How to Grow 100 Pounds of Potatoes in 4 Square Feet | Apartment Therapy Re-Nest On many occasions, we've been tempted to grow our own potatoes. They're fairly low maintenance, can be grown in a pot or in the ground, last a fairly long time if stored properly, and can be very nutritious (high in potassium and vitamin C). Here's more incentive: according to this article, you can grow 100 pounds of potatoes in 4 sq. feet. According to this article from the Seattle Times, potatoes planted inside a box with this method can grow up to 100 pounds of potatoes in just 4 square feet. Lumber Seed potatoes Soil Careful attention to watering The Times' guide for building a potato growing box yields up to a 100 lbs. of potatoes in a mere 4 square feet is shown below: Plant as early as April or as late as August 1, with an approximated 3 month till harvest turnaround time. Here are some pointers from the article: Cut apart larger seed potatoes, making sure there are at least two eyes in each piece you plant. Seattle Times via LifeHacker.
66 Things You Can Grow At Home: In Containers, Without a Garden" Growing your own food is exciting, not only because you get to see things grow from nothing into ready-to-eat fruits and veggies, but you also don't have to worry about the pesticides they might contain, and you definitely cut down on the miles they—and you—have to travel. As it turns out, with pretty minimal effort, anyone can be a gardener. My boyfriend and I are essentially first-timers this season and so far have the beginnings of strawberries peeking out, tomatoes are on their way, the basil's about ready for a big batch of pesto, and once the last frost hits, the peppers, kale, spinach, chard, and mesclun will be on their way, too. All on a tiiiny little terrace (with the help of a little DIY carpentry). WATCH VIDEO: World's Greenest Homes: Rooftop Garden If you're up to the challenge—and it really isn't much of one—growing your own food can be so rewarding. Here's a starter list of all the crazy things even urban gardeners, without space for a garden, can grow at home. 1. 2. 3. 4.
Small-Scale Beekeeping My PeakProsperity username is the Latin name of the common honeybee ( “Apis mellifera” ). So it should come as no surprise that I'm a beekeeper. I started keeping bees about seven years ago, long before I had any awareness of "Peak Everything" or the three E's. And I enjoy keeping bees more than just about anything else. Why Keep Bees? The stock answer for why to keep bees is because bees make honey, and fresh, raw honey tastes much better than what passes for honey in the supermarket. Also, bees pollinate fruit trees and nearby crops. Bees emerging from an older inner cover. But if I'm perfectly honest, none of this is really why I keep bees. Disclaimers If you or someone in your family has a serious bee allergy, you shouldn't keep bees, of course. There's a saying among beekeepers: "Ask three beekeepers, get five opinions." Some Basic Bee Biology (the Ultra-Condensed Version) A strong beehive can have over fifty thousand bees. Note how fuzzy the workers' bodies are. Small-Cell Beekeeping
Gardening Tips - 7 Habits of Successful Gardeners Originally published January 2009 Or is it the Seven Pillars of Horticultural Wisdom? As everyone's resolutions remind us, we love attaching a number to advice, a number smaller than the one I regard as most realistic: The Twenty Three Thousand Four Hundred and Sixty-Two Things It's Important to Remember Before Getting Out of Bed. So be warned: I haven't really honed it down to only seven; these are just the first seven essentials that came to mind when I decided to do this. And not in order, either. Make CompostUse CompostPlant Crops in Wide BedsMulchFeed the Soil, Not the PlantsShare SomethingBe There Photo: The compost bins at Stonecrop Gardens in Cold Spring, N.Y. 1. Short version: Mother Nature never throws anything away. Longer version: Composting is the rare silk purse from sow's ear, something for nothing, win-win. It's easy to fall into thinking that compost's last name is bin, and that careful layering and turning are part of the deal. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Got seeds? 7.
