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  • Green Idea 1 : ' Find your nearest Farmer's Market and go there this weekend with friends...
  • Green Idea 2 : ' Swap your old incandescent bulbs for CFLs when they burn out and start saving $$$
  • Green Idea 3 : ' Try using your bike this weekend instead of your car...
  • Green Idea 4 : ' This Spring why not plant a small kitchen garden of tomatoes and peppers on your balcony or patio?
  • Green Idea 5 : ' What are you waiting for? Make the change today!
  • SUSTAINABLE DESIGN

    The basic objectives of sustainability are to reduce consumption of non-renewable resources, minimize waste, and create healthy, productive environments.

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  • RENEWABLE ENERGY

    Explore energy resources, such as wind, solar, hydroelectric, biomass, geothermal, ocean thermal, and wave power, that replenish themselves within a short period.

  • LOCAL FARMERS MARKETS

    Locating the Farmers' Market nearest to you is now only a few clicks away. Localharvest.org is a useful and straight-forward site designed to faciliate your quest.

Friday

Recession Gardening and The Micro CSA Project

Posted by vergelimbo On 5:36 PM 9 comments

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.



9 comments:

What a wonderful idea!! I wish I were still in Winston so I could participate!

p.s. I miss that fire-escape garden of yours. Nothing like eating Italian ice whilst perched upon a fire-escape, surrounded by beautiful plants.

I've still got a few units of thai pesto* and italian pesto left over from last summer's olive avenue garden crop, if you want to share...

xo lori

*thai pesto is an invention of mine that combines thai basil, lime juice, garlic, fish sauce, and chili. excellent on fish, seafood, eggplants, and jasmine egg fried rice.

My neighbors and I are already networking for years about recession proofing. My personal income is nothing like beyond the poverty level income and farming is a joy and necessity.

Work, too, for those who sow not
most likely know not about the principal of it being an honor to do so.

JP

When are you going to start your pepper plants...don't forget i need some and celery root seeds too

Hey Phil, this is Eric at the werehouse. We are working on establishing a garden here this year.
Gabby told me about the micro CSA web idea!
If things go well here maybe we could participate. Here is my email for the list: ericrobertjackson@gmail.com
See you around,
Eric

Urban gardening. The article on vergelimbo recently has so many merits. Join now! The master of soil between asphalt and edifice really has a magnificent way of producing great eatable, shade bearing, solar power to human power conversion techniques.
It is time to start some things now. When I introduce my niece to gardening I talked her into using 25 cents of her own money to buy and plant some cantelope seeds. In three months she was delighted to harvest 25 cantelopes. She has never forgotten though she was 5 at the time. Of course the uncle and grandfather helped with the weeds, but probably not much as we are not great weeders. It goes without saying that we will not remind her of that if in fact we ever actually did any weeding.

Things are well underway at The Urban Garden Project:
With the help of a friend we turned over 4 more beds and began framing them in with salvaged wood. I'm expanding the garden to the creekside, and adding cow manure, and mushroom compost to the beds.

I'm going to hold off on planting for the next few weeks, starting things like radish, beets, arugula, kale and celery root from seed.

by the way...

"to transform an unused piece of urban land into something useful and beautiful."

I agree with this concept %100. You've got an exceptional project going on- one of the few where everyone wins.

Well, let me know if you'd like to get up some time. I'd really love to hear what you know about alternative energy. especially wind and solar.

Sounds like a great idea! Count me in. I've been looking into starting a garden in my back yard.

-Andrea

Earthling...

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