Fast Friday Tip: Tomatoes in a Cat's Cradle

Here is a strong, sturdy alternative to using cages for your tomato plants.



Plant tomatoes in a row, about two feet apart, if you will be using this method. Push stakes or rebar at least 12 inches into the ground at each end of your row and between every other tomato plant. Use strong twine to weave in and out among the plants to keep them up off the ground. Every week or so, as the plants grow, add another layer of twine.

Click HERE for a more detailed article at Organic Gardening!

How to Make a Raised Bed Garden

I am a big fan of raised garden beds. They give you a real advantage when it comes to soil conditions, since you get to control the quality of their contents (think lots and lots of good compost). Our south garden consists of raised beds on top of nothing but rocks, and our plants thrive there! Raised beds can be constructed out of almost anything you can come up with, or even made with nothing at all (you can simply make large mounds of compost/soil over your existing space). Do a Google Image search for 'raised garden beds', and you will be amazed at the variety of beds that people come up with.

This is a good, basic article on some different ways to make raised garden beds.

How to Make a Raised Bed Garden
By Colleen Vanderlinden, About.com Guide

What is a Raised Bed Garden?

A raised bed garden is a garden built on top of your native soil, sometimes incorporating native soil, sometimes not. These gardens can be contained, such as when you build a wood or stone structure to keep the bed intact, or they can be more free form, with soil and amendments merely piled several inches high. You can plant anything from herbs and vegetables to perennials and shrubs in a raised bed.

Advantages of a Raised Bed Garden

Aside from avoiding the issue of gardening in poor soil, raised beds offer several advantages:

• They warm more quickly in spring, allowing you to work the soil and plant earlier.
• they drain better.
• The soil in raised beds doesn't get compacted, because they are constructed with accessibility in mind.
• It's easy to tailor the soil for your raised bed to the plants you plan to grow there.
• After the initial construction process, less maintenance is required than there is for conventional garden beds.

How to Make a Raised Bed Garden

Contained raised beds are the most popular type, and they're great for vegetable and herb gardens, as well as flower gardens. Fruits, such as strawberries, grapes, blueberries, andraspberries, also do very well in a this type of bed.

You can choose from a variety of materials to construct your frame. Wood is a very popular choice, because it is easy to work with and it is inexpensive. Concrete blocks, natural stone, or brick are also nice options, but there is definitely an added expense and labor to consider in using them. Some gardeners go the ultra-simple route, and simply place bales of hay or straw in whatever configuration they desire, then fill it with good soil and compost and plant it up. This solution will only give you a year or so of use, because the straw will decompose, but it's worth trying if you don't mind replacing the bales yearly, or if you're still developing a more permanent solution.

Since most contained raised beds are constructed from wood, here are instructions for building your own wood raised bed garden.

Step One: Select your site. If you know that you'll be growing vegetables or herbs, or sun-loving flowers in your new garden, select a site that gets at least eight hours of sun per day. A flat, level area is important, and you should also make sure that the area has easy access to water sources as well as room for you to work.

Step Two: Determine the size and shape of your garden. Make sure that you can access all parts of the garden without stepping into the bed. One of the main advantages of a raised bed is that the soil doesn't get compacted the way it might in a conventional bed because they are planned for accessibility. It is a good idea to keep the garden to around four feet wide, because this way you can access the middle of the bed from either side. If you're placing your bed against a wall or fence, it should be no more than three feet wide. Any length you like will work, as long as you keep the width in control. In terms of depth, six inches is a good start, and many vegetables grow well in a bed that is six inches deep. As with many things, though, if you can do more, more is better! Ten to twelve inches would be ideal. If you have decent subsoil (not too clayey or rocky) you can simply loosen the soil with a garden fork and build a six to eight inch deep bed. If your soil is bad, or you are planning to grow crops like carrots or parsnips that need a deeper soil, your bed should be at least ten inches deep.

