Hello from the Florida Panhandle!

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nolefanjon

nolefanjon

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Dec 10, 2021
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Hello, everyone! I am excited to join this community. My wife and I have recently begun discussing our desire to live a more self sustaining lifestyle, for a myriad of reasons. We are currently in the planning stage of the process. We are going to start small by doing a couple of raised bed gardens in the coming spring. I look forward to learning from others here in the group and sharing our experience as we move along.

Thanks
 
Welcome from Texas, glad you joined us! I too do raised beds and grow many different veggies. Right now I have my beds tilled and will till donkey manure in them soon to help prepare for the spring. Am now planning what I will grow in which beds, I always rotate what I plant. Hope we can learn from each other, and good luck with your endeavors!
 
Pearl said:
Welcome from Texas, glad you joined us! I too do raised beds and grow many different veggies. Right now I have my beds tilled and will till donkey manure in them soon to help prepare for the spring. Am now planning what I will grow in which beds, I always rotate what I plant. Hope we can learn from each other, and good luck with your endeavors!
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That's awesome! I cannot wait to get started on ours. Thank you so much!
 
Welcome from Colorado.

Raised beds give you better control over soil conditions. I have been working raised beds for decades and keep amending and building them up. Here, we have clay soil and I had no idea what I was doing when I started gardening. Now I add compost, peat moss, aged manure or something every year.

When it comes to gardening, I have years when some things do well, and then years where the same things do not do so well. It is good to plan for extras in case this happens.
 
Weedygarden said:
Welcome from Colorado.

Raised beds give you better control over soil conditions. I have been working raised beds for decades and keep amending and building them up. Here, we have clay soil and I had no idea what I was doing when I started gardening. Now I add compost, peat moss, aged manure or something every year.

When it comes to gardening, I have years when some things do well, and then years where the same things do not do so well. It is good to plan for extras in case this happens.
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I have clay here too, much better using raised beds and pots!
 
Welcome from Alaska!

I do love the Panhandle area of Florida. When I was assigned at Fort Rucker back around 1993-1995, we spent almost every weekend camping around Destin, which at the time was a sleepy little town with an expansive, pristine beach with a new road leading to it. I understand that new road has turned that beach and that area into quite an attraction. We loved catching and eating the blue crabs that thrived in the bay. Your post brought back fond memories spending time with my wife and two young sons in your panhandle!
 
Hello and welcome from S.W. Oregon. Raised beds are rather common around our area, I made two using incense cedar planks, presently I have kale in one and Swiss chard in the other, they are both great winter crops. The neighbor on our west side made raised beds out of Doug fir planks and the neighbor on our east side is making theirs out of concrete. Around here the soil is so acidic we need alternatives like raised beds to put better soil into to be able to grow vegetables, on the other hand the acidic soil is great for blueberries and growing all sorts of trees. Years ago we threw apple cores into the large chicken pen an ended up with about 10 volunteer apple trees, I reduced them down to 5 of the better trees and since then have other volunteer apple trees come up. Anyway, it's alway good to have soil test done to see what you may need to amend the soil with, we never had a really good garden until I brought in composted soil, every tomato we tried to grow ended up with bottom end rot, this is not good, it certainly made me feel like I had a brown thumb and couldn't even grow weeds all that well.
 
Spikedriver said:
Welcome from Iowa!

You should start a post in the garden section detailing what your conditions are and what you want to grow. That will help determine what you need to do and what advice will work for you. Good luck with it!
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Thanks for the advice! I will definitely do that!
 
nolefanjon said:
Hello, everyone! I am excited to join this community. My wife and I have recently begun discussing our desire to live a more self sustaining lifestyle, for a myriad of reasons. We are currently in the planning stage of the process. We are going to start small by doing a couple of raised bed gardens in the coming spring. I look forward to learning from others here in the group and sharing our experience as we move along.

Thanks
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I'm also in the Florida panhandle.
Depending on where in the panhandle you are, maybe we can go shooting together sometime? :)
Feel free to send me a PM.
 
Alaskajohn said:
Welcome from Alaska!

I do love the Panhandle area of Florida. When I was assigned at Fort Rucker back around 1993-1995, we spent almost every weekend camping around Destin, which at the time was a sleepy little town with an expansive, pristine beach with a new road leading to it. I understand that new road has turned that beach and that area into quite an attraction. We loved catching and eating the blue crabs that thrived in the bay. Your post brought back fond memories spending time with my wife and two young sons in your panhandle!
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That's awesome! I have many friends and family that are civilian workers at Rucker. I always loved visiting there as a kid and seeing all of the military vehicles and helicopters. Destin has definitely boomed in the last 20 years. Even South Walton has become a popular destination. Land has gotten extremely expensive there, even before the market boom. My grandmother told me a story about how her father was given the opportunity to buy some land down there but declined due to the fact that it wasn't a good location for growing crops.
 
viking said:
Hello and welcome from S.W. Oregon. Raised beds are rather common around our area, I made two using incense cedar planks, presently I have kale in one and Swiss chard in the other, they are both great winter crops. The neighbor on our west side made raised beds out of Doug fir planks and the neighbor on our east side is making theirs out of concrete. Around here the soil is so acidic we need alternatives like raised beds to put better soil into to be able to grow vegetables, on the other hand the acidic soil is great for blueberries and growing all sorts of trees. Years ago we threw apple cores into the large chicken pen an ended up with about 10 volunteer apple trees, I reduced them down to 5 of the better trees and since then have other volunteer apple trees come up. Anyway, it's alway good to have soil test done to see what you may need to amend the soil with, we never had a really good garden until I brought in composted soil, every tomato we tried to grow ended up with bottom end rot, this is not good, it certainly made me feel like I had a brown thumb and couldn't even grow weeds all that well.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the advice!
 
Thank you everyone for the warm welcome! I will say, I am extremely surprised and grateful for how active this website is! When the time comes I will start a new thread with updates on our journey. Unfortunately, I do not have access to home internet, so I will have to post and respond to messages when I go to work (I am a teacher). I hope you all have a wonderful Monday!

:great:
 
Welcome, of course you know that it's really not homesteading if you don't have to spend 1/2 of your time moving or getting over snow for at least 4 months of the year,
This is a great bunch of friendly helpful people enjoy your time here, and the only silly question is one left unasked
 
Tirediron said:
Welcome, of course you know that it's really not homesteading if you don't have to spend 1/2 of your time moving or getting over snow for at least 4 months of the year,
This is a great bunch of friendly helpful people enjoy your time here, and the only silly question is one left unasked
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I do not envy those of you fighting with snow throughout the winter. Although, there have been summer days that made me think I was working in the devil's den. Thanks for the welcome.
 
Welcome from the piney woods of rural NE Florida.
We went to raised beds in the garden to make it easier for my wife (who is the actual farmer - I'm just the "hired hand").
She's 75 now, and when we did this 10 years ago we planned ahead and made them far enough apart to get a wheel chair around them if it ever came to that.
 
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