Even apartment dwellers can grow a pot of chard and the beauty of a pot of chard is that it will provide food for months.
Photo by makdune
Even apartment dwellers can grow a pot of chard and the beauty of a pot of chard is that it will provide food for months.
While much of our steep lot is shady, we have plenty of sunshine on our driveway. My husband, however, is steadfast in his refusal to rip up the concrete to put in a garden. Not to be dissuaded, I came up with an alternative plan to utilize the space: upside down tomatoes. You’ve seen those Topsy Turvy contraptions, right? I decided to create one of my own with a bucket I had on hand to see how well it works. It took about two hours, including paint drying time. If you’re not painting, you’re looking at 20 minutes or so. Click through for my step-by-step photos if you’d like to give it a try, too.
It’s that time of year when – for many of us – scouring seed catalogs for potential garden additions stands in for actually getting our hands dirty. While you’ve got time (and not dirt) on your hands, you might want to consider organizing a method to share your eventual harvest right in your own community. Just imagine back fence trades – your abundance of zucchini in exchange for some of your neighbor’s prized turnips – a little bit larger in scale. Call it vegetable commerce if you will. Sonia Martinez and Kim Hoffman, both part of the leadership team for Slow Food Hawaii, envisioned a way for backyard gardeners to barter their abundance with others in the area. Share the Harvest is the result. Modeled after the successful Freecycle program, interested parties sign up to become a member of Share the Harvest and swap, trade, or barter anything that is food related. Fresh produce, baked products, preserves, dairy products, or even plants and seeds are fair game. Members who have an abundance send in an ‘offer’ listing what they have available and what they’d be interested in trading for. The message goes out to the list and anyone can...
I recently wrote for GeekMom about Julie Bass and her family’s fight with the City of Oak Park, Michigan over a front yard vegetable garden. The city wants the Bass family to remove the vegetable garden and put in lawn and shrubs like their neighbors. Obviously, I think this is ridiculous, but let me expand a little bit on why I think front yard vegetable gardens can be a better choice than lawns. 1. Water usage. Maintaining a lawn in dry, arid regions requires regular watering to keep it green and lush. Really the only way to irrigate a lawn is with overhead sprinkler systems that generate a fair amount of water waste via over spray and wind. But even if 100% of the water intended for the lawn actually benefited the lawn, does it make sense to use precious water to grow lush grass that provides essentially no value. I understand that this is the norm – and mind you, I’ve lived in houses with grassy front lawns – but knowing what we know now, isn’t it time to reconsider whether this is a smart use of our water? An edible garden in the front yard can be...
Finally! The weather seems to have cooperated all across the U.S. and gardens are in. But instead of simply cheering on the first of the radishes or ogling the tiny beans on your plants, think ahead. What happens when you pull out those mature radishes and add them to your table? Unless you’ve planted another crop to follow the first, you’ll be out of radishes. Some plants – like squash and some tomatoes – will produce fruit continuously. Others, like radishes and beets are done the moment you harvest them, while crops like beans and peas tend to have a nice peak and then slow down in production. Succession planting allows you to keep crops producing in your garden continuously during the growing season. My garden went in earlier than most. I planted bush beans in early April and then pole beans in May. I’ve already harvested the beans from the bush plants and pulled them out because they were looking spent and not producing much. The pole beans were ready for picking just as the bush beans came to a halt. A good rule of thumb – or one that’s worked for me, anyway – is to determine...
I pulled the first beets out of the garden the other day. I’m not a beet grower and have only just added beets to our dinner repertoire, so this is new to me. I cut off the greens and headed to the compost pile when it occurred to me that hey, these are edible too! I’m not big on cooked greens, so I did a little playing around. Add them to a smoothie. Make your favorite smoothie, but sneak in four or five beet leaves. They disappear beautifully, making this a perfect way to incorporate more veggies into the diet. I made a banana-blueberry-pineapple smoothie with beet greens tossed in and my 15-yer-old said, “Ooh, that’s a good one.” Success! If your people are super sensitive, start with just one or two leaves. Make chips. I figured, if it can be done with kale, why not beet greens? Clean the leaves and tear them into large pieces, removing the ribs. Dry thoroughly and toss with a tiny bit of olive oil. I used about a teaspoon of olive oil on greens from four beets. Place in a single layer on a baking sheet and sprinkle with coarsely ground salt....
