Growing my own food

[sbfluter]

I'm thinking that I would like to try to survive this Depression by growing some of my own food. The problem is, the only place that has enough sun is the roof of the garage. It occurred to me that I could put a container garden up there. But it could get awful hot, too. Does anyone have experience with growing veggies in containers in warm places? Could I use soil from the yard? We have really good sandy soil (according to a chart of soils in the area it's supposed to be good and it's supporting a whole bunch of huge fruit trees blocking out all the sun so it must be pretty good) and we also have compost. I would hate to have to buy potting soil. That doesn't seem like it would help me save money.

[cowtime]

You can find out pretty much anything you need to know right here-

http://www.whyy.org/91FM/ybyg/

I listen to him on the radio while I'm working and this old farm girl has learned some new tricks.

I'll go ahead and tell you plain old dirt is not going to serve you well in containers. It will work, but not as well as what this feller recommends. Here's his info on container gardening-

http://www.gardensalive.com/article.asp?ai=452

[Doc Jones]

Hi Diane,

My wife is a serious gardner. We grow enormous amounts of food (13 kids remember) with not much space by using the techniques in this book.

http://www.amazon.com/All-New-Square-Fo ... 820&sr=8-1

I highly recommend it. It has dramatically increased our yields (which were quite impressive anyway).

Have fun.

Doc

[hans]

Doc - I don't know this book (All New Square Foot Gardening). Does author Mel Bartholomew advocate a fully organic approach? it is not clear to me from the description I found at amazon:

Sure, there are ten new features in this all-new, updated book. Sure, it's even simpler than it was before. Of course, you don't have to worry about fertilizer or poor soil ever again because you'll be growing above the ground.

But, the best feature is that anyone, anywhere can enjoy a Square Foot garden. Children, adults with limited mobility, even complete novices can achieve spectacular results.

But, let's get back to the ten improvements. You're going to love them.

1) New Location - Move your garden closer to your house by eliminating single-row gardening. Square Foot Garden needs just twenty percent of the space of a traditional garden.

2) New Direction - Locate your garden on top of existing soil. Forget about pH soil tests, double-digging (who enjoys that?), or the never-ending soil improvements.

3) New Soil - The new "Mel's Mix" is the perfect growing mix. Why, we even give you the recipe. Best of all, you can even buy the different types of compost needed.

4) New Depth - You only need to prepare a SFG box to a depth of 6 inches! It's true--the majority of plants develop just fine when grown at this depth.

5) No Fertilizer - The all new SFG does not need any fertilizer-ever! If you start with the perfect soil mix, then you don't need to add fertilizer.

6) New Boxes - The new method uses bottomless boxes placed aboveground. We show you how to build your own (with step-by-step photos).

7) New Aisles - The ideal gardening aisle width is about three to four feet. That makes it even easier to kneel, work, and harvest.

8) New Grids - Prominent and permanent grids added to your SFG box help you visualize the planting squares and know how to space for maximum harvest.

9) New Seed Saving Idea - The old-fashioned way advocates planting many seeds and then thinning the extras (that means pulling them up). The new method means planting a pinch- literally two or three seeds--per planting hole.

10) Tabletop Gardens - The new boxes are so much smaller and lighter (only 6 inches of soil, remember?), you can add a plywood bottom to make them portable.

What is Mel's mix exactly?

~Hans

[djm]

I would be concerned with your idea of growing on the garage roof top. The garage is probably structured to take no more than the weight of the roof, not your garden boxes with all that soil and water, let alone your own weight walking back and forth weeding, watering, harvesting, etc. You would need to look to beefing up the structure first, eliminating any savings that gardening might get you. That's not to say that the joys of gardening wouldn't be worth it, but that's a personal call.

The other thing about container gardening is that it requires a lot more attention to watering. Ask anyone who has tried container gardening from an apartment balcony. The plants are exposed to a lot more wind in an elevated position, and don't get any benefit from the effect of moisture rising from the ground the way their earth-bound relatives would get.

That container gardening book mentioned above is all about using compost, which is pretty much on par with your concern for buying topsoil or potting soil; IOW, yes, it's gonna cost you to set up. Considering how miserable store-bought vegetables taste, you may find container gardening well worth the cost and trouble.

djm

[dwest]

We have gardened with "soiless" mixes in raised beds for over 30 years. For rooftop gardens they are the only thing to consider. Can your roof handle the increased weight? We orignally used a Ball's Mixture, with input from Cornell's Peat-lite and U of Ca's mix. We bought the raw materials and made it ourselves on either sheet plastic or a driveway slab, when we had one. We could even get pine bark free sometimes from mills, I still get saw dust from a mill here for free which I compost. I raise potatoes in 55 gal. white PEX barrels with a very lite mix, toss a few seed potatoes in the bottom of the barrel(used to hold Pepsi syrup, cost $10.00)with some soil, as they grow add more soil until they sprout through the top, granted you could probably achieve the same results using wet wheat straw too. We have crimson clover in all our beds for the winter, I will turn that over in about six -eight weeks to get ready for early leaf crops and the water cloches we use for tomatoes. I have a little competition with one of my uncles to see who gets the first tomatoes of the season. He's in zone 6, we're zone 7, yet he still usually beats me, he even uses long graduated cloches to grow sweet corn that he made from welded wire and plastic sheeting.

