Vertical gardens for beginners

August 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Vertical gardening is a method for growing more food in less space.

For example, in traditional vegetable gardening, tomatoes sprawl over and around their cages. However, you can grow your tomatoes along a trellis, a post, or even a single strong string with relative ease.  This method allows you to plant more tomato plants in your garden as you eliminate tomato plant sprawl.

My favorite method of vertical gardening—again, I’m a lazy gardener—is against stakes.  This method has worked particularly well for me with tomatoes. I prefer wooden stakes that are an inch square and five or six feet tall.  Simply buy as many stakes as you have tomato plants, and when you put the plants in the ground, set the stakes in the ground at the same time, being careful not to stab the roots of the young plants.  As the young plants grow, gently tie the thicker branches of each plant to the stake, using either strips of fabric or a vinyl stretch tie.

For this method to work best–to keep the plant put its energy into growing up instead of out–you need to pinch off new growth at the point where the existing branches join the main stalk of the plant.  I typically do this once a week; it only takes a few minutes, and once your tomatoes are trained up the stake, these little extra sprouts are easy to spot and remove.

This is an effective, but not necessarily the sturdiest or most attractive, way to grow vegetables vertically.  If you’re looking to grow heavier vegetables–like squash or even pumpkins–vertically, you’re going to need something more substantial.  If you’d like to see how to build a simple but tall and strong support for heavier plants, I recommend All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew, as the book has plans for constructing, with only a few tools, an affordable but substantial trellis.  The book also explains where to situate your trellis (hint: don’t place it in such a way that the vegetables growing on the trellis will shade out those in the garden bed), how to best secure the netting that forms the ladders up which the plants climb, which plants grow best vertically, how to train plants up the trellis, how to increase your tomato yield by planting one tomato plant hortizontally (!), and how to secure the trellis if the plants become heavy at the end of the season.

If you’re ready to tackle slightly more advanced vertical garden methods–many of them exceptionally beautiful–I recommend you get your hands on the lavishly illustrated and highly inspirational book Garden Up!  The book has a chapter on growing edibles up, against, and hanging from walls, with a special focus on how to irrigate plants in such a system.  The chapter also covers growing on espaliers, using containers creatively in vertical plantings, making “potato condos,” and constructing nontraditional trellises.

Photo by digika, and used under a Creative Commons license

Filed Under: Fruit and vegetable gardening, Techniques, Vertical gardening

Have You Tried Strawberry Pots?

August 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

When I was a kid, I was fascinated with the strawberry pots my mom kept in an especially sunny spot in the backyard. Every year plants tucked into the pockets of the strawberry pots produced lots of strawberries.  Best of all, the strawberries hung over the edge of the pots’ pockets, dangling in the air instead of sitting in the dirt.  Not only were these pots full of strawberries lovely–the strawberries were less prone to destruction by slugs or damage from sitting on the moist soil.  (This year I planted my strawberries in traditional containers and the slugs are having a feast. Ugh. Next year: back to strawberry pots!)

Need I even mention that strawberries you grow at home–especially if you choose your variety carefully–are so much tastier than those that have been shipped to grocery stores on big, refrigerated trucks?

You don’t need a large backyard, however, to keep strawberry pots–they’re just the right size for patios and even tiny balconies.  And you may not even need much sun–a friend of mine successfully grows tasty strawberries almost entirely in the shade.

Some tips for success with your strawberry pot:

Pick a place where the pot will get sun on all sides.  You don’t want to place it right up against a wall or a fence because the strawberries planted in the pockets nearest the fence likely won’t get enough sun.  You want your strawberries to get at least six hours of sun a day, and more is better (although, as I mentioned above, in some cases you don’t need that much sun).

Try ever-bearing or day-neutral strawberries.  These tend to do better in strawberry pots that some of the June-bearing varieties, and they don’t seem to care as much about the length of day, so they produce fruit throughout the season.  Choose a soil with a lot of organic matter—ask your local nursery or garden center what kind of organic potting soil they most recommend—and fill the pot with it until you get to the level of the first pocket. Plant one strawberry plant in that pocket, then continue this process until all the pockets have been planted and you reach the top of the pot.

Don’t let the soil get too dry.  Most strawberry pots are terracotta, and on hot days, terracotta can lose moisture very quickly—especially since strawberry pots have all those pockets through which moisture can evaporate.  Check every day to be sure the soil is at least faintly moist–you want to be sure the water is getting to the roots of each plant, so check the pockets as well as the top of the pot.  (In fact, before you plant anything in a terracotta pot, it’s a good idea to submerge the pot in water for an hour, so that the water in the soil doesn’t immediately get wicked through the terracotta sides of the pot.)

