Container Gardening, Garden Anywhere!

If you don’t have land, don’t want to or can’t join a community garden, Small Space Urban Farming, Sustainable Containables may be perfect for you! Check what the curbside use rules are for your city. You might be able to use that space too! The number of containers is completely flexible. Have as many as you have time and energy for.

I discovered container gardening through the amazing book Bountiful Containers by McGee & Stuckey. I first wrote about container gardening in November 2012. Now there is a feast of books written on the topic. Learning container gardening principles taught me a lot about how to use precious space productively no matter what size your garden!

Containers give you complete flexibility. Have as many or as few as you want, put them wherever you want, move them, remove them, replace them! If it’s too hot or too cold, bring ‘em inside, no greenhouse needed, but if you have one, all the better!

Garden in anything! From grow bags, hanging bags to pots. There are containers of any size, shape, material or color, some are even self watering! Some are spiffy new, others are what you have around at the time, maybe an old favorite or an old wooden bucket, the wheelbarrow with holes in it.

Most of all, the Beauty of Using Containers is You can plant!

You can make them, paint them!
They can get you outdoors
There’s no digging
You eat better food, fresh basil for your fresh salad.
Often, no slugs or snails, avoids soil-borne fungal diseases
Rarely any weeds
You can give them away
You can instantly remove and replace problem plants, or redesign your layout!
You can move them around for more sun or shade, for warmer or cooler
You can take them with you when you move!
No packaging, or food miles!

Location, location, location – Garden anywhere!

Balcony, Rooftop, along Stairs
Patio, Deck
Along a Wall or Fence, on top of the wall!
Backdoor, Front door
By Kitchen, in a Window
Box hanging from fence, a basket hanging from the upstairs neighbor’s balcony or a tree
A lovely raised bed in plenty of sun is a large container!

What can you plant?! Light makes a difference! 6-8 hrs Sunlight 

Everyday edibles to fruit & nut trees, minis to full size! Flowering plants, water plants, and fruiting vegetables require eight hours of sunlight each day to grow well. Root vegetables can do well with six hours though slower; leafy plants and herbs should get at least four hours.

As a general rule leafy vegetables such as cabbage and lettuce can tolerate the most shade, while root crops such as beets and carrots will need more sun. Fruiting vegetables such as tomatoes and cucumbers need the most sun.

If you don’t have enough light, paint a wall white, put a free standing white reflective screen behind your plants to capture light.

Put your planties on a rolling cart, table, on plant dollies and move them with the sun during the day!
Move them from your front porch to your backdoor during the rainy or cold season, or indoors during a frost. Dollies raise your plants so your wooden containers and deck don’t rot.

Too hot?  Double pot – one inside the other. Too cold? Use black containers, wrap your pot with dark fabric, a blanket, burlap.

• Dwarf & semi-dwarf trees, shrubs, grapes
• Beets, chard, cucumbers, dwarf sunflowers, eggplant, dwarf kales, bush beans, green onions, green peppers, HOT peppers, leaf lettuce, mini melons, garden purslane, radishes, spinach, smaller varieties of summer & winter squash, strawberries, determinate and dwarf tomatoes!
• Herbs and edible flowers too!
• Select smaller veggie varieties that are bred for productivity, disease and pest resistance, slow bolting, heat and/or cold tolerance, drought tolerant
• Pick varieties that tolerate your conditions – sun/shade, wind, water, time of year
• Find plants that match your diligence, time available to care for – do you like to prune or deadhead?
• You can plant a container Orchard! Dwarf is the key word! Dwarf figs, ‘cados, citrus, plums, etc! Grafting 3 types that come in early, midsummer and fall on one tree gives you all season fruit for the space of one tree!

Designing your Container Garden

Container gardening is a way for people living in urban areas to enjoy the benefits of veggie gardening.

Questions & Options!

Will my deck, balcony or roof support the weight of watered plants?
Do I want to get a bunch of small containers or two really big ones, or a combo of sizes?!
Can I place pots around my regular garden? Would the pots look better on my deck or around my copper beech tree?
Can I grow herbs and flowers or should I stick with one type of plant?
Will someone trip over those small herb troughs near my narrow pathway or underneath my garden arbors?
What complementary plant colors will look best in my sunny office? Or in or around my house?
Are these plants pet and child safe?
Will the draining water rot wood, drip on my table, cause mold or mildew, be tracked indoors?  Drip on your neighbor’s patio or balcony downstairs?
Do most people like the scent of that herb, society garlic? Allergies?

Containers along a Spiral Staircase can be alternately planted with veggies, companion plants, herbs, more flowers for pollinators!

Design for Beauty and fit There are wonderful design programs online! Or start with one container and see what happens from there.

If you want to, sketch it out – summer, winter layouts
Pencil in your largest plants first
Tall plants against the fence, wall, to the back, north if possible, short in front, vines spilling over front
Stagger the heights of containers
Elevate with concrete blocks
Purchase just a few containers at first to get the hang of it
Mix colors luxuriantly!
Mix veggies, companion plants, pollinator attracting edible lowers and herbs mercilessly!

The simplest space saver is to go Vertical! Hanging baskets & grow bags, tiered planters, strawberry pots, pallets, gutters affixed to a fence (slope to one end for drainage & cover the low end to keep the soil in), put a trellis in a rectangular basket or oblong galvanized container, hang planters on a fence or up a wall!

Each Container is a miniature garden! Select plants with the same watering requirements.

1. Thrillers:  the tallest, most noticeable or unusual plant.  Put pots with melons, cukes, beans, near a trellis or fence.
2. Spillers:  plants that “spill” over the edge of the pot. Even if you are using a spectacular container, you do not want all of the plant material to only go up.  Strawberries….
3. Fillers:  plants that tie your container together, providing a backdrop for your thrillers to shine.

Theme Gardens are special!

One color
Pink!  Chard, chives, dianthus – an edible flower, monarda – an herb, pansies, sage
One type plant – a lettuce box or basket
Ethnic
Asian — Japanese Eggplant, Chinese Cucumber, Sugar Lace Peas, Broccoli, Thai Chile Pepper, Chile de Arbol Pepper, Bell Pepper, Cabbage.
Greek and Middle East — Tomato, Eggplant, Cucumber, Shallots, Garlic, Onions.
An era like Victorian – Lavender, roses, sage, scented geraniums, thyme, tulips, with violets, violas, pansies
For kids! Radishes, Thumbelina small round carrots, pansies (cat faces), purple-podded beans, dwarf sunflowers, Wee-Be-Little pumpkins!
To attract pollinators, butterflies, wildlife, hummingbirds! POLLINATION is Vital & Easy to Do!  Grow a Pollinator Meadow at Home in Your Veg Garden!

 Design for Companion Plantings for many reasons! Here are just a few to get you started! There are many more combinations you will discover!

Pest prevention  Some plants emit allelochemicals from their roots or leaves, which repel pests. Oregano repels insects that bother broccoli! Borage repels tomato hornworms.
Enhance each other: Oregano enhances the flavor of beans. Carrots stimulate peas (onions stunt peas). Chamomile is called the Plant Dr!
Some plants attract butterflies and bees to pollinate your plants! Feverfew repels bees.
Others are great trap plants – they are more attractive to pests than the plant you want to save. Calendula traps aphids, whiteflies, and thrips!

Choosing the perfect magical container …from found reusables, on the cheap, humble homemades, to extraordinaire, there are multitudes of beautiful materials!! Shop, scavenge, everywhere!

Start with the Standards

1. Traditional Terracotta: has good air circulation, dries out fast, degrades, and is easily breakable, charming old world outdoor look, least expensive.
2. Ceramic: hardier, retains moisture better if glazed, myriad of colorful choices and shapes.
3. Plastic, Resin, Fiberglass: long lasting, lightweight, good for balcony & rooftop plantings or where weight is a factor. No air circulation. They can be inexpensive to very expensive. They are an excellent liner pot. Be sure what you choose is FDA approved for growing food.
4. Untreated Wood Boxes/Barrels: natural look, dries out fast, line with water barrier or use a sealant, use peat for insulation & to hold moisture. If use a water barrier, cut holes for drainage.
5. Magical Metals: keep moisture in

Drainage holes are a must! Ask the nursery if they will make some for you if there aren’t any. Usually there is no charge.

