My wife and I are attempting to grow a vegetable garden this year. We have a ton of rabbits and deer, so I've been working on fencing in the area (white vinyl picket) to keep them out. I also buried a timber perimeter below the fence to a depth of about 6-8" or so to keep out any burrowing rodents, even though I don't think we have any.

The garden will be 16' x 30'... almost 500ft². The Milorganite website says to use 5lbs. per 100ft², so that would be about 25 pounds. Is a garden like a lawn... can you use too much Milorganite??? I was thinking of at least dumping one whole 36lb. bag in there and then rototilling.

In addition to the Milorganite, should I use any other fertilizer? The Milorganite site says to use an additional fertilizer w/ potassium for some vegetables.

This garden will be in an area that was priorly wooded. There were once four fairly large trees in this 16' x 30' plot, but they've been dead for at least 5 years. I've ground the stumps and the roots have rotted enough that they crumble when you hit them with a shovel.

Technically, if your soil contains sufficient P and K you only have to replace what's used and leaches yearly--the same's true on your lawn, where I'm adding a whisper of P and avoiding K, which keeps going up anyway. A soil test there would tell you that. Veggies that have a high demand for K may still need some.

While you can't use too much Milorganite per se, and it's rated for vegetable gardening, some people dislike it for the possibility of lead getting into the veggies. A near-neutral pH helps with that, as does not raising lead-concentrating vegetables (leafy greens and root crops). Fruit crops are fine even at medium lead levels.

The amounts given do sound right; in my flower garden, I use 36 to 72 pounds a month over 2,000 square feet (or 18-36 per K per month), varying with soybean meal (usually) at 25 per K. Never corn in the gardens--sprouts don't get mowed down and shoot up to three feet really fast.

I have a friend who can get me some free manure... cow or horse. Is it worth it to add some manure to my garden? How much? Or is it too late to do it this year if I plan on planting next week?

Fresh manure is hot, and it can burn. Unless you can compost it, or dig it in and let sit, don't use it.

What if I added about a 1/2 yard and tilled it in to about 6-8 inches? (Again, garden 16' x 30'.)

Honestly? I wouldn't do it for two reasons--that's a lot of nitrogen in a small space (480 square feet).

Two...E. Coli, which love to hang out in manure and I wouldn't want in my vegetable garden in large numbers. Herbivore manure isn't as great a danger to us, but I still never, never use hot manure even in the flower gardens or on the grass, and I don't eat either of those.

Well the garden was planted today.

Today, before I planted added the following and then rototilled:
1) 36 lbs. of Milorganite - Milorganite website recommended 24 lbs.
2) One bottle of Osmocote - The bottle rate was to treat 180 sq.ft., so this was about a 2/5 dose.
3) Almost one cubic yard of sawdust from ground tree stumps.
4) 400 lbs. EarthGro Organic Humus & Manure
5) 600 lbs. EarthGro Top Soil
6) 15 cu.ft. MiracleGro Garden Soil

bajafx4 wrote: I've ground the stumps and the roots have rotted enough that they crumble when you hit them with a shovel.

bajafx4 wrote:3) Almost one cubic yard of sawdust from ground tree stumps.

That's a lot of wood. As wood decays it uses available nitrogen from the soil - thus not available for the plants.

Depending on the vegetable, green leafy types, you will probably have to supplement the nitrogen.

Well the garden was planted today.

What are you growing?

Hey Gary,

In total, I ground 18 tree stumps. Three of them were in the location of where the garden currently resides, which was previously a wooded area; the stumps and the roots were pretty "punky"... I believe punky is the word arborists use to describe soft/rotten wood. The other 15 stumps were in or right at the edge of the lawn; those were a lot harder and took much more effort to grind. Funny how the forest can decompose a tree stump so much faster than a lawn... the forest trees were even cut down more recently.

Ok, sorry for my rambling about tree stumps...

We are planting... let's see if I can remember everything:
Tomato
Cucumber
Lettuce
Onions
Green Bean
Sugar Snap Pea
Brussel Sprout
Asparagus (supposedly won't grow until next year)
Radish
Corn
Jalapeno
Spinach
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Fruits: Watermelon & Cantelope

I think that's it! Most everything was in the form of a baby plant, but a few things are starting from seed.

