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Ah, the upside down garden! Love it, hate it. Here’s the positives:
Less space needed, no digging, no weeds!
Here’s the negatives: Need something strong enough to hold them up, need to water them regularly and often, limited soil, and therefore limited harvest. Still, I may do another one, if I can figure out what small plants I can use, and how I can have them watered “automatically”.
In the Garden – Upside-Down Crops Are Growing in Popularity – NYTimes.com.
Solar Greenhouses greenhouse plans at end of articleCalling a greenhouse solar is somewhat redundant, since all greenhouses are solar heated to some extent. The greenhouse itself traps the heat each day, as anyone who has been inside a greenhouse for just a few minutes on a sunny day knows. Although a traditional greenhouse acts as a natural solar collector on sunny days, it does not retain the suns heat at night. Consequently, 75 to 80 percent of the cost of heating a greenhouse by conventional energy sources is expended at night.
Great little interactive graphics, too!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704784904575111680463669658.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTTopCarousel
Grow your own strawberry patch indoors! This is great for kids as well as adults, you just have to keep the cats out! (in case of cats, I recommend the planters that don’t expose much soil). If you’re patient, you can grow from seed – if not, talk to your garden center and see if you can get some plants early for a great indoor harvest that beats store-bought!
An Indoor Salad Garden can chase away the winter blues, and help you and your kids avoid being stir crazy. Easily done with little materials or room, and you can get a salad a week from very little space.
salad garden.
While “Sluggo” will still be in my arsenal until I can find a better solution, making my own bug killers will greatly reduce the cash outlay as well as keep the added chemicals out of my garden.
15 Homemade Organic Gardening Sprays and Concoctions That Actually Work : Planet Green.
The National Gardening Association estimates that 19 percent more people grew vegetables in 2009 than in 2008. While experienced gardeners may adhere easily to their annual gardening resolutions, new gardeners will see real results by following through on the following suggestions.If this list seems a little daunting, try picking just one or two resolutions for this year. Once youve appreciated the results and these gardening tasks have become habit, it will be easier to add a few more resolutions to your annual list.
via New Years resolutions for gardeners – San Jose Mercury News.
“… Companion planting can play a significant role in assisting with
pest control.
It’s a methodology that has more
to do with observation than science, but it does seem to work.
Some combinations work because
of scents they use to repel insects, others work because they attract good bugs. …”
Call me crazy, but I am already thinking about what vegetables I want to start growing this coming year. I know I want to branch out and grow some new things, but I’ve also re-evaluated just how much I need to grow.
Avoid composting tomato foliage or any other leaves which may have been diseased. To rejuvenate depleted garden plots or improve poor, heavy, or sandy soils, spread several inches of organic material in the form of shredded leaves, well-decomposed manure, compost, and peat moss over the surface; top-dress with lime, wood ashes, or gypsum and turn all the amendments into the soil with a digging fork or a tiller. A thorough fall cleanup, conditioning, and turning of the vegetable garden will ensure an earlier planting season next spring and hopefully Mother Nature will provide better growing conditions.
via Green Thumbs: Notes of a difficult growing season – Hanover, MA – Hanover Mariner.
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