Pros/cons of Fabric containers  Select bags made of breathable and strong fabrics. Some are washable, reusable and biodegradable. Avoid ones made with plastics. Fold and store for later! They generally last 2-3 years. They need lots of watering, which can leach nutrients from your soil. However, the chance of root rot is little.

Excerpts adapted from SpringPot: The most unique feature of fabric containers is the prevention of plants becoming root bound, they call it ‘air pruning.’ In pots, the roots of plants tend to grow in circles entangling themselves leading to less water and nutrient intake. This increases the likelihood of having oxygenation or water stagnation issues, especially in larger pots that lack proper drainage. In fabric grow bags when the roots meet the edges of the fabric pot, they sense the drier soil that is exposed to the air. At this point, they know they have reached their growth limit. The roots become “air pruned” which is vital to growing healthy plants in containers. You will also get many more fibrous roots when air pruned. A more fibrous root system (many small root tips) allows the plants to take in more nutrients and water.

If you want prettier, most of the bags are black or gray, Simply put it in another larger container! If not protected in a container, the black ones can get too hot, put shade cloth around them (added expense and time), but you have healthy roots!

Be creative! Use what you have at hand or experiment!

Pots, baskets, boxes, grow bags, nested burlap bags, shoe bags, plant sacks, bowls, buckets, plastic containers
Plant right in the compost bag!
Bathtubs, sinks
Drawers – use untreated wood, no paint
Drums, ½ whiskey barrels
Wheelbarrow, wagon
Built-in deck planter, top of rail/wall planter
Hanging, upside down toms
Recycled anything – old garden boots, laundry basket, wheelbarrow
Greenhouses themselves are the perfect winter container or for all year Veggies!

If you like wooden troughs or baskets, make sure that your wood is of a solid quality. Finish the wood with a veggie-safe preserver. If you use wine barrels, make sure the hoops are secure. Wood containers fare well in colder weather, provide more insulation than clay pots.

To retain moisture and prevent freezing and cracking, seal your clay pots inside and out with a veggie safe sealant.

Lettuces, peas, beans and cukes require the least depth; tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, broccoli, the most.

You’ll need some fail-proof saucers to capture that loose soil and dripping water that escapes from the bottom of any container. Plastic saucers don’t get damp as do terra cotta ones.

Making a Home for your Plants  Soil, Filling Your Container, Seeding, Transplanting

Soil Selection is critical; a workstation is optional but very nice!

A high-quality potting soil works, choose ones with time release nutrients!
Use all potting soil, or add the very best compost!
Topsoil alone is too heavy, doesn’t drain well, too dense for tiny roots to get through
Soilless mixes are two to three times lighter weight
Each year use fresh soil mix when you plant

Put drainage holes in your container if they aren’t there already. 3 to 5 is good, use your judgment.
For less weight on a balcony or the roof, line the bottom with capped plastic bottles or insert a smaller upside down pot, put your soil on top. It uses less soil, weighs a lot less, especially when wet.
OR, install a self watering system, sub irrigation.
Fill with your soil – lace it with slow release organic fertilizer (and a ¼ cup lime for tomatoes)
Install trellises as needed for beans, cukes, toms, melons, squash, grapes
Anchor pots and trellises securely if your plant will get tall or is in a windy spot, on a balcony

Seeding, Transplanting

Partially fill your container, put your central or tall back plant in, fill around it. Add any peripheral plants.
Water gently so you don’t wash the soil away from the roots, add more soil if needed as the soil settles.
Plant seeds according to the instructions on their packet in 6 packs or right in your container!
Water again with a watering can so as not to wash the seeds away or cause them to get uncovered, or covered too deeply with soil. KEEP them moist!
Top dress, mulch with wood chips or as you like, about 1” deep. Less weeds, saves water, keeps your soil moist. Keeps roots cool in summer, but remove in winter so your soil will be warmer. Cocoa mulch is toxic to dogs. Mulching ~ Why, When, With What, How Much?!

Self watering, save-water Sustainable Container Technology!  You can use this in any small container to kiddie swimming pool containers used in rooftop gardening! The principles are the same. If you decide to purchase, there are multitudes of amazing, and even lovely, self watering containers available! Or get a DIY kit, or simply DIY!  There are various techniques. See more

.

.

If it is hot weather or you may be away, try these bottles with watering spikes to keep your plants moist..

.

.

.

Fertilizing, Side-dressing

Since potting mixes drain water rapidly, fertilizer will be leached out of the container as you water.

Avoid contaminating vegetable plants with manures (use only if well aged and incorporated in your soil weeks in advance), teas, or organic emulsions. Do not use manure foliar teas on veggie leaves that you will eat, like lettuce. Not recommended by UC Master Gardeners. Instead, use a dilute liquid fertilizer with every other watering, maybe every two weeks. Liquid fish emulsion is smelly but good. Liquid seaweed/kelp are great plant boosters, add trace elements.
If you have predators like skunks or raccoons, be sure your plants are enclosed so they can’t dig them up.

Remember that you need to provide your plants with a variety of nutrients.
Compost and/or worm castings are tasty additions!
Or use organic time release pellets when you build your soil!
Check the labels on the products in your garden center to be sure that they contain a complete, balanced solution that includes trace elements. Be sure you get the right season or use a specific mix. Early on you want Nitrogen for leaves, but not too much or you get all leaf, no bloom. Be a bit careful with phosphates for bloom…not all soils need it added.

Contact your local extension office to inquire about soil testing. Many municipalities offer soil testing free of charge.

Special Care for Your Tomatoes – the most popular container plant!

Scout around for a good container tomato soil mix or build your own! See Tomato Dirt! They do not recommend to scoop up your ground soil – ‘It compacts making it difficult to water and keep aerated by mid-season. Also, garden soil is infested with fungi, weed seeds, and pests, which can wreak havoc in your containers…’
IF your soil is acidic, add a ¼ cup lime (calcium) when making your soil mix
And a tablespoon of Magnesium Sulfate (Epsom salts), both to prevent blossom end rot
Secure your plant so it won’t topple in the wind when laden with tomatoes
When the plants are flowering, give the stems a sharp rap about 11 AM to help pollination along.

Common Problems Help List – Be vigilant, Remove diseased plants ASAP! If you are trying to save a weakened plant, move it away from your other healthy plants. Weak plants are vulnerable to pests and diseases. 

Your harvest! Harvest, Seed Saving, Sharing the Bounty

DO harvest! When the time is ripe, do it, don’t let it go to waste. If you don’t pick, ask yourself why. You don’t like that veggie as much as you thought you would? You planted too many plants and you are tired of it! Your recipe is too time consuming or intimidating? Harvest is too labor intensive? This is all a natural part of the live & learn gardening experience. Plant something different, differently next year, a different variety perhaps.

Keep picking, especially beans, cukes and peas, or your plant thinks it is done and stops producing.  Pick daily, don’t ‘store’ on your plant. Cut & come again plants are a true value! Take lower lettuce, chard and kale leaves and the plant will grow more; cut off bunch onions 1-2″ above ground and they will grow back! Several times! When the radishes are pulled, plant more or something else right away!

Seed saving is your 2nd harvest!

If you have a plant, that does terrifically, you might want to save some of its seeds! Or sow them immediately for continuous harvest!

Tie ribbon around a plant you choose to save seeds from to remind you once it has stopped producing,  you don’t accidentally remove it.
Let it flower – the bees love it, let it seed.
Let the seeds, or your bean pods, dry on the plant. Tomatoes get a different treatment. SeedSaving! An Easy Annual Ritual & Celebration!
Harvest the seeds midday on a dry sunny day.
Label your envelope – save date, plant name, special info about it.
Store in a cool, dry place.
Some seeds have a short shelf life, only 1 season, so check to see if you should be sure to plant them next year or give them away to someone who will!
If you have extra, share your seeds at a neighborhood garden exchange, Seed Swap, or give some away as holiday or birthday gifts!
Organize your garden seeds during our cool season. It is an inspiration for spring planting!

Container Gardening can be one of the most creative experiences you will ever have! Exercise your options! Have fun and be healthy!

Wherever you are, enjoy growing the most colorful tasty organic veggies!

Updated 5.29.23.

---

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. Both  Santa Barbara City’s remaining community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

Top^

Read Full Post »

Smart Garden Design Leads to Excellent Plant & Seed Selection!