How much nitrogen do you think I need? I have some Lesco starter fertilizer, should I spread some of that around the seeds?

How much nitrogen do you think I need? I have some Lesco starter fertilizer, should I spread some of that around the seeds?

These will be your nitrogen hogs

Lettuce
Brussel Sprout
Corn
Spinach
Broccoli
Cauliflower

All grow green leafs, long before fruits and require nitrogen. How much additional you will need? Can't say - you'll have to watch things like poor color and leaf growth. Lettuce and spinach are very shallow rooted by nature and will need daily water. The watering leaches the nitrogen down below their roots.

However some of your choices, it's too late to plant them.
Leaf lettuce and spinach will bolt (seed and get bitter) as soon as it gets warm in June. Forget head lettuce.
Broccoli and cauliflower - early spring and fall crops.
Snap peas are planted as soon as the soil can be worked in spring.
Brussels Sprouts (cole crop) need a frost when setting fruit to taste best. Take your first frost and count backwards 90 days for planting date.

A word of advice with a first garden is to start small and keep it close to the kitchen.
Close because then you won't mind grabbing something for the table and small at first so it doesn't seem like a giant task to maintain your first year.

Asparagus is tricky. Research that one and maybe reconsider. Needs a lot of space to get 1 spear at harvest ... unless you like ferns
Watermelon & Cantelope vines will over take your garden before they fruit. Be careful.

With summer just around the corner, concentrate on the heat loving vegetables like
Tomato
Cucumber
Peppers
Green Bean
Corn
and melons.

Oh boy... well I guess I'll see how things turn out this year.

bajafx4 wrote:Oh boy...

What, LOL!?!?!??!?!

Well everything is already planted, so I guess all I can do now is wait and see how things turn out. This year was really inteded to be an experimentation, which is why we planted such a variety. We'll see what does well this time around and phase some items out in the years to come. Don't tell my wife, but all I really want to do good is the melons.

Baja, here's a little vegetable 101 Click here for more information

Well I must say the garden did (is doing) pretty excellent for my first time. Here's what I learned...

I figured out what rabbits favorite foods are. Rabbits got in the garden and wiped out the entire crop of sugar snap peas in a single night and only took a few nibbles on the other plants. The next night they wiped out the entire crop of green beans. Then I installed some vinyl coated wire on the inside of my vinyl pickett fence and that was all for the rabbits. You need chicken wire - lesson learned!

Once the corn started to get about 2+ feet tall, I realized I planted them way to close to eachother. Luckily by this time I had room to transplant the plants to where the sugar snap peas and green beans were before the rabbits ate them. Corn gets big - lesson learned! The corn is currently doing really good. I read that corn stalks get between 1-3 ears of corn, but a few of mine have 4!

Butter crunch lettuce did great, but I let it get too tall and it got bitter. I started picking it sooner and it tasted awesome.

Tomatoes... where do I begin? My tomato plant is more like a tomato tree... it's gigantic... probably 5' tall and 5' wide. The first trellis was swallowed by the plant in a few weeks; I then installed another modular trellis around the plant and it too got swallowed. Now I just have fiberglass stakes in the ground around the plant with horizontal stakes zip tied to the vertical stakes. I've already got about a dozen red tomatoes and there are at least 50 green ones on the plant w/ plenty of flowers still blooming. I've never eaten a fresh grown tomato before the ones I grew and wow, they don't taste like any tomato I've ever eaten before... they are EXCELLENT!!!

Jalapenos and bananna peppers are doing awesome!

Squash and zucchini were doing too good. I planted three of each plant and had to get rid of two of each because they were so enormous... they were shading out neighboring plants. Still I've harvested almost a dozen of each and they were also scrumptious.

Cucumbers... WOW! These babys are gigantic and taste great too. I've harvested more cucumbers than anything else. During the past week I've picked 5-10 daily.

Watermelon and cantelope are currently about softball size, but they are definitely trying to take over the garden. They are growing in the last row of the garden, so I continue to steer them along the edge. Many of the vines have grown through the fence and are now outside the garden... I hope rabbit or deer don't eat them.

Radish did pretty good. My wife said they were good... I don't eat them. Green onions too, they have been producing a lot and still are, but I don't eat them either.

Hey thanks for the update bajafx4! I enjoyed the read.