More Spring Plantings, and a found deck

Laura and I got together today to do a second round of Spring planting, with non-frost hardy vegetables. The lettuce, spinach, and snow peas, after some worries with a serious frost, pushed through the soil. The seeds were in the ground nearly three weeks before germination, but they seemed to know when the perfect time to pop out was. The wisdom of nature is beautiful :)

After perusing our pre-purchased seed packets, we decided to plant swiss chard, green onions, radishes, and pole beans. We purchased used desk drawers to plant the beans, an old steel two basin kitchen sink for swiss chard, a large box shaped wall box for radishes, and a drilled 5 gallon bucket to plant onions. The total cost for all the boxes was $16, hell yeah.

On our way back from the re-store, we drove past an abandoned lot that I had seen a cool wooden pallet with legs in the evening before. We parked next to it with the engine running and loaded it turbo-style into the back of her van, while traffic rolled past, giggling the whole time. It felt mischievous, even though it was clearly abandoned.

Elmer is doing very well (my raspberry), as evidenced by the picture. The apple trees are budding, I fed them an organic bloom fertilzer around 3/20 to facilitate budding. All veggies planted today were in a 50/50 compost soil mix, organic of course.

Benny and June

To honor the spirits of the 100 year old apple trees that started it all, I wanted to plant apple trees at Passionfly. I knew I would need a dwarf variety, but was very unsure how to begin looking for one. I met a young woman, Carrie, who was shopping at the store and after chatting found out she worked at a plant nursery. I asked her some questions and she left with a mission to find me the perfect apple trees for potting. Saturday she called and said she had found the ones, and even brought them to me after I paid over the phone! (Thanks Carrie!)

I potted them sunday Mar 8, in a 60/40 Soil Compost mix. I used an old tin garbage can for one, and a recycled bone meal barrel I picked up at the re-store. Carrie suggested that I only increase the pot size about 3x what they came in, and repot to fit as they establish themselves. Apple trees need very well drained soil or their roots will rot and the whole plant will die. I punched a bunch of holes through the bottoms of both containers, then filled about one foot deep with broken concrete peices, for added drainage. I covered the stone with hemp burlap, for soil retention and then layered soil and compost all around the plant. I staked the trees, since their is a danger of wind damage, and Bellingham has some serious winds in the spring and fall.

I got a pair of trees since they will need to cross pollinate. One is a super-dwarf Spartan apple, the other is a super-dwarf liberty apple. Both will bear shiny red fruits. I doubt that either will fruit this year, but maybe by next year they will be happily fruiting. I named them Benny and June. Thanks Laura for all your help!

Early Spring Planting

Sunday Mar 1st I planted my very first parking lot plant! I purchased a raspberry (an impulse buy, I'll admit) and a pot for it. I use outdoor nurserys as a good gauge of what is plantable right now. If they have it outside on a shelf growing, I'm positive that it is equipped for the current weather. After purchasing it, I realized I didn't know anything about raspberry plants. A little research revealed that raspberries grow vertically more than horizontally, they are cold hardy and perennial, and produce fruit in late June through the end of July. If trimmed properly I should be able to get it to grow more densly than the normal sparsley spaced vines it produces when planted in the ground. It should top out about 6' with no need to stake the hardy vines.

Th closely spaced needle shaped thorns reminded me of course chin whiskers, so I named him Elmer, it seemed suitable. I like to name my plants because it makes me feel a more solid relationship to the plant as a cohabitating life form. I care about Elmer, I've given him a special meaning outside of the vague abstraction that is raspberry, or Rubus idaeus; he is MY raspberry.

I potted elmer with a 50/50 organic potting soil/ compost mix and the next day he put out these little buds. I think Elmer likes his new home. Raspberries like full sun and partial shade, so I placed him at the very corner of the building so he can benefit from a little shade in the hottest part of the late after noon.

I also planted strawberries, which are ever bearing and cold hardy, I made two containers with five plants each. I punched holes through the bottom of a tin bucket I found in my storage shed and a tin box I also found. I'm leaving one outdoors and hot housing the other inside the window. In theory, by rotating the plants indoors and outdoors I can mimic a winter-spring transition anytime. With a little luck, I'll have strawberries all year long!

In the beginning....

My name is Colleen and I believe that things can be different than the way they are. I believe that food is a product of the earth and should be grown and shared freely. I believe in being unique, doing what makes each of us happy, and absolute personal freedom for those who aren't stepping on anybody elses toes.

Planting Crops in Parking Lots started as an idea, a vision actually. I was speaking with my landlord about the parking lot sinkholes that need to be filled each year with new gravel. He explained that 100 years ago, Passionfly clothing was a drug and sundry store, and that the parking lot had been an apple orchard. When the trees were removed, they were cut at ground level, leaving stumps in the ground to slowly degrade. I blinked and saw, for just a moment, what that parking lot must have looked like with an apple tree in every sinkhole, and was struck by the beauty of the idea. I could not get the ghostly apple trees out of my mind, and the novelty (by todays standards) of having a small personal orchard behind a business made me grin. Why not? The concrete wasteland of a semi-industrial downtown Bellingham grated against my nerves, all the wasted space that 100 years ago was food producing land. Something had to be done.

As a first time gardener I spent the winter of 2008 researching garden plans, reading about seeds and supplies, and began formulating a plan of action. The more I read, the more in depth my own vision became, and the more knowledge I wanted to gain. Spring 2009 is the beginning of something big. Over the winter, as I giddily explained my idea to anyone with ears, over wine at dinner parties and beer at bowling alleys, the same question was posed to me by several skeptics: "What if homeless people steal your vegetables, Colleen?" The first time I was absolutely overwhelmed, I laughed out loud, and said "well, that's kind of the point, right? If I can grow nutritious food that will go to feed a hungry person that is about the coolest thing I can think of!" now when asked the same question I just smile knowingly. Food should be shared freely. We should NOT have to pay to live. Who are we paying, really? Rule makers and boundary setters, taxed of our existence, of our time , of our money which is really our energy. How many hours are wiled away in unhappiness while we earn our weekly grocery budget?

Something has got to give, eventually. By growing copious amounts of food and giving it willingly I hope to provide an example. There is all of this space, everywhere! Rooftops and parking lots are perfect full sun locals for vegetable gardens. At the turn of the twentieth century Americans and Europeans planted millions of "victory gardens" at private residences and businesses. The idea was that by taking pressure off of the national food supplies, everyone would have more resources and the American and European citizens would survive the economic hardships of World war I and II.

Somewhere in the age of convenience, where everything is purchased, everything is 'supplied' by a larger organization, this idea was buried. Quietly set aside and discouraged. Now it is 'patriotic' to buy buy buy, rather than become more economically viable and sustainable as individuals. A few people have spent alot of money to make sure things like victory gardens are lost in the annals of history. I, for one, do not want to see this idea die.

By blogging about my philosophy and the exact trial and error process of actually setting up a fully potted vegetable garden, I hope that others will be able to use my successes and failures as a back bone to try their own ideas. Not every vegetable will grow in a pot, and sometimes modifications to growing procedures need to be made in order to be successful. I hope that this will be both a resource for information and an inspiration towards actions. Lets grow some freakin food, man!