Step Three: Prep Your Site. Once you know the size and shape of your bed, you can get to work prepping the site. How much prep you will have to do is determined by the depth of the bed you're planning, as well as the plants you're planning to grow there. If you are planning a vegetable or herb garden, a six-inch deep bed is perfect. To save yourself some labor, you can use newspaper, landscape fabric, or cardboard to cover and smother it, then put your soil and amendments right on top. However, to ensure that your plant's roots have plenty of room to grow, it is a good idea to dig out the existing sod and loosen the soil with a shovel or garden fork to a depth of eight to twelve inches. 

Step Four: Construct the Bed. Using rot-resistant lumber such as cedar or one of the newer composite lumbers, construct your bed. Two by six lumber is perfect, as it is easy to work with and will give you six inches of depth. Cut your pieces to the desired size, then attach them together to make a simple frame. You can attach them in a variety of ways. You can make a simple butt joint at each corner, pre-drilling and then screwing the corners together with galvanized screws. You can use a small piece of wood in the corner,and attach each side to it.

Step Five: Level Your Frames. Using a level, make sure your frame is level in all directions. This is a necessary step because if your bed is not level, you will have a situation where water runs off of one part of the garden and sits in another. If part of your frame is high, just remove some of the soil beneath it until you have a level frame.

Step Six: Fill Your Garden. The whole point of a raised bed garden is that it gives you the opportunity to garden in perfect soil. Take this opportunity to fill your bed with a good mixture of quality topsoil, compost, and rotted manure. Once they're filled and raked level, you're ready to plant or sow seeds.

Maintaining a Raised Bed Garden

Happily, raised beds require very little maintenance. Each spring or fall, it's a good idea to top dress with fresh compost and manure, or, if your bed only holds plants for part of the year, go ahead and dig the compost or manure into the top several inches of soil. As with any garden, mulching the top of the soil will help retain moisture and keep weeds down. Moisture retention is important, because raised beds tend to drain faster than conventional beds.

Original Article found HERE

Fast Friday Tip: Sharpen Your Shovel

A sharpened shovel will make your life much easier in the garden.

All you need is a flat file. Keep it simple.

Lay your shovel flat on the ground and step on the neck to keep it steady. Use your file to gently push away from you at the tip of the blade at a 45 degree angle. Follow along the top until you have nice, shiny, sharpened metal edge. Turn the blade over to remove any burrs.

So easy a kid can do it-with supervision, of course! :)

Dream Garden

I love this picture! I found it on Facebook, posted in my favorite group, Occupy Your Garden.

This is the type of oasis I imagine when I gaze across the street at the empty lot. Ahhh, maybe someday!

Review: Urban Farms

Urban Farms by Sarah Rich
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A fun picture book for the wanna-be urban farmer. I love looking through the colorful, whimsical photos when my inspiration is running low.

I was really excited to see up-close-and-personal pictures of Novella Carpenter's inner-city farm, because I find her personal story fascinating--I've read her books and it's nice to put a visual to the work she chronicled so well in words. 16 farms are featured in this book in full, vivid color. The photos have creative flair, with fun closeups and interesting vantage points.

It's encouraging that many of these urban farms do not have the look of perfection. There are raised beds falling apart but still functioning, straw and compost strewn about, stacks of pots waiting to be used, hoop houses that appear functional but definitely homemade, and a delicious sense of hodge-podge on nearly every page. Now and then a random flower pokes through, basking in the sunlight, or a pig rests by his homemade pen, looking pleased. Why does this appeal to me? Well, it's enormously encouraging to see real urban farming and all it's imperfect quirks because I feel like so many of my own personal projects just, well...look terrible. I can get lost in this book for a few minutes and gain new appreciation for my 'happily cluttered' garden adventures.

These bright and colorful photos remind me that the beauty lies not in immaculate rows of vegetation, but in the efficient function, the practicality of the urban farm layout. The spaces showcased in these photos have very little wasted space, and are great examples of polycultures, loaded with biodiversity. Also, it's obvious that many of these urban farms have perfected the talent of repurposing objects for ingenious new uses.

Reading the stories of the farmers who tend these amazing enclosed food-havens is calming and inspiring. Because I dream of creating my own productive urban oasis, I feel a connection to these visionaries.

This would be a nice book to keep on the shelf to gain inspiration whenever you need it. Open to any page and feel an instant sense of peace and purpose!