If you still find yourself purchasing produce at the grocery store, you may wonder just where it’s come from and if it fits within your personal food requirements. I can’t help you with the origin of your fruits and veggies, but I can offer up a little trick for finding out if the produce you’re considering is grown conventionally, organically, or is (shudder!) genetically modified. You know those little stickers on produce? The International Federation for Produce Standards uses a four or five digit code to identify certain types of produce. If you know what you’re looking for, you can utilize those stickers to make buying decisions about your family’s fruit and vegetable consumption. A four digit code (or a five digit code that begins with a zero) indicates your run-of-the-mill piece of produce, grown with traditional farming methods which may include the use of pesticides and herbicides. A five digit code beginning with the number nine indicates an organically grown fruit or vegetable. A five digit code beginning with the number eight indicates a piece of produce that’s been genetically modified. (See update, below.) With all the uncertainty about the safety of GMO (genetically modified) crops in the...
We’ve been talking a bit over on the Attainable Sustainable Facebook page about how to store food in the freezer without using plastic containers. It’s a big stumbling block for people like me who want to preserve garden bounty (I freeze vegetables like green beans; their acid content is too low for water bath canning) or things like soup stock and premade meals without the health risks of plastic. Here are some options to consider: Glass storage containers: This collection of Pyrex glass containers is on my wish list. These are oven safe, plus they’re good for both refrigerator and freezer storage and they have glass lids as well as plastic. I have some glass containers that I use for freezing, but they have plastic lids that are beginning to crack and I’m having a heck of a time finding replacements. Glass lids are so much more durable. If you are the parent of a baby and making your own baby food, rejoice! Check out these super cool freezer safe glass baby food storage containers. Alas, these aren’t exactly inexpensive options. Life Without Plastic has some great bpa-free storage options, but again, not cheap. Glass jars: I freeze some...
I’ve mentioned before the fact that my soil has a hard time holding on to moisture. Between that and the fact that some of my veggies are planted on a slope to utilize as much of our space as possible, getting water to the roots of my plants – and keeping it there for a moment – is difficult. By deep watering with a container sunk into the soil, I can direct the water right where it needs to go instead of wasting it as it runs off down the slope. To try this method, you’ll need a container of some sort. I used a 1.5 liter plastic bottle (cut in half) but you could also use a 1-gallon plastic plant container, a large tin can (the oversize kind you’d get at Costco or a big pineapple juice can), or a half-gallon milk jug. Poke three or four small holes in the bottom of the container. Dig a hole alongside the plant you’d like to deep water, being careful not to disturb its roots. Sink the container in the ground, leaving only about half an inch above ground level. Fill around the container with soil. When your garden is...
Good soil is the key to successful growing, but whenever I read or ask someone about how to make good soil, though, my eyes glaze over with all of the details. Some people love the details (N.P.K.! Ph! Acidity!) but not me. It’s too overwhelming. I know I need good soil, but I don’t want to spend tons of time getting there. I’m not a scientist; I just want to dig in the dirt. Good dirt. In previous gardens, I’ve had good luck improving the soil without testing. I’m not anti-testing; I just don’t think it’s always as necessary as some soil experts would have you believe. If you’ve got a serious problem, soil testing can help you pinpoint it, but poor soil can probably be fixed without a PhD. In my new garden space, the soil is puny. It doesn’t hold moisture at all; the water just drains right on past the plant’s roots, and probably waves as it goes by. There don’t seem to be a lot of nutrients, because the things I’ve planted are just failing to thrive. They’re not dying, but they’re not doing well, either. My soil improvement plan in two easy steps: Add...
