A newbie looking to connect with his roots.

My pop could grow pretty much anything and always had a garden (and a greenhouse and shelves and shelves of potted plants, cacti and bonsai) full of green. Every spring, that gardening urge starts boiling in my veins and I decide that this is the year I will finally have my own garden. Then I try to dig into my rocky dirt - more like dirty rocks - and within an hour or two, I am completely exhausted and the urge dies down for another year.

This year, I am looking to beat this thing by setting up a couple of sfg boxes. I have a son that is crazy for salsa and hot sauce, so I think one box devoted to tomatoes, garlic, onion, peppers, and cilantro will be in order. And a second for salad greens, carrots, and other goodies. So I got the new book last week, and set up my first compost pile today after work.

This is the year. Looking forward to some fresh pico de gallo.

Glad to have you here. I'm new to SFG myself.

Before you go buying seeds and such, pay close attention to the planting
times for your region. Most people here say that garlic does best when
planted in the fall, then overwintered in the soil and grown into the
next summer. So I decided to wait on that for this year; we'll continue buying garlic until my crop comes in next year. (I am growing things to try making my own salsa too!)

Welcome ,

It looks like your off to a good start .... most folks seem to forgo the book & compost heap thing till long after they have fallen over their shoe laces trying to run before they can crawl sort of thing. Then they buy read avidly and get going .

Take care with teh composting especially if you are using mels reccommendations to make

Have a look at some of the posts by" ToTallTomatoes " they have been well and truly bitten by the tomato and compost bug . There are some decent tips in the threads especially the tip about laying a 10 inch long plant down in a six or seven inch long 4 inch deep trench to get a massive number of feeder roots goming oi=ut the plant before it then staerts to climb skywards.

Please do keep a photo log and slip them on here when your able .

You can't normally put pictures up till you have been here for five days then the picture fairy waves the magic wand and you can suddenly partake in full on the site.

Welcome!

I have a great recipe for Pico di Gallo, but you probably do too. We lived in the DFW TX metroplex for 4 years and love the items. I found that because the Roma tomatoes are really fleshy they work best.

---

Here's the Pico de Gallo recipe for the other members

Pico De Gallo
1 ½ cup seeded diced tomato
¼ cup diced onion
1 Tbs diced jalepeno
1 Tbs minced garlic
Juice of 1-2 limes
2 Tbs fresh cilantro
Salt and pepper to taste
Combine ingredients

Howdy and thanks for the welcome. I am pretty excited to give this a try. Last year, I bought some plastic bins and attempted to plant in those on my pool deck. After planting purple potatos, a few types of onions and some seedling tomatoes, I ended up with almost a dozen tiny potatoes and not much else. Bad soil, bad draining, and some neglect, blazing sun...

This time I have Mel, and y'all, to get me on the right track and keep me there. I take pictures!

My son made a door/hatch thingy. i will have to get a picture of that tomorrow.