Designing your garden is an intricate and intimate process depending on a lot of factors. It will ‘look’ like you as you are at the time of your life that you do it. Gardens are a form of autobiography. ~Sydney Eddison, Horticulture magazine, August/September 1993. If you plant from seed, designing your garden leads to making a pretty accurate seed list.

Some of your choices will be the same as what your family always did. Or, you may be a permaculture type doing a Food Forest guild system. There is no right way. You are you, your situation unique. You may be the same the rest of your life, only influenced by drought, deluge, seasons or climate change. You may be research oriented and enjoy trying out new plants and practices from across the world, allowing volunteers the birds bring to grow. You might decide to leave an untouched wild area in the name of freedom or magic, or rest a section of your garden each winter! Or plant it to a green manure cover crop or incorporate living mulch!

Choose a sunny place with easy access to water! Bioswales may be part of your water capture plan. In SoCal consider a centuries old technique, a water saving Waffle Garden. Greywater distribution location may determine where fruit and nut trees will be planted. Then how will their mature shade affect the rest of your garden? Use dwarfs?

Make your garden a shape that flows with the area, whether that be simply the space available, or contoured to the land. Use slopes and hillsides! (Image by Arterra LLP Landscape Architects) Grow permeable windbreak shrubs to slow wind. If you don’t have outdoor space, but do have a sunny doorstep or balcony, put those containers to work!

Layouts can be any design you want! Circles with cross points, spokes, concentric, spiral! Squares like a formal British royal garden. Wild like a cottage garden or food forest garden guild. Beds in blocks. Straw bales wherever you can put them! Terraced on a slope! S curves along an existing path interspersed with ornamentals! Maybe you would like to add a greenhouse this year, or you need a shed and convenient workspace.

Put in pathways – straw bedding, boards, gravel, pallets, living mulch, as suits the spirit of the location, are safe and make you happy to be there!

Where is the summer and winter sun path in the sky? Where will you plant tall to short? Generally it’s tall in the North to short in the South. A full 6 to 8 hours of sun is best for almost all veggies. You can do shade, but it’s slower and fruits are not as big or plentiful. If so, choose varieties of plants that like cooler weather.

If you choose to make your own compost, select an easy access area for composting, near the kitchen, if you will be using it on an ongoing basis. Plant compost speeding herbs like comfrey or yarrow right next to it. They like a lot of water and your compost needs to be kept moist, so near a spigot is good thinking. Plant pretty calendula – summer or borage – winter to hide it and bring bees and butterflies! If you use straw layers, leave space beside your composter or compost area for a bale staked in place on its end.  See more

Also choose an area, maybe near the compost, for your worm box if you will be growing them for their valuable castings. Mine are in full sun all year and produce like crazy. See more

Decide if you want to do a no dig Lasagna type bed or your soil is fine and you can just get to planting right now! But first, either way, install gopher protection wire!

The nitty gritties are deciding what plants you want, how much space they take up per the return you hope for. 

What plants do you want? Will you judge by nutritional value first, return per square foot? Will you really eat it or has your family just always grown it? Will you be biodiversely companion planting or monoculture row planting?

Think about your choices for permanent residents! Plant perennial herbs by the kitchen door, at corner points or gates. The perennial Dragon Fruit along the fence. An amazing chayote needs tons of room. Artichokes are big, and grow 10 years! Set aside an all year area for flowering plants for bees, beneficials, butterflies and birds! See Stripes of Wildflowers!

In summer, where will biggies like that Winter Hubbard Squash, pumpkin, squash or melon, artichoke, sweet potatoes fit or is there really enough space for them per their production footprint? Sweet potatoes want a lot of water. Do you need them to cover space while you take a break from other planting?

Will you be planting successive rounds of favorites throughout the season? If you plant an understory of fillers – lettuces, table onions, radish, beets, carrots, etc – you won’t need separate space for them. If you trellis, use yard side fences, grow vertical in cages, you will need less space. See Vertical Gardening, a Natural Urban Choice! If you plant in zig zags, rather than in a straight line, you can usually get one more plant in the allotted space.

Are you growing for food or seed or both? Waiting for plants to flower to seed takes time, and the space it takes is unavailable for awhile. But bees, beneficial predator insects, butterflies and birds come. And you will have seeds adapted to your area for next year’s planting, plus extras to share, perhaps take to the Seed Swap!

Would be lovely to put in a comfy chair to watch the garden grow, see birds, listen to the breeze in the leaves. Or read a bit and snooze in the hammock.

Install a summer social area, table, chairs, umbrella. Have candlelight salads in the garden with friends. This is at Davie Village Community Garden in Vancouver’s West End.

Plant sizes, time to maturity  There are early, dwarfs, container plants that produce when they are smaller, have smaller fruits. There are long growing biggies that demand their space, over grow and outgrow their neighbors! Maybe you don’t need huge, but just enough for just you since it’s only you in your household. Or it’s not a favorite, but you do like a taste! The time it takes to mature for harvest depends on weather, your soil, watering practices, whether you feed it or not along the way. The size depends on you and the weather also, but mainly on the variety you choose. You can plant smaller varieties at the same time you plant longer maturing larger fruiting varieties for a steady table supply. How long it takes to maturity, and the footprint size of your mature plant is critical to designing your garden, making it all fit.

Vertical and Horizontal Spacing!

• Vertical Space – More plants per square foot!
  • One method is to double trellis up! Cucumbers below beans!
  • The other is to plant in ‘layers!’ Plant an understory of ‘littles’ and fillers below larger taller plants ie Lettuce under Broccoli. The lettuce does double duty – food and as living mulch!
• Horizontal Space – Give them room to thrive at MATURE SIZE!
  • Pests and diseases go right down the row of plants of the same kind, especially when they touch each other. You may lose them all ~ better is Biodiversity. Interplant with pest repelling, growth enhancing and edible companion plants! Alternate varieties of the same kinds plants.
  • More is not always better. Plants too closely transplanted, seeded/not thinned, get rootbound. That squeezes oxygen from the soil, prevents or dramatically reduces water uptake for plants in the center. Plants can’t take up nutrients without water. That lessens growth and production since your plants are literally starving. In crowded conditions feeding your plants doesn’t help. Weakened plants are more disease and pest susceptible. Give them room to breathe and live to their full glory! Only ONE healthy plant may produce more than an entire row of stunted plants.
  • On the other hand, do as many have always done, deliberately overplant then thin for delicious mini salad greens!

Look up each of your plant choices. Make a list – name, variety, days to maturity, mature spacing. The mature spacing gives a good indication how tall your plant might get and if it will shade out other plants. If you put your list on your computer you can click on the column to reorganize the list per footprint space/height or days to maturity.

Your purpose may be for your and your family’s daily food, as a chef for your clients, for a Food Bank. Fruit and nut trees may be part of your long term plan.

Now that we know how much space you have and your purpose for growing each plant, we can estimate how many plants of each you need, how many seeds you will need if you plant from seeds. Know that Mama Nature has her own schedule – lots of rain, no rain. Wind. Hail. Heat. Birds love picking seeds or tiny seedlings you planted and snails/slugs are perpetually hungry. We won’t speak about gophers. Add to your number of seeds to account for surprises, gardener error, low germination if the seeds are old. Get enough for succession plantings.

A special design factor! Remember that patch of plants that self-seed every year? Don’t forget to allow for them in your Garden plan! My BreadSeed Poppies are a perfect example. The seeds fall from the pods all by themselves. The seeds are miniscule. All of summer planting, soil amending, turning the soil for spring planting happens, winter planting happens, and there, in early spring, by the greatest miracle, come the Poppies! The seeds that end up at the surface know just where and the perfect time they want to grow. Every year I forget to allow for them. But they are so beautiful, again, I change my plan, wait for them to stun us with their beauty, and make seeds to gather and share at the annual Seed Swap! It takes that time, now almost a sacred ritual.

If you are a SoCal gardener, you may plant several times over a season. In summer plant bush bean varieties and determinate tomatoes for soonest table supply and to harvest all at once for canning. If you want a steady table supply all season long, also plant pole bean varieties and indeterminate tomatoes. If you have a Northern short season summer window, you may choose cold tolerant early bush and determinate varieties for quicker intense production. In SoCal ‘winter,’ plant bush and pole peas at the same time for early peas then a longer harvest of the pole peas!

Take into account the number of people you are feeding and their favorites!