Don’t let the soil get sodden.  Strawberry plant roots need good drainage.  To be sure all the roots are getting the water they need, but that they don’t get too wet, install a drainage pipe down the middle of the pot.  Simply take a piece of PVC pipe—an inch-wide one will do, but you can experiment with larger ones if you like—and drill several holes in it, then center it in the pot; leave a couple inches of pipe sticking out of the pot.  (It may not look pretty, but soon your healthy strawberry plants will be hiding it from view.)  Pouring water down the pipe, as well as on the surface of the soil, ensures that the water is more evenly distributed to the strawberries planted in pockets.  Be sure that you haven’t blocked the drain hole on the bottom of the pot with the pipe–you want any extra water in the soil to drain out through that hole.

By the way, I really like the design of this strawberry pot, even though it isn’t actual terracotta, because it has nice big pockets for ease of planting.  (Note that there’s both a 30- and 14-quart version.)

Image credits: Strawberries by odonata98, and used under a Creative Commons license; strawberry pot by Corey Harmon, and used under a Creative Commons license.

Filed Under: Container gardening, Fruit and vegetable gardening

Keeping Cats Out of the Garden

August 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I like cats–I really do.  If my spouse wasn’t allergic to them, we’d definitely have a couple. However, one of the neighbor’s cats has decided the square-foot piece of garden immediately next to my front door is the world’s best litter box.  I’ve been interested, then, in ways to dissuade cats from digging around in the garden.  Here’s are some techniques my research has turned up so far, but I’d love to hear your ideas—especially inexpensive ones—on how to keep cat poop out of the spots where I might want to grow food.

Water. Set up a motion-detecting sprinkler system. If there’s motion in the garden, the sprinklers will come on.  Of course, you’re going to want a system that you can turn off easily–the computerized sprinkler system at the house we rent is not one of those–so that you’re not drenched when you work in the garden.

Dense vegetation. Plant flowers, or vegetables that are OK with being crowded, close together. Many cats don’t like to squeeze between leaves (though some will do so happily).  As I’ve learned recently, an open patch of soil = great place for cat poop.

Crushed red pepper or cayenne pepper. Apparently cats don’t like strong smells like these, so you can spread ground hot peppers around the border of the garden, or even on spots within the garden.

Pinecones or stones. If there’s a spot the cat likes to target in the garden, place some pinecones there to discourage them from inhabiting that space.  Pinecones are uncomfortable to walk on—or, I imagine, squat on—and stones, if placed in the ground a bit, make digging difficult.

Give in and build a cat garden.  Set aside a small portion of the garden for the cat to use.  Plant catnip, cat thyme, and cat mint.  I don’t think this is an option for me, as I’m not about to put a welcome mat for the cat right by the front door.  That said, maybe cultivating a cat garden in another part of the yard might lure the cat from the front door.

Or, do the opposite: plant an anti-cat garden.  Apparently cats don’t like lavender, geraniums, or rue, a—like red and cayenne pepper—the scents are too strong.  With my luck, my neighbor’s cat—or cats, I’m really not sure—would be lavender lovers, but it’s worth a try, I think.

Spiked mats.  You can see one type here: Cat Scat Mats.  These are mats featuring small plastic spikes that stick up about an inch or so from the ground.  Alas, these mats will also discourage you from walking barefoot into the garden.  (But hey–you’re probably not walking into your garden barefoot if, like me, there’s a half-hidden stash of cat poop in it.)

If you’ve had this problem, how did you solve it?  (Please tell me there’s a solution, as I don’t like welcoming guests with cat poop by the front door.)

Cat photo by zenera, and used under a Creative Commons license.

Filed Under: Garden pests, Techniques

Some gardeners I admire

August 8, 2011 By 1 Comment

A view of Barbara Ganley’s amazing Open View Gardens. (Photo by Barbara Ganley, and used under a Creative Commons license.)

I’ve been surrounded by gardeners all my life–it’s a peril of having spent three decades in the western half of California, where year-round growing is pretty easy.  In my perambulations around the country and the web, however, I’ve come to know (as friends or merely as a website lurker) some people who have a really deep relationship with their gardens, and I’d like to give some of them a shout-out here, as they’re an inspiration.

First, if we’re talking about floriculture, my mom is at the very top of my gardening idols.  Her yard boasts a few dozen lovely and fragrant rosebushes and I’m guessing at least a dozen varieties of begonia. My parents have lived in their Southern California home since 1968, so they’ve had plenty of time to improve the soil, and it shows–her garden blossoms year-round thanks to nearly a hundred tall and prolific perennials whose names I never seem able to remember.

Next on my floriculture list would be a number of women you’ve likely never heard of–none of them are alive today–but who all contributed in one way or another to California floriculture or to the understanding of California’s native plants: Lester Rowntree, Theodosia Shepherd, Alice Eastwood, Gerda Isenberg, Susanna Bixby Bryant, and Kate Sessions.  (I’m in the process of becoming a California garden historian of sorts, so admiring late floricultural and horticultural pioneers is becoming a vocational hazard.)

If we’re going to talk about edible horticulture, however, then I’m eager to list people I’ve met and people I want to meet but thus far know only online.

