This thread is about what YOU can do, even in an apartment, to either relieve your budget or green the planet: doing both at the same time…
Tomatos, strawberries, or squash—at about a dollar per yellow squash or zucchini (ridiculous!) you can do nicely with this. Also cucumbers.
A patio planter. You need: a 5 gallon bucket at Lowes or one of those light, cheap large pots—with hole for drainage, and a bottom tray: you can improvise, but these plants cannot sit half-drowned. The excess water needs a way to leave. And don’t get one of those upside down jobs: they weigh as much as a 12 year old and don’t work well, either.
You need, depending on climate, a sun-sail for screening: you can attach it on your patio, to keep your plant from frying. 45.00 including shipping, from Amazon. Attach sun-sail to protect your pot—if you’re just starting this year, best way to get something that actually produces fast—go to Lowe’s and get one of their grown tomato plants, and choose one of the varieties with smaller tomatoes, because they’ll develop faster. It doesn’t really have time to grow in what’s left of summer if you try something else. Get decent potting soil, and put gravel in the bottom (fishstore, or the parking lot or a roadside). Put a little carbon in the bottom (fishstore); potting soil, and put a wire cone atop it all. Water it daily, just a bit. Fertilize it every 2 weeks. Pick bugs off it. and within not too long you will see ripening little tomatoes. If you have never tasted a sunwarmed tomato right off the vine, you have never tasted a tomato.
Should you have a windstorm and green tomatoes get blown off: slice, dip in egg, bread with Panko or Progresso, fry in oil. Not so great for your waistline, but a real nice dish, and a way to use a disaster. Also if you are up to here with tomatoes and want variety, you can heat vinegar in a pan, pour it over sliced green or half-green tomatoes, add onion slices (to taste), and also cucumber, salt, pepper, maybe jalapenos, add a little water, allow to cool, put it in fridge and forget it for 3 days. Then enjoy as a semi-pickle with a lot of freshness about it.
Yellow squash can be sliced and fried by the above method, or used in soups, etc. If in stew, add it only 20 minutes before serving or it will go to absolute mush.
IF you count that you are saving a dollar an item, not to mention trucking, etc, it’s a way to green up the apartment and get a few meals for nothing. If you get good at this you can widen your efforts.
CJ, is that a 150 Watt equivalent replacement bulb ?
A flourescent drawing that much power would be horribly bright.
A set of two 4 footers only draws 80 Watts using standard tubes.
They might make a 150Watt bulb form factor but my experience says
it would need a fairly good sized heat radiating sink to cool the
ballast or some highly arcane electronics as well.
The heat vs light problems is why traffic signals and street lights
are going to LED technology.
A bit of experimentation with the aquarium as a grow station might
get a marvelous carrot crop, a layer of potting soil and a layer of
sand should work as long as you cultivate to keep the sand from
packing. Thinning after a bit gets you tiny carrots which heated
in butter are a gourmet delight. I like the idea of being able to see
the moisture, since drowning plants is a common occurrence.
Replacement bulb. 150-200 w is the one for growing plants: I use a 12.00 clamp aluminum fixture. Sure beats an 800.00 metal halide rig…the reckoning of ‘par’ is exquisitely accurate, but the power draw is huge and the lighting is dangerous without shielding.
I love home grown veggies – especially tomatoes – and have a small herb garden with the most spectacular cold weather tolerant rosemary bush. But the possums always beat me to the veggies. So I didn’t plant any this year on the theory that I could get to the farmer’s market every weekend. Bought some of the upside down planters at an end of season sale for use next year.
My summer favorite: fresh sliced heirloom tomatoes, fresh corn kernels off the cob (raw), julienned basil with white wine vinegar/shallot/olive oil. Dress very lightly. Heaven!!
Let’s hear it for the farmer’s markets across the country, survivors of Saturday market morning in the little towns…if you can’t grow ’em, buy them. Many’s the time we’d got after a whole bushel of apricots in season, and spend the rest of Saturday splitting and boiling them and making apricot preserves.
I go to the farmer market a lot, especially since the bunnies and field mice have nibbled my vegetable garden into oblivion this year. I might try your bucket idea just to get the plants into a area where the rabbits can’t go. I can’t seem to keep them out with chicken wire — the rabbits are apparently more persistent in achieving their goals than I am.
I just finished reading all 11 of the Foreigner novels over the last month, so thank you very much for several weeks of very enjoyable reading. Deceiver may be my favorite so far, so I am really looking forward to the next book in the series.
