Planet Veggie Garden

Many folks have limited space for gardening.
And many more have limited time.

Agriculture is more than 11,000 years old.
But that doesn’t mean there can’t be technological breakthroughs.

Enter the Earth Box

Earth Box Garden System

The Earth Box…

Self-watering – you fill a reservoir and plants pull water when they need it. No under or over watering, no watering schedule that doesn’t fit your schedule.

Weed-free – the mulch cover keeps weeds out so you don’t need to spend time weeding.

Fertilizer strip – releases nutrients as plants need them.

Double the yield – this system has proven to produce about twice the yield as a typical garden so it’s like having twice the planting space (without even half the work).

Portable & reusable – the Earth Boxes can be wheeled around whenever you want, AND, if you move you can take them with you.

Each Earth Box is 30″ long x 13-1/2″ wide x 12″ deep, holding 2-1/2 cubic feet of soil.

Grab your own Earth Box and you’ll have you’re crop planted in nearly no time. And with little effort you’ll have fresh veggies and herbs right outside your door.

We’re growing the traditional green zucchini and another summer squash variety called ‘papaya’ – a cute yellow squash shaped like a papaya.

I was scanning the NYT health section and came across two delicious sounding zuchinni recipes that I would love to try:

Greek Zucchini and Herb Pie

Provencal Zucchini and Swiss Chard Tart

Let me know if you try either of these. I need to wait for the zucchini crop to explode…

What happens to plants when they are deficient in minerals? Oftentimes, as in humans, they exhibit the symptoms commonly associated with disease. They do not do well…stunted growth, yellowing leaves, curling leaves, blossom end rot…just to name a few. Amending the soil and rotating crops can help prevent deficiencies but what happens when your plants start to exhibit yellowing leaves for instance.

Here is a great pictorial online source aptly called The Diagnosis of Mineral Deficiencies in Plants

I’m using this to figure out why my romano bean plants are yellow when everything else (peas, lettuce, cilantro, dill and Italian parsley) are all doing well.

Check it out.

well, Winter is long past and we are nearly a month in to Spring. It was hard to get out into the garden (whine, whine) in the cold damp winter so we just let nature do it’s thing.

In the Fall, we had planted: garlic, carrots, beets, daikon, watermelon radishes, kale, chard, mustard, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuces, spinach, sorrel, italian parsley, favas and english peas. We had mixed success due to inexperience, the ongoing battle with rats and the eternal “short on time.”

Out of Hibernation
So far this Spring we have been enjoying lots of mustard, chard, lettuce and kale. A little bit of favas and english peas. Carrots are coming out in the next few days and sadly I waited too long before picking the beets and radishes so while the roots were a bit fiberous we had lots of the green tops.

We’ve been busy working in the garden most weekends and I’ve been lucky enough to have some time during the week (but not as much as I want!:( .)

The biggest chore is weeding. We started weeding about 6 weeks ago and managed to fill 5 – 90 gallon green bins. Some of the contents came from pruning and yanking up dead plants but most of it was the result of back breaking weed pulling. Phew! There are still some weeds lurking about but that part of preparing the garden is done.
We have a call into our local tree trimming company to drop off a load of free wood chips next time they are in the neighborhood. This will get spread between the raised beds to cut down on the weeds next year.

Next up, amending the beds and irrigating.
After pulling up the previous crop, we amend each bed with horse manure (which we had gotten from the stables in the Fall and let age under a tarp in the corner of the garden over the winter), compost from our kitchen scraps, bone meal, humate, azomite and a bit of potash. Don’t ask me how I came up with this – I read a bunch here and there and decided this is what I will do – it’s all an experiment. If anything, Compost is probably the most important.
There are still 3 more beds to clean up and amend but that can wait until next weekend.
This weekend I will work on setting up some beds in our front garden and laying out the drip irrigation. This is a big job and may extend into next weekend. Always so much to do!

Irrigation is simple soaker hoses and a mish mash of drip using odds and ends parts. Last year, I spent a lot of time hand watering everything – this year the garden is even bigger so having the drip will save a lot of time and make for hopefully a bigger crop due to a more consistent watering schedule.

Planting!
This weekend calls for warm weather so we will plant half of what we plan to grow. The other half will go in in a few weeks.

• Veggies from seedlings (transplants): tomato (early girl, cherokee purple, roma, yellow pear cherry and celebrity), cucumber, butternut squash, zuchinni, bell pepper, basil, japanese eggplant

• Veggies from seeds direct into the ground: beans (green and yellow romano, red noodle) went in last week, peas, dill, cilantro, basil, lettuces, dino kale, chard and radishes

In the next few weeks, as the weather (hopefully) continues to warm, the south facing front garden will get the heat loving veggies such as the melons (honeydew, watermelon and bitter melon) and we’re trying out corn this year. That should be a sight – corn stalks in the front yard! -Most of these will be seeds direct into the ground.

Now I just have to remember to record where I am planting everything so that we can rotate next year! Knowing how well things stick to my brain these days I have to resist the temptation to tell myself, “I’ll remember…”

That’s it for now,
What’s happening in your garden?

Bill Moyers recently interviewed Michael Pollan. The conversation primarily focused on Governments role in how and what we eat as well as some suggestions for the Obama administration.

Pollan called food the “Shadow Issue” as it influences our health, climate change, energy security and environmental pollution.
We tend to only think of food in an isolated way. 

You can watch the two-part interview here.