Graph paper, sketches, a few notes jotted on the back of an envelope, in your head. It all works and is great fun! If you sketch it, keep that sketch to make end-of-season notes on for next year’s planning!

Here’s to many a glorious nutritious feast – homegrown organic, fresh and super tasty!

See also some of the bigger long term choices planning your garden.

Back to top

---

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic!

Read Full Post »

Smart Design for Your Spring & Summer Garden, Seed Selection!

Designing your garden is an intricate and intimate process depending on a lot of factors. It will ‘look’ like you as you are at the time of your life that you do it. Gardens are a form of autobiography. ~Sydney Eddison, Horticulture magazine, August/September 1993. If you plant from seed, designing your garden leads to making a pretty accurate seed list.

Some of your choices will be the same as what your family always did. Or, you may be a permaculture type doing a Food Forest guild system. There is no right way. You are you, your situation unique. You may be the same the rest of your life, only influenced by drought, deluge, seasons or climate change. You may be research oriented and enjoy trying out new plants and practices from across the world, allowing volunteers the birds bring to grow. You might decide to leave an untouched wild area in the name of freedom or magic, or rest a section of your garden each winter! Or plant it to green manure!

Take Day Length into account! Photoperiodism is applicable to many plants. Some plants and certain varieties of some plants, simply won’t grow or produce if they don’t have the right day length. Some plants stop growing when there is less than 10 hours of daylight. There are special considerations for broccoli, onions and bulbing plants like beets. You will need to know your latitude to determine the best choices for your area. Santa Barbara CA is 34N; Jan/Feb have less than 10 hours of light per day. See more and examples of planting strategies!

Choose a sunny place with easy access to water! Bioswales may be part of your water capture plan. In SoCal consider a centuries old technique, a water saving Waffle Garden. Greywater distribution location may determine where fruit and nut trees will be planted. Then how will their mature shade affect the rest of your garden? Use dwarfs? 

Make your garden a shape that flows with the area, whether that be simply the space available, or contoured to the land. Use slopes and hillsides! (Image by Arterra LLP Landscape Architects) Grow permeable windbreak shrubs to slow wind. If you don’t have outdoor space, but do have a sunny doorstep or balcony, put those containers to work! See some smart design ideas and tips at the Magic of Permaculture!

Layouts can be any design you want! Circles with cross points, spokes, concentric, spiral! Squares like a formal British royal garden. Wild like a cottage garden or food forest garden guild. Beds in blocks. Straw bales wherever you can put them! Terraced on a slope! S curves along an existing path interspersed with ornamentals! Maybe you would like to add a greenhouse this year, a worm bin, or you need a shed and convenient workspace.

Put in pathways – straw bedding, boards, gravel, pallets, living mulch, as suits the spirit of the location, are safe and make you happy to be there!

Where is the summer and winter sun path in the sky? Design to plant so tall plants don’t shade out the shorties – generally that is tall in the North, short in the South. If you have only morning sun, you plant tall in the West, vice versa for only afternoon sun. A full 6 to 8 hours of sun is best for almost all veggies. You can do shade, but it’s slower and fruits are not as big or plentiful.

If you choose to make your own compost, select an easy access area for composting, near the kitchen, if you will be using it on an ongoing basis. Plant compost speeding herbs like comfrey or yarrow right next to it. Plant pretty calendula or borage to hide it and bring bees and butterflies! If you use straw layers, leave space beside your composter or compost area for a bale staked in place on its end.  See more

Also choose an area, maybe near the compost, for your worm box if you will be growing them for their valuable castings. Mine take full sun all year. See more

Decide if you want to do a no dig Lasagna type bed or your soil is fine and you can just get to planting right now! But first, either way, install gopher protection wire!

The nitty gritties are deciding what plants you want, how much space they take up per the return you hope for.

What plants do you want? Will you judge by nutritional value first, return per square foot? Will you really eat them or has your family just always grown it? Will you be biodiversely companion planting or monoculture row planting?

Think about your choices for permanent residents! Plant perennial herbs by the kitchen door, at corner points or gates. The perennial Dragon Fruit along the fence. An amazing chayote needs tons of room. Artichokes are big, and grow 10 years! Set aside an all year area for flowering plants for bees, beneficials, butterflies and birds! See Stripes of Wildflowers!

Where will biggies like that Winter Hubbard Squash, pumpkin, squash or melon, artichoke fit or is there really enough space for it per its production footprint? Do you need it to cover space while you take a break from other planting?

Will you be planting successive rounds of favorites throughout the season? If you plant an understory of fillers – lettuces, table onions, radish, beets, carrots, etc – you won’t need separate space for them. If you trellis, use yard side fences, grow vertical in cages, you will need less space. See Vertical Gardening, a Natural Urban Choice! If you plant in zig zags, rather than in a straight line, you can usually get one more plant in the allotted space.

Are you growing for food or seed or both? Waiting for plants to flower to seed takes time, and the space it takes is unavailable for a while. But bees, beneficial predator insects, butterflies and birds come. And you will have seeds adapted to your area for next year’s planting, plus extras to share, perhaps take to the Seed Swap!

Would be lovely to put in a comfy chair to watch the garden grow, see birds, listen to the breeze in the leaves, read a bit and snooze.

Or a social area, table, chairs, umbrella. Have candlelight summer salads in the garden with friends. This is at Davie Village Community Garden in Vancouver’s West End.

Plant sizes, long-short day or day neutral, time to maturity  There are early, dwarfs, container plants that produce when they are smaller, have smaller fruits. There are long growing biggies that demand their space, over grow and outgrow their neighbors! Maybe you don’t need huge, but just enough for just you since it’s only you in your household. Or it’s not a favorite, but you do like a taste and nutrition! The time it takes to mature for harvest depends on weather, your soil, whether you feed it or not along the way and select the right long-short day or day neutral variety. The size depends on you and the weather also, but mainly on the variety you choose. You can plant smaller varieties at the same time you plant longer maturing larger fruiting varieties for a steady table supply. How long it takes to maturity, and the footprint size of your mature plant is critical to designing your garden, making it all fit.

Vertical and Horizontal Spacing!

• Vertical Space – More plants per square foot!
  • One method is to double trellis up! Cucumbers below beans!
  • The other is to plant in ‘layers!’ Plant an understory of ‘littles’ and fillers below larger taller plants ie Lettuce under Broccoli. They do double duty as living mulch!
• Horizontal Space – Give them room to thrive at MATURE SIZE!
  • Pests and diseases go right down the row of plants of the same kind, especially when they touch each other. You may lose them all ~ better is Biodiversity. Interplant with pest repelling, growth enhancing and edible companion plants! Alternate varieties of the same kinds plants.
  • More is not always better. Plants too closely transplanted, seeded/not thinned, get rootbound. That squeezes oxygen from the soil, prevents or dramatically reduces water uptake for plants in the center. Plants can’t take up nutrients without water. That lessens growth and production since your plants are literally starving. In crowded conditions feeding your plants doesn’t help. Weakened plants are more disease and pest susceptible. Give them room to breathe and live to their full glory! Only ONE healthy plant may produce more than an entire row of stunted plants.

Look up each of your plant choices. Make a list – name, variety, days to maturity, mature spacing. The mature spacing gives a good indication how tall your plant might get and if it will shade out other plants. If you put your list on your computer you can click on the column to reorganize the list per footprint space/height or days to maturity.

Your purpose may be for your and your family’s daily food, as a chef for your clients, for a Food Bank. Fruit and nut trees may be part of your long term plan.

Now that we know how much space you have and your purpose for growing each plant, we can estimate how many plants of each you need, how many seeds you will need if you plant from seeds. Know that Mama Nature has her own schedule – lots of rain, no rain. Wind. Hail. Heat. Birds love picking seeds you planted and snails/slugs are perpetually hungry. We won’t speak about gophers. Add to your number of seeds to account for surprises and gardener error. Get enough for succession plantings.

If you are a SoCal gardener, you may plant several times over a season. Plant bush bean varieties and determinate tomatoes for soonest table supply and to harvest all at once for canning. If you want a steady table supply all season long, also plant pole bean varieties and indeterminate tomatoes. If you have a Northern short season summer window, you may choose cold tolerant early bush and determinate varieties for quicker intense production.

Take into account the number of people you are feeding and their favorites!

Graph paper, sketches, a few notes jotted on the back of an envelope, in your head. It all works and is great fun! If you sketch it, keep that sketch to make notes on for next summer’s planning!

