Vegetable Gardening

[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