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. Learn how after the jump... 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.
Terrarium Centerpieces&|&Indie Bliss - StumbleUpon The other week, my good friend Stephanie and I planned out a craft weekend. Our mission: Terrariums. Not the kind you keep lizards in, but the kind you can seal up and watch the moss grow. It was fun, cheap, and easy, and while we were creating them I realized how awesome they would be as centerpieces at a wedding. They are totally unique, creative, and beautiful. We each made four of them, which just goes to show they are not even that labor intensive. Terrariums are meant to be long lasting, so you can even make some months before the wedding and still have them thriving in time for the big day. So lets get down to the nitty-gritty of how you can actually make them: Step 1: Materials • Glass containers in whatever size you heart most. • Good dirt and rocks. • Figurines or decorative rocks to place inside. • Horticultural Charcoal. • Moss (another one