Urban Garden Project: July Update

I took these photos of my Urban Garden project July 15th, 2009. This is the fourth season of the garden, and every year it grows bigger and better. I "repurposed" the lot adjoining my shop with the intention of beautifying the space, promoting urban gardening and ensuring a steady supply of delicious fresh fruit and veggies for me and my friends... "Mission Accomplished"

For Further Information: To Learn the Who, How, Why and Where about The Urban Garden Project check out these articles:

Locavores, Patio Gardens and Urban Gardening
Urban Gardening and the Habits of Locavores
Urban Garden Project: Winston-Salem, NC
Urban Garden Project: Composting in the City
Recession Gardening and the Micro CSA Project

In the beginning: After days of weeding, levelling and removing the gravel of the former driveway June 2006

Victory Garden Posters

I love these World War II era Victory Gardens posters.

They represent the ideal convergence of patriotism and artistry. The Work Progress Administration (WPA) hired artists to design these posters to help promote self-sufficiency and co-operative ideals on the home front as a part of the war effort.

Victory Gardens "croppped up" all over the country. At their peak, it is estimated that almost 20,000,000 gardens were growing, and that about 40 percent of all vegetables produced in the U.S. came from Victory Gardens. By the end of the Second World War, the Department of Agriculture estimated total home front production of over one million tons of vegetables valued at 85 million dollars.

Which is your favorite poster? Tell me why below:

Bicycle vs. Car Sales Graph

Finally a trend I can get behind. Forget those tragically hip Williamsburg Wannabes and their brakeless single-speeds. All around the world bike manufacturing numbers are leaving their automotive counterparts in the dust, and that's great news for cyclists. More cyclists on the road is already leading to an increasing number of bike lanes, and increased safety through driver awareness. Wear a helmet, and use a light at night.

From The Economist:
THESE are tough times for carmakers, many of which are labouring under high oil prices, slowing demand and financial weakness. For makers of human-powered, two-wheeled vehicles, by contrast, business is booming. Giant Manufacturing, the world’s largest bicycle-maker, sold a record 460,000 units last month and is heading for its best year ever. Such is the demand for bikes that shortages were reported in New York earlier this year. In Taiwan, Giant’s home market, supply is tighter still: for many models, buyers put down deposits months before their bikes come off the assembly line.

Please leave your comments or queries below:

Urban Garden Project: June Update

I should use "stop-action" photography to capture the insane growth occurring at my Urban Garden Project. I took these pics a week ago, and things have grown so much since. "How can this be possible?", you may ask. The simple answer is rain, then lots of sun, and love throughout (ie: weeding, trimming, staking, etc.)

Here are some close-ups of the veggies I picked recently:

This week I will be training the watermelons down the driveway, mulching most of the garden with straw, and picking some tomatoes, onions, beans, blackberries, salad, and peppers.

Leave me a comment or question and I will get back to you!

Vergelimbo's World Domination Reset!

Every year, my "World Domination Map" is reset to zero. (see upper right) This just happened the other day, so my visitors "dots" are few and far between - for now. Most readers come to my blog via google searches. Some of the more unusual searches that have curiously led to www.vergelimbo.com are:

Urban Myth? How did this lead to me?
Ask The Internet I love it when people ask the internet
Flakes on the Net Probably an un-employable searcher
Hungry Film Buff? I love the movie and the recipe!
Scary Stuff Doesn't he watch CSI?

Essentially, people from all over the world read my blog, and for the most part find what they are looking for by typing in a search box. Some of my regular readers have subscribed to my RSS feed and get updates in their readers, such as bloglines. I joke to some that all sorts of people from all over read my blog - just not my friends. Leave me a question or comment below.

Review: "Plan Bee", by Susan Brackney.

"Now disappearing in alarming numbers, honeybees are the unsung heroes of the food chain, essential for the pollination of apples, oranges, almonds, blueberries, and more than ninety other crops."

