Oh, very cool, then good luck and have tons of fun in your first season! :D

For peppers, I recommend buying plants. They take ages to grow from seeds, and aren’t that expensive at the nursery/garden center. They really produce a lot of peppers, too.

Feel you on the barefoot pains. But don’t worry, the peppers (and plenty of other plants as well) will love it.

Yeah, we also just spotted a small wasabi plant at the garden center and immediately bought it without prior knowledge. They need to always be in really wet soil, and in full shade (we have them between the tomato containers, once the tomatoes get big they won’t get any direct sunlight). Luckily, they are also very forgiving. Had them look almost dead a couple of times from lack of water, put some water in, two hours later, good as new.

Anyways. Hope you have a great season!

Sure thing!

For the barrels, they were simply sold with the bases. Didn’t see a reason not to use them, and also allowed me to drill the hole for the hose connector as close to the bottom as possible (used both for filling water in and for leveling between the two barrels, since the pump is only in one of the barrels, see last picture). I don’t remember what the barrels cost exactly, but it wasn’t too much and I’m happy with the sturdiness.

For the compost bin, we could have gone a bit more expensive tbh. This one was <25€, and as you can see, it’s not exactly shaping up to be a paragon of longevity. It sits on some slabs that were already in that corner, and I though it might help drain excess water…? Not sure though, I don’t think it does anything. The compost bin is also too small (and unsturdy) to go in with a shovel from the top and dig the compost over, which would really be beneficial. But still worth it. We put all our kitchen scraps in, almost completely eliminating residual waste bad usage for us, and I pull about 70l of compost out of it each spring.

If you have a place where you can place the bin in the garden rather than on the deck, dot it, I’d say. Take a look around youtube or something, there’s some really cool composting systems.

Good luck! Hope the pictures help. Sorry for being so slow to respond.

LMAO, I might have missed the six fingers, mainly because my eyes went directly to the map with everything from France, Belgium, Germany,… simply labeled “Russland” (Russia).

Definitely hasn’t paid for itself. Not sure if it ever will. The initial investment was quite high - pots, soil, the structures, the watering system,… all add up really quickly.

For this year, the haul from the garden center, plus some seeds and plants ordered online, total roughly 200-250€. Everything in the supermarkets has become more expensive the last couple of years, so I don’t think it’s unlikely that the harvest surpasses what we’d pay there; but it’s hard to say, because obviously we can only harvest what’s in season, and the in-season things are always at their cheapest in the supermarket as well.

But as you said: that’s not really what it’s about. Being able to just go outside and pick fresh herbs basically all year alone is so worth it to me. Same for salads for half the year. And then add being spoilt for choice on fresh veggies on top.

Also: this garden just gives me joy.

No worries. Same here.

Eh, it’s not really that sturdy when I e.g. move it around, but it’s enough for the peppers 🤷🏼‍♀️

Please share here when you end up building something similar! :D Good season to you too!!

Yeah it’s probably not very accurate 😄 Though to be fair… Weather has been amazing. So far.

Ah right, I forgot:

bottom, too

bottom two

AccuWeather has a monthly view on the website. I’m sure it’s flawed. But good enough to make me gamble!

Maybe this is a case if “the grass is always greener on the other side”, but I’m definitely a but jealous in return, haha. Raised beds with room to expand sounds like a dream.

Sorry to hear about the troubles with the deer and raspberries, but I guess such is nature 😄

Thank you kind stranger 🙂

Good question. My drippers are all pressure-compensating, I have no experience with the variable ones (instead just bought 3 different kinds). The past 3 years, I’d say they were pretty consistent, but I have noticed this year that they seem to differ by quite a bit in how much they drip. My explanation was that since we have really hard water here, they might be starting to calcify or something.

Sorry to hear about the variable ones though. That sounds really frustrating :(

Maybe we should both invest in a water counter thingy? 😄

Thank you, I appreciate the explanation! Have never had in lain out like that before. This actually explains the source of my confusion as well:

In German, there is a strict separation between what is meant by “Paprika” and “Chilli”. Above, you said you have lots of pepper varieties in stores, and then listed both things like bell peppers, which are Paprika here, and lots of Chilli varieties. In German, it would just be wrong to call e.g. a habanero fruit “Paprika”, or a bell pepper “Chilli”, and I think that’s were my hesitation comes from: I always feel like I’d be misunderstood if I just say “pepper” 😄

So, just for clarification: everything in the trellised beds are sweet, non-hot peppers.

Haha, thanks, I’d say they’re more of an necessity though 😅

Most prolific is usually the sweet peppers. There’s 24 plants (3 kinds in total), and they seem to really love getting baked in the sun here. I think they might be the only plants we have that actively like how intensely the stones heat up.

Favorite plant: we buy a jew Wasabi plant every year, always with the intention of “then we can finally harvest the oldest one!”, but they look so nice and we feel bad for them and never do 😭

How about yourself?

Oh no… Well, you’re certainly more careful than myself. I meant it in the title, it’s a gamble. Last year I also could have planted out in April, but was cautious and waited for mid May. This year… Well. Let’s hope climate change is for once good for something /s

You mean, the one in the GHSA that was swiftly fixed in accordance with proper protocols?

“Hugely overblown”, you mean.

Puh… Müsste ich mal den Vermieter fragen. Bauchgefühl ist “nein” 😅😅

Thanks :) Ah, you mean this one?

I built that last year specifically for our paprika (capsicum? never sure what the English word is. Web search says “pointed peppers”? Not hot though).

The previous years, every time around August the twigs would be full of large, heavy, but unripe fruit. Inevitably, we’d get windy weather and a third of the twigs would break off. The soil in those pots is not very deep (15cm, ca), so the trellis needed to be able to stand on its own. I really like the outcome, no breakage last year :)

The original idea came from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFWNV1V0x3o, adapted for our situation. The twigs end up kind of laying atop the supports.

Oh, and throwing a plastic foil over it in February/March also worked quite nicely to create a make-shift coldframe!