The 100 Square Foot Garden Challenge

Rosalind Creasy of Mother Earth News has proposed a 100 Square Foot Garden Challenge. The challenge is produce as much edible food from a garden space of 100 square feet.  Ideally according to Creasy the bed should be a 4' x 25' Jeavons style garden bed with the long end facing north to make crop rotation easier and eliminate shading problems.  Basically a Jeavons garden bed is raised and no till

Popularity of Urban Edibles

In a recent post I discussed briefly urban gardening. Urban gardening and landscaping has always been a popular except now the focus is turning towards growing edible plants. Growing urban edibles is now becoming quite popular as folks realize they can grow a variety of flower, herbs and small vegetables in small urban spaces. Why is growing urban edibles becoming more popular?The idea of

Small Gardening Water Features

All gardens whether they are traditional row gardens, raised box, container or any combination thereof really need some type of water feature. Why? Water features attract beneficial pollinators, insect eating birds and bats. They extend your growing possibilities to beautiful aquatic plants, some of which are edible. They also add to the aesthetics of the garden. Water features do not need

A Gravity Fed Self Watering System

Keeping container plants sufficiently watered can be a problem especially on hot days or days you are away from home. I found this great video from a permaculture designer. The balcony garden plants water themselves, using 2,000 year old desert technology. The water travels from a rainwater collection tank through tubing to buried unglazed terra cotta wetpots via gravity then is distributed to

A Few Container Gardening Tips

Quite often urban gardeners are forced to grow in containers due to lack of ground space. The ground space may simply be non-existent as in apartment buildings or unavailable to use as in row housing, rental houses and residential areas governed by Home Owners Associations (HOA). While each container is small in comparison to a raised bed or traditional row garden it is surprising how

Balcony Gardening

Yesterday I introduced the topic of urban gardening. Urban gardening presents several issues because in most cases it falls into small space gardening. In some of these cases no actual ground is available for traditional row gardening and while raised beds may be an option for some those living in apartments and row housing may not be able to use raised beds due to restrictions of the tenancy.

Urban Gardening

image courtesy of The Graphic FairyWhen most people think of gardens they think of a large plot with neatly arranged rows of fruits and vegetables perhaps with a fruit tree or two. This method is known as traditional row gardening and while still popular for those with extra space, it is going by the wayside for urban gardening where other methods are proving to be more productive. High

Truck Farm - Episode 2

Episode 1 of the Truck Farm showed a novel idea of growing a garden in the back of an old pick-up truck. This episode dealt with the issues of drainage and soil mixture. Episode 2 shows how much produce can actually be grown in a small space. I love the idea of using solar power to power a camera to take pictures of the hourly changes in the garden!Assuming an older Dodge truck bed is about the

Truck Farm - Episode 1

One of the most common complaints for many who want to garden is they don't have the space. That is where you have to get creative. Think outside the box. I have seen some very unique small space gardens but this has to be one of the most ingenious ideas yet. This enterprising young man decided to turn his old truck into a truck farm. Here is Episode 1 of Truck Farm.In this episode he

New Raised Beds Layout

Over the past weekend we worked on two new raised garden beds (more here). The beds are being created while we are continuing to rip out existing vegetation so the new beds were not planned using Garden Manager software mainly because the beds were going in late spring. I would have to reboot in Windows as well since this software is not Mac compatible. I've been using the combined with

First of the New Square Foot Gardening Beds

New SFG BedsJune 16, 2009Little did we know when we moved here 2 years ago we would be spending a good portion of our gardening time ripping out vegetation overgrowth. Our property had been over planted in a willy nilly fashion without regards as to growing conditions in certain parts or how the plants would mature or what problems some plants would create. It was so over grown we could not see

Sweet Million Tomatoes (Container Gardening)

Sweet Million Tomatoes(Lycopersicon esculentum)July 16, 2008If you have been following this blog you will know we moved last year and still do not have the vegetable and herb beds in. They are in progress but we were delayed by the spring weather conditions. We plan on having them ready for fall gardening and to allow the perennial herbs to root well before the cold weather. I'll talk more on