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.

What happened in Cuba

Cuba had it's "peak oil" experience in the 1990's. The fall of the Soviet Union resulted in the sudden cutoff of all oil imports into Cuba. Almost overnight Cuba had to learn to cope with the shortage of energy and all the resulting shortages that caused. This video shows how Cubans did this and how they learned to take care of themselves. We have a lot to learn from Cuba.

Grow boxes on a boat

Grow boxes are ideally suited for liveaboards. We currently have four boxes on the quarterdeck of our boat. (My wife and I have lived on our 38 foot trawler, Desiderata, for more than two years. We are remodeling a 100-year-old house in Everett Washington and the work has taken a bit longer than we had expected. We expect to move in this summer.) We have lettuce and strawberries started. This week we will start harvesting the lettuce which was planted in March. This box has not been in a greenhouse. None-the-less, our harvest is very early for the Maritime Pacific Northwest.

Under Construction

At last the Parking Space Garden is under construction at Shoreline Unitarian Universalist Church in Shoreline, WA. I have been busy with travel and remodeling our house. But from now on, I should have a lot more time to put on this. Expect to see major progress this coming weekend.

Early Broccoli

I set some broccoli plants the same day in the Earth and in the Grow Box. The top picture is the Grow Box. The bottom is in the Earth. The plants are in the same area -- within 20 feet of each other. Notice the larger size and healthier appearance in the Grow Box. I attribute this primarily to the black plastic cover. It will be interesting to see how much earlier the Grow Box plants mature. I have 3 plants in a 14-gal Rubbermaid container.

Shoreline, Washington

Last Wednesday night I received permission from the Board of Trustees to construct a Parking Space Garden in the parking lot of the Shoreline Unitarian-Universalist Church in Shoreline, Washington -- immediately north of Seattle. This will be a demonstration garden intended to show what can be done in one parking space. The project will receive financial backing from The Great Turning group at SUUC and the vegetables produced will be sold on Sunday mornings to benefit the Great Turning group.

Whe garden will include a portable greenhouse and security fencing. Pictures will follow in about a month.

Long Cold Spring

We're having our usual long, cold spring in the Puget Sound area. This has discouraged my planting schedule. However, I have been busy making parts for more Grow Boxes (I have decided to use this name for the home-made vegetable growing containers). I am promoting the parking space garden concept in my church and I hope to use one of the church parking spaces as a demonstration project this summer.

The plan will be to carefully record all food production from the pilot plot to test the conjecture that one person could produce all the vegetables they eat in a year from one parking space garden.

I expect this concept will take several years to mature.

Trees in Earth Boxes

Last weekend Jennie and I attended an all-day workshop on 'edible landscaping' at Raintree Gardens in Morton, Washington. Our teacher, Bruce Weiskotten, gave me a new idea. Then I remembered that I had heard of something like this 25 years ago in Holland. Trees in containers. After the workshop I bought a columnar apple tree on ultra-dwarf rootstock to plant in an Earth Box. I'll attach pictures here when I have planted it. It should get about 8 ft tall and the idea is to prune all side branches to 2-3 inches to keep it growing straight and tall. I figure one tree per 18 gal. box. Bruce said that orchardists in California are planting columnar fruit trees in fields and I remember Bob Sestrap at Wax Orchards talking about how that was being done in Holland 25 years ago. Hmmm... I wonder if apples could be harvested commercially with a machine like a corn picker.

More Planting

Last weekend I started tomatoes, peppers, broccoli and radishes. The Tomatoes (Rutgers, Medford and Siberia -- all heirloom varieties which are not hybrids and hence not at the mercy of the corporate seed giants) were started in sterile starting soil under glass. Same for the broccoli and peppers. I planted the radishes outside in a SWAMP box. After 4 days, the radishes are the only ones that are up.

I also am preparing to start potatoes (Yellow Finn).

My first setback

It was bound to happen. THe first problem arose this week. I had filled two SWAMP boxes with potting soil from Cedar Grove which is a mix of sand and recycled yard waste. My wife planted lettuce, arugula and spinich seeds. I set the boxes inside in a south window of an unheated house and covered the soil with a thin black plastic mulch cover. After two days I peeked. The soil was overgrown with a quarter inch layer of fungus which looks like the fungus I used to see on starting plants which is associated with damping off disease. I expect to see that here also. I expect that the seeds either won't sprout or will die as soon as they sprout. Chalk one up to experience. That's why we're doing this. I will restart those plants in sterile potting soil.

