. They are different.
You plant them now, but dont harvest them till abut January or further.. We are just eating ours now. Love them.

Just mark them with sticks so you know where to dig them in spring or winter.
We boil them till soft and then fry in butter.....till golden .

Is teh tiller a little "mantis" type, or a little bigger?
There are 2 factors that I think are most important in how big your garden can be, well, 3, water access, but the first 2 are how much soil you can prepare, and how much mulch or weed control you can get. I'll be using a lot of black plastic this year to cut back on weeds and watering, but not everyone likes black plastic.
Plant the broccoli from plants now...and plant onions, potatoes, lettuce, radishes, carrots...the peas must go in now, they hate warm weather...
The main thing is to get the soil ready and start getting cool season crops in.

Yes it is a mantis type, good for between rows. I might put mulch in the rows. I don't like putting it in the garden but this is a big field and there is free mulch at the compost facility. I also usually use preen once the green beans germinate but since I try to be organic I really shouldn't use it. It helps a lot though. I am probably not going to use my weed blocker stuff because it seems to contribute to fungus but if there are plants you guys think are fine with it I would like to know which.
I am ready to plant the cold stuff now but the weather is not cooperating. It was supposed to be ok but cool tomorrow on my day off (weekend is busy) but now it is supposed to be cold, rainy and even snowy. We are having a very late spring here and had a really bad winter. So now I am going to focus on getting my inside stuff done tomorrow I guess . Wednesday I'll be off work and ready to plant. Then we are going backpacking so I will be out of the garden then too! Anyway I want to plant my peas, carrots, onions (haven't arrived yet), potatoes (haven't arrived yet except I have some from last year), rutabagas, parsnips, garlic, shallots, then broccoli, leeks, greens etc, scallions. So I have a ton to plant before the first part of May. I love getting stuff in early.