Here’s to many a glorious nutritious feast – homegrown organic, fresh and super tasty!

Updated 12.31.21 

---

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. In 2018 they lasted into September and October! Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

Back to top

Read Full Post »

Planting Veggies Efficiently in Drought Times

Our recent 1″ rain in Santa Barbara was just a kiss! We aren’t out of the drought by a long shot, so keep clear about how you do your planting.

Kebun Malay-Kadazan girls plants a fine garden! Peas growing vertically behind 3 cauliflower plants. Growing in front of cauliflowers are leeks, carrots, corianders (cilantro), lettuces and 2 poppy plants. Companion planting rules, good job! Interplanting confuses pests!

In my many meanderings I one time read that small area gardeners are far more efficient than commercial farms. Here’s how we do it! First, we don’t need extra space for maintenance and harvesting machinery. We can use that space for perennial herbs that deliciously spice our foods and repel bothersome insects, and grow lovely flowers that fill our hearts with their beauty. Some flowers are edible, feed the bees and attract beneficial insects! Total winners!

Plant more than one crop together, right?! Water one, water all!

• On the summer trellis put cucumbers below, beans above. In the winter put beets, carrots or lettuces below, peas above.
• Tuck small variety cabbages like Baby Cabbage Pixie or Red Express on the sunny side under taller variety broccoli. Snip off lower branches once the brocs have enough size. Or plant cabbies around the base of your pom pom top curly leaf kales once the bottom leaves are harvested.
• Cilantro and Brassicas are very happy together.
• Tuck table/bunch onions in between everywhere except by peas. Keep them AWAY from the peas. And that means all onions/chives/garlic.

Plant cleverly and timely!  Put radish and carrots together. One’s up quick the other keeps growing more slowly, down.

Instead of planting low return space eater crops, put in year ’round continuous producers! 

• Instead of that huge 7′ footprint artichoke for a few fruits a year, pop in some broccoli like All Season F1 that makes those nice 3″ side shoots all year long once the main head is taken. Marvelous nutrition.
• Instead of corn that produces only 1, or 2, maybe 3 ears if you are lucky, plant a patch of forever feast low calorie massive Fordhook Giant chard. Amazing plant feeds an army. If you don’t need that much chard, plant gourmet ruby chard Scarlet Charlotte or brilliant yellow Pot of Gold! If a lot of chard suits you, plant them all! At home you can plant these among your ornamentals for bright winter color beauty!

Smaller yet quite productive varieties! These are better for when you like a veggie but don’t need that much. Look about for dwarf, patio, container varieties that use less water and are happy to nestle in among their neighbors. Improved Dwarf Siberian Kale is a good bet. It’s more open leaves make it less susceptible to mildew, and it’s easier to hose off aphids too! If you love cabbage, try some of those cute Red Express or Pixie Baby! They come in sooner, plant often for a steady fresh supply.

Plant two for ones!

• Beets! Use the leaves in salads, steamed, in stews. Wiki says beets can be cooked, pickled, and then eaten cold as a condiment; or peeled, shredded raw, and then eaten as a salad. Pickled (probiotic) beets are a traditional food of the American South, and are often served on a hamburger in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Arab Emirates. Don’t forget Borscht! Plant the traditional deep reds, goldens, or those stripy pink and whites!
• Carrots too! Steam or eat the greens in salads, eat the roots as you please! Try those spicy sweet heirloom Cosmic Purple carrots with bright orange inside! Or Purple Carrots F1, purple all the way through! If you want them faster, Thumbelinas are quick growers! If you like surprises, plant Renee’s Circus Circus variety pack!

And, naturally, look for those amazing Drought Tolerant varieties, and in summer, Heat Tolerant varieties!

Plant smart, save water!

Read Full Post »

Vertical Veggie Garden in a 55 Gallon ‘Drum!’

Want to expand your growing space, or you don’t have growing space?!

Vertical gardening in a 55 gallon barrel is a great solution! Cost-efficient, space-efficient! One barrel can be virtually an entire garden in itself – plant the sides in strawberries, lettuce, potatoes, herbs, carrots, beets, and hundreds of other plants, and a tomato and pepper in the top! In fact, an average 55-gallon drum can hold 72 plants in the sides alone, or fewer as you wish, depending on smaller or larger plant choices. Either way, it’s a good return per square foot.

No gophers, moles, or weeds, and few soil insect pests. Water usage is less because the system lowers evaporation since it’s enclosed. Water not used at the top trickles down to water plants below. A drain at the bottom collects any excess nutrient dense water, that is like a compost/worm casting tea, that you can pour right back on top of your barrel garden. Plants grow faster! 

Here’s the barrel building process! Select a clean barrel, make the pockets, set up a manual or automatic watering system, mix the fertilizer, plant, harvest, maintain.  

Get a food grade plastic barrel (if you are ok with plastic) from any food processing company, used on craigslist, from your local honey processor! 

DIY! Mark and make slits in the side with a buzz saw, open the slits with a soldering iron to soften the plastic, hammer a wedge in to open the slits to the dimension you want. OR, a jig saw, heat gun, crowbar, two by four. Use what you got. Some places you buy the barrels from will cut them for you for a little extra. Worth it for the long term investment you are making and the amazing production you will get from it.

The number of slits might be 48. If you are doing bigger plants, leave more space between the rows of slits around your barrel.

In the center install a 4 to 6″ worm tube! Put your worm food in there, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, stuff safe for them to eat. Drill holes into the tube so the worms can come and go, aerating your soil, leaving their castings as they meander. At the bottom of the barrel, make a hole that you can screw a plug into at the bottom of your worm tube. Put your barrel up on cinder blocks so when you remove the plug, the worm castings fall down into a container below. Put a cap on top of the tube to keep out critters like mice, and rain.

If your barrel will have a permanent location, sunny on all sides, you can attach legs, or put it up on cinder blocks. If you need to move it around or turn it for sun and shade, pop your barrel up on a plant dolly. Put the drum in its permanent location, or on your dolly, before filling the container with soil and plants because then it may be too heavy to move afterwards.

Check out Half-Pint Homestead’s video on how to make your own barrels! How to install automatic watering, a drip system in your barrels. John Kohler shows you how to set up a Garden Tower and plant your plants in it. He is a strong advocate of super soil with powerful amendments! And why not?! Makes a lot of sense. Lots of healthy plants in a small space are chomping up those nutrients right and left. What you put in is what you get back. The video is done in his inimitable way, quickly with lots of animation!

If you don’t want to build one yourself, get one in from a small company in Bloomington Indiana called Garden Tower Project! Their new custom terracotta colored, USDA food grade, UV-stabilized v1.1 Garden Towers are $269 (Feb 2014), versus the Tower Gardens, the tall white skinny towers, that start at $525 for a structure that grows only 20 plants. The foot print is about the same, but these don’t have to be anchored and your plants whipped about around a small diameter when there is high wind. And there are certain plants, like peppers, with vertical stems, that don’t do well in Tower Gardens. Garden Towers recycle your kitchen scraps, do worm composting, and your plants are grown in soil. 

If you are planting on a deck, balcony or rooftop, be sure the weight of either one can be accommodated safely. Be sure your water source is convenient and there won’t be water damage to your space or neighbors below or near you.

Plant placement! Smaller plants to the top, vining plants at the bottom. Put upright plants like tomatoes, peppers, bigger tall plants, carrots that need to grow straight, in the top of your barrel. Or plant the whole thing to strawberries! Perennials are not your best choice because they can become root bound. 

Maintenance is pretty simple. From time to time, you add some of your collected castings, and replenish your compost as soil settles, gets used. Replant when space becomes available.

In Eugene OR, the students are making start up barrels to sell, and getting a community garden going this year! Perfect!

Alex at Garden Tower Project tells the story pretty quickly and makes the big points!  It’s way less expensive and complicated than hydroponics. You can put them anywhere. Perfect for seniors, no weeding! Oh, and the barrels come in different colors – green, red, white and blue, and now, that lovely natural looking terracotta!

Read Full Post »

Mediterranean Understory & *Guild Plants for Food Forests – Part 1

.
This is one example of how to do a single tree simple mini system. It is designed by Joshua Reynolds at Texas Edible Landscapes. He sells these PODS, self-sustaining micro eco-systems, that can come with lots of variables per the plants you pick. July 2019 prices – Ready made, $550; custom is $750. Food Forests and Guilds are catching on!

