Putting Money in your Pocket

Read this. I want her other book, The Essential Urban Farmer

Coffee Hour at church today was full of gardening chatter, even though we are supposed to get 6-10 inches of snow tonight. My early squash, melon, and heirloom tomatoes are up. Tomatillos, Nicotania, leeks, and other early starts will begin by the end of this week, once my indoor "greenhouse" is fixed up from last year's wind battering.

I'm not starting all of my own plants this year, because I'm in graduate school. I will buy my broccoli, cabbage, many more tomatoes and others. But I still love seed starting, even thought I'm a hack at it.  A few electric hand warming mits, some home recipe seed starting dirt- mushroom compost, peat, and organic mix, and press and seal to cover my well-worn planters. I've killed the lids. Press and seal works just fine for keeping in the humidity until it's time to open up the starts and let the light on them. (Don't let light be a worry until the seedling are up with two leaves.

We talked rain and potato barrels, recent research on attracting wild bees, back-yard beekeeping, and this excellent TED Talk, wherein Ron Finley says that "growing your own vegetables is like printing your own money."  It's true. He is doing what Novella Carpenter wrote about in Farm City: The Education of an Urban Gardener. 

I promised, as we signed off, to call and craigslist more food grade barrels, for water and potatoes. I will link "how-to's" here. 

My husband's spring to do's include stapling chicken wire to a huge window frame, to create a pea trellis. I will plant summer lettuce under it, to prevent bolt.

Then, to make these trellises between our beds, to link two more rain barrels up, to have Liam paint them black, and to make two potato barrels. I love sweet potatoes but we didn't rake in enough last year, and the water was inefficient..

Nothing like a long "Honey-Do" List, with a problem with a late Pascha (Cinco de Pascha!) 2013, right?

Here are some hints, if you are like me-- Read old issues of Urban Farming Magazine and share. Dianne shares with me. She's a saint. 

Look up verticle gardening. I'm not as worried right now about aesthetic. I should be, but I'm even more a hack at outdoor "style." I'm working on this idea for the year though-- I want it between my raised boxes.