OT - MGrowFarming

Calling XM, whose got Commissioner Gordon's tractor signal?

2. Soil mixes for growing veggies (ideally not sourced commercially... I think)

For me, the best soil is the stuff that I make on my own. I just decide where I want a bed, and then lay a bunch of wet newspapers over the lawn to kill the grass (or, in my case, weeds). I then keep piling up any organic material that I can find (leaves, grass clippings, banana peels, vegetable scraps, egg shells...) over the area, maybe mixed in with a little bit of bagged topsoil. Alfalfa pellets (the kind you feed horses) sprinkled over the top is also great for the soil. Within a year, you have the best soil that you could want.

I've also found that some tree service/landscaping companies will dump their wood chips in my driveway. If I see them in the neighborhood, I'll ask and offer to give them $30-40 bucks for it. When this decomposes (mixed with all the other organic material), you have black gold. My shovel goes in the soil is like a hot knife through butter.

Good luck with your garden!

Dennis, that’s gardening, not farming. A very laudable pass time, but the Lord Wizard of Gardening is blue@LSU, follow whatever he tells you.

If you need a pick up bed full of manure bring your truck to the farm and I will get a front end loader out and load you up.   You can grow Jack and the bean stalk type of things with that stuff.

I'll second post above, wood chips help in many ways, including protecting the soil to keep it moist... once you get a nice layer there is less work overall

I am planning to grow much of my own food some day as well

I had to spray my garden with pepper spray regularly to keep the squirrels away. If I didn't live in the suburbs I'd have just sniped em with a pellet gun, but the children woulda been upset wahhhhh.

Dennis, there’s some lovely filth down here!

30% is a helluva goal (and I'd likely try to do the same if I had the land).

For those with less acreage, me and Mrs93 did galvanized feed/water troughs (I suppose you could too, there'll just be more of them than I have).  Even bought me a John Deere hat, despite, you know, not owning anything else of theirs.  The 2x2x4s are great -- tall enough to discourage most animals and to make tending / picking easier on the back, small enough to easily manuever around.  Many summer nights, salad comes from the bins and pretty much every day something on the table is from our bins (veggies, herbs or flower arrangements).

Drilled pin holes in the bottom for drainage, put river pebbles in the bottom up to the drain spout, weed barrier, then filled with organic veggies soil.  We rotate the soil between the bins each sping and don't get much fancier than that.

Good luck!

Note: the naming and linking of any products is not an endorsement; mi93 nor representatives are positioned to benefit from the purchase of such products; enjoy your homegrown produce responsibly

I have a 10'x25' garden bed that I dug down 2 feet and filled with manure. Every year I rake all the leaves and yard material in to the garden and mix it up. I've added a few bags of organic mushroom compost and black topsoil over the years. But once you have a good base I've found the soil to be pretty self sustaining. Lower MI has a great growing season. I've had success with lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, kale, radishes, peas, carrotts, cucs, zucchini, beets, rutabaga, potatoes, tomatoes and lots of hot peppers.

2 things I've learned from trial and error..don't waste garden space oh herbs as most will do fine on a window sill. Space your seeds out "plant thin". I've gotten too greedy in the past going seed crazy only to have many veggies come up too close together and not truly grow.

Once you have a productive garden I would say get in to canning. Have fun!

4) We've had good success with seeds from Nature and Nurture in Ann Arbor. Pricy, but organic and a heavy emphasis on foods that actually are native to or thrive in SE Michigan. We tend to do huge crops of tomatoes, hot peppers, raspberries, apples, lettuce, melons, herbs, and cucumbers. Tons of flowers too. 

We've got a tiny suburban lot and have had to get very creative with our bed placement. My wife and I would love to buy some acreage Up North one day and at minimum spend our summers and falls up there with a hobby farm set up. 

Opened MGoBlog tonight and saw this post as if y'all made it just for me!

I closed on my 'new' 122-year-old farmhouse on a little under two acres this afternoon. I, too, plan to grow a significant portion of my food on my little piece of heaven.

So, advice. Dennis: start reading all you can about permaculture and sustainable agriculture. In addition to veggies, consider the possibilities of dwarf fruit trees and nut trees such as hazelnuts which would add home-sourced protein to your diet without having to deal with raising any animals. There are many perennial vegetables, not just rhubarb and asparagus, with which you can diversify your garden and palate. Straight-row monoculture gardens in full sun are best for some crops, but look into interplanting and planting some things under trees. It is possible to grow more than half of your family's food on less than half an acre. You have plenty of acreage. But don't try to do too much all at once.

Learn about the potential for terracing your slope. Not ideal for all soil types, but it may have possibilities for yours. If you are looking to build raised beds, avoid any sort of treated lumber (you probably already know this.) Any sort of material will need maintenance and/or eventual replacement. The best wood for beds, like cedar, are of course pricier. 

As others have mentioned, invest time and effort into composting and green manures. I'm looking forward to meeting my new neighbor who has a half-dozen horses and may be willing to part with some of their production.