There is nothing new about Forest gardens/Food forests. Indigenous peoples have always had them at the edge of the village. Many visitors never knew the garden was there since they didn’t eat the same foods. We have come to understand how these ‘food forests’ work. They have been being deliberately mimiced and with practice we have found out a lot more about why and how they work, and added a few touches of our own! At their height, they have literally brought an appreciation and respect for the importance of trees, how trees beget their own companion plants, called Guilds. They are ecological zones! Trees and other perennials have taught us their extended worth, much more than money, as we experience climate changes.

If you want to grow your own, if your land already has plants growing naturally on it, sit down with them. Maybe a bit each day for a few days. Let the land talk with you. Notice the lay of the land, how it flows.

Trees are your master plant. Plant a tree thinking in the long term of a food/garden forest, guild – mainly its mature height! What about shading your area, the neighbor’s area? It will be there a long time. Think carefully what tree that will be – a food producer? Will it interfere with the soil, limiting choices of what you will plant under, around, near it. Due to tannins and oils, oak, eucalyptus, tea tree, walnut pose a challenge. Do you want it to be a windbreak so the land will be warmed for veg planting? What does your space accommodate? Do you want full grown trees? Or would your space and palate do better with an array of different kinds of dwarf trees, mixed semidwarf trees grafted with different fruits or nuts at fruit picking reachable height?

Food Forest at Alan Day Community Garden, Norway, Maine

There are all different kinds of Forest gardens/Food forests! When permaculture first got popular, the hybrid garden design was used. It was a ‘U’ shaped area cleared among the trees, the opening to the south to allow the greatest amount of sunlight and heat to be received. The edges were natural, acted as windbreaks. The central, protected and warmer portion, was planted to veggies. Since then, as the idea of Food Forests has taken hold, they have been incorporated right into urban living! They are planned from the selection of useful food producing border trees and shrubs to learning about plant companion guilds with one central tree. That happened because few urban homes had room for more, so make the best use of the space you have! Some are planted in narrow side home strips or small yards, but they are cleverly and creatively happening! Your first job is selecting your space, designing as you can.

If you have enough space, you can use the old hybrid U shape more wisely, to great advantage! Our knowledge now is much more sophisticated. In these times of needing more sustainability, little land available, Food Forests now are tending to use more efficient low maintenance perennials, that survive for decades. A mature forest may not even be recognized as a garden. The levels blend just like in nature, self mulching, use less water. Harvesting may be done along the only opening which may be a broad path corridor. But if you love your annuals, plant them along borders or in sunlit areas, or just like times past, in that protected area. You can do as you wish! If you strictly want only a perennial food forest, please see GroCycle’s super post The Complete Guide to Food Forest Layers for site selection/prep, how to tips, details on layers, much more!

See Designing your SoCal Winter Veggie Garden! Think Big! to mix it up and broaden your long term plans!

Perennials are nature’s mainstays. They are efficient, no replanting season after season waiting for fruit to form. If the perennial is eaten for their leaves you have a constant year round supply, and once at maturity, some produce fruit/veggies year round! Many are natives perfectly suited to their area – water needs, that soil. Inquire locally! They are often heat and drought tolerant. They are water saving, not requiring more start start up water like newly planted plants. See more!

December, January are a great time to install native plants and fruit trees! Nurseries stock them bare-root then! See if any of this info affects where and how you place them. Your garden can start with a single tree in your backyard. Read Toby Hemenway’s book ‘Gaia’s Garden,’ especially the chapter on Designing Garden Guilds. Toby says “…biological support replaces human intervention, shifting the garden’s burden onto the broad back of nature.” If you have time and inclination, see Linda & Larry’s Food Forest Video! Besides their suburban Santa Barbara yard being a food forest, it is the epitome of edible landscaping!  

*Guild plants are plants that grow well together. It’s a LOT more than companion planting by twos, two plants that like, enhance, or help each other, though that is wonderful too. Happy plants make more food! Guilds are systems of plants starting with a tree if you have the space! If you can’t do a tree, start at the level you can – food producing shrubs are good too! Generally that tree is a fruit or nut tree that provides food. For lots of great ideas, check out Permies.com on Guilds. If you love the idea of guilds, and apples, check out the details at this Apple Tree Guild! – image at left. A large area super functioning guild utilizes both vertical space and horizontal overlapping circles!

Food forests are naturally occurring in nature. Permaculturists think of them designed in layers. From Wiki, adapted to one person’s Apple Guild example, running vertically from the top down:

1. The canopy – the treetops.
2. The understory or low tree layer – anything under about 4.5 meters. Our apple trees will be in this zone but in our neighborhood they’ll be some of the highest plants around so nothing will be competing with them for light.
3. Shrubs – our raspberries, broad beans, and blackcurrants are in this layer. Being larger, the vicinity of the apple tree will only sustain a few of these. Broad beans are a good bet since their roots fix nitrogen from the air and get it into the soil where the tree and other plants can use it.
4. Herbaceous layer – lettuces, dill, thyme, cabbage, rhubarb and so on. Anything that flowers with the apple blossom will attract insects which will help to pollinate the tree (without which, no apples).
5. Rhizosphere – root crops like carrots and potatoes grow here, so need to be kept far from the shallow roots of an apple tree.
6. Soil surface – home of our strawberries, sedum and clover. Clover is another soil feeding nitrogen-fixing plant.
7. Vertical layer – our hops, cucumbers, sweetpeas and vines grow here. Sweetpeas fix nitrogen in their roots, which can be left in the ground after they have died back – but they climb and have thick foliage, so only suitable for larger trees.
8. Some people include the underground network of some fungi as an eighth layer. In our garden the edible fungi include puffballs, though somehow we never catch them before they are football-sized.

That’s the vertical plane – there’s also a horizontal plane. An apple tree’s root spread is one-and-a-half times the diameter of its canopy and its principle feeding roots lie close to the surface, which tends to be where most of the soil’s nutrients are.

Your Forest garden/Food forest might look like William Horvath’s when it is mature. As your food forest grows, fills in, there will be no obvious layers. It will look just like nature does, blended, each plant getting sunlight per it’s height. William Horvath has ongoing experience with Food Foresting! See his detailed May 5, 2017 post and read the comments! 

When you are reading online, remember to pay attention to where the guild example is. There are super wet northern guilds, snowy mountains, humid southern areas, hot and dry south western desert types, snowy northern plains and central US flatlands. All will require their own special treatment. Your best guide will be Mother Nature herself. If you are a native plant fan, the ones in your area may be the most sustainable choice of all per water needs. What did the indigenous peoples eat there?

If you are growing for income, research to find the most productive trees and crops in your area will be key. If you want self reliance, diversity is key – what grows super well together. You want crops coming in all year – fresh potent nutrition makes for healthy lives, and crops that store well if you don’t have the all year option! Some gardeners opt for a combination of in-the-ground plants interspersed with greenhouses.

I am in hopes you will talk this up to your apartment owner, install it on your own property. No matter what the size, model your veggie garden after it, share it with every gardener anywhere, of any kind that you know. This principle is so important in many ways. Guild lists can be made for every area, plant zone, specific for every tree! Guild planting makes sense.

• It’s economical.  Low maintenance food forest plants grow densely, produce more for less work. We are making on prem food forests when times are hard and may get harder.
• Ecologically we are restoring native habitat when we plant and support those plants that use our water more wisely.
• It is sustainable –  produces more food on less land, uses less water, cuts food miles, less fuel, packaging.
• Health is prime as we eat organic, much more nutritious food that hasn’t been depleted by shipping, storage and processing.

Our list [SEE IT!] author is Linda Buzzell-Saltzman, M.A., MFT, co-editor with Craig Chalquist of the anthology Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, Sierra Club Books (May 2009). She is a psychotherapist and ecotherapist in Santa Barbara, where she specializes in helping clients with career issues, financial challenges and the transition to a simpler, more sustainable and nature-connected lifestyle. Linda is an heirloom rose lover, current board member of the Santa Barbara Rose Society, founder of the International Assn for Ecotherapy and co-founder of the Santa Barbara Organic Garden Club! She cares.

Linda’s List is intended for a Mediterranean climate like coastal Southern California has, one of only 5 in the world. The list in your area may be different. Check out your local gardener’s successes, check with your local nursery, permaculturists. This list is not tree specific yet. We’re working on that!

