Organic & Sustainable Practices

Yard Sharing – in Portland and Everywhere

October 23, 2009 · 10 comments

YardSharing Yard Sharing.

Have you heard of this? It has become increasingly popular over the last few years. Gardeners who want more space to garden team up with people who have the yard space (but lack the time or skills to garden). The gardener provides the labor, the homeowner provides the land (and usually ends up helping too). They agree to split the crops.

The result? Both sides end up with baskets and baskets of edibles! It is a great idea. Everyone eats more local, wasted space is used efficiently and total strangers become garden buddies.

Yard sharing is especially popular in the Pacific Northwest. There are several groups in Seattle and Portland that help organize this concept and more groups are appearing all across the US.

Portland Yardsharing.org is one such group. Their mission is “to provide resources to our community that enable the creation of gardens with the sole purpose of generating fresh local food while cultivating healthy growing relationships in our neighborhoods.”

But you don’t have to join a group to make yard sharing happen for yourself. I have enjoyed reading about the yard share experiences of the Shibaguyz. When they were looking for more land to grow food on, they just posted an ad on a community blog. Within a few hours, they had over 30 offers! They picked four garden plots that fit their needs and their urban yard sharing adventure began.

It really is a simple idea that reaps such huge benefits. Many yard sharers are even growing rows to feed the hungry. Something to think about next spring…

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The Value of Fish Emulsion

June 10, 2009 · 7 comments

Clematis2May09wtmk  I grow a lot of flowers as well as veggies in my garden. Some flowers, like clematis (shown left) and nasturtiums do great with little or no care. If you over feed a clematis or nasturtium with too much nitrogen, you get lots of green foliage and few flowers.

But other flowers (like my roses) love to be fed. They bloom best when I shower them with love. But I honestly don’t have much time to love them these days!

So, how do I give roses the food they need when I don’t have the time to be feeding them every other week? And if I do feed my roses, how to I keep from over-feeding the other nearby flowers like clematis and the nasturtiums?

Well, some gardeners resort to slow release fertilizers. They throw the slow release pellets under each rose bush and it slowly breaks down to feed the roots. Others feed their garden with a foliar spray of Miracle Gro and hope for the best.[Ugh!]

Now, I understand the lure of using a fancy Miracle Gro sprayer on the end of your hose. You just attach it and the water mixes in and you lazily walk around the garden spraying away like those pretty gardener women in the Miracle Gro commercial. I get it. But don’t do it!  Miracle Gro is salty and synthetic. It is NOT the best choice for oh so many reasons.

The way I get my garden to look like the one in the Miracle Gro commercial is to use Fish Emulsion. I  water with it using a siphon mixer attachment. First, I attach the siphon to my water spigot. Then I attach my hose to the siphon. I measure out the fish emulsion into a bucket, fill the remainder with water and stick the siphon hose into the bucket. The fish emulsion in the bucket is siphoned into the garden hose at the correct rate and you just water the garden! (Or you can use a spray attachment at the end and give your plants a foliar feed. I prefer to just water the plants.)

Yes, it stinks! You can buy a deodorized fish emulsion, but it still has an odor — just a bit less. Trust me, you will not feel like one of those pretty gardener women when you are done watering your garden with stinky fish goo. However, when you use fish emulsion, you get THIS…

RosesMay09wtmk

And this…

Windowbox1wtmk

ClematisMay09wtmk

And you get this with a natural product. No synthetics.

Fish emulsion has the main N-P-K of regular fertilizer, but in very small amounts. (You are less likely to over-feed and get too much foliage.) It also has lots of micro-nutrients that the flowers LOVE. Fish emulsion also releases these nutrients in a slower, more natural way than the synthetics. You don’t shock your plants. It’s all good — except for the stinky part.

I use fish emulsion about once a month in April, May, June & July. That’s about it. Just don’t do your yard the day of a big outdoor BBQ party. The smell lingers for about 24 hours.

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My new MEGA Composter: bigger IS better!

March 19, 2009 · 6 comments

About a year ago, my friend Michelle bought a gigantic Duel Drum Rotating Composter…And for the past entire year, I have coveted it! Oh man, how I have wanted one for myself! It is a gardener’s dream!

Why you ask? Well, I have composted with square composters that I had to dig and struggle to mix. And I have had a small rotating composter that I love, but that fills up too quickly. Once it is full, I have to wait…and wait…until the compost is finished so that I can start a new batch.  Michelle’s composter solved this problem by being extremely large, with two compartments. Even though it is large, it is very easy to turn. It composts quickly and is up off the ground so that you can dump the contents into a wheel barrel placed underneath. Plus, it looks COOL.

