Last week I posted an article about a system of gardening that allows you to grow many kinds of vegetables in a tiny space, even on a balcony with no garden. This system is quite easy to do, and by the looks of it is working better and faster than anything I have ever seen before! What if I told you that in just 30 days we are already able to make beautiful organic salads from this garden!? It takes very little time to maintain and is the only part of our garden that is not showing signs of weeds, or slugs!
Did you know that salads items are some of the worst things to eat when they are store bought and not organic? This is because we eat the leaf, which is the part that is sprayed directly! Whilst its still not good to eat any vegetables that are sprayed with pesticides, leafy vegetables are really the worst and also happen to be the easiest and quickest to grow. Let me share a few photos with you and you can see for yourself! Note the the 30 days it has taken to get this harvest includes germination time!
Radishes are already growing and we can pluck one or two whilst the others continue to grow. They are SO juicy and vibrant!
Enough Arugula for weeks!
Loads of Lettuce. You can just pick a few leaves and start eating whilst the rest keeps growing!
Oh look, more lettuce!
As far as im concerned this is almost miraculous! I can't say exactly why this system works SO well, but I know it has a lot to do with the soil. The mixture that we made contains about 33% vermiculite, which is something that holds water very well. This means that the soil doesnt dry up nearly as quickly and keeps giving moisture to the plants without over saturating them. The soil is also VERY loose, and much less compacted than the soil we have in the rest of our garden. I also think this has allowed the roots to grow very quickly which means that the plants can establish themselves much more easily. That is evident with the radishes, which can so easily grow in the soil with very little resistance.
The bottom line is that this REALLY works, and with the least effort we have ever put in to a garden! If you would like to be eating beautiful, prana filled home grown lettuce then I hope this inspires you to try. 30 days is SUCH a short amount of time to wait for the start of a harvest, and you can be saving money in no time when you are no longer buying them. If you didn't see my last post about how to set this up then here are the basics!
Some of the main advantages of this system over traditional methods are:
- 90% of the success of a kitchen garden depends on how you set it up. With this system you do that all so easily by following some simple instructions.
- The maintenance? 5 minutes a day! Weeds hardly occur with this system so it costs you less time than doing the dishes.
- Mega harvest on little space From an Easy Vegetable Garden you harvest 5 times as much per m2 than from an ordinary vegetable garden. And even on your balcony.
- Suitable for all your plants due to the composition of the mix everything grows fine. No hassle with mixtures per plant.
- You only have to fill your container once because the recommended mix lasts a long time. Some people have been using the same soil for more than 10 years!
- Your own piece of nature. Where you come to rest after a stressful day it is more therapeutic and relaxing than you might think to lose yourself in your minature food forest!
What are the steps?
Come, I'll walk through everything:
- Make the easy gardener box!
- Prepare the soil
- Get your seeds
About the Soil Mixture
-
1/3 part mixed and nutritious compost
-
1/3 part peat (preferably brown peat: that's the top layer)
-
1/3 part vermiculite (with coarse grain)
Compost:
Your plants get all their food from the compost. Therefore, use a nutritious, mixed compost. You can buy this to start out and then you can make it very easily from your kitchen scraps.
Peat:
For the mix you use garden peat or peat litter. That is a fibrous brown material that you can buy very easily at garden centers. Usually it costs between 4 and 7 euros for 40 liters.
Vermiculite:
Vermiculite is a granular natural mineral that traps water and air. This airy and nutritious mix gives your vegetables everything they need to grow well with sufficient nutrition for the first 3-5 months. After that time you only need to add compost.
By using this mix, even large plants have enough space in a box of just 30 cm and you can harvest a lot in a small surface area.
You can make this Easy Vegetable Garden mix yourself from materials available in any garden center.
For more detail and how to make the container please check my previous post out
https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/the-easy-vegetable-garden-grow-vegetables-with-no-knowledge-and-just-5-minutes-a-day-and-only-5-sqft-of-space-or-on-your-balcony
It's never been easier folks so why not get growing your food right now!
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I am also very interested in growing vegetables, which is good to grow vegetables because greenery remains at home which I like very much. Great and amazing post @eco-alex sir.
Thanks for sharing this post. ☺💚
Inspired! Going to go and do something about it ..
YES!
I just got my lettuce and greens into their containers maybe two weeks ago... but so fr so good. All are doing good except my big leaf sorrel. I am contemplating planting a few more seeds.
YOURS is looking great!!
congrats! are you using this type of system?
No I'm not. I had two extra 55-gallon barrels and we cut them in half
We have spinach, radicchio, arugula, basil, sorrel and a lettuce blend in them
oh yeah that looks good.. i think there is a LOT to be said for loose soil!
Oh yeah that looks good..
I think there is a LOT to
Be said for loose soil!
- eco-alex
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
you HAVE to be kidding me!!
Wonderful bloging post
Wow!
that's wonderful Garden..
i think it's very nice idea.
thanks for your kind inforfation.
That 's great. It feels so good when you pick up the product.
Daily Learn some new from your post. Love to read it.
Such great info here, @eco-alex. I call my garden "the tiny garden paradise." But yours is even tinier than mine. LOL. Here's one of my recent posts. And I too am eating salads every day from the lettuce in my garden. YUM.
Looks like that mini garden is coming along nicely! I like the grid system but lately what we have been doing with greens is just mixing a bunch of different seeds together. (Sometimes leftover seeds from previous years) Then just sprinkling them on the ground and lightly raking them in. You end up with a disorganized salad greens patch but it seems to work just fine. A lot of them will cut and come again too.
STOPIt looks practical and easy. I used to do gardening projects in school for homework assignments. But it wasn't anything compared to this salad garden. It was just a jar, I threw common fertilizer and left the seeds. But this is much more functional. Youngsters can do this for their biology projects. They can also analyze the properties of the vegetables, and study the growing process.
your salad garden is looking really good, I'm over and back to Ireland this year a lot so my garden is getting very over grown, I am missing my greens now though xx good job
Nice patch!
Do you have any troubles with pests such as slugs or flies? If so do you have any tips?
thanks! WE dont have troubles luckily.. whereas a patch next to it has lots of weeds and slugs..
There are TOO many options for dealing with these things to really say as every situation is different and needs different remedies.. You can surely google it and come up with many solutions. an easy one though is to provide some scraps of nice leaves nearby to attract them elsewhere..
best of luck!
Awesome! Here at the EcoSwell house we do our best to grow fruits in vegetables. We are currently getting passion fruit and tomatoes but great to hear other garden adventures and tips.
very inspiring garden @eco-alex! definitely there is no reason not to grow your own! cannot wait to start mine when a settle somewhere out there! blessings
thank you! we just had our first salad from it.. SO goood! ;-)
I bet is delicious! makes me happy acknowledging that more and more people are taking responsibility on sourcing and growing their own food! looking forward to your future posts. blessings and love