Find more info@
planbeebook.com



One of the long-term projects I have had on my "to do" list for the Urban Garden Project over the last few years has been to keep a few hives of bees. My friend Steve G, also an aspiring beekeeper, has been a member of the Forsyth Beekeepers' Association for some time and has encouraged me in this direction. Beekeeping has always appealed to me, and thousands of determined pollinators would benefit my garden's yield dramatically. Oh yeah...and there is the honey. Local honey, apart from tasting yummy, offers immunity to many seasonal allergy symptoms. However, my design/build work [ie: my real job] has taken off, leaving me no time to pursue my own "Plan Bee" this season. Nonetheless, I have (bee)n able to research many of the practical issues of beekeeping and that is how I came across Susan Brackney's "Plan Bee". Aptly subtitled "Everything you ever wanted to know about the hardest working creatures on the planet", Plan Bee is destined to become a cult classic.

My friend Andrea had just finished reading "Plan Bee" and was intending to sell it to a local used-book store when I stepped in. The moment I saw the dust cover and skimmed through its 192 pages I was "stung" with interest. As a designer, I very much appreciate the concept and layout of the book itself... someone with a skilled eye and subtle creativity has done very good work - from the cover art to the binding, the paper used, the fonts chosen, the page layout, the varied photographs and sketches within, through to the back-cover blurbs.

Brackney divides the book into two parts: "The Buzz about Bees" and "A Beekeeper's Life", for a total of 9 chapters with multiple sections therein. Chapter titles include such puns as: "Who's Who in the Hive", "The Bee's Knees" and "The Sweet Life". Humorous anecdotes abound. But so too does a wealth of interesting scientific, cultural, historical, environmental and practical information. This is not a textbook on beekeeping... but it will stimulate the enthusiast into pursuing more reading about bees and beekeeping, or at the very least (for the casual reader) it will draw attention to the largely unrecognized importance of bees in our world. Multiple footnotes anchor the pages - some anecdotal, some academic, but all interesting, useful and often funny. Two pages of "Further Reading and Resources" finish the book.

The writing is colloquial, accessible, concise and very entertaining. It is really quite a feat that Plan Bee contains such a range information: from beekeeping rituals in ancient Egypt to the early American beekeeping practices, to the current blight of the Varroa mite and up-to-date research on the looming and mysterious threat of Colony Collapse Disorder [CCD]. This book is one of the better "How To" books I have ever read... what it lacks in practical matters it more than makes up for in its inspiring tone, clear message and provocative futurism. Anyone could read "Plan Bee" and everyone will enjoy it. I already have 3 friends looking forward to borrowing my copy. I am hoping that they will give into their stinging desires to read "Plan Bee" and buy their own copies. An author this good deserves to be rewarded. I'll be buying another copy to give to a friend for his birthday.

Urban Garden Project: May Update

The thundershowers this May have been unprecedented. I have barely needed to water my garden - which was good, because I had a friend visiting from Tel Aviv, and we took a roadtrip to Savannah. I also had an important design/build project with a serious deadline. As a result of this "other-prioritized" schedule, The Urban Garden Project was left in the moist, loving hands of Mother Nature.

My friends Ed and Hilary helped me plant a row of Blueberries in the new creekside bed, and transplant my fig tree, lavender, and mint in salvaged terracotta tubes from a dismantled furnace. Steve G helped me frame in 5 new raised-beds, and build the trellis for the Isaac Kiwi to ascend.

Did I mention the rain? Seemingly non-stop the past few weeks, my garden has reveled in the daily downpours. My heirloom tomatoes have already started to fruit, and my blackberry bushes - now 4 years old - seem intent on breaking some world records. Everything is growing beyond my expectations with the exception of the Baby Bok Choy which was ravaged by bugs unknown, and has been bolting continuously since they were planted - which is quite annoying and inexplicable.

I have been invited to sell my excess tomatoes, peppers, okra, beans, blackberries, basil and eggplant at a "farmers market" to be held Thursdays at the Krankies Airstream on Reynolda Road. I'm quite looking forward to this as The Urban Garden Project produces more than enough fresh veggies for me and all my friends. It also ties in nicely with my Urban Garden Network and Micro CSA idea. I hope all the regular coffee drinkers enjoy what is on offer at the farmer's market, and decide to go home and plant their own Whole Foods Killer Gardens.

Gardening is finally being seen as something cool to do!

Urban Garden Project: April Update

The weather has been unseasonably warm these past few days, and I have decided [with fingers crossed] to begin planting in my garden. The five-day forecast calls for highs in the eighties, and lows in the 50's. Freakishly warm for this time of year. The same thing happened last Spring and the results were devastatingly tragic: A few days after I had transplanted my lovingly nurtured heirloom tomatoes, peppers and basil - which I grew at home in peat, the weather took a steep nosedive into the 20's and 30's, and I lost them all. Twenty something seedlings that I had grown from seed from the Seeds of Change catalog met their untimely end. Zapped by unexpected frost, their withered bodies soon became compost in the beds in which I had planted them only a week earlier. I recall they passed, together, on the 4th of May, 2008.