More than a list of plants, Linda’s List gives tips for good growing, eating, and usage!

SEE PART 2, the List!

Updated 3.25.23

^Top

---

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. Both of Santa Barbara City’s remaining community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

Read Full Post »

Mediterranean Understory & Guild Plants for Food Forests – Part 2

Please SEE Part 1 before you read this list!

Here is what a young Food Forest can look like in a part of your urban yard!

Linda’s List here is intended for a Mediterranean climate like coastal Southern California has, one of only 5 in the world. The list in your area may be different. Check out your local gardeners’ successes, check with your local nursery. This list is not tree specific yet. We’re working on that!

More than a list of plants, Linda’s List gives tips for good growing, eating, and usage!
____________________________________________________________________

Once our fruit trees are planted in their water-saving basins in a budding Mediterranean food forest, it’s now time to think about what else to plant in these usually moist wells and swales. Or up the trees? Or nearby? We need these companion plants to increase our food and medicine yield, and also to enrich the soil, provide habitat, pull up minerals and other nutrients from deep in the earth, draw nitrogen from the air and bring it into the soil, attract beneficial insects to control pests, create shade for delicate roots — and to provide beauty, a critical psychological and spiritual yield in every garden.

Thanks to the members of the Permaculture Guild of Santa Barbara and the Santa Barbara Organic Garden Club for their ideas and input. Additions and corrections are welcome.  Please email lbuzzell@aol.com. Especially welcome would be input on what plants do best under specific fruit trees – so far I don’t have much information on that.

BERRIES
Blueberry. To grow well here, they need acid soil, so a container is often the best solution, since Santa Barbara soil and water tend to be alkaline. One gardener we know waters hers with a very dilute solution of white vinegar, plus puts pine needles, coffee grounds around the plant. Best in Mediterranean climates are the low-chill varieties like ‘Misty,”O’Neal,’ ‘Sharpblue’
Cane berries. Upright cane berries are fun to pop in here and there as understory plants and they take some shade. But we found out the hard way that you probably don’t want to put in sprawling, thorny berries (especially blackberry) that sucker underground – they pop up all over the yard and are hard to eradicate. When we buy new berries we limit ourselves to thornless varieties and our current favorites are ‘Navajo’ and ‘Apache,’ although the thorny varieties that still linger in our garden – and will probably be there for hundreds of years as they’re ineradicable – taste best. So we live with them and enjoy the berries.
Elderberry. Shrub. There is a California native variety. Produces edible fragrant white flowers (used to make elderberry syrup and wine) and edible small blue berries that the birds love. Ripe berries are safe to eat but leaves, twigs, branches, seeds and roots are toxic. Has medicinal uses. We use our elderberry as a sacrificial plant attracting birds away from other fruit trees.
Lemonade Berry (native). Rhus integrifolia. Can also control erosion.

BULBS AND ROOT CROPS
Placement of these may take special care, as you don’t want to plant them too close to delicate tree roots.
Carrots
Edible canna. Canna edulis –Achira. Flowers are smaller than most cannas and the root is edible, can be chopped and sautéed like potato.
Onions
Potato and sweet potato

EDIBLE FLOWERS (note: most fruit trees, veggies and herbs also have edible flowers. Always triple check the safety of any flower before eating!
Daylilies. Hemerocallis species. Buds are used in Chinese stir fry, Petals in salad.
Nasturtium (flowers, young leaves and buds that may be pickled like capers) Let the plants die back in place. They will reseed and form a straw mulch.
Roses (yield petals for salads, sandwiches, syrups, desserts; rose hips for tea, syrups, jam)
Scarlet runner bean
Scented geranium

HERBS (most have edible flowers in addition to other uses)
Borage
Chili peppers, including tree chili
Cilantro
Garlic
Italian parsley
Lavender
Lemon balm
Lemon verbena. A drought tolerant shrub with delicious leaves for tea.
Mint. Some fear its vigorous, spreading roots, but we welcome it into drier areas as ground cover, autumn bee food and a source of fresh leaves for cooking and tea.
Mustard (young leaves can be stir fried, flowers are edible, plus seeds for making mustard)
Pineapple sage (leaves and flowers make delicious herbal tea)
Oregano
Rosemary
Sage

SHRUBS/Understory trees
Guava. Psidium Tropical shrubs native to Mexico, Central and South America that yield white, yellow or pink fruit. Not to be confused with Pineapple Guava (Feijoa) Psidium guajava (apple guava) is one tasty variety. Also try lemon guava and strawberry guava.

VEGGIES (there’s no way to name them all – it’s fun to experiment to see what likes the soil under and around your fruit trees. Our favorites are those that overwinter and/or reseed themselves)
Artichokes. Plant away from tree roots, in baskets as the gophers love them.
Brassicas like broccoli, kale, collard greens.
Chard.
Dandelions. Leaves are great in salads and so good for us. Small birds like the seed heads.
Fava beans and other beans.
New Zealand spinach.

VINES
We often forget about vertical space in the garden, but it’s nice to increase your yield by growing edible vines up fruit trees, on walls and over arbors, fences and hedges.
Grapes. Note: the Permaculture Guild of Santa Barbara has a separate list of recommended table and wine grapes for our area. Contact lbuzzell@aol.com for details
Passion Fruit. A garden member says “mine is simply rampant, productive and trouble-free; gets little to no supplemental water.” The juice can be used to make a spectacular salad dressing (served at Los Arroyos on Coast Village Road in their tropical salad).

MISCELLANEOUS
Bamboo. Use clumping instead of running kinds to avoid it taking over your garden. Bamboo shoots are a delicacy in Asia.
Pepino melon.
Sacrificial plants. In permaculture designs we often plant trees, shrubs and other plants that are nitrogen-accumulators, “nurse” plants or fruit-providers for animals that might otherwise eat our crops. When they have performed their function, we “chop and drop” them around our fruit trees as a nutritious mulch.
Yucca. We’ve read that yucca yields edible fruit and flower buds. Anyone have more info on this?

BENEFICIAL ATTRACTORS AND NUTRIENT ACCUMULATORS
Ceanothus. Shrubs and ground covers that fix nitrogen in the soil.
Salvia, ornamental. These are treasures in the Mediterranean forest garden.
Tagetes lemmonii. Golden color is lovely in fall.

GROUND COVER
Easy-to-grow succulents can provide temporary ground cover for delicate roots. They can act as a living mulch until other plants take over that function. This crop is often free, as gardeners who have ground-cover sedums always have too many and are glad to share.
Pelargoniums and lantana are other easy, colorful ground cover that can be removed as needed.
__________________________________________________________________

#1 Home Permaculture book in the world for seven years!

Per PatternLiteracy.com, Toby Hemenway’s home site, Gaia’s Garden has been the best-selling permaculture book in the world for the last 7 years. The enlarged, updated 2nd edition is the winner of the 2011 Nautilus Gold Medal Award.

The first edition of Gaia’s Garden sparked the imagination of America’s home gardeners, introducing permaculture’s central message: Working with nature, not against her, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens. This extensively revised and expanded second edition broadens the reach and depth of the permaculture approach for urban and suburban growers.

Treat yourself and your land to this incredibly efficient way of gardening. Wisely use ALL the space available to you in a good way. Nature is the Master Gardener – follow her lead.

Read Full Post »

Growing UP, 4 High Yield Summer Plants!

From the LA Examiner.com Pasta with fried zucchini, teardrop tomatoes and walnut pesto!

Four of the highest yield summer plants per square foot are indeterminate tomatoes, pole beans, zucchinis, and chard!  Three of these crops can be grown up, on trellises, in cages, so your land need is small.  Chard is prolific, cut and come again all year long!

Tomatoes are classically grown UP!  They have their own little support systems, tomato cages!  Some people trellis them, grow them against the fence, espalier them, even grow them upside down!  At Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden we have two foot diameter cages we build out of two remesh panels – if you are local, drop by to see them on the job!  

We use those same structures for pole beans!  Pole beans love growing on trellises, any kind!  Those simple tripods tied at the top work fine.  Or let them shinny up your sunflower Jack-in-the-Beanstalk style!  I feed them across my remesh panel horizontally so they remain at harvest height!