My number one pest control item will be about a thousand feet of tall fencing, as my rural neighborhood is a nice place for both people and long-legged rodents sometimes called deer. (I have other choice words for them, but I'll restrain myself at this moment.) Interplanting and maintaining healthy soil and plants will deter most insects, which often prey on weaker plants first. Sometime companion planting allows one crop to protect another from insects or other vermin. Planting major bug-attracting weeds on the far side of your neighbors' yards may keep the bugs away from yours. Or at least you can try to keep those weeds from growing on the near side of your neighbors' yards.

There are some (allegedly) more nutritious cultivars of vegetables like carrots, but if you are just eating a wide variety of produce, you will get all the nutrients you need without paying significantly more for designer seeds.

And don't forget to grow some flowers to feed the soul! 

A year ago I moved from a place where I kept a typical garden. Surrounded by a solar power electrical fence because deer, raccoons and several other creatures loved it too.

At this new place I'm working on a new plan. I'm not getting younger and have always hated weeding so I'm going to build raised beds. A few each year and I'm really considering going the Mel Bartholomew Square Foot Gardening route. Take a short look at it and see if it interests you. I plan to make some "self watering" raised beds first.

Mostly just make sure to shit in the garden - it's nature's fertilizer

Also, keeps the neighbors on edge

You'd be amazed at how many pounds of produce you can pull out of 1/4 acre, as well as how much work can go into it. 

I would recommend the no-dig approach for a market garden. Cover ground with cardboard, cover cardboard with soil and compost in rows, plant, and cover with a bug mesh over hoops.

As far as type of compost? Well-rotted horse poop would be my first choice, if you can get it. Mushroom compost from a shroom farm will always be in supply as well, as they usually turn over fresh soil each harvest. 

For starters, I'd recommend fruit and vegetables you already eat on a regular basis. At the very least you'll want them, so the work will be worth it. 

If you're looking for in-depth advice then Charles Dowding and Eliot Coleman are some of the OGs to watch online to get you going. Richard Perkins runs a lot of courses on starting small produce farms and businesses, even with no money up front, and has an extensive video library for free. 

This was interesting about how to avoid insect problems without pesticides:

We grow butternut squash. Harvest leaving the stem on and cure (skin completely hardens) at room temp. Once cured they will last through winter or for most of it. The vines grow like crazy so you need a lot of room. Squash blossoms are also edible but we have never tried them.

Nobody can give you the correct answer without a whole lot more information. What is the soil type you are working with, what are your water sources and what other resources are available??? Call your county extension agent and, if available, a local garden club-get the best local advice you can. Buying a load or two of good top soil can be a nice head-start if you are planning on having raised beds. Beets, lettuce/spinach, carrots, onions and tomatoes provide excellent garden-to-table supplements-and, spatially, are very efficient producers. Mulching to preserve moisture, improve soil quality and depress weeds is perhaps your best friend-saves a ton on labor and greatly increases production. 

There is nothing better than home-grown produce-even if it is a figment of ones imagination. 

Think about growing fruit trees- apples in particular can be stored in a freezer for a year. Just make sure you get a variety of different apple species as many do not self pollinate. Peaches, pears, etc are also good. There are also hardy kiwi and pomegranate varieties. 

Sunflowers/pumpkins- easy to grow and the seeds are nutritious and shelf stable.

Fencing is the best animal prevention. 

Learn how to jar & pickle.

When I first saw the OP title, I thought that MGrowOld had given up city life in Ohio and was exchanging his Hermes suits and Ferragamo shoes for overalls and clodhoppers.

Blue Acres is the place for me...

1. Don't know much about this for your initial plantings. It sounds like you're doing raised beds instead of planting directly into the soil. I've always planted directly into the soil and amended it with compost. Make sure to rotate crops. Tomatoes shouldn't be planted in the same location 2x in a row. Also, plant nitrogen-fixing veggies (peas, beans, etc) and plow them under at the end of the season. The roots contain nodules that release nitrogen into the soil as they decompose.
2. Start your own compost bin. Throw in leaves, lawn clippings, most waste from the garden (not tomato plants or squash/pumpkin/melon/cucumber vines, they can carry disease with them), kitchen scraps (not milk or meat products). There's tons of info out there about how to do this. It's a mix of greens (grass) and browns (leaves). To get started, you can layer straw (brown) with grass clippings and get a healthy amount of compost by the end of the summer.
3. I use neem oil quite regularly for pest control. Put fences around the garden for small critters. For deer, I "water" around my garden around 11 pm after having a beer around 9 pm. Another deer deterrent - extend your corner fence posts to about 6 feet and run fishing line around that. Deer won't see it but they'll feel it when they try to stick their heads over the fence. That freaks them out. Another method is companion planting (tons of info online about that). Some veggies won't grow well next to others. Some work together very well (basil and tomatoes). One will bring in beneficial insects that will protect the other. For example, I plant oregano near my tomatoes. The oregano flowers about the time the tomato horn worms come out and decimate tomato plants. The oregano attracts parasitic wasps that paralyze the horn worm and use them for egg incubation. Also look into 3 sisters methods. Native Americans would plant corn as a trellis with climbing beans using the trellis and squash/pumpkins running underneath to keep down weed growth.
4. Get a catalog from Baker's Creek or someone like that and start browsing.
5. Adding a 5th: Don't be afraid to grow vertically. I've grown peas, cucumbers, melons, squash up the fence around my garden. Instead of spreading along the ground, they spread along the fence and leave open ground for other plants. You can also use cattle fencing and create a trellis. The vines grow up the sides and you can plant other veggies underneath. For peas, I've taken long branches and made a tipi that they grow up. Get creative.