The Moral of the Story:
If you want to get started planting in your garden before May, plant only the hardiest seedlings or seeds. Otherwise you had better be prepared to replace any and all of your much loved home-grown seedlings. Vegetables like onions, peas, broccoli, and cabbage are hardy enough to withstand a gentle frost or two. Almost every other seedling will most certainly perish. In the meanwhile, there is plenty of other gardening work to be done: Amending the soil with mushroom compost or Black Kow manure, weeding, turning over beds, and possibly framing them to make raised beds - as I have just done. [see slideshow above]

The warm weather will soon be here to stay...don't rush into planting as I did last year. "Haste doth make waste"

Supercilious Cyclists Caught On Camera

I love this video so much I post it every Spring...By the way you guys know who you are!

Urban Garden Project: Seeds Strips

Look closely and you can see the spacing of the seeds

The latest addition to the ever growing list of "my inventions that other people actually brought to market" are the Ferry-Morse "Jiffy Strips" pictured above. The idea is simple: A strip of biodegradable paper with seeds appropriately spaced that you simply "plant" in an open furrow, and then bury. I tried out the "Nantes" carrots, and the Baby Belle radishes. Small seeds which require specific spacing are ideal for this system: Beets, turnips, leeks, onions, parsnips-essentially, any veggie that is row planted.

Isaac Kiwis Begin their Triffid-like Growth

I finally transplanted the Kiwi that my friend John had given me last year. They were on the verge of taking over my fire-escape garden. These Kiwi are Hillarian climbers, and arbor very nicely providing plenty of shade and a countless number of small, fuzz-less Kiwi that pack all the flavor of the store-bought variety, albeit on a lilliputian scale. I need to build my arbor ASAP.

Verge's improvements to the Jiffy Strips:
Rather than a dyed white tissue strip folded into a 5-inch packet, the strips should be made of a recycled paper/peat infused with organic fertilizer and nutrients. Seed Strips should also come in a roll, like scotch tape to minimize packaging...the current offering is un-necessarily over-packaged.

Urban Garden Project: Baby Got Bok!

I just planted a dozen Baby Bok Choy seedlings in the garden the other day. I haven't grown Bok Choy- baby or otherwise- in my garden yet, but I love the crisp taste and green zingery of them... as you can see, they are cute as well.

The weather has been very nice lately, so I also planted some broccoli, parsley, tarragon, sage, and lovage. If I am not planting from seed, or planting my own seedlings that I have been growing in peat at home, I always get my seedlings from Myers Nursery. Myers is a family-owned nursery that grows an amazing range of vegetables, plants and flowers-many of them heirloom varieties, and all of them organic.

Early spring at Myers Greenhouse on Stratford Road

The people who work at Myers love gardening and gardeners and share their wealth of information regarding planting issues, local pests, fertilizers etc. Rebecca confided in me the other day that they get many of their heirloom and rare seeds from "Baker Creek Seeds" I usually get mine from Seeds of Change, but after seeing the almost pornographic photography and extensive range of exotic veggies in the Baker catalog, I rushed home and ordered my own copy. Plus, you can never have too many catalogs, right?

Over the next few weeks I will be adding two new beds to my Urban Garden Project. One large one, on the creekside, will become home to blueberry bushes, black currants, strawberries and melons. Any day now I will transplant the Isaac Kiwis that John gave me last year. They are already budding and splashing out their sinewy, roaming vines on my fire-escape garden. Yikes!

If you are interested in the idea of starting a local network of organic gardeners leave me a comment below. We can meet to compare notes, inspire, swap seeds, plans, ideas etc. For more information about this, see the articles below and follow the links.

Recession Gardening and The Micro CSA Project

There's money in them there vegetables!

Spring is right around the corner, and many a gardener's green thumb is twitching. I spent a sunny Saturday turning over one of my larger raised beds and uprooting last seasons spindley leafless tomato and pepper plants. I am always careful to shake the heavy-laden roots and capture as much of the soil as possible. The old saw: Waste not, want not fits gardening like glove.

