by Cody Marx Bailey on August 28, 2008
I found a wonderful article on growing a 4-season garden. Melinda, from the pacific Northwest, describes some of the things she learned while ignoring the conventional rules and doing what she was determined to do. Here’s a quote:
When I moved to Geyserville, California in May of last year, I was excited to grow my own food for the first time. But immediately my neighbors dashed my hopes. They told me that it was too late to grow much this year - that I’d have to wait until next year. Sure enough, I found a pamphlet put out by the local Master Gardeners, confirming that it was too late to plant most crops.
Fortunately, I didn’t listen.
Matt and I first amended the soil. Then we made garden beds. And then, between mid-June and mid-July, we finally got in our tomatoes, peppers, summer squash, winter squash, runner beans, bush beans, tomatillos, ground cherries, beets, carrots, radishes, scallions, corn, oregano, cilantro, fennel, and loads of salad greens of all different types. Plus worms and microbes to help them along. A few weeks later we planted kohlrabi, brussels sprouts, kale, more winter squash, melons, and started successional planting our greens and carrots.
Link: How To Grow A Four-Season Garden - Part 1
by Cody Marx Bailey on August 21, 2008
by Cody Marx Bailey on August 18, 2008
I did the math tonight and I think you could get about 40 tomatos for $7 if you followed the steps that I have. What you basically1 need is a 5-gallon bucket, rocks, soil, compost and lastly, the tomato plants.
I found that fast food restaurants and bakeries get their supplies/ingredients in 5-gallon buckets and instead of recycling them they just toss them out. If you go in and ask a manager to set them beside the dumpster instead of throwing them away you could conceivably recover 5 or 6 per week.
Cost: $0
Take one of these 5-gallon buckets and be on the look out for rocks/gravel/pebbles. You’ll want to make sure that they are not hazardous to your mission. Make sure they are somewhat clean. These will be used to help with drainage at the bottom of the buckets when it’s time to plant.
Cost: $0
Soil is one of the more important factors so I usually try not to skimp on this ingredient. I usually get about 4 buckets worth of soil out of a large bag after I fluff it with compost. The cost per bag is $8, but like I said, that stretches 4 buckets.
Cost: $2
Next is the compost. You should be able to create your own compost by collecting the table scraps, organic material, and lawn cuttings. We started ours about 3 weeks ago and it’s already starting to decompose. Unfortunately it’s not ready for this season planting - so we had to purchase some from Producers. It’s cheap and seems to work pretty well when you combine it with the soil mentioned previously. A bag will run you about $4 and do the same as the soil and cover 4 buckets.
Cost: $1
The plants are next. You can get a 6-pack of tomatos for $0.99 which brings the cost down to around $0.20 after tax per plant. Or you can get a 4″ single plant that’s a little further along for $1. I usually buy those just because I’m anxious and I feel like I get a better idea of how strong the plant is. Mark has informed me to stay away from celebritys for container gardening as they have a taproot that wants to go a bit deep than a bucket can provide. Cherry and Romas though should do fine.
Cost: $1
So, when you think about it - tomatos can be extremely cheap if you grow them yourself. A Cherry Tomato plant will put off 40 tomatos and should have only costed you $4 for all the supplies. If you are in a pinch and don’t have time to track everything down like I explained above, you could get everything for under $10.
Total: $4
1 I’m really trying to quit using split-infinitives, really.
by Cody Marx Bailey on August 15, 2008
Celebrity Tomato plants are in, but you better hurry as they were gone in a few hours last time they got a shipment. I swung by and grabbed a few six-packs. I’m only going to use 2 or 3 of them so if you need just a couple or so email me and you can come pick some up.
I’m probably going to be putting the Celebritys in my larger container garden as they will be bigger and bushier from what I understand and I’ll put my Cherry, Solar Fire, and Sun Masters in 5 gallon buckets.
Also, I’m going to be purchasing a 55 gallon barrel ($18) from producers to use as my water container, thus liberating my 5 gallon buckets.
by Cody Marx Bailey on August 11, 2008
I was running errands today listening to KEOS and I had the opportunity to catch the tail end of a piece on slow foods or slow living. I wish I had caught the entire program, but I was able to catch a URL at the end and when I got home I was surprised to see such a well thought out and organized community rallying around the term “slow food”.
From the website:
Living the slow life with food as the focus is as rewarding as it is easy, and it can be done daily by each one of us. Ultimately, it is about pleasure and taste, knowledge and choice. Once we begin to take an interest in the enjoyment of food, and in finding out where our food comes from, we can begin to see the effects of these choices. When we shorten the distance—both literal and figurative—that our food travels to get to us, we are participating in the Slow Food movement. Slow Food is about coming together as a food community—connecting producers and co-producers, coming together on the farm, in the market, and at the table—to create and enjoy food that is good, clean and fair.
Slow Food is also simply about taking the time to slow down and to enjoy life with family and friends. Every day can be enriched by doing something slow - making pasta from scratch one night, seductively squeezing your own orange juice from the fresh fruit, lingering over a glass of wine and a slice of cheese - even deciding to eat lunch sitting down instead of standing up. For example, here in the Slow Food USA office, we take a moment to eat lunch together every day.
by Cody Marx Bailey on August 7, 2008
Saturday, Brian and I decided to get our garden stuff together. We grabbed three large plastic tubs from behind Square One and then went to Lowes and picked up some soil, compost, mulch and rocks. The tubs were perfect. We originally wanted to do a raised bed garden using rail road ties, but time was short and McCoys was closed by the time we got there.
We figured we’d use the three tubs and then pick up a few 5-gallon buckets for the tomato plants. We rushed home and prepared the soil just before sun-down.
On Monday, I went over to Producers Coop and with the help of Mark in the gardening section I selected 6 different seeds that I thought I would plant - cucumbers, squash, cantaloupe, watermelon, eggplant, and okra. These all needed to be planted pretty soon as we were getting late into the planting season.
Mark told me to wait a few days until the big rains from TS Eduardo passed. He also told me to collect as much rain water as I could because with the way the summer has gone - rain has been… non-existant.
Just before the storms on Tuesday I ran down the street to McCoys and purchased 4 large buckets and placed them at the edge of the roof. After 2 hours of rain the 4 buckets were filled. Now I just need to find a way to store that water so I can use the buckets for planting tomatoes.
Today, Thursday, I planted the seeds and soon they should sprout. I photographed a few of the buckets and where I planted the seeds. I planted the okra and eggplant in the center of the buckets and I plan on hanging the squash and melons over the sides of the tubs once they get large enough.
Check out the images on flickr.
by Cody Marx Bailey on July 19, 2008
GardenCampBryan was the catalyst for starting this blog. The people who came together to simply share their passion was proof enough that there needed to be a community-driven blog. The idea is that anyone in the Brazos Valley can provide content - ideas, results, announcements, etc.
Through this blog, we will connect and learn from each other and hopefully grow a community.
Stay tuned and grab the RSS feed if you use a feed reader.
