Agroecology and How To Feed The Planet Better and Cheaper

[filkertom]

The title of Jill's article may be a little offputting, but there's some amazing info there.

Doing any food gardening this year? I'm gonna try again with the window herbs. Maybe the hanging tomatoes, but I'm not sure I feel that ambitious.

Comments

[louisadkins]

My wife is looking at doing what she calls a "3 sisters" garden. Corn grown (an affective pole plant), with a squash of some sort planted with it (that aggressively chokes off weeds, since it grows outwards, but ignores the corn,) and a climbing bean of some sort (that will climb above the squash, but not interfere with the corn.) She mentioned that the nutrient cycles of the three plants is suppose to be symbiotic, as well.

We're also looking at doing some earthbox tomatoes, planting two Apple Trees, six raspberry canes, maybe a few blueberry bushes, some cantaloupe, a watermelon, maybe some potatoes, some onion, garlic, and herbs.

My grandmother have a garden plot they are letting us use for the 3 sisters gardens, we will probably have about 8 earthboxes (home-hade, much cheaper than buying them prebuilt) when we are done, and I suspect a small patch in the back yard will become a garden, as well. The berries will be down the edge of the drive (blueberries love acid, we have some pines growing there, so..)

(She says this year she's not feeling ambitious, btw. *grins*)

[filkertom]

Not ambitious? I'm exhausted just reading about it. ;)

[ladysmith.livejournal.com]

We finally got our Home Owner's Association to agree to our putting in raised beds, so the vegetable garden will be going in one weekend soon.

(HOA's are a PITA -- the garden would have started LAST year if they hadn't lost the paperwork and then strung us along for months...)

[umbran.livejournal.com]

My Lady and I do gardening every year. I wouldn't say we are organic, but to date we've not used pesticides, and most of our soil enhancement comes in the form of manure. But, come summer, I've been known to use a bit of Miracle Grow. We admit we garden not for production, or economics, or to save the Earth, but just as a hobby.

Reading that article critically, I note that sometimes it says, "double food production," and elsewhere it says, "double food production in key areas," (italics mine).

The difference between those two statements is huge. It is like those new bank commercials which tout "triple the national average interest rate for savings accounts". Doubling or tripling something near zero is easy.

I would be entirely unsurprised to find that you could double production in those areas with any program intended to increase production. Or, maybe you can double it with organic techniques, while you could triple or quadruple it with conventional techniques. Given that some of those "key areas" are probably arid, proper irrigation alone might double production.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

Interesting article and I've grabbed a copy of the report to get the details. Thanks for the link.

[sveethot.livejournal.com]

My sister bought the hanging tomatoes last year - FAIL! As did my niece's boyfriend's father, who also had no luck w/them. You may have success w/them, but around here - not so much.

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

I SO miss having a garden but moving from a house with a yard to an apartment makes that...difficult. But I will be doing container gardening some how or other. I must figure out how to get enough sunlight in my walled deck; perhaps containers on wheels so I can move them to catch the sunlight. Won't be a whole lot but it WILL be something; definitely herbs, likely hanging tomatoes, hopefully a couple blueberry bushes and I dream of having a lime tree.

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

Seriously look into hydroponics. It's not as expensive as it was and takes up a hell of a lot less space than soil gardening. Well worth the effort because once you're set up all you need is seeds/plants, nutrients, and a water change every so often.

Also no gnats from the potting soil. ;-)

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I don't have room INside; it's a tiny apartment out of which I also run my sewing business. The only room I have for growing stuff, other than a house plant, is outside on my deck.

But that's an awesome idea.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

links to this? Unless I get real lucky I anticipate being an apartment dweller for some time now.... but I have a west-facing balcony now and anticipate having a Juliette balcony (no actual floor space, just a sliding glass door opening onto a rail and empty air, but one could hang stuff behind the doors) later, when summer actually gets started...

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

The dwarf rootstock citrus trees do really well in containers. I had a Meyer lemon for a long time in a big pot, just put it in the ground last winter. I've seen a half dozen different lime varietals in dwarf form.

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I want to do! Thanks!

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

We're fairly large scale gardeners, all organic. Our main garden is about 100 square feet of raised beds, where we grow broccoli, kale, lettuce, spinach, arugula, beets, carrots, radishes, peas, and chard in the cool season, beans, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, beets and chard in the summer. We've got a bed of nothing but strawberries and scallions, another that is asparagus, raspberries, blueberries, a strip of culinary and medicinal herbs, a grapevine, and trees: nectarine, cherry, navel orange, apricot, apple, fig, lemon and plum. This year, we've figured out where to make room for pumpkins and butternut squash, so that'll de an exciting addition. We're also adding a pomegranate to the trees.