For zuchs, the easiest thing is to grab the largest strongest tomato cage you have and feed the zuch leaves up though it as your zuch grows! Let some of the outmost leaves stick out so the plant is more open for easier harvesting in the center, air flows to allow cooler conditions to prevent mildews. Cut the bottommost leaves off as the plant gets taller and well foliated, plant other plants underneath! As your zuch vines more, put in another cage, or two, right next to the first one. Let your vine grow right over the top of them, above the other plants already growing there. Put in as many cages as you need as your vine grows.  This is one time when it really doesn’t pay to let your zuchs get huge on the vine, break the plant from their weight, fall on plants below!  Harvest small and salad tender.  If you see one coming, don’t neglect to check on it in a maximum of 2 days.  In prime conditions they are FAST growers!  

If you are growing butternuts/winter squash, or gourds, pop in a well staked sturdy trellis – simplest is remesh 4′ X 7′ panels from Home Depot or OSH, or an arbor. Remesh can be bent whimsically or cut to fit a spot perfectly, or green wire tied together to make cage sizes that suit your needs. Tie your vine, 10′ for squash, 25′ for gourds, to the trellis, or to a southwest facing fence so your squash get plenty of heat and light. Use that flat green garden tie that expands with your plant as your plant grows.  Heavy fruits will need to be supported. Use cloth twine, net veggie bags ie onion bags, old panty hose, old sheets, towels, colorful cloth scraps, parts of old clothes. Have fun with it! 

That said, another ‘vertical’ trick, that doesn’t require tying, is to put up an upside down ‘U’ shaped device. Take one of those remesh panels, or a trellis and lay it over the top of sawhorses or any way you can devise, cinder blocks staked with rebar, whatever you have around. Be sure to support anyplace that needs it so the structure won’t sag. Plant your plants, cucumbers, melons, beans, outside the ends of your ‘arbor’; let them grow up and over. Your fruits will be supported by the remesh or trellis! Don’t make your structure too wide, and make it high enough – you want easy access to tend and harvest other plants that you will grow underneath, like summer lettuces that need a little shade!  Or it can be a kid play place and they will harvest the beans for you! 

Trellises?! Buying them readymade is time saving. Some gardeners would never dream of buying one. They build their own! Some make the simplest, three poles tied together at the top. Others go into fastidious detail and artistic ritual, creating works of beauty! To them, gardening wouldn’t BE gardening without doing that. 

Blessings on your way.  Up you go!

Read Full Post »

Full Circle Farm & How to Grow $700 of Food in 100 Square Feet!

Other Community Gardens   

Full Circle Farm, Sunnyvale CA

 

Some community gardens are larger and have different purposes!  Full Circle Farm is 11 acres!  It is an organic educational farm funded by nonprofit Sustainable Community Gardens. One of their goals is to put ‘fresh food in Santa Clara Unified School District cafeterias.’   Their ‘About Us’ page says:  Programs being developed include a science and nutrition elective for 6-8th graders, a farm-based apprenticeship program for teenagers, a mentoring program where at-risk teens lead elementary youth in garden and nutrition workshops, and a variety of school field trip programs.    

As a team, young people grow their own food, and develop critical life skills of communication, teamwork, leadership, decision-making, and problem-solving through practical, hands-on agricultural and entrepreneurial experiences.  If you will be up that way over the summer, here’s where to visit:  1055 Dunford Way, Sunnyvale, CA 94087
View Map    

Good Green Thinking! 

From Mother Earth News:  Grow $700 of Food in 100 Square Feet!  4 great tips from Rosalind Creasy & Cathy Wilkinson Barash:    

1. Choose indeterminate tomatoes. They keep growing and producing fruit until a killing frost. (Determinate varieties save space but ripen all at once.) 
2. In spring, plant cool-season vegetables, including lettuce, mesclun and stir-fry green mixes, arugula, scallions, spinach and radishes. They are ready to harvest in a short time, and they act as space holders until the warm-season veggies fill in. 
3. Grow up. Peas, small melons, squash, cucumbers and pole beans have a small footprint when grown vertically. Plus, they yield more over a longer time than bush types.   
4. Plants such as broccoli, eggplant, peppers, chard and kale are worth the space they take for a long season. As long as you keep harvesting, they will keep producing until frost   

The expanded second edition of Rosalind Creasy’s landmark book, Edible Landscaping, will be released in Spring 2010.

Read Full Post »

Plant a Lot in a Small Space!

First of two posts!   See 2nd post, 4.22.10
Clever Space Saving Strategies for Your Urban Garden!             

To some, a 10′ X 20′ Community Garden plot is daunting, to others it is not near enough space!  To get a tasty variety and enough production to keep your table steadily supplied all year, to have some to put in the freezer or can, here are some tips we Community Gardeners have learned to up our production!          

Plan Ahead for Scrumptious Returns!

Plan ahead for 3 seasons, maybe even four:  a cool-season crop, a warm-season crop, and then finishing with another cool-season crop. Careful attention to days to maturity for each crop grown will establish the ideal rotation period.

Raised beds without framing—plant on top and sides. Higher yield than on flat ground.  

Companion Planting—some plants actually kill others or stunt their growth. Onions stunt peas, but others thrive with each other, i.e. carrots enhance peas!   

Stacking—does your plant serve multiple functions, table food, fiber, dye, herb.   

Layering—  

• Put plants under each other at different levels, lettuce that may need summer shade under a taller plant, or used as a trap plant for Brassicas.
• Classic radish, carrots combo—short fast growing radishes dovetail nicely with long slow growing carrots!
• Start plants that will succeed another, for example, beans after peas, while the peas are finishing, you plant your beans at their bases.
• Interplant fast maturing crops such as lettuce, spinach and radishes with slower crops such as beans, squash and melons. By the time the slow crop grows to fill the space, the quick crop will be harvested. Or beans, radishes, green onions, spinach, or leaf lettuce may be planted between rows of tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, or corn. 

Go Vertical!  

• Trellising, cages, staking, using fences – peas, beans, cucumbers, melons.
• Pole beans versus bush beans = more beans for a longer time!
• Plant different varieties of the same plant that mature at different times, or entirely different kinds of plants, on either side of your trellis. They can grow simultaneously, but give a more continuous supply from that area of your garden.

On the other hand, for more variety, today’s gardener can also choose select bush varieties of beans, cucumbers, melons and squash that require much less space than standard varieties. For example:  

• Little Leaf Cucumber: This compact plant variety got its name because its leaves are only half the size of regular cucumber leaves.
• Burpee’s Butterbush Butternut Squash: These plants only need 1/4 the space that traditional sprawling winter squash varieties need. About nine square feet is as much space as this plant will need in order to produce its bell-shaped fruits. This variety also matures relatively quickly and produces 1 1/2 pound butternut squashes about 75 days after you seed it. 

Maximum production will require that you disregard standard row and plant spacing and utilize wide rows or beds for planting. For instance, seeds of many crops, such as leaf lettuce or beets, can be broadcast in a bed 1 to 3 feet across and thinned to obtain proper spacing—tasty little greens for your salad! Other crops, such as cabbage or broccoli, can be planted closely in wide rows so that their outer leaves will touch one another when the plants are about three-fourths mature. These tender thinnings can be stir fried or steamed! These methods reduce space wasted as aisles, and often provide such dense shade that weed growth is inhibited and evaporation of soil moisture is reduced.   

Container Garden, a Plot in a Pot! Hang baskets in tiers, on hooks on your fence, hang window boxes on your balcony, from a balcony – see images! On your roof, up your wall, on your deck. Grow lettuce and herbs in your windows! Use shelves. Espalier fruit trees. Mix veggies among ornamentals around your property. Although tomato and cucumber plants are the ones most commonly grown upside down, a wide assortment of plants can benefit from upside-down gardening, from vegetables to herbs and a variety of flowers.  

Hay Bale Garden

• Consider a Hay Bale Garden!  One gardener says ‘You can grow so much in a hay bale garden – lettuce, peas, flowers, strawberries and much more.  Don’t limit yourself to planting just the top – tuck edible nasturtiums, creeping thyme or fragrant alyssum into the sides.’  Total instructions by Rose Marie Nichols McGee, co-author of Bountiful Container! 
• Although tomato and cucumber plants are the ones most commonly grown upside down, a wide assortment of plants can benefit from upside-down gardening, from vegetables to herbs and a variety of flowers.

Plant smart!  May you have many healthful and muy delicioso meals! 

 

Read Full Post »