Of course, the other thing stopping me from gardening is my local wildlife. I am currently fighting a running battle with gophers to save my myoporum. They like to eat it, I want it to finish growing in. Unfortunately I tried using a repellant, and waiting to see if that worked has merely allowed them a chance to get well-settled in the yard. So now I have the difficult task of trying to figure out which of the multiple holes they are currently using. Not fun. 🙁
Plus, I have an apricot, plum, and peach tree. How much fruit do I get off them? None! Birds and squirrels get that. And I just had some wood rats (aka pack rats) move in, and have hopefully convinced them to move on by disturbing their nest.
So… do beasties mess with potted plants?
Oh, and I have changed my gravatar to include my pretty little Katie. Enjoy (once it finishes propogating)!
Love the new gravatar. How is Trink doing? I hope all is well. She and Katie look *very* happy!
The only way you will beat birds and squirrels to your fruit is to net it heavily. I used to make cages for my raspberries.
I have heard of getting rid of burrowing animals by stuffing moth balls down the holes. However, moth balls are poisonous so I don’t use them. I have had good luck getting rid of ants in my planters with a combo garlic and chili pepper water, perhaps chili peppers in the burrow ?
I have had very few problems with bugs in planters. I think the main thing with planters is GOOD DRAINAGE. It continually amazed me how many people drown their plants.
It’s mango season here, and the neighbor’s tree has begun its annual shelling of our back yard. In good years, I can count on a dozen softball sized Hayden mangoes a week for as long as the tree is bearing. As long as I get to the mangoes before the birds do and they are relatively intact, they get et. Mango ice cream… mmmmmmm….
My Sunday morning breakfast, courtesy of my local farmers market, is sticky rice with mango and coconut sauce. Plain cooked sticky rice (the kind that gets used in Asian deserts a lot, short grained and naturally lightly sweet), next to cold ripe mango, and then what I am pretty sure is coconut cream (not cream of coconut) that has been cooked to reduce the water content and thicken it a bit. It’s absolutely divine! The contrast of the hot rice and cold mango is important, although it would probably be good with both chilled. And you have to add the coconut cream right before you eat it, or else the rice soaks it up.
also, you will avoid pesticides by growing your own fruit and veg – see this article – sounds convincing to me – http://shine.yahoo.com/event/loveyourbody/why-you-cant-lose-those-last-10-pounds-1964849/ – pesticides are making us fat!
interesting!
This is a WONDERFUL thread! I love talking about food *almost*, but not quite, as much as I enjoy cooking and eating! 😆
For a rant on hydroponics in odd places go to <http-colon-slash-slash-markbittman-dot-com and scroll down to the post for july 20. This is the strangest place for hydroponics I have seen. (The vegetable torte is pretty yummy too!)
When I still had my back house I never fenced the garden and had no problems with animals eating crops because I could let my dogs and cats run free. Now that I am in the front house the animals are not out because we have too many predators, chiefly coyotes and fisher cats not to mention the usual raccoons etc. I no longer use the garden for veggies because it is too far from the house and I got tired of being the salad course for the local fauna. Before I got Breezy (pooch) it was not uncommon to drive into the yard and see several deer in the garden, lookat me, (Oh, hai, thnx for the salad, hay u're out of chard.) and go back to eating.
The soil here is not great, glacial morraine, (Ever wonder why there are so many stone walls in New England?) so I have been growing in large pots for years. Thyme, wild oregano grow as ground cover….as a general rule I find that herbs are not appealing to the wild.
I am trying a new method for tomatoes this year. I bought large bags of potting soil, cut three slits in each and planted the tomatoes in the bags. I covered them with black plastic and drove my bamboo stakes through the bags to provide drainage and a sturdy support system.
They are strong bushes covered with little pear tomatoes. At the end of the year I will turn the used soil directly into the ground. Eventually I will have planters and good soil in combination The tomatoes are sports from a plant that did not do very well last year. If they are tasty I will save seed. I am seriously considering throwing tomato seeds in my planters this fall and seeing what comes up next spring.
Speaking of tomatoes I have some old Shaker recipes for 'Tomato Figs', 'Tomato Jam' 'Green Tomato Preserve' that my brother says is like the chutney they used to get in Sumatra.