So I saved my pennies FOR A YEAR and bought my own Duel Drum Composter (also known as a Compost Tumbler) – Just like Michelle’s!

When it arrived, I was beyond excited!
DuelComposter2

Unfortunately, it had twenty thousand little screws, but I managed to get it together all by myself. Although I do have an engineering degree, it was not complicated and I did not have to do any upper level math to complete the project! However, it took some time to assemble because there were so many darn screws and no one at home to help hold the drum in place while I was assembling.
DuelComposter1
DuelComposter3 The finished composter is AWESOME! It has two sections inside so that you can fill one and cook it while starting to fill the other side! One side is already full and the second side is about 90% full. So I am really using it! And that little puny black thing next to it is my old rotating composter. It is still a workhorse, but it just can’t even keep up with this MONSTER composter!

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And Even MORE on Compost Ingredients

February 10, 2009 · 4 comments

Okay. We talked about compost ingredients HERE and HERE. Then a friend sent me an email with a few more items I forgot to list. (Thanks Lisa!)

More weird things you can compost…

Old flour, oats or expired grains
Pet Bedding from (rabbits & herbivores only)
Toilet & paper towel rolls
Leftover Wine (Who has leftover wine? That just doesn’t seem possible.)

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Certify YOUR Garden as a Wildlife Habitat

January 21, 2009 · 5 comments

The New York Times had an article on a woman named Susan Gottlieb in Beverly Hills, CA who created a one-acre  “Haven for Wildlife” in the big city. She planted a native garden, focusing on attracting wildlife such as bats, rabbits, birds, bees, insects and even the occasional bobcat. She reduced her water usage and has learned a great deal about natural gardening in the process.

It is an interesting article, especially the part about how she created an outdoor cat run over the roof of her house so that her pet cats do not become a bobcat’s snack when they explore the garden. She obviously has money (one-acre in Beverly Hills, two part-time gardeners, etc.) but I like that she is using her space to educate others about native gardens. She has a lot of tour groups go through to learn about the transformation.

Wildlife_habitat Certified Wildlife Habitat:

The article talks a lot about how Gottlieb’s garden is a certified wildlife habitat through the National Wildlife Federation. But I think they make it sound more difficult than it really is to get certified. My own garden was certified years ago and it is only a matter of meeting certain criteria and filling out a questionnaire on line.

For over 35 years, the National Wildlife Federation wildlife Habitat program has certified backyards, apartment balconies, schoolyards, businesses and farms. No garden is too big or small to become wildlife-friendly!

To be certified, a garden must provide three food sources, water, shelter/places to raise young, and have at least two forms of sustainable gardening (such as conserving water and using organic methods).

See? Not so difficult if you are an organic gardener anyway.

To certify your own garden, you apply on line with a questionnaire. If accepted, you pay $15 and get a personalized certificate and membership to the organization. Once you are certified, an outdoor wall plaque can also be ordered for a fee and all the proceeds help promote the program and increase awareness about nature. If you don’t pass the first time, you can make improvements to your garden and redo the questionnaire until you meet all the criteria.

Visit the National Wildlife Federation – Garden for Wildlife page for more information and get yourself certified!

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Boil Away Your Troubles

October 29, 2008

 I hate when weeds get down in the nooks and crannies of bricks or sidewalks and set up residence. We have a charming brick walkway leading to our house, but it is next to impossible to pull out the weeds from between those cracks. I refuse to use Round-Up or other herbicide on them for [...]

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GWA Garden Tour Diary #2 of 5 – Urban Edibles

September 24, 2008

As promised, I have the next set of garden tour photos for you today from my adventures at the Garden Writer Association conference in Portland, OR. After visiting Nancyland, our tour bus stopped at the urban edible garden of Glen Andersen. Completely organic, the entire garden is designed to be a very efficient, high-production food [...]

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Trench Composting

July 31, 2008

I haven’t seen this done much here in America, but in England (where it seems everyone is a skilled gardener), they like to do “Trench Composting”. They dig a shallow trench in an area to be planted later. Then, they throw in compost-friendly kitchen waste such as banana peels, coffee grinds, vegetables scraps, etc. Then [...]

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Collect Garden Fertilizer on Your Next Beach Trip

July 28, 2008

I had heard the buzz about using seaweed powder in the garden and have even fed my plants with sea kelp extract from time to time with excellent results. So when my boys asked me the other day if they could bring home some seaweed they found on a recent trip at the beach, I [...]

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