A laboratory for Survival

I recently watched a great video -- The Power of Community how Cuba Survived Peak Oil. The video talks about how we all are facing the consequences of Peak Oil. It uses the experience of Cuba in the 1990's when Soviet Oil imports were abruptly halted as an example of how a nation can survive a sudden loss of cheap oil. It strikes me that we need many local laboratories all over the Unites States today to learn what we will need to know when we face Peak Oil.

First Planting

This weekend Jennie and I planted 5 SWAMP boxes. She planted lettuce, arugula and spinich. These were in the small 10-gal boxes and are inside against south facing windows.

I planted shallots and everbearing strawberries in 10 gallon boxes and radishes (both the round red kind and the long white kind) in a 14 gal. box. All three of these are outside against a south facing wall. I have some question about planting everbearing strawberries. I believe that these don't produce as much fruit as the regular strawberries. We will see. I expect that the radishes will produce early and be replaced by a fall crop like broccoli in June or so.

I plan to start some tomato plants from seed indoors this week. I will plant several of the non-hybrid types whose seed I can save.

Food Preservation for the Cold Months

I have spoken in the blog of raising all of the food that one can eat in a small area. But in the Maritime NorthWest of the US, we have short, cool growing season. How do we make our food last all year? The answer is that we re-learn some of the food storage methods known by our grandparents and great grandparents. We also adjust the foods we grow and eat to ones that will do well in a cooler climate. Let's look at food preservation first.

There are four methods of food preservation that I can think of. You may think of others.

Cold Storage -- this works for potatoes, carrots and other (mainly tuber) foods. All you need is a cool, dry place. The idea is to slow down the natural sprouting of these tubers to keep them fresh for several months.

Drying -- Some foods can be dried. Seed foods like beans and peas when dried will keep for years. Fleshy foods will keep for several months. We'll have a lot more to say about this later when the times comes to dry foods.

Canning -- I remember my Grandmother canning lots vegetables and fruits. My mother did less so, and mainly fruits -- and tomatoes. I have since learned that canning low acid foods is quite risky and the risk is primarily botulism, a very serious poison that can develop in canned food. High acid foods like tomatoes and most fruits can very well. We will also talk more about canning when the time comes.

Freezing -- Most vegetable and fruit foods can be preserved by freezing. It is easy and the food tastes good. Freezing requires a reliable source of energy to maintain the freeze, and it is proper to be concerned about that. We will also talk a lot more about freezing later.

Today, I am off to build more SWAMP boxes and to start sowing the first seeds of the year: lettuce, radishes, onions, and to start some tomato plants to use in demonstrations in April.

Garden Security

In the early 1970's I was active in a community gardening project in Columbia, MD. We leased vacant land on the edge of a developing town and subdivided it into 20 x 25 ft garden plots which we subleased to gardeners. We supplied water in tanks located in the center of the garden area,we kept the paths mowed and we published a monthly newsletter. Otherwise, the gardeners were on their own.

The major security problem then was people getting into the wrong plot in the spring. Usually someone would come to their garden to find it already rototilled and planted by someone else. In those cases I switched plots or tried to do something to satisfy everyone. I gave highest priority to protect the hard labor of the planter. We had NO reported cases of anyone stealing ripe vegetables.

In a more densely populated city, I would anticipate a more acute pilferage problem. We may want to enclose our Parking Space Gardens. Now, we also need to provide support for climbing -type vegetables, so a surrounding fence makes some sense.

I suggest that we construct mobile panels of woven fence wire and fir 2 x 4's. We could make a 4 x 8 ft panel for about $15 each (perhaps less). We could surround a 8 x 16 ft garden to a height of 8 ft for $180 or to a height of 4 ft for half that, or any combination in between.

Maritime Northwest Season Extender

In the Maritime Northwest we have a short and often cool growing season. This can be a problem when trying to produce semi-tropical crops such as tomatoes. This inexpensive ($250) greenhouse found at www.greenhouses.com can extend our growing season by several weeks in both he spring and again in the fall. I would propose that 6 ft of the 8x16 foot Parking Space Garden by occupied by this greenhouse. The greenhouse is self-supporting and is clad by a flexible plastic fabric which is resistant to UV damage from the sun.

