A New SPIN on Growing Food Locally

Those Canadians! While we've been down here moaning about finding sustainably farmed local produce, they have been up there in the north country inventing boutique food production methods that give people the courage to grow produce sustainably in their own backyard.

The program is called SPINfarming and involves using harnessing sub-acre plots of land for money-making farm production. They claim that by using intensive gardening techniques SPIN farming overcomes the 2 big hurtles to farming: land costs and capital. Here's the link to learn more about this innovative idea for food production. http://spinfarming.com/common/pdfs/SPIN_passalong_calculator.pdf and http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/article-11701-burgeoning-business-in-backyard-gardens.html

Great Wall of Lettuce Update

(The Great Wall of Lettuce today after the first harvest of Rapini and Lettuce)

It's been a few weeks since the start of the great wall of lettuce project. Here's an update and a long overdue thanks to my GM friends for offering up their empty 1-5 gallon pots for the experiment ... and to MM for the chocolate mint plants: they love their new home on The Wall.

The wall supports about 16 1-gallon pots and a few 3 and 5-gallon pots. Here are some observations:

• Keeping the plants hydrated is easier than expected. The plants get enough afternoon shade and are protected from the wind. they only need water 1x per day.
  
• Getting the water onto the pots is harder than expected. The best method has been hand watering with a hose. The line drippers don't spread the water well enough and the spray dippers just don't angle properly allowing too much water waste and runoff.
• The 1-gallon pots are too small for more than one plant at a time. There just isn't enough nutrient in the soil to grow truly useful plants.
• The 5-gallon pots grow enough leaf lettuce for a nice dinner salad and the shoots regrow after harvesting.
• The baby bok choy seeds weren't planted deeply enough. The plants are spindly
• The mint loves it semi-shade exposure (about 4 hours of sun a day)
• The bigger pots have a tendency to topple over. The container cuke was damaged by a bad fall.
• Lettuce and Rapini have worked the best. Both were in 5 gallon pots. Maybe the baby bok choi will be better planted deeper.
  

Yeild

Four squares of bush beans planted in the watering trough around April 20 yielded a nice big handful of beans for supper tonight with more to come in the next few days. The square of snap peas against the fence are still offering up a crunchy little snack every few days and the leaf lettuce is promising a salad or two along with greens for sandwiches, but the baby romaine is just about gone. I'm vaguely thinking about cost per square calculations, but how do you factor in the romance of gardening and the lovely sense of anticipation, accomplishment and hope that a garden yields in addition to the odd tomato and the promise of crazy zucchinis any day now.

90 Days: Time to Replant

Musing on replanting... a kind of recycling. Recycling the space that has stopped being useful. Like cleaning closets. Letting go. Out with the old in with the new:

The Old (Planted March 13):

• 6-7 sq. lettuce. Romaine 2-3 plants per square was enough to give us a daily salad for about 2 weeks.
• 2 sq. snap peas. Enough to provide a morning snack every 3rd day for about 2 weeks
• 2 sq. bush beans. provided about 2 cups of green beans. Very discouraging really.
  

The New

• Lettuce growing in the great wall is useful as a source of transplants. I'm moving plants to the empty squares and hoping they don't bolt. They aren't really getting enough sun on the wall. Maybe 4-5 hours a day. The plants are spindly and sad.
  
• 2 squares of pole beans planted in the watering trough.
  

Status Update June 4, 2010

The lettuce seedlings emerge. As of today, 16 pots are planted with a variety of Mesclun, baby romain, baby bok choy, mint, and rapini. The 12 bush beans planted at the bottom will soak up any water that splashes out of the gutter and provide more shade for the lettuce if they grow. This experiment, based on Mel Barthomew's square foot gardening techniques with a dash of hybred hydroponic gardening priciples tossed in for good luck is entirely ad hoc.

From Renee's Garden: "Mesclun has come to mean any mixture of young salad greens that is sown, grown and cut all together."

What did I plant?

Although I adore experimentation in the trial and error way, I've never been good at keep records. I did jot down a few notes about what I planted and when and even managed to get most of it written in the same book. Yesterday I tried to transpose it all into an excel spreadsheet, but forgot to save. Oh dear. We're back to the void.

Havesting Water

We live amidst the illusion of abundant water. In my garden water is used and used again whenever possible. Today I tapped the side of the bean trough to gather the run off and harvested about a gallon. This had the added benefit of keeping the ground around the pot from getting squishy. But still, I am so grateful for abundance.

Garden update June 7: First Green Bean Harvest

The green beans are coming but slowly. 2 squares of French bush beans went in (Harcort Vert) -- about 18 bean plants. 60+ days later, the first beans have arrived. Yesterday and today's harvest combined will be about 1 handful. Not exactly enough for a family of five, but something. Next year the first planting will include 4 squares and I'll start later. The cold spring had the beans shivering in their pots.

The 2 squares of bush beans planted 30 days later are climbing steadily. They went in on 30th of April when the days were longer but only somewhat warmer. They're growing in a homemade "earthbox" or self-watering container. Basically it's constructed from a plastic tub, filled with red lava rock and then a layer of "nuvo peet" (ligna peet, a red wood product). They get more reflected heat from wall behind them than the bush beans get. I only water them every 2 weeks and they seem healthy.