Vegetable Gardening

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Congratulations Smilingcat! We look forward to the progress reports of your new garden as it gets created.

[mudmucker]

Well, it's funny how life gets in the way of finishing things. Here's the latest on the root cellar, which has been extremely fun to make. It's so liberating being handy. I would have finished today except I needed a couple more pvc fittings and I wasn't going to make an hour round trip to get them.

I finished making the doors which wasn't a standard size at all, and finished insulating them. I began on the air exchanger and was able to easily pull out my basement window and replace one half with plywood and foam insulation. I took my trusty hole saw and made some nice clean holes for the piping to get through. I fit together the pipe on the outside, but I think I will cut them a little shorter. Although, they have to be high enough to be above the snowdrifts. Link to more narrative

[sundial]

Senate Bill 510, The Food Safety Modernization Act, the most dangerous bill for farmers and gardeners, passed. The House version passed earlier this year. Should this bill be signed into law, you will no longer be able to clean, store or sell seed, transport or sell home grown produce without prior FDA approval, you will be subjected to fines if you found in violation of the law, and puts all food and farms under Homeland Security. Your home garden will now be regulated by the government. Healthy, home grown, organic foods will no longer be available as the government will continue to introduce genetically modified produce.

For more information about this bill, please go to the following links:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:S510:

http://www.urbanfarmhub.org/2010/05/...grown-produce/

[tulip]

The Tester-Hagan amendment protects farms with less than $500,000 income from the requirements. It appears that the Tester-Hagan Amendment is included in the bill that is coming up for a vote.

Mudrucker, that is quite a wonderful root cellar that you have built for yourself!

[OakLeaf]

Michael Pollan is strongly in favor (and confirms that the Tester amendment did pass).

That's good enough for me.

[tulip]

Good enough for me, too. The fact that the large agribusinesses were against the bill speaks volumes.

[crazycanuck]

I'd like to grow some veggies but as a non green thumb kinda person, i've come to this thread in the hope someone can guide me

What veggies grow well in pots and what types of pots should I use???

Tanks..

[mudmucker]

You want big pots, or those sizes that will accomodate the full grown vegetable. I like plastic because a) they're lighter and since they're above ground, less apt for moisture loss than clay (porous) pots. You can grow just about any vegetable in a pot, and many people do container gardening due to limited space. There are plants out there specifically bred for compact container gardening such as squashes, tomatoes, and cucumbers etc. There are many clever ways to grow vertically as well and that saves a lot of space. There are also self-watering pots out there. These are very pricy but if you are even somewhat handy you can make your own. Self-watering is very nice since containers will dry out quicker than regular gardens. Use a nice light soil or seed mix if you don't compost. You may want to feed since if exposed, the rain will leach out valuable nutrients. So now that I've thrown out a whole bunch of stuff, here are some useful links.

Go to Burpee or Johnnies Selected Seeds. Although the climate zones and seeds and such are for the US, these are the ones I know and will give a sense of direction for they types of things that can grow in containers well. Most seed company web sites give planting dates and such. Then, do a search for your country/area and find a comparable seed place to research the vegetable, how to grow it, what it needs, etc., see if there are varieties bred for compactness and more suitable for containers. Then buy local if you want. Go to a local greenhouse to get the plants if you don't want to start from seed.

http://www.burpee.com/
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/

Wait, here's an australian veggie site, you get the idea...

http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/factsheets/pots.htm

Look here for very clever ways to grow vertically, with or without pots:

http://www.gardeners.com/
http://www.motherearthnews.com/

And lastly, how to make your own self-watering container:
http://www.josho.com/gardening.htm
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/g...gardens-054291
http://www.spillingbuckets.com/2009/...ontainers.html


If you want, buy a cheap set of castor wheels and put on the bottom so you can move it. These things will get heavy when wet and you'll never be able to move it.