zucchini.....  you don't have to be a green thumb, you don't even need to have thumbs... that stuff will grow pretty much anywhere and it has a yield that puts VZ stock to shame.... 

you will no doubt get sick of it unless you fully explore all the 1,000 ways to use it.  my ex even made chocolate cake with that stuff....   

Plant a couple of pear trees.  They don't require spraying and are low maintenance.  If you have a big crop they can be canned.  Prepare to battle squirrels for them.  My fav is the small seckel pear - they are small, but almost as tastee as kicking Buckeye ass.        

I just built 2 raised beds out of cedar, on a fairly steep incline. I used untreated cedar wood, the beds are 4’x8’x2.5’. 4x4 posts at each corner with 2x6 boards screwed into the posts. The long dimension gets a 2x4 vertical to keep the boards in alignment. I lined the bottom with 1/4” hardware cloth to keep critters from burrowing in underneath. I applied a homemade iron sulfate solution to treat the wood before assembly, to hopefully prevent mold growth and stretch the lifespan. All told these babies cost a bit over $400 a piece with today's lumber prices, so you may want to look into different options.

I live on a hill, with mostly clay and rock soil (hence the deep raised beds) and digging out flat areas was the biggest pain in the neck about building these things. Get a long level and a board, you definitely want to install your beds on a level area. Take the time to flatten, tamp it flat, measure, and keep going until you get it right. It's a pain but nobody wants a lopsided box. Honestly if you have decent enough soil, you can save a lot of time/money just tilling up a few rows (your hardware may have rototiller rentals, only need to use them once -- or maybe annually). My wife wanted the raised beds so I didn't have the option. I dug out about an inch down around the edges of the beds once built and filled with pea gravel for drainage.

For fill materials, I used a lot of felled branches and logs, plus a ton of compost from the city (Ann arbor provides a cubic yard for free to residents each year - I needed two cubic yards plus quite a bit of wood filler for the size of these boxes. Second yard was $30). Depending on the depth of your boxes, you can use mostly compostable materials for filler and top it with soil/compost. You can use some topsoil but keep in mind, most of it is nutritionally useless. Go with compost and the more of your own you can make or cheaply and locally source (such as getting aged manure from farmers), the better.

Pest control, you can stay away from commercial products all you want but keep in mind homemade stuff using soap, salt, vinegar, etc can still mess up your plants and soil if used improperly. Responsible use of herbicide and pesticide is fine. Neem oil works pretty well on bugs, and selective use of glyphosate (sparingly but it’s effective) to remove certain plant-based pollutants like honeysuckle, celastrus, buckthorn, vinca, crown vetch, etc in combination with manual removal. For furry pests, plantskydd prevents deer and rabbit browsing but you may need to employ lethal methods as well.  Just think of it as a protein growing garden :) if shooting with a bow (firearms are generally not legal to use so close to a house) isn't your thing, you can get live traps or conibear traps to manage populations of squirrels, marmots, etc. Some people buy lady bug, lacewing, or mantis larvae to release in their gardens as these critters prey upon pests like aphids, however this can be ecologically problematic. I've found olfactory methods (like planting marigolds around or using cayenne or garlic powder) to be ineffective, but some people have success with it. There really just aren't any perfect solutions, and certainly no single activity on its own will suffice; you'll want to find the right combination of methods that works for you.

plants, I would seek out some of your local Amish folks and see if you can buy heirloom varieties from them. Also look into growing from seed if you’re seeking to produce a large volume. For me, the trick isn't getting things to grow - it's preventing them from being eaten before I can get to them. But the plant growing aspect is a whole rabbit hole on its own... I'd start with asking gardeners in your area what they have the best luck with in your microclimate and soil types. or reach out to the county extension.

Anyway, hope that helps. good luck!

Would think it's quite a bit different in S. Mich but I would pay attention to irrigation.  Depending on what type of system you are on I reccomend capturing rain water if possible.  If you are on a well I would think the pH is out of balance.  

Here in So Cal the city water is not great and my fruit trees don't like it.  Have several friends who have water capture - some pretty elaborate - from rooftop rainfall and their veg gardens thrive.  Only get rain certain time of year but it can be stored in large containers and for irrigation it's just a simple matter of gravity and pvc pipe.

Get some chickens while you're at it!