Grow Boxes

Here are some grow boxes that were started on January 31, 2010 in our small green house. The pictures were taken March 25, 2010. I will be conducting workshops on Grow Box construction on April 24 at the Evergeen UU Church in Marysville, WA and on April 18 at the UCC church in Everett, WA. Call me at 425-328-9979 for times and details. Participants will be able to buy the parts for $12 and assemble boxes to take home.

Progeny of TPSG

As a result of The Parking Space Garden, dozens of people are now using the Grow Box design for their hme and patio gardens. My wife and I had a dozen boxes working last summer. We'll do that again this summer and at least two other local churches want us to teach how to make the boxes.

Well, How did it go?

The Parking Space garden was a limited success.

I say that because of several reasons:

1) It did not receive consistent care. I severely injured myself shortly after starting the Parking Space Garden. So the Farmer-in-chief was absent during some critical periods.
2) It got inconsistent watering because of poor coordination among the people who were tending it.
3) We had a very cool June which affected all gardeners in the Pacific NorthWest.
4) There was some inconsistency in the construction of the Grow Boxes. In the rush to get the garden going, several did not get fertilizer and at lease two did not have drain holes which resulted in invisible water-logged roots.
5) We didn't have adequate height of the bean support fence. This reduced been production.

There were some definite positives:

1) The greenhouse worked very well. Inside temps approached 100 degrees F on sunny days. The semi-tropicals loved this. Also, no rain fell on the tomatoes. That is good. Tomatoe leaves don't like cold rain.
2) The height of the greenhouse and the tomato support system were just right.

I would definitely do this again. Would I do it as part of a community project? It may have been useful as a demonstration. It did not produce enough food to make a significant impact on the church community. Also, the farmer lived too far away to be able to care for the garden adequately. Next year, I will do this in my own yard.

I must apologize for not being more active with this blog. I have been ill -- just a very nasty summer cold -- and busy. My wife and I are nearing the end of a looong remodeling project. The Parking Space Garden is doing very well.

The plants inside the greenhouse are doing very well. The tomatoes are 2 feet tall now and very healthy. Tomatoes planted outside in Seattle are barely alive.

Outside plants are slow, due to the coolest June on record in Seattle. Also, I think some of our Grow Boxes may not have gotten any fertilizer. That is easy to fix.

We've had our first harvest -- lettuce which we gave away to members of our congregation.

Meanwhile, my home Grow Boxes are doing very well. We have been eating the Broccoli. It is so tender and sweet, it doesn't need to be cooked.

Cool, wet weather in the Northwest

This week has been very cool (50's) and wet (1 in. of rain today) in the Pacific Northwest. Good for lettuce and the kales. Not good for tomatoes and eggplants. I'm glad I decided to include a greenhouse in the design of The Parking Space Garden.

The garden is practically complete now. This week I planted eggplant and more basil in the greenhouse. Outside I planted carrots, onions, kale, two kinds of zucchini and cucumbers. Within the next month, when all of these plants spread out, the garden will be full.

I also bought two pieces of concrete reinforcing mesh at Home Depot. I bent these into a rectangle which I set up over the tomato plants. This should give them a good strong support system as they grow vertically.

Plant support

Gardening in such a small space (roughly 8 feet by 16 feet) requires that we go vertical as much as possible. For that reason, we are enclosing the garden with a light weight, easily portable fence made of 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe with 48 inch green plastic fencing wire-tied to it. This fence will also serve as plant support for pole beans on the east side and sugar snap peas on the west side. The beans will likely climb higher than 48 inches (most likely 96 inches or higher), so I will need to go up with another layer of fence by the beans. I cannot go outside the parking space footprint to support that fence, so I will go over the top at a height of 8 ft and join the west and east fences with two lengths of PVC. Pictures later. The entire of cost of the garden, including the greenhouse and 30 grow boxes will be about $700. That will not be economical the first year, but by the end of the second year, it will have paid for itself at today's vegetable costs.

So the world will know

Carol R. made a nice sign for our Parking Space Garden. It reads "Parking Space Intensive Garden -- One Less Car, Lots more local food." In the greenhouse we have 13 tomato plants, 2 hot pepper plants and 4 sweet peppers. Outside we have 5 containers of pole beans, 3 containers of broccoli, 4 containers of sugar snap peas, 2 of lettuce. This week I hope to plant zucchini, kale, onions and carrots.