Urban Garden Project Year 3: Oct 2008

When I started The Urban Garden Project 4 years ago, it was only in part for the financial benefit of growing my own favorite veggies. For the most part it was an expression of potential- to transform an unused piece of urban land into something useful and beautiful. It was also sort of a habit...gardening was just something that I did. My first summer job was building a new community garden near where I grew up. This process lasted over 4 summers from the age of 13-17. When it was completed it occupied 2 acres and 116 raised garden beds. Along the way I learned how to build a fence, lay patio stone walkways, build a deck and finally graduated to building a gazebo for the gardeners to enjoy. I have started my own garden in every place I have lived ever since then. Sometimes I was restricted to a mere fire-escape garden, but it is surprising how much a container garden can yield. Tomatoes and Peppers thrive in containers.

John's Garden is a recession-proof model of sustainabilty.

Since we are now in an economic recession (proving: you reap what you sow) more people have begun planting their own "kitchen gardens" and cutting down on their trips to Whole Paycheck. I was speaking to an old friend the other day who is anxious to start such a homestead garden. We discussed starting a network of small home gardeners that could share/swap/trade their individual yields. I already do this to a small degree with my gardener friends but look forward to the possibility of helping to expand this idea with some other interested parties. (Find more ideas on garden swaps and Micro-CSA see articles here and here)

If you are interested in the idea of starting a local network of organic gardeners leave me a comment below. I will follow up with an email in a few weeks time as the season is upon us. We can meet to compare notes and swap seeds, plans, ideas etc.

Warning: Disturbing Internet Images Below

We have all stumbled across images on the internet that we find disturbing. I am not exaggerating when I say that in all my years of trolling, the image above I find to be the most fundamentally disturbing. I gleaned it from an article on internet predators.

The Corollary to the Above Image

There was an artistic trend in 17th century portraiture to depict young children as miniature adults. They were painted with the attitude, habits and clothing of adults. These paintings have always caused me to pity the poor kids. For some reason, both of these contemporary photographs make me feel the same way...




The image above is simply preposterous hyperbole. I hope.

Simply put: Children are children and adults are adults. There is an important distinction between the two, both behaviourally and developmentally. Nonetheless, it would seem that a "blurring" of child and adult is occurring in our society today. Both the images above depict children indulging in behaviour and habits from adulthood. A healthy society would recognize and support the distinction: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things" (1 Corinthians 13:11)

Have you noticed this disturbing trend? Let me know...

Full Video of Obama's Inauguration Speech

Free Garden Porn: 2009 "Seeds of Change" catalog

From This:
In my childhood, the arrival of The Big Sears catalog was a significant and holy day for me. As a young boy I can remember "scrutinizing" the women's underwear and bra photos in my dog-eared copy of the Sears catalog. "The Catalog" weighed in at roughly 3 pounds. You know the one, right guys? What an illicitic wealth of information/ inspiration those glossy pages held! I spent untold hours ogling those curvey beige and skin-toned images...

To This:
In the intervening 25 years, catalogs continued to play an important role in my life. As a designer and builder, The Catalog was supplanted by Interior Design, Garret Wade, Dwell and Fine Homebuilding. A few years ago I started The Urban Garden Project, "re-purposing" a barren industrial lot adjoining my woodworking studio into an organic garden. As a result of this project, "The Seeds Of Change" organic seed catalog has recently achieved prominence in my ever-growing stack of reference catalogs. Magazines such as Mother Earth News and Permaculture are continuosly "cropping up" around my home. I have posted margin links to similar webmags here on vergelimbo.com as well as from my technology-based webpage: greengearonline.com

Seeds Of Change 2009 Catalog

The 2009 catalog [pictured above] is available for free, either in a downloadable pdf format or home delivered in it's glossy 108 page glory. The catalog is filled with beautiful photographs of countless vegetables-many of which I guarantee you have never seen or heard of. It features a wide range of heirloom vegetable seeds and informative articles on organic gardening, tools and techniques. Buying seeds online is easy, safe and very affordable. Peruse the magazine and pick a vegetable you have never tasted and plant some this spring. Last year I planted Dragon Carrots, Hopi Squash, Dinosaur Kale and the Sputnik-like: Kohlrabi.

What is your favorite catalog or freaky vegetable?
Leave you comments or any suggestions below...