Cutworms chewed my morning glory tower! 🙁 I took the strongest vines and stuck them in a bottle fert water; now they are growing roots so I may have a few flowers. 😀 The morning glories by the house are okay but not as bountiful as the tower. Moonflowers were a complete bust this year. The rose is beautiful, not many blooms this years but the bush is healthy.
As I have said before over at C&L, gardening is a crap shoot! 😉
Those of you with deer and rabbit problems, http://www.yardlover.com/wolf-urine-32-oz comes in various flavors, wolf, coyote, fox, etc. You can also get it from amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Wolf-Urine-Lure-32-oz/dp/B0006IGZSM which has the silliest customer reviews, which they richly deserve, since they have it listed as ‘wolf lure’, an aid to photographers… Shakeaway, the brand I use, is currently having some sort of quality issue and has stopped shipping. Basically, just sprinkle this periodically on the garden path surrounding the edibles, renew it as directed, and you may be able to dissuade the blighters even given the visble salad ahead.
There is also http://www.amazon.com/Contech-Electronics-CRO101-Scarecrow-Motion-Activated/dp/B000071NUS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1279806328&sr=1-1 the scarecrow, which moves, looks weird, and throws water. It works on most critters, even airborne ones.
Here’s a link to an article about getting rid of traditional grass lawns:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/20/AR2010072005347.html?hpid=features1&hpv=national
And they had a “chat” about it on the WP website today.
The bulk of the article is behind a paywall D: I may see if I can get to it from work later, which connexion is a little bit more adept at getting around/through those pesky paywalls.
Thanks for that! Really, it’s a lot of work to do it, but it’s going to be so good when it’s done. We’re going for a bit less high growth, just well-disciplined shrubs and low plants, and rocks. Lotsa rocks. Jane also wants a garden swing, so she can sit out there and enjoy the splashing (disappearing) water and the trees.
We live in the ‘burbs on a fairly small lot, but have converted a certain percentage of it to garden space for both ornamentals and for veggies over the last few years. The kids love eating right out of the garden and we grow all sorts of things.
This year, Oldest Child studied the Iroquois in school and so we planted the Three Sisters (corn, beans, squash planted together) in the garden. First time for corn, and so far we have 5 plants doing well and several small ears of corn developing.
I want to replace the front lawn entirely but hubby isn’t keen on that idea, but every year I expand the garden a little and I practice intensive planting and do some things in containers to make the most of our space. On our small square of land, we are growing corn, three varieties of beans, squash, sweet peas, snow peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, four varieties of lettuce, bell peppers, oregano, rosemary, dill, basil, chives, onions, garlic, lemon balm, and thyme.
Most things we start from seed using a micro greenhouse we set up in the kitchen. This year, we’ve been running the greenhouse all summer and I intend to see if we can manage to keep the greenhouse growing all year round using growlights in a window-less room in the basement. Wish me luck!
I didn’t have to pay to see the article or pictures, although you do have to register on the WP site in order to use it. I did that years ago and haven’t had to do anything since.
I actually convinced my HOA to let me remove the front yard and replace it with a low-water butterfly garden. It’s coming along nicely, although it does make all the microclimates very apparent! I’m going with pink myoporum as a pseudo-lawn ground cover, and it is growing in nicely on both ends of the yard. But the middle section gets a little bit more shade from the oak, and is now being hit hard by the gophers, so that part is not filling in as well. Hopefully I can get rid of a few more gophers, and it should fill in with some more time. It’s fun watching the myoporum.. you can almost see it grow in front of your eyes. I’d mark the current end of a shoot, and check in a few days to see how far past the marker the plant was.
Along with the myoporum I have: butterfly bush, lavatera, lavender lantana, day lillies, duranta, a crepe myrtle, and salvia gregii (aka hummingbird heroin… they love it). As soon as the crepe myrtle gets some more flowers on it I am going to take some more pictures, and will post a link so people can take a gander.
@philosopher77
1)Hope Trink is healing nicely.
2)Try pink bubble gum (Double Bubble, or the like) chopped into small pieces and dropped down into the gopher holes. Reapply to the holes (and any new burrows) weekly. You don’t want the dogs to get into the gum, but it is basically biodegraeable, and does not harm the plants or affect any vegetables’ edibility. The gophers eat the sweet sticky gum and it, er, gums up the works. This tactic has been used by a co-worker of mine to rid his Arizona garden of gophers, pack rats, and ground squirrels. It does take a couple of months for the critters to move on, but is inexpensive, readily available, and non-toxic.