[mudmucker]

Well, I've made some adjustments and pretty much finalized the main unit. I don't think I'm going to get to finishing the fruit bin part for a while now. My farm apples have been in the kitchen fridg, although not leaving much room for much else. I need to move on to a couple of other things. I want to expand my grow light shelves to accomodate more seed trays and I want to finish this in January. I also need to finish the insulation up in the attic. Because of this year's tax credit, I'm upping the R value up the attic. I tell you, in theory it's one of the easiest jobs to do, just put insulation in. But it's miserable - walking, crouching in all sorts of contorted positions, banging my head on the slanted roof with roofing nails sticking through, walking like a cat on the floor joists or across placed boards so as not to step wrong and land a foot through the ceiling below requiring drywall repair. I spend a couple hours up there and I come down feeling like I got hit by a truck!

After the grow light shelves I am going to build my own top bar beehive. I've decided to get bees for my mead. I'll post in the beekeeping thread on the construction, and my reasons for going for the less popular top bar beekeeping method.

Then after the beehive, I'm going to build a chicken coop once the snow clears in April. I've decided to take the plunge and get 3 hens. I have to make sure this is entirely predator proof.

Then after that I'm going to stop and relax and enjoy my summer and ride lots.

Here's the link to the complete root cellar process which gives a better explanation of things.

A couple of pictures:

Had to change out 2" pipe for 4". The 2" just wasn't sufficient and there was too much of a temperature differential. I couldn't get the root cellar down to temps I wanted. See above link for better explanation.



Intake pipe all the way to the floor to pull in cold air



Exhaust pipe on ceiling to remove warm air.



Final unit

[mudmucker]

As I said in the previous response is that you can grow just about any vegetable in a container. However what might be the driver for you over anything else is how much dedicated space you have. How many containers/pots can you fit into your space. If it is limited, then you need to think on how best to maximize the effort. For example, maybe it wouldn't make sense to grow eggplant or squash since you'd get few items for the space and amount of time the plant takes to grow in that space just doesn't make it efficient. So, things like tomatoes and cucumbers would be good because you get many, and they are typically prolific. String beans grown vertically (pole beans) would be good because you get many. Lettuce, chard and other greens are always good - they grow quickly and you can continue picking up to a point. On the other hand, maybe lettuce isn't so good if you have limited space because you might take all the time and energy to grow, but devour it in one meal because you don't have enough space to grow enough -that's not too efficient either. I don't really know what specific and compact varieties might be available for Australia climates and conditions either, that's why I say to try to hit a few in-country seed web sites. There may be a lot of diiferent things you guys got that we don't have here.

[crazycanuck]

Thanks for the info Mudmucker! I'll have a look at the ABC site & get some ideas. I also located & "borrowed" an Organic Gardener magazine from a cafe the other day and found some more info.

Ta!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

CC- are you planning to grow veggies in pots inside the house or outside on a patio?
Most (but not all) veggies need good sun.

[crazycanuck]

Lisa, they'll be outside where our boooteful sunshine can help the green stuff grow n be yummy!

Just wondering if anyone's used a raised garden bed??? I can't post a link at the moment but this is the website www.naturalyards.com.au.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Raised beds are great- especially if you have rocky or poor soil.

Also, think of just growing lettuces in window boxes full of good soil- like on a deck or patio. Cherry tomatoes do very well in large pots. they need lots of fertilizer. You might try radishes too- VERY easy to grow and don't need very deep soil. Be sure to grow some favorite herbs in pots too- and you can have 3 or 4 differnt herbs in one large pot.

[OakLeaf]

I use dug beds rather than constructed beds. I can amend the soil and till the whole garden at once in the spring rather than having to fool with individual beds. It's a lot of concentrated work each year before planting time, but lots less for the rest of the season.

I'm not sure raised beds are any help with rocky soil unless you truck in an entire load of fresh topsoil. If you take good care of you soil it will improve year by year, and pulling out rocks is one of the simpler things that you can do. It was the fourth year of my garden before I could really grow carrots. The first year I pulled out the 20 cm rocks ... the second, the 10 cm rocks ... the third, the 5 cm rocks ... after that, I could grow carrots.

My soil is very clayey, so I pretty much need raised beds for drainage.

I have a friend who's having very good results with lasagne gardening. It seems to be a really great way to go with a small patch. I'd think it would be too much if you have more than a hundred square meters or so, though. She also grows all kinds of things indoors in pots in the winter, including baby carrots!