Fast Friday Tip: Pea Seedlings

I have not had very good luck with transplanting peas, but peas are so much fun for kids to start inside. I found this cool tip in a book called How To Grow Food, and I think we will definitely try it! It may be too late to try it this year, for we can actually plant our peas directly at this point in the season. But I wanted to get this idea down for future reference so I wouldn't forget.

Unruly Teenage Tomatoes and the Potato Party

Is this a sign that we planted our precious tomato seedlings a bit too early?

These plants have grown so big, that they began falling over last week. If you look carefully, you'll see we had to rig a twine and tape system to hold them up against the window, along with wooden-skewer stilts tied to some of the stems to help hold them!

In the back of my mind, I often compare seedlings to children. You spend so much time nurturing them in their little nurseries during the late winter, like newborns. You fuss over them, worry about them, rejoice when they grow strong and tall, and lose sleep when they are having difficulties. Eventually the young plants you raised will be transplanted out in the world, where it will be up to them to prove productive and happy.

Well, if the analogy is applied to our tomatoes, they are teenagers--albeit late teens--who have outstayed their welcome home. They should have been out in the world on their own weeks ago. I will not kick them out, because the weather is still bitter at night (waiting for the 'magic' plant date of Mother's Day). But wow. They are entirely too big to still be at home. We thought about getting out to the garden and setting up a cover system with pvc piping and plastic, but money is tight as well as time. We are going to hold out. When it comes time to transplant them, we'll have to dig deep to provide some support to those long, long stems. I know that last year when it came time to transplant outside, our tomatoes were only about a third this tall. Another interesting development that these teenage behemoths are boasting? They are attempting to make tomatoes already! Look at one of the blooms I found.

In other Little Harvest news, we have decided to plant potatoes. This week we had a potato planting party!

There are so many great ideas for planting potatoes in small spaces. The trick is to keep covering them with soil or compost or rotting leaves/straw (whatever organic material you have on hand, basically) as they grow.  The same holds true whether planting in the ground or in a container. In order to keep burying the growing potatoes, you want to plant them at the bottom of something large. I have been on the lookout for the perfect large container for a few months. I wanted a washtub-style container, or whiskey barrel. Some old tires would have been great (stacking and filling with soil as the potatoes grow). But this giant white plastic pot will hopefully do the trick. I found it by chance at the dollar store at a deep discount, since it has a small crack at the top, which I knew would not effect our potato growing plans at all.

We have not purchased seed potatoes. I have already talked to a seasoned gardener in my family who has told me I MUST buy seed potatoes. Well, we had a bag of organic potatoes that were no longer fit for making lunch, and the sprouts coming out of them seemed to be begging to be put somewhere that they could keep growing. I have a stubborn streak, and being told I must do something a certain way only invites my effort to try a different (and cheaper) way!

Before heading outdoors, the kids and I examined the sprouty potatoes. "Gross" and "Weird" and "Scary" were the words I heard most as they touched and looked at the potatoes. I encouraged words like "Awesome" and "Amazing!" How amazing is it that these old potatoes want to grow into new ones?

We cut two of the sprouts off one of the potatoes, leaving some potato flesh with it. We put the rest of the potatoes in the cold garage, thinking we might find more places to plant them later. We then headed out (on a VERY windy day, mind you) and collected some compost. Oh, that rich, wonderful homemade soil! We marveled at the fact that each one of us remembered putting vegetable peelings, straw, and other old stuff, and here it was, transformed at the bottom of our compost ball.

You can see our unruly tomatoes hanging out in the window behind us!

About to blow away in the wind!!!

As I mentioned above, just a small amount of soil in the bottom of the pot will do. Place the potato bits in, sprouts faced up to the sky, and cover the sprouts with a thin layer of soil. As the sprouts grow through, add soil over the growing plant, leaving just a couple of green leaves poking out into the sun. In this way, the potato plant will grow up into the soil and create many roots. Lots of roots will eventually grow lots of potatoes!

We have high hopes for our new venture. If this proves successful, I'll be on the lookout for suitable containers for more potato growing!