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Vegetable Gardening

Garden friendly places to retire and why?

12 years ago

I am beginning to think about my retirement

Requirements:

- Garden friendly (I love to garden and grow what I eat) like to have an acre or so

- Must be East Coast (the kids, sister etc.,)

- I hate the cold, cant be too rural wife likes to shop.

- Already Have turn key a place in florida already for winter - dont want the other digs to be more than 12 hours driving away from Sarasota.

- Wouldnt mind a college town.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

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Comments (10)

grandad_2003
12 years ago
I'm in climate Zone 28 and garden year round. Zones 31 & 26 might also provide the same capability. Looks like you have lots of options.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sunset Climate Zones
dave_f1 SC, USDA Zone 8a
12 years ago
If you're looking outside of FL, maybe places like Atlanta area or Athens, Ga (UGA) or Upstate SC (between Atl/Charlotte) with mountains/lakes,Greenville, and college towns (i.e.,Clemson). Or maybe Charleston or Savannah if you want a climate more similar to FL.
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Do you know what sort of soil you have? The type of soil you have, how well it drains (or doesn't drain, as the case may be) and your annual average rainfall (20"? 30"? 40"? more than that?" all are factors that would help us recommend what would grow well for you. As for plants that can be grown safely around dogs, that's gonna be a huge challenge. First, you'll need to start out with a list of what you want to plant, and then you'll have to Google and do your research and try to figure out if the plants you want are known to harm dogs if eaten or chewed. The ASPCA maintains lists of plants that are known to be dangerous to dogs, but it is not an all-inclusive list. It merely is a list of plants that have been reported to them as being dangerous. Still, it is a good starting point. I've always gardened with dogs, but for the safety of our dogs, they have an enclosed dog yard that is fenced off from the rest of the yard and nothing grows inside their dog yard that would be considered harmful to them. If we are out in the yard, I occasionally let them out of the dog yard to roam the larger yard, but only because I am out there with them and can keep an eye on them. Some dogs are diggers and will dig up anything and everything you plant. Other dogs could care less and never dig. Some dogs chew. Some dogs try to chew but what they end up doing is pulling up everything you planted so they then can chew on it. At times, when I planted stuff in our yard before we had built the fenced-in dog yard, I would put cages of woven wire fencing around newly planted shrubs and trees to prevent the dogs from digging them up. Did I think it looked really lovely? No, of course not. What it did, though, was allow new trees and shrubs to become firmly rooted into the ground before the dogs could dig them up. After the first year, I removed the cages and the dogs never dug up any of those plants. Our dogs were pretty big-time into digging in their younger years, particularly from the puppy stage until they were 4 or 5 years old. Now that they're older and calmer, they don't dig as much as they used to. We had one dog, Mrs. Jeeves, who made it her personal mission to rip into and scatter every bag of anything (peat moss, pine bark fines, cow manure, mushroom compost, soil-less planting mix, etc.) she could find but she didn't bother plants. So, if your dogs are older and more settled down, they might not bother your plants much at all. Be advised that if you use organic fertilizers like blood meal and bone meal, your dogs will smell them and will dig up everything in sight looking for the source of that smell. I noticed that a lot of the plants on your list flower at various stages in their lives. I think you might want to consider vitex agnus-castus which blooms in summer and has lovely blue flowers. It is very drought tolerant and will grow in almost any soil, as will crape myrtles. If you have well-drained sandy or sandy loam soil, I think that everything on your list would grow well for you, but I haven't compared the plants you listed to lists of plants known to harm dogs. Lavender needs really well drained soil, so keep that in mind if you have soil that has a lot of clay in it. I'll link the ASPCA dog problem plant list. When you click on the link and go to that page, you'll notice you can ask for a 'toxic' list or a 'non-toxic' list, or you can search for individual plants using their search feature. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: ASPCA Toxic and Non-toxic Plants For Dogs
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glib
12 years ago
Yeah, GA, a little high up in the hills, is your ticket. On a side note, last night I followed a link to the Blue Zones, apparently a well known group of five areas all over the world where life expectancy is abnormally high. They were all coastal places, although for historical reasons people in the Greek island ate little fish (they had to live high in the mountains to escape pirate predation for centuries), and another in CA was vegetarian. But what did they really have in common? Ubiquitous vegetable gardens. So build a sturdy house in your new place, it may have to last 40 years or so.
Jon_dear
12 years ago
If I could be just one zone warmer I could grow (whatever) is the way i think... But then again I'm in Maine.
vtguitargirl
12 years ago
When I lived in Tennessee I remember listening to some of my co workers discuss vegetable gardening, heirloom varieties & so forth, and wondering what the allure was. Now I'm in Vermont, with lots of space for a garden a considerably shorter growing season, and less income to spend on something like a greenhouse. That's life!
fruitnut Z7 4500ft SW TX
12 years ago
You might as well stay in Sarasota year around or move high into the mountains for summer. At lower elevations the mid Atlantic and southeast are hot and humid in summer just like Florida. You might find better soil in another spot but the climate will be about the same in summer unless you head uphill.
girlgroupgirl
12 years ago
I highly recommend Athens, GA. The university as the trial gardens, and the state botanical garden is close. There are quite a few nurseries just outside of town, and I suggest you check out Winterville, GA
The climate is nice in Athens.
It's a college town with all the conveniences.
Tons of shopping for the Ms. and not all that far from Atlanta.
Winterville features new homes in subdivisions but there are older homes and lots in the area.
Several great nurseries around the area.
Loads of gardeners!
Reasonable drive.

My parents lived in Sarasota for many years (but that was many years ago!!).

Here is a link that might be useful: Thyme after Thyme in Winterville, GA.
Edymnion
12 years ago
I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't welcome y'all to pay us a visit here in Chattanooga. Plenty of rural land around (I'm sitting on 20+ acres of mostly forested land, but there's plenty of wide open pastures as well), lots of pretty scenery (we were named Outdoor Living's #1 city to live in a few years ago), and some nice historical sites (Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Rock City, etc).

Several big shopping centers (Northgate and Hamilton Place malls), and we're surrounded by mountains and high plateaus that mean we have fairly mild weather year round (almost all really bad weather, tornado bad, gets blocked by the mountains or worn out by the plaeau). As for warm weather, well this town virtually shuts down if the ground so much as turns white, so you can see how much snow we get. =)
jolj
12 years ago
grandad, you are right about sunset 31 & 32.
I live just in 31 in Columbia,S.C., if I read your map right.
I garden year around, not tomatoes, but winter stuff in the winter & everything else in summer.
ncdirtdigger
12 years ago
I grow here in Marvin NC. I am about 30 minutes to downtown Charlotte, 30 minutes to UNC-Charlotte, 30 minutes to Winthrop U., right on the NC/SC state line. Our winters are mild. I grow something every month in the garden, I have plants/shrubs blooming just about every month of the year (Mahonia and Camelias are blooming now. We have a few days every winter that are too cold for me to garden, and a couple months in summer that, if I didn't have a pool, would be too hot and humid for me after around 10am. All in all, you can find some commuter n-hoods around Charlotte that offer anything you want and a hub airport for USAir. I've heard that the Raleigh area has some wonderful nurseries and the JC Ralston gardens at NC State U are to die for.

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