My friend Barbara Ganley runs Open View Gardens adjacent to her home in rural Vermont. While she’s not technically an urban gardener, Barbara’s methods are applicable to intensive gardening of food, and her passion for her work is inspirational. I admire the way she has launched a business that supports her passions through truly one-of-a-kind cooking workshops, a lovely shop packed with dried herbs and peppers, syrups, jams, jellies, condiments, and more from her garden and kitchen, and subscriptions to special ingredients from Barbara’s kitchen, as well as recipes and menus that call for those ingredients. Her site also boasts a ton of recipes drawn from cuisines around the world–and all infused with Barbara’s brilliance as a gardener, chef, and all-around creative thinker.

I’ve had the pleasure of crossing paths with Bryan Alexander at a number of education technology conferences; he lives just up the mountain from Barbara, but–as he emphasized in a guest post on Barbara’s blog–his gardening takes on additional urgency in the face of the isolation winter brings to his community. Bryan blogs about the Gothic at Infocult (not a site for the queasy of stomach or those prone to nightmares, I assure you) and is the author of The New Digital Storytelling, but for gardeners his most interesting site is likely Scaling the Peak, “a blog about peak oil and a family attempting to cope.” On that blog he chronicles his family’s agricultural adventures on what he affectionately terms “the doomstead.” Again, Bryan’s homestead isn’t urban, but his experiments remain relevant to those of us in cities and suburbs; check out, for example, his post on early July homestead activities or planting potatoes in June.

When I lived in California, I found the blogs of northern denizens like Barbara and Bryan to be really interesting and inspiring. Since my move to Idaho, I’ve found them instructional as well.  Definitely add them to your feed reader or bookmarks, especially if like me you’re challenged by a late last frost date and a short growing season.

My pseudonymous friend Garden Grrrl, who blogs at Gardensong,  is always ready and willing to ease my muddling through the garden. Like me, she has a passion for informal science education and the democratization of knowledge about horticulture and the natural world. Though she hasn’t been the most prolific blogger lately, I’m delighted to number her among my good friends–and thrilled that I have her phone number for good conversation and garden emergencies.

I’ve never met the Dervaes family, but I hope one of my regular visits to Southern California will soon take me by their Pasadena urban homestead (a term the family has registered as a trademark, to much chagrin–OK, indignation–in the urban ag community). On one-tenth of an acre, the Dervaes produce more than three tons of organic food annually.

I’m just learning about the saga of the South Central farmers of Los Angeles. They’ve seen their community farm’s acreage decline dramatically, and they’re fighting to retain access to one final sliver of land.  Check out their site to see how you might help.

I also admire the myriad community gardeners in Oakland, California.  (Urban farming and community gardening has absolutely taken off in the San Francisco Bay Area.) There are Oakland neighborhoods without a grocery store, so it’s difficult to get fresh produce. Activists, neighbors, and entrepreneurs have teamed up to bring ultra-local fresh food to the residents in the form of gardens and urban farms.

Which gardeners do you admire, and why?

Filed Under: Community, Fruit and vegetable gardening

Urban gardening round-up #1

August 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Because (like many of you, I suspect) I’m on a budget and I rent the home I live in, I can’t build an extravagant gardening infrastructure on my property.  That doesn’t keep me, however, from dreaming of bigger plots and collaborating with my community on gardens.  Here are some recent posts and articles I found inspirational in one way or another:

Margaret Roach reminds us that, even if we live in climates without year-round growing seasons, there’s still time to put certain cooler-weather plants in the ground.  Check out her list for seeds and seedlings that it might not yet be too late to plant.

Slugs have attacked my strawberry pots, so I’m experiencing a shortage of strawberries. Barbara Ganley’s video on how to make French-style strawberry jam, however, makes me want to buy bushels of strawberries from a local farm.*

Inside Urban Green provides tips on how to transform your ceramic pots into sub-irrigated planters–without having to drill an extra hole in the side of the pots.

The thriving community garden movement in Oakland is both metaphorically and literally in full bloom.  Oakland’s efforts to bring local food to communities that lack even grocery stores has brought into partnership some really great organizations.  Definitely click through to find out what they’re up to.

Thinking of growing the scale of your gardening, and making the transition from urban gardening to urban agriculture?  You might find some inspiration in Inhabitat’s post about the top 5 urban farms in New York City.

Meanwhile, urban farmers in Los Angeles are trying to save South Central Farm. Visit their site to see what you can do to help.

What urban gardening and urban farming news and techniques are you finding interesting these days?  Feel free to leave links (even to your own gardening sites) in the comments.

 

* That fledgling directory of Treasure Valley (Idaho) farms emerged from a student project in my public history course.  Their Facebook page is still a work in progress, but the project is the brainchild of some amazing young women, so I encourage you to “Like” their page so you can stay posted about their work.

Image credits: Good greens by seanpants, and used under a Creative Commons license; strawberries by @joefoodie, and used under a Creative Commons license.

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Filed Under: Urban gardening news round-up