Eventually some of the ornamentals in the front yard are getting replaced with a satsuma mandarin and a Mexican key lime. I also want to add a tilapia pond-we don't eat meat, but my cats do, and we can use the water as fertilizer. Maybe chickens someday, too, but I'm not fond of them, the noise or the mess.

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

My in-laws have suddenly become gung-ho about helping us make a large garden in our yard this year as long as we split the proceeds.

Looks like besides my 25'x25' garden space I'll also end up with a 50' x 20' garden space as well.

And I've got plans for raised boxes as well as upside-down hanging plants.

So yes we'll be growing a lot of food this year. ^_^

[ladyotterfae.livejournal.com]

Working on designing and building my first raised-bed garden right now, actually. After a couple of seasons of container gardening (with pretty lousy results, but that was largely due to too much travel, inexperienced plant-sitters, and non-ideal light/water conditions), I tried some in-ground last fall, and it was a disaster. :P So, of course, I'm trying again. Now that I have a larger rental yard and a tolerant landlord/neighborhood, 2-3 small raised beds are going up in the side yard, I have a front deck we built for the ramp that I'll be burying in containers, and it (yay!) faces south, so that might actually work this year...

I've gotten a little carried away, but plans include beets, carrots, some various greens, scallions and onions, peas, beans, and possibly a squash or two from seed. I'm also attempting to start some eggplant and tomato, but mostly I'm getting heirloom tomatoes from a nursery this year, and will pick up a pepper plant or three while I'm at it. Also strawberries, but that's largely because someone gave me one of those hanging strawberry thingies, and I'll happily use it once I find some plants.

Which reminds me, my first home-made grow light is all ready to go, and I need to get some flats put together today...*bounce*

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

You might consider investing a bit of time and money on an automated drip irrigation system. For a large garden, it took about $100 initially for the timer, emitters and the permanent lines, every few years we wind up buying a bit more 1/4 inch tubing, and maybe more drip along lines. This year we invested in the valves that let us shut off irrigation to each bed separately. Each year, it takes us about half a day to set up that year's layout, then we tweak the timer as needed for weather conditions. It's invaluable when we get busy, the plants still get plenty of water, we still get food. Before we put in the automated system, my plants died every year in early August.

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

I also note you said ramp- one of the folks on my husband's mail route has his front yard entirely done up in waist-high raised beds- all of them set so his wife, who is in a wheelchair, can tend them herself. I wish we'd thought to do that for my grandmother.

[ladyotterfae.livejournal.com]

We're hoping to eventually (probably after we've moved to wherever he gets a good job, I hope I hope), make raised beds that are about knee-high to him in the wheelchair, which will be easiest for him to work in, or so he thinks right now - we may adjust over time. I'll be the primary gardener, but it's best if he can do a few things when I'm busy or elsewhere.

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

Just started late last year with a grape tomato plant in a pot that somehow made it through the winter and has produced so many tomatoes that I've lost count. It's in between harvests at the moment, but there are more flowers on it, so it should be producing more tomatoes eventually.

[j-e-richards.livejournal.com]

I checked out the herb garden this morning and the cilantro is coming up. Everything that is not an annual seems to have survived the horrible winter in Ohio. I'm getting ready to start some herbs from seed because I'm co teaching a section on herbs in April for the Master Gardener program. Otherwise no one DARES to plant anything around here until May 15...

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

I'm in California. We had 2 weeks of nearly 80 degrees in early February, people started planting tomatoes (I put in greens and peas). Then we got a hard freeze last week. A layer of burlap over my cold tolerant babies did the trick. The neighbor's tomatoes were not so lucky. I'll wait for late March to put in my nightshades.

[ash-blackwell.livejournal.com]

My husband is planting corn, beets, carrots, beans, chard, and okra in the 150 square feet of his Grandfather's garden we've been given this year. Grandpa is 86 and didn't feel weel enough to do the planting and weeding himself, but was good for sitting in a lawn chair and telling my husband what he needed to do to get everything started and turning on and off the soaker hoses every day. It's win-win. Grandpa gets his garden, we don't have to worry about him pushing himself too hard and ending up in the hospital again.

We're also eyeballing the areas of bare dirt within curbs in front of and behind the store. We've got permission to use the back one already from last year and we're going to ask if we can plant the edges of the front one this year.

The squash we planted out back last year kept having the squash picked off it long before it could ripen, so this year we're thinking herbs. Most people won't recognize the plants as food, and the "landscapers" (we call them "plant-killers" here) won't ruin the crop by seeing the veggies as "dead flowers" to be pruned.

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

Why is my one response to technoshaman screened?