You don't need a tree. You can just get a huge pile of green wood chips. A place by my house has a 20 ft pile for free. They're low quality for landscaping, but perfect for composting.

Nice!! Anyone here read "teaming with microbes"

If not then I highly recommend it

https://youtu.be/Jp-5wKaL_oE

This guy does good introductory level hydroponics videos, if anyone's interested

Go no till

What exactly do you mean by this?

You don't till the soil. Instead you focus on keeping the soil life healthy(from insects, to bacteria, to fungi, nematodes, etc)

Basically healthy soil life will make anything and everything your plants need, so instead of administering what you think your plants need, they instead have an entire nutrient buffet in the soil that they can draw from as they need it

It involves learning about the soil food web and understanding the different rolls of the microlife

Basically everything you do will be to support that life rather doing what you think your plants nees

Need

I do green fertilizer in my traditional garden. I've been thinking about all that, but I'm moving soon, so I'm not sure that it's worth it.

Start it up at your new place

And read "teaming with microbes" by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis

The whole system can be used indoors as well

Regardless always go soil over hydro, unless you're in space, even then that's debatable

I just like hydro and aquaponics for the technical aspects. It helps to soothe my Autism.

Haha gotcha

@Why Tea that's a clever set up to protect your cantaloupe

It worked great! Another round of 'em ripened too so I got to re-use that cage.

Have a small backyard garden. Had a bad year for the most part. But want to grow cotton, just a few for the heck of it and was done here by original settlers, so should grow. Ordered seeds twice online, but I think they were duds.Nothing even came up. Anyway, tips on time of year or anything. Never seen a cotton field and fascinated by it, especially being a Southerner.

Take that back. Did see cotton fields on way back from Virginia, but they were in flower stage so doesn't count!

How did you prepare the seeds (if at all) and what care did you provide right after planting?

🤔

@Why Tea No prep of seeds. Just planted as instructed and watered immediately after. Kept moist through the days. Nothing ever grew.

Well that sucks. I've certainly had bad luck sometimes with seeds that just did nothing.

Looks like a tiny plant that subverts and takes over your whole garden.

For some plants we always buy seedlings or young plants, just to avoid the hassle/risk, despite the extra cost.

The wife's dad, however, is some sort of wizard with seeds and grows almost everything he can from seed.

Yeah. I just like more natural way of going by seed. But certainly has it's setbacks.

@Deleted User Low light. Makes sense, likes to be in the shadows as it wonders.

@GoyMeetsWorld If I remember correctly, that's exactly how it got it's name

Of course!

Does anyone have any good informative videos or online articles that would help me start looking into an in-home mini garden? I am in college, and have a small patio deck that I can do a small box garden or multiple plants. Thanks!

Have you seen these garden wall things? You can make it with old pallets to save $$

That looks absolutely perfect and what I want to do. It's nearing the Winter though (Winter is coming lol), so would it be a good time to pick up the hobby now?

Or wait until the Spring?

What zone are you in?