Self WAtering Mobile Planter (SWAMP) box

There are several designs for do-it-yourself "Earth Boxes" floating around the Internet. They have somewhat varied materials and labor costs, but most are based on the Rubbermaid storage tub in sizes ranging from 10 gallons to 18 gallons. All of the designs will cost about $10 per box for materials and will require between 30 min. and 1 hr. to construct. The cost of soil will depend on the size of the box.

The larger box (18 gal) shown above is appropriate for 2 large tomato plants. It has sufficient soil volume to grow the really large and productive tomatoes. You could also grow any deep-rooted vegetable such as large carrots, potatoes, climbing vine plants like pole beans, vine squash, etc. I suggest building these boxes with a 6 inch water reservoir.

The mid size box (14 gal) would be good for moderate deep rooted plants -- broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, bush beans, etc. I suggest making these boxes with a 5 inch water reservoir.

The smallest box (10 gal) would be good for shallow rooted plants like lettuce, radish, scallions, most greens, etc. I suggest building these boxes with a 4 inch water reservoir.

The depth of the water reservoir can depend somewhat on your climate and how often you expect to be able to add water. In hot climates or where you can only tend the box 2-3 times a week, definitely, make the water reservoir larger. In cool climates like the maritime Northwest (N. Cal, OR, WA, BC), we can get by with smaller water reservoirs.

If you know that you will be away from your SWAMP boxes for extended periods of time like a vacation, and you can't get a neighbor to tend them, consider installing some sort of drip watering timer on a hose. Instead of running the drip irrigation system around your plants, just run the drip hoses directly into the watering tube of the SWAMP box. You'll have to experiment with how many minutes each day to run it.

One Parking Space Layout

This drawing shows how one 8 foot x 16 foot parking space could hold 30 2 ft x 15 in Rubbermaid based SWAMP boxes. Since we are building this in the maritime NorthWest, with it's late springs, cool summers and rainy falls, we will enclose part of the space within an inexpensive vinyl 'greenhouse.' In this area, we will plant tomatos, peppers and basil. In the rest of the planters we will plant beans, peas, broccoli, squash, lettuce scallions, radishes, etc.

The greenhouse will be built of selected 2x3's and covered with inexpensive 4-mil vinyl film. It will have a 3x6 ft door for access and ventilation. If the garden cannot be visited every morning to open the door as needed in the spring, we will need to provide some sort of automated ventilation. Two solar powered ventilation fans (available on eBay for less than $30 each) will fill the bill for ventilation.

We should be able to start tomatoes and basil indoors in mid February and set the plants into the SWAMP boxes within the greenhouse by mid to late march.

SWAMP Box -- The basic building block

The Parking Space Garden is based on the commercial product known as the EarthBox. We will actually be building our own d-i-y version of the EarthBox which we call the Self WAtering Mobile Planter (SWAMP) box. We will use three sizes of SWAMP boxes, based on the Rubbermaid storage tub in the 10 gal, 14 gal and 18 gal sizes. The picture above shows an EarthBox on the left and three SWAMP boxes on the right. The 10 gal size is good for shallow rooted plants such as lettuce, radishes, scallions and strawberries. The 14 gal size is good for bush beans, non-climbing peas, cucumbers, etc. The 18 gal size is good for large tomato plants, climbing beans, climbing peas, etc. We will give a detailed planting guide later in this blog.

Preparing for Spring, 2008

Welcome to The Parking Space Garden. The idea for this blog came to me as part of my participation in The Great Turning group within the Shoreline Unitarian-Universalist Church in Shoreline, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. The Great Turning is all about moving from a cultural theme of Empire to a cultural theme of Earth Community. For us, one element of this turning is eating foods grown closer to where we live, even on the same block where we live. Many of us do not have the space for a garden, but there are spaces the size of one car parking space in abundance in our cities. In some cases, these are actual car parking spaces which may no longer be needed if more of us also use public transportation, or they may be surplus car parking spaces created by some over zealous city planner or developer. They may just be a weedy space somewhere in our neighborhood.

Wherever an eight by sixteen foot space can be found, this blog is dedicated to helping you make the most of it to feed yourself, your family and your friends.

In the case of Shoreline Unitarian-Universalist church, we plan to sacrifice one of our 65 parking spaces to make a demonstration parking space garden. We will be reporting here on how we are doing this, what we are planting and how much we are harvesting. By this time in 2009, we hope to have some definitive data on what can be done with a parking space garden in the Maritime Northwest.