I love spring, and gardening. We just got busy in the yard getting planting done, maybe late for many here but in northern canada we are blessed with frost from june to september. with a 90 day growing season and living in an urban environment one needs to be creative.
anyways, just though that id share my setup. we are in the middle of town, front balcony and a small back yard, but we can easily harvest 200lbs of veggies in that short time from our little property every year. its so important nowadays to at least try to grow some of your own food and keep money out of the hands of mega corporations that spray spray spray.
i save my old tires for potatoes. we plant them in the bottom tire then keep a foot of dirt and compost cover. ill check every few days and when the potato plants get close to breaking the surface ill stack another tire and fill with dirt. this keeps the plants rooting all the way up. you can build these as tall as you want. last year i used only 1 stack and we harvested over 50lbs of spuds! anyways this is the start. im going with 3 stacks this year and going to keep a few more tires out of the landfill.
cleaned out the greenhouse and planted. bylaws forbid actual gardens but we prefer potted anyways, we can easily transport, mix compost, etc. also easy to control pests, weeds etc.
last year we got over 50lbs of tomatoes for salsa. started these indoors over winter from the seeds. tomatoes are super easy as they literally self pollinate. just smear seeds on a paper towel and try. they readily sprout when planted and watered. added a couple beefsteak this year because i love slicers!
4 cheery tomatoes in hangers, 3 cayeene pepper, 3 jalapeno, 4 green pepper. all from last years seeds. should make for lots of salads over summer and salsa over winter.
onto the cukes. we planted over 30 gherkins in the boxes. i love pickles!!! of course a few slicers and long english in there somewhere, all of them grown by last years seeds as well.
front deck was a little empty so on top of the usual flower hangers i added a small herb garden for my wife, she is very happy. hoping for the best!! basil, parsley, oregano, cilantro. we get full blast of sun in the back so this is our shady hideaway for the dog days of summer.
also have a strawberry bed, raspberry patch and my beloved rhubarb. last year we ended up making over 40 pints of jam, and we use it to flavor homemade yogurt and ice cream.
: 
no chemicals, no poisons. no additives. 10 times better quality than store bought, and for pennies on the dollar. we get so many honey bees and birds show up on our property, and we know we are doing good by mother earth.
hopefully this inspires one or two other urban dwellers to make the jump and start doing the little things to take demand from the industrial monopolies that destroy the ecosystem!
cheers!!
That is such a great idea with potatoes! I've never heard of that but it seems to be working.. will share this information with my family :)
Well done with those tomatoes last year. I hope that you'll get even more this year.. and those gherkins. I also love them!
I wished I had herbs garden too! I just travel too much and they need constant watering so I'm not able to do it.. the only thing I can grow at home are sprouts as it takes only a few days to be able to eat them :)
Thank you for sharing and have fun with gardening!
thankyou very much, and I would agree that the hardest part of gardening is needing to be around to water it, which usually comes at the expense of vacation time! our hangers need 3 waterings a day when its really hot out.
we were going to experiment this year with a timer will let you know if it works!
I have a couple of tires around, never thought about doing potatoes. I have done something similar with cinder blocks. Same concept, just add another row as needed!
yep. plus it keeps them out of the landfill. right now my rhubarb patch has been exploding in size and im finding little rhubarbs popping up in random places a good 10' away from the existing plants. I may throw a big root in a stack and see if it sets shop in there, would be a great way to contain it if so... and would open up the area for horseradish that I was wanting to plant but didn't have the room
Hum...I planted rhubarb for the first time this year....how does it spread to somewhere else?
Now for those tires....where to put them in the yard?
it started out as one little plant which got so big that I had to relocate it, but the root was so big that it ended up breaking into 4 pieces. they all grow now, and later in season when they bolt and seed I end up with little baby rhubarb plants popping up by the potato stacks
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Man, your backyard looks awesome, and awesome setup too! That truck tire trick is cool, will try it out one day!
thankyou very much !
only problem that I can see with the tires is that in a hot climate they may get the soil really hot, since they are essentially a heat sink. I had never had success with parsnips/sweet potatoes and im told they really enjoy warm soil, maybe the conditions will work for where you live :)
Awesome. Also recommend #honesteading and #ecotrain tags!!
I was talking to someone the other day about stacking potatoes and he said it was a myth.. we both read a really detailed article that supported the idea it wasn't possible!!! But you said you got 50 Lb so I'm intrigued again!!! Of course it's a great urban garden space saving trick.
Your garden is sooo neat! Love your work.
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thanks and yeah I had some failures over the years, they key is to start with a full tire of dirt as soon as the bottom tire is planted. not to let the tops of the plant break the surface, because once they do they go up like weeds and it doesn't work ill scrap down and when the shoot is a couple inches from the top on goes another tire and foot of dirt. I suppose stagger planting another seeder would probably work as well but I haven't tried it.
Awesome! Thanks for that! Let me know next time you harvest!
definitely! hoping for a bumper crop but regardless ill be sure to post what we get this year!
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This is all so beautiful. I really like that green house. Gardening and growing all sorts of things is always fun, but I love it when things look like they have some sort of order haha. I hope you have amazing yields!
thankyou for the kind words!
I was going to build the greenhouse, but ended up buying this one from the youth correctional facility, they take young convicts and teach them job skills. building these greenhouses is one of their programs and it was really pretty so it was win win.
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