Scraps Garden Update: Re-potted and Pruned

Here is what remains of my early scrap garden, plus lillies for Ostara and unlabeled hanging flowers (white and pink) from Aldi to attract beneficial microbial life, bugs and birds. I have had better success since I have re-potted 6 of probably about 10 or so.

There was no luck with the mushrooms (though I did purchase fertilizer to give it another shot soon) but here is what I did discover:

1. Celery, onion and pepper stumps are successful for flourishing veggies just by planting in dirt and watering regularly. They even fair decently well in lots of rain and some cold weather.

2. Garlic wants to grow. Peel a clove, the sections of herb you are left with will sprout on your windowsill, in a cabinet or on top of a refrigerator. Plant it in dirt and it shoots up pretty quick.

3. Berries are difficult to extract from the source. I am going to try organic seeds but I am going to also try organic produce, thorough rinsing of fruit flesh and more soil. Birds ate what I put in egg carton planters.

4. It is possible to over do it with too many seeds in a small planter. These tend to be popular with birds but not sprouting veggies.

5. Plants like to come in from the cold at night (until it gets warmer is my hypothesis).

6. Pepper stumps produce a lot of sprouts very slowly and depending on how deep you plant it, a lot of the initial growth takes place below soil.

7. You can buy decent gardening supplied for cheap at the dollar store, but a bag of dollar potting soil will hardly fill a medium sized pot so buy a lot or try bulk at, say, Big Lots or even better: a local specialty store.

The aquaponic system continues to await materials and still a bit of research, but it is definitely on my list of things to do. I will update here and there as I add to the garden, but for now it is an ultimately slow process.

For frequent tips on your urban garden check out over 100 pins on my favorite pin board on Pinterest: Sustainability; Home & Garden. My newest project is awaiting debut still as my deterrents are finally filing away! Congratulate me on my involvement with the American Secular Census/Mainstream. I will be covering the presidential candidates with unbiased information to help you make your decision on voting day!

Happy Spring, To New Beginnings

There are a good many vegetables and fruits that you can grow from table scraps according to home gardeners of the inter-web. Anything, particularly organically grown fruits and vegetables, where you can acquire seeds, you can sprout seedlings with heat, sun and moisture.

In elementary school, we sprouted seeds from beans via a wet paper towel in a zipper bag left on a window sil. I wanted to try this with bell peppers, and so I have (that is what is in the bag).

When I moved into my apartment there was an abandoned window planter in the back yard. The problem is, that the back yard doesn't get much sun (could be a good place for fungus growth, perhaps?). We were going to toss it or recycle it for that reason, but today I decided to take some potting soil, old cans and containers I had been saving and some table scraps to start my own garden experiment.

I don't like to take a whole lot on faith being a lover of science, and so I took some info from UrbanFig & Healthy Houseplants and I planted a garlic clove that had begun sprouting, a celery stump, some onion, a mushroom (this is an experiment that I don't have much hope for, but I have to know) and an opened avocado suspended above a jar of water.

I will be updating throughout the progress of my little scrap garden. This is a project separate from the soon-to-come aquaponic garden that will be mobile in the back and front yards. My next post, hopefully, will be a review of the Aquaponics 4 You system, closely followed, we're hoping, by a video of our aquaponic project!

Economic & Ecologic Benefit

Both in industry and in community sustainable farming is an economic and ecological benefit. While some financial preparation is necessary, money is quickly saved by implementing methods of recycling wastes, conserving resources and preventing loss of energy, water and nutrients for the soil and, therefore the crops (“Making the transition”).

Sustainable agriculture views farming as an ecosystem rather than a factory (Sullivan, 2003). In commercial agriculture, fossil fuels are conserved by implementing no-till methods of planting, therefore using multipurpose machinery, preserving soil aggregates and promoting biodiversity both in and above the soil (“Making the transition,”). In urban cases, fossil fuels are preserved by literally putting the market in your back yard, rendering traveling by vehicle unnecessary.

Erosion is prevented in commercial agriculture with such methods as layering mulch above topsoil; crop rotation; using perennial cover crops during the “off” season; utilizing animal manure as fertilizer and using biological methods of pest control (“Making the transition,”). The untilled land allows for undisturbed insect and microbial life and diverse porosity within the soil for maximum water retention during drought and flood prevention during periods of heavy rain (Ashman & Puri, 2009).

The environmentally conscious methods of sustainable agriculture naturally promote biological diversity throughout the food chain by including flowers, which attract beneficial insects; and trees and shrubbery which add to the necessary gas exchange for healthy crops (Sullivan, 2003).

The Urban Farming Guys have a revolutionary design for urban agriculture. Tame chickens and goats are cared for in their inner cities to supply milk and eggs (The Urban Farming Guys, 2011). Tilapia is bred and fed duck weed grown in baby pools in back yards (The Urban Farming Guys, 2011). Vegetables are grown and fertilized in the same tank that the tilapia are bred, and perhaps most importantly, food scraps are blended and recycled as worm food for nutrient rich soil (The Urban Farming Guys, 2011). There is even a method for extracting methane gas from tilapia waste to heat the greenhouses and convert electricity in generators (The Urban Farming Guys, 2011).

Check it out:



References:

Ashman, M. R., & Puri, G. (2009). Essential soil science- a clear and concise introduction. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Black.
Sullivan , P. (2003). Applying principals of sustainable farming.National Center for Appropriate Technology.
The Urban Farming Guys. (Photographer). (2011). The urban experiment. [Web Video]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/user/TheUrbanFarmingGuys?blend=1&ob=video-mustangbase
U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Resource Conservation Services. (2000). Making the transition to sustainable agriculture. Watershed Science Institute.
(Image via google images and not the artistic property of Green Goddess)