Food-Is-Free Planter in 2016 (Pics!)

Alternate title: horticultural moron has amazing success with a youtube recycle project.

The planter was a late bloomer this year, but well worth the while!

Sweet! (peppers)

Arugula grows fast!

Arugula gone wild!

Don't let your arugula get this big - super bitter!

 Siletz and celebrity tomatoes love the planter!

The 5-gallon Instructable - still going well!

Basil flowers 

Holy roly poly!

The ill-fated attempt to drown our roly poly problem

Very few tomatoes until October

November 5!

November 17 (at night)

 

November 18

November 18 (harvested before the first freeze)

November 20 (after freeze)

11-25-16

May your recycle projects bear fruit and give you a reason for thanks in the coming year!

Carbon Munching Garden: Lessons in Ollas, Self-Wicking, and Aquaponics

[Warning: This post contains almost no wheels and no electric vehicles.]

 

Fall just started. We had a little rain yesterday. I have been watching the garden begin to wither, and I realize how much I will miss it over the next months. We still have foour strawberries and seven tomatoes ripening, but I think that will be it for this year.

The ollas have been a success, and I am very much a fan of that approach. The self-wicking pallet planter had its struggles, but it has turned into a success as well. My wife made spaghetti sauce with roasted tomatoes (from the planter) last night. And it was delicious.

I have learned a lot of things from this year's experiments.

Get bigger planters!!!

 

With the ollas - use Gorilla Glue!!! Everything else I tried eventually broke down. Also, start with better soil and feed that regularly with good compost. And, no matter what, use bigger pots! It's just like an aquarium - the bigger the container, the larger your margin for error can be. Overall, I am a big fan of ollas in big containers!

Before compost

 

The raised-bed, self-wicking, Food-is-Free-Project, pallet planter? I learned two major lessons there. The first was the importance of soil that allows water to wick. I used soil with a high clay content, and the water could not travel through it. And the garden barely survived it first six weeks.

After compost

Things did get better when I mixed in good compost with lots of organic matter. The second thing I learned (and it seems really obvious) is that it is smart to add wicks to your self-wicking garden. A piece of cotton rope or  shoestring reaching from the bottom of your planter directly to the roots of your plant - it's a straw for your plant to sip from. Good stuff!

The Aquaponics setup - not a success - I hope to take another approach at that in the relatively near future. I blame the failure on poor lighting and lack of water quality monitoring.)

One other incidental lesson, move slowly near pollinators. The wasps love the garden and were ever-present. I was stung by three wasps this summer, but none were in the garden. Two, somewhat ironically, happened when riding a Vespa scooter - "vespa" is Italian and Latin for wasp. The other sting happened on a bicycle. Speed near wasps equals pain, but they love it when you bring them flowers slowly.

What's next? I am prioritizing projects. I would love to throw together a small greenhouse and keep the momentum going, but it looks like a better time to pursue minimalism. There's too much stuff - no money, time, or room for projects. (I am hoping to find some people who have decided to pursue maximalism so we can all feel good about our stuff.) So the greenhouse (and a much more productive garden) may need to wait until next season.

May your experiments thrive and grow (great food)!

Personal Carbon Reduction (PCR):The 1st Food Is Free Planter IS Built!

The carbon-munching garden (almost) lives!

 

A busy weekend with a project started and (mostly) completed - the first Food Is Free Project Self-Wicking Raised-Bed Garden is now built. We only need to add a little more soil and some plants. (What a mouth full!)

Thursday night I made my wife watch the FIFP videos that had me so excited. She was even more excited than I was by the time the videos were watched - so the project was green-lighted and fast-tracked. Friday at lunch I picked up free pallets from a Craigslist ad. After work I swung by my favorite sign shop and snagged some used coroplast signs. We found a neighbor with a new fence and acquired some of the old fence pickets for trim work. We had a tarp left over from one of my wife's neighborhood garden projects. We had an ugly old sheet that was ready for retirement. We had a few boxes of screws around. It all came together rather nicely. I did have to purchase some PVC and river pebbles. (Snagit, I wish our fair city had a working glass tumbler/recycler!!!!) We started buiding Saturday around noon and (even with significant interruptions) had it done by evening.

Swartzy stopped by and we put him to work. Thanks, man!

 

Now, we just need to get some plants going and a little sign to talk some neighbors into joining the revolution - the revolution won't be televised, but it will be blogged!

 

Do you want to build your own? If so, set aside 20 minutes and watch these three videos in this order:

 

The Story of Food Is Free

 

FIFP: How to Build a Wicking Bed Garden (Quick Overview)

 

FIFP: How to Build a Wicking Bed Garden! (Detailed video with ukelele music)

 

May you learn to love your neighbor, eat healthier, and strike a blow for carbon reduction with one tiny little garden - get out there and kick some carbon-munching garden butt!

 

I'd like to thank my wife, the Swartzy, the Food Is Free Project team, the pallet guys, Jennifer the pallet hurler, our favorite sign guy,Lucy the Wondertruck, and the weird guy who kept walking by our house and offering suggestions.

 



Personal Carbon Reduction: Planning the Raised-Bed Garden Monster

Yep, that's what people look like in South Austin.

Earlier this week, I wrote about personal carbon reduction through gardening, so I have been looking around a bit to figure out how to get started. And I found something out of Austin that has me feeling inspired.

First, let me tell you that I do love Austin. I especially love South Austin. I have not found a cultural attitude like it anywhere else in Texas - defintely not in our conservative and often stifling Lubbock.

I also love white-board animation and pallet-based projects, and I am not opposed to ukele music.

All that is to say that I was really excited yesterday to find a Derek Markham  article on Treehugger that features some South Austin greenies teaching me how to build a self-watering raised-bed garden out of pallets and political signs. The project is almost completely out of repurposed materials and can be built by people with limited tools and skills. (All of which fit my budget, tool collection, and skill level!)

Treehugger: FoodIsFreeProject.org self-watering raised garden bed

And that lead me to watch a series of videos from the the Food Is Free Project - and I really like their idea of building better and healthier communities by encouraging neighbors to build these raised gardens to create a neighborhood food system of tiny shared gardens. (And their videos have white-board animation and ukele music.) I am impressed! Now, I just need to snag some free pallets and talk to my neighbors...

foodisfreeproject.org

May your small projects lead to big changes!

(Does anyone have any Randy Neugebauer or Glen Robertson signs I can cut up and use to keep the fertilizer where it belongs?)