Tiny Gardens

Ok, so remember six months ago or so when I promised resources on container gardens? Yeah I'm finally getting around to making that post. When I say I'm going to do something and you really want to see it? Remind me about it or I'm going to forget for months. Let this be a lesson to you spiceberries.

Right! Moving along! As a bonus you're getting square foot gardening with container gardening. Buckle up this is going to be a bit long. Resources are in the bibliography page as always.

Container Gardening

Ok, container gardening is one of  those things I utterly love in concept. The idea of growing veggies in pots when you don't have a yard is really really attractive. I advocate container gardens for urban dwellers and college students trapped in dorms. They're space effective and because you can replace the soil every year you don't have to worry that you're going wear out your soil, and because you can keep them indoors you get a longer growing season.

But let me let you in on a little secret:

I've never had ANY success with them. I don't know what I'm doing wrong but something is going pear shaped without producing pears. So please keep in mind that the rest of  this information is coming from a place of wistful longing.

To begin: the first thing you need to consider is your space. Are your containers inside or outside or stay outside in the summer and over winter indoors? Do you have asshole pets that'll get into your pots? That'll determine your pot size which will then determine what you can grow.

Second consideration: What to grow in your space? The most common container veggie? Tomatoes. So for the sake of the rest of this we are going to assume you're growing something else, lets say... kale. Mostly because you can find resources for growing tomatoes in pots almost anywhere and doing what everyone else has done is boring to me.

Kale is a fantastic green to do in a container! Most greens are! Kale is shade tolerant which means you don't need to have a window with direct sun to keep them happy. They are also nutrition bombs that you can eat raw, cooked, dried, or blanch and freeze. So kale in a container.

Third thing: Pot size. In our example you don't need to have a large container. Greens have (comparably) shallow roots so you could grow a couple of them in a standard window box. Kale needs 6 sq inches per plant, so for a 18in long window box you can fit three plants, or do them in individual small traditional style pots.

Forth consideration: Soil Now that you've decided on what you're growing and what size pot you need (in this case kale in window boxes) you need to figure out what kind of soil will make your plant the happiest. Kale is easy, it wants a loamy somewhat loose soil that's pretty close to pH neutral. A standard potting mixture will work just fine. Use compost if you've got it.

That's really it. Container gardens are dead simple if you follow those four considerations. Or should be. One day I'll manage one.

BLOG POST PART TWO: SQUARE FOOT GARDENING!

Still with me loves? Good. Go get a drink and then we'll continue.

Back? Awesome.

Square foot gardening is, at its essence, intensive gardening of a small space. It is a much more effective use of space than traditional row planting, but it is slightly harder to weed and harvest. But if you've only got a postage stamp of a yard? You can still get a solid amount of food.

Square foot gardening is based on the concept of a grid which makes it very new gardener friendly. First measure out your gardening space and develop your grid. 4ft x 4ft is traditional but whatever space you have is great. The lay out in what is important. For this we're assuming you're starting with a 4 x 4 plot.

You have your large square (your whole garden). You divide that by 4 and keep reducing each section by 4 until you have 16 units. The basic rule of thumb is 1 large plant (tomatoes, squash grown up, cucumbers ect) per unit, 4 medium plants (kale, lettuce, other greens) per unit, 9 for medium small plants like spinach, and 16 plants for things like herbs and other small plants. In our case we're doing kale, so 4 kale plants per unit, there's 4 units per square foot which means a total of 16 kale plants per square foot or (if you plant the whole thing with kale) you get 64 kale plants in 4 square feet.

Compare that to how you'd normally plant out kale which is 8 per square foot (two rows of 4) which gets you a total of 32 kale plants in the same space.

This method is also great for diversity in a small space. You have the potential 16 different types of veggies, greens, and herbs in a 4 x 4 plot of land.  Tell me that isn't cool as hell?

Corn!

Guys we have corn! Successful and tasty corn!

See? Isn't it cute?!

This year we grew Jade Blue Dwarf Corn (Hudson valley seed library) and I highly recommend it. I planted about 20 stalks, 10 down either side of Fwigf. My tallest one is about 3 and a half feet tall (just over a meter for our metric friends). The advertised average was about 2 mini-ears of blue corn per stalk. I'm looking at 3 or 4 ears each. The ears themselves are not large at all, they're about 3 - 4 inches long (6-8cm), so each one yields about one side dish serving of corn per person. Not the massive ears of sweet corn that I'm used to, but tasty none the less. I'd actually like to try these as container corn. They didn't take up much room at all and frankly I believe a nice big pot will hold three or four stalks and give a decent yield of corn. So there apartment dwellers, you too can have corn!

They were less sweet than commercial sweet corn, but they had more corn flavor if that makes any sense. I think these would stand up very well to being frozen. The good news is we will have enough to freeze, and we can freeze one meals worth in a quart sized freezer bag. So yay corn!

This weekend also marked my acquisition of a dehydrator. And by 'a dehydrator' I mean 'the dehydrator my parents had when I was a child that they used maybe all of twice in the early '90s'. It is an ancient beast. There are no thermometers, no digital timers, the temperature is regulated by turning the top to open or close vent holes. But it works. And it was free. And the company is still in business, so even though the box says 'as seen on tv' it wasn't a one hit television wonder invention.

Current cunning plan is to make jerky. Then start making soup mixes out of on sale seasonal veggies and meat. This will save us money this winter. Provided my wonderful new-to-me dehydrator doesn't take off like the UFO it resembles (guys, this is a creature of the early 90s and looks it). The other plan is to attempt to make drink mixes by buying seasonal fruit (Read: all fruit) when it's in season (read: summer) and dehydrate it then smash it into powder. But first, we try jerky. basic jerky. Salt, pepper, garlic, and a little bit of vinegar. That's it. Baby steps.