Local Harvest / Farmers Markets / Family Farms / CSA / Organic Food How to Grow 100 Pounds of Potatoes in 4 Square Feet | Apartment Therapy Re-Nest On many occasions, we've been tempted to grow our own potatoes. They're fairly low maintenance, can be grown in a pot or in the ground, last a fairly long time if stored properly, and can be very nutritious (high in potassium and vitamin C). Here's more incentive: according to this article, you can grow 100 pounds of potatoes in 4 sq. feet. Learn how after the jump... According to this article from the Seattle Times, potatoes planted inside a box with this method can grow up to 100 pounds of potatoes in just 4 square feet. Lumber Seed potatoes Soil Careful attention to watering The Times' guide for building a potato growing box yields up to a 100 lbs. of potatoes in a mere 4 square feet is shown below: Plant as early as April or as late as August 1, with an approximated 3 month till harvest turnaround time. Here are some pointers from the article: Cut apart larger seed potatoes, making sure there are at least two eyes in each piece you plant. Seattle Times via LifeHacker.
How to Turn a Pallet into a Garden Good news and bad news. I had planned to film a short video showing you how to make a pallet garden, but the weather didn’t cooperate. I was stapling the landscape fabric onto the pallet when it started drizzling and got really windy. That’s the bad news. So keep reading my pallet loving friends, instructions on how to make your own pallet garden are just a few lines away… Find a Pallet The first thing you need to do is–obviously–find a pallet. Don’t just take the first pallet you find. Collect Your Supplies For this project, you’ll need the pallet you found, 2 large bags of potting soil, 16 six packs of annual flowers (one six pack per opening on the face of the pallet, and two six packs per opening on the top of the completed pallet garden), a small roll of landscape fabric, a staple gun, staples, and sand paper. Get Your Pallet into Shape Once you’ve dragged your pallet home, give it a once over. Let the Stapling Begin! Lay the pallet face down. Now for the sides. Caring For your Pallet
Window Farming: A Do-It-Yourself Veggie Venture Everything Petroleum Does, Hemp Does Better Becca Wolford, Contributing WriterWaking Times We are in an economic crisis. But don’t panic, there are always good things that come out of crises. It’s all a matter of being aware, being ready, and being educated. Our economy, put simply, really sucks right now. Here is a simplified example: A country has good currency and a strong economy. (image from rickety.us) Here are the main reasons for our economic state today: 1. 2. 3. If you look at history about 100 years ago, when the big oil boom started, that is when the economy surged and the population started seeing an increase. The United States uses 25% of the world’s daily oil supply, and imports 70% of that. Oil is not a renewable resource, and it is a DECLINING resource. Global oil production is declining at 8-10% per year. Now, this is not the end of the world as we know it. Hemp does everything that petroleum does, AND BETTER! Extracting fossil fuels are harmful to the environment and to human health. So, what do we do now?
Small Footprint, Big Yield: Create an Easy Micro Organic Urban Garden Today! | Urban Gardens | Unlimited Thinking For Limited Spaces April 28, 2009 by Robin Plaskoff Horton There are two things urban gardeners are short on: space and time. The Urban Garden, brainchild of Bill Arquitt, resolves both of these issues, making it efficient and simple to plant a vegetable garden with up to 55 plants in a 3-foot deep by 4-foot wide footprint. The contained six level tiered system is nearly maintenance-free, eliminating heavy weeding, and its northwestern cedar construction renders it naturally bug repellent. How to build My 50 Dollar Greenhouse First off – you really can build this thing very cheaply, but to do so you have to recycle, freecycle, and scrounge. If you just go out and buy new everything it will probably cost over $200 – still not bad all in all.This Article is featured in Jan 2010 issue of Birds and Blooms Magazine!Want to find out if this thing works before you read all this? Read 6 months in the Greenhouse first.Want to see what happens when a few inches of wet snow accumulates on this? Collapse! My $50 Greenhouse Welcome Stumbleupon Gardeners! Materials list Construction Steps Hind Sight – What I would do differently The planning is over and construction on my hoop house greenhouse has begun. After some research I’ve decided to build the structure of the hoop house out of 20 ft. joints of three quarter inch PVC plumbing pipe. My hoop house green house is going to be 11 feet wide and 15 feet long, and will be about seven and a half feet tall in the center. If your Greenhouse is too Flat it will collapse! Thusly
US Seed Companies Pledge to Be GE-Free For newest list go to: US Seed Companies Pledging to be GE-Free Recently a project called the "Safe Seed Initiative" was launched by the Council for Responsible Genetics and the High Mowing Organic Seed Farm. The initiative is simple: seed companies sign a pledge (see text below) stating that they will not buy or sell genetically engineered seeds. Virtually every seed company in the US was given an opportunity to sign on. The Safe Seed Sourcebook Winter 2000 Agriculture and seeds provide the basis upon which our lives depend. California: Abundant Life Seed Foundation PO Box 772 Port Townsend, WA 98368 Bountiful Gardens 18001 Shafer Ranch Rd Willits , CA 95490 Environmental Seed Producers PO Box 2709 Lompoc, CA 93438 Horse Creek Seed Santuary PO Box 1476 Santa Cruz, CA 95061 KUSA Seed Research Foundation PO Box 761 Ojai , CA 93024 Santa Barbara Heirloom Nursery PO Box 4235 Santa Barbara, CA 93140 Colorado: Beauty Beyond Belief Wildflower Seeds 1730 So. Florida:
Farmers Markets Farmers markets are an integral part of the urban/farm linkage and have continued to rise in popularity, mostly due to the growing consumer interest in obtaining fresh products directly from the farm. Farmers markets allow consumers to have access to locally grown, farm fresh produce, enables farmers the opportunity to develop a personal relationship with their customers, and cultivate consumer loyalty with the farmers who grows the produce. Direct marketing of farm products through farmers markets continues to be an important sales outlet for agricultural producers nationwide. As of National Farmers Market Week, (the first full week in August), there were 8,144 farmers markets listed in USDA’s National Farmers Market Directory. This is a 3.6 percent increase from 2012.