[sbfluter]

I didn't think about if the roof could handle the weight.

There's a spot in the yard with a lot of nasturtiums growing on it, just far enough from the avocados. I know the Man of the house likes to toss leaves and things over there. Maybe I can grow a little bit over there instead.

We compost our kitchen waste. We have a lot of waste because we have a lot of birds. They eat a lot of fruit. Well, they take a bite and toss the rest. I think the Mel's Mix was vermiculite, compost and something else. Peat moss?

We just don't have a lot of sun because of the avocado trees. Damn the lawn. What is it with guys and lawns?

[djm]

What is it with guys and lawns?

The need for personal space, or at least, the intimation of such space.

djm

[dwest]

Damn the lawn. What is it with guys and lawns?

Don't look at me when you say that. I've been fighting lawns for more years than I can remember. I've been in shouting matches with editors and publishers of just about every "gardening" magazine in the US about the misplaced promotion of this issue. Unfortunately it is the most profitable segment of the landscape industry. I know farmers here in Va who have some very serious problems with their farms but they still spend hours, every week, mowing the two to three acres of grass, and only grass, they have around their homes. And most state extension services support the lawn industry as much if not more than any other "crop."

[Daniel_Bingamon]

You should look into Japanese Gardening techniques. They're used to growing a lot it very little space.

[izzarina]

Hi Diane,

My wife is a serious gardner. We grow enormous amounts of food (13 kids remember) with not much space by using the techniques in this book.

http://www.amazon.com/All-New-Square-Fo ... 820&sr=8-1

I highly recommend it. It has dramatically increased our yields (which were quite impressive anyway).

Have fun.

Doc

I second this book. It's absolutely wonderful.

[hyldemoer]

Several years ago one of my herb teacher/friends moved the urban campus and her home to a building with no outside yard.


Up on the flat roof of her building she put small green house for growing plants during the winter
and the rest of the year she grows the plants (the ones she doesn't transplant to her 100 acres in the country) in huge planters with built in water retention tanks (because without the water retention tanks they wouldn't survive the 3 day weekends she spends at her acreage).

There's a lot to be said for growing plants inside. I'm currently growing winter wheat (for juicing) in an unheated enclosed porch in pans of organic soil (that my worms made me in the vermiculture I keep in my laundry room)

and I've also been sprouting all sorts of seeds, nuts, and grains for consumption in jars in my kitchen.

[chas]

Damn the lawn. What is it with guys and lawns?

Don't look at me when you say that. I've been fighting lawns for more years than I can remember.

Ditto. I'm on a wooded lot. The I think each of the five lawns we border are taken care of by services,* complete with the applications of nasty chemicals accompanied by the Mr Yuck sign. The folks behind us had most of their trees taken down. We're talking probably 6-8 healthy, 50-foot tall tuliptrees and white oaks just taken out and replaced with sod. While we're one by one trying to get rid of the alien invasives and replant native species. I'm sure our neighbors think we're from another planet. We had a wind storm a couple weeks ago which took one of our mature (3' diameter, 75' tall) healthy tuliptrees down -- I'm thinking the absence of the buffer trees in the next yard may have had something to do with its coming down. On the positive side, we have about six cords of wood to burn in a year or two.

I'd like a little grass just to control erosion, but we're really embracing the moss.

*I was back home in Connecticut for Thanksgiving, and ran through a couple of neighborhoods that had been recently paved. In front of almost every house, there were gasoline stains on the roads. Now, these are neighborhoods with 1/4 acre lots. When did people become so lazy that they couldn't mow a quarter of an acre but had to pay someone to do it?? Heck, I'm pretty sure that weekend before last I personally moved five tons of tree (I'm not as adept with a chainsaw as my two relatives, so I was the grunt).

[s1m0n]

You'll love your sandy soils when you need to dig, but they'll be quicker to dry than other soils. Humus (decomposed plant material) is exactly what you need. Compost is where you'll find it. Peat moss is both pricey and bad for the universe.

[dwest]

You'll love your sandy soils when you need to dig, but they'll be quicker to dry than other soils. Humus (decomposed plant material) is exactly what you need. Compost is where you'll find it. Peat moss is both pricey and bad for the universe.

Peat moss is great for the Universe! MG! man what are ye thinking! It's just better left where it is in most cases or used in small quantities to malt certain grains. Personally, there are few things more fun than jumping on a peat spong.