Create a Garden Journal - Guest Post Today's guest post comes from Karen at Chicken Sense. Karen blogs about gardening, cooking, sewing, and living in the country. Below she shares some resources to get you started on creating a garden journal. A great rainy day project is to begin a garden journal. A garden journal isn’t just a diary, it’s important information to help you get the most from your efforts. You won’t find a better source of growing and gardening tips for next year than the ones you write yourself this year. Your garden journal can be as simple as a notebook, blank paper, and pencil; or free printable garden journal pages found online; or you can purchase software garden journals; or buy spiral bound garden journal books. Free Garden Journal Pages to Print Garden Journal Software and Books to Purchase Would like to see your post featured here?
Blog » 5 Secrets to a ‘No-work’ Garden It took over 20 years of gardening to realize that I didn’t have to work so hard to achieve a fruitful harvest. As the limitless energy of my youth gradually gave way to the physical realities of mid-life, the slow accretion of experience eventually led to an awareness that less work can result in greater crop yields. Inspired in part by Masanobu Fukuoka’s book, One Straw Revolution, my family experimented with gardening methods which could increase yields with less effort. Fukuoka spent over three decades perfecting his so-called “do-nothing” technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort. Here are the strategies we used which enabled us to greatly increase our garden yield, while requiring less time and less work. 1. With ‘no-till’ gardening, weeding is largely eliminated. 2. Gardeners are always on the lookout for free sources of clean organic mulch to add to their garden.
Comment élever des poules ? Peu contraignant, rentable, ludique et écologique, l’élevage des poules est sans doute l’un des premiers pas vers le retour à la nature. Traditionnel s’il en est puisque 70 % des familles françaises avaient un poulailler avant l’exode rural, cet élevage vous apportera d’énormes satisfactions pour bien peu d’investissements en temps ou en argent. Aubonsens se propose de donner les fondamentaux pour conduire un petit élevage familial avec succès. Pourquoi élever des poules ? Pour l’économie Les oeufs Un œuf de qualité acceptable se vend 30 centimes pièce [1]. La viande Du poulet industriel « élevé hors UE » au poulet de plein air certifié agriculture biologique, le prix varie entre 3 et 12 € par kilo. Pour l’écologie Les déchets En une année, chaque français produit 400 kilos de déchets qui seront apparemment taxés d’ici 2014. Les conditions d’élevage des animaux de l’industrie Plus de 8 œufs sur 10 sont produits par des élevages d’intérieur en batteries ou en volières. Pour la qualité de vie
Garden furniture, outdoor furniture and patio furniture at Garden Furniture World! The UK’s No 1. Garden Furniture Omega Hydroponic Garden Gets Five Times As Much Food Per Watt We often wonder about the benefits of indoor hydroponic gardening, given that the sun is free. After all, Illegal hydroponic installations are often discovered by their abnormally high electricity use. Last month Sami introduced us to the Omega Garden system; looking at it a bit more closely I wonder, can it make high tech urban gardening economically feasible and actually more energy efficient than growing outdoors? But Vancouver based Omega Garden's Carousel system rotates the plants around the bulb. They claim that it yields three to five times the weight of plant per watt of electricity used, compared to conventional flat systems. Their commercial carousel system produces as much as a 1500 square foot greenhouse in only 150 square feet, and their LED system just sips electricity. They claim a lot of advantages; the light is always even and exactly the same distance from every plant, at a close enough distance to get maximum light efficiency.
Garbage Gardening Down below this jungle of tomato and snap pea plants lies layers of organic waste and lots of composting worms busily converting the materials into rich vermicompost. As I mentioned a while back (and written about recently on Red Worm Composting), I’m involved in a pretty sizable restaurant food waste composting project this year. In a nutshell, I am receiving hundreds of pounds (per week) of fruit and vegetable waste from a very popular local restaurant and have been composting these materials on my property. Given the quantity of wastes, I’ve had to get a little creative with my methods, and I’ve certainly discovered some methods that really work well, and others that…well…don’t work quite so well! Most of my efforts have focused on various forms of vermicomposting. One simple technique that seems to be working quite well for me is what I refer to as ‘Garbage Gardening’ (although this name could actually be applied to much of what I’m doing in my backyard this year).