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.