I just read something very disturbing. Here I've been thinking about myself and my family as I try to garden, but this alarming article made me realize that this planet is about to experience major stress and mass starvation, and now I'm thinking my modest little garden can help in a modest little way to alleviate enormous suffering.
At first, in my gardening efforts, I was thinking "Oh, it’ll be cheaper just to buy produce in the grocery store," but then I realized, after reading this article, that my gardening efforts are not only a hedge against the store shelves emptying out; they are a contribution I can make to the rest of the world as well to liberate what little food there is for others who are going to need it to keep from starving.
Please follow me below the fold to see what I'm doing, and also please include in the comments your own efforts and things that you've found that are helping you get into/succeed at gardening.
I didn't start trying to garden until 2003, when we moved onto about three acres in the country. I slowly began to learn over three seasons how to build raised beds, lay drip line, catch rain water, compost, build soil, nurture predator/prey relationships to control insects, work with worms, cook and preserve the harvest, etc. I even built a chicken coop and run and had ordered my hens, when we had to move to another city for DH's job, living in the surburbs.
That was in 2007, and I've been trying to garden ever since with very little success. I was trying the Mittleider method in our last (rental) house and had bought everything I needed to do the rows in the back yard with the landlord's permission, when we had to move again and this time to a place with prohibitions against digging up the yard. And, yes, I again walked off and left (or freecycled) everything I'd bought to facilitate my doing it.
Last season, after it dawned on me I might better spend my money on things that can be moved, I tried to make my own hydroponic setup (a simple floating raft method). I was not happy with the results. It wasn't that hydroponics won't work; it's that the system I chose was not appropriate for what I wanted to grow and I couldn't afford the lighting I needed to make it really work.
I just don’t have any place really good to garden, but I’m trying to get some things going in containers sitting out on my driveway where I get a little morning sun; the rest of the lot is too shady. Containers dry out really fast, too, in Florida, so it's going to be a challenge. I'm not trying to plug particular products, but here are some things I've bought recently or want to buy to help me garden: stand and hanging self-watering planters, EzGro quad pots or stacking planters. The latter two things provide only about 6.5" planting depth so veggies that require more depth won't like them; but I figure that with these, at least, they can be moved and I won't be out the investment. (I'm leaning toward an EzGro pole system because, then, later, I could convert it to an indoor recirculating hydroponics system like the one they sell as the Elite if it's not successful outdoors. The 9" diagonal, 7" on-the-square, 6.5" deep pots would stack on top of a five-gallon bucket with lid. And it might be the cheaper way to go in the long run. Of course, the cheapest way to go is lasagna gardening, but that requires the ability to dig up your yard.)
I've got one Earth Box, sans support structure, that I'm planning to use for bush-type summer squash. Some people rave about earth boxes, but for my situation they take up too much space and cost too much for what you can get out of them--especially if you want to grow something that requires a strong trellis structure.
One thing I'm trying is using inverted white spray-painted 2-liter bottles with the bottoms cut out to plant in, just stacking them up garden poles set into containers (poles go through center of bottle, and three or four poles are tied at the top for stability) with a coffee filter in the bottom of each; this way, the water trickles down through all the bottles and finally winds up in the container the poles are stuck into at the bottom, watering what I've got planted in the container. The instructables site has lots of ideas for planting in those 2-liter bottles; hit the recycle bins when trash day comes around.
I've bought a ton of gardening books over the years (this is my bible), but now I'm returning to the information and methods in Bountiful Container and
an older copy of Square Foot Gardening. A good book on container gardening will emphasize container depths and water requirements for various veggies. The SFG methods are very helpful for new gardeners who have a lot to learn about planting requirements but also need to be steered away from breaking the bank on all the fantastic (but often useless) things that are sold to prospective gardeners--the things I've bought and given away over the years. (If you're tempted to buy a bunch of seed-starting stuff, refer to Bountiful Container or learn about winter sowing. GardenWeb is a great resource for all kinds of planting and horticultural information.
Growing food is definitely a skill we all need to have, but it takes time to learn it and a certain amount of inventiveness as well. If you can go in with neighbors and share what you know and what you know how to do, that's great. Start a community garden in your neighborhood!
We can't depend on the food just being there, and it would be nice if we didn't do the Ugly American number when food supplies become limited. So whether folks are "into" the local food movement or not, please, everyone take the time to do something, even if it's just sticking some beans into the ground along a fence or sticking a tomato in a five-gallon bucket by your door or keeping a few hens in your backyard. Importantly, if everyone plants a modest little garden, it might be the difference in life or death for large numbers of people. Think about what all those $5 contributions did during the elections.
And president Obama et al., help us make gardening so cool that everyone's going to want to do it.