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Every vegetable in those jars grew in my back yard. I feel pleasure and pride just caring of this little organic urban patch.
Who shares the same primitive values?
How is your tomatoes, this year?
Anyone doing hydroponic gardening?
There is a lot of that going on, but few people admit it in public, because the crop is rarely tomatoes...
There really is a bad stereotype about hydroponic gardening. I used to work in a gardening store that specializes in hydro, and let me tell you... "Get Hooked On Ponics!"
Once you grow in water, you will never go back (especially if you have the right fertilizer). Your tomatoes will grow and produce more than you will ever be able to eat, your strawberries will never be sweeter, your peppers will never be bigger... I could go on forever, and I haven't even started talking about flowers.
I absolutely LOVE gardening, and eating my home grown food. Unfortuneately, some people have ruined the perception about hydro gardening, but I urge you to give it a try. The initial investment can be a little ugly (if you want to do it correctly), but you really do make your money back with the quality of food you produce and IT IS EASY. The cliche is true: If I can do it, anyone can.
I think my infomerical time is up.
We garden in raised-beds that we filled with good dirt. The normal soil in our area is too hard with clay.
What's new this year is making compost. This Spring the county government sold composting bins, called the "Earth Machine", at cost. It's basically like a durable plastic trash can, but with no bottom and a screw-on lid.
We now keep a plastic pitcher in our kitchen and put all vegetable matter in it (corn cobs, apple cores, watermelon rind, stale bread, wilted salad, leftover vegetables gone bad, etc.). Then we take it out and mix it into the bin every day or so. There's a lot less to go into the trash and it's cool to think that what we used to have hauled away will help our garden grow, though next year.
I've learned that you can't put all kitchen waste into the composter or you'll get flies and fly larvae. The thing to do is add grass cuttings and leaves to the mix. Bury the kitchen waste under the grass and leaves so the flies won't get to it. The grass and leaves also makes the compost a better environment for microbes, and their increased numbers raises the temperature of the heap and makes it less hospitable to flies.
We'll see what it does for the garden next year.
Wow digitalghost, what a marvelous place you live in now! Please save us a couple more pics of your place in a couple of months. The sight must be breathtaking during the fall. Magnifique!
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vkaryl
>>[i]Will hold 24 pints or 16 quarts, double layered.
vkaryl, thanks for the tips. I never tried canning in the oven because of those risks. I think I will get a large pressure canner. I see Presto has one that will hold up to 20 1 pint jars or 7 1 quart jars. Home canning is a low energy and low waste solution for preserving food. A pressure canner could widen the variety of foods preserved that way to almost anything.
Thanks for the double rainbow.
You guys are tempting me for a move... :)
That's right, I forgot, we're getting pepper seeds too. I love peppers, of all kinds. What specifically do you recommend as the "right fertilizer"?
<<I absolutely LOVE gardening, and eating my home grown food. Unfortuneately, some people have ruined the perception about hydro gardening, but I urge you to give it a try. The initial investment can be a little ugly (if you want to do it correctly), but you really do make your money back with the quality of food you produce and IT IS EASY. The cliche is true: If I can do it, anyone can.>>
Unfortunately, my initial outlay was only able to be a couple hundred dollars, but I have fantasies of the 2k+ turn-key units. And seriously, when it's 112F, nothing wants to grow out in our yard (not to mention, we're in a huge drought and have water restrictions), but cactus and lantana. Even my beloved Ruby Slippers threaten to die when it goes over 90 here. We've thought about a greenhouse, but it's generally too hot for one and we often have winds that would make me worry about it too much. So, hydro it is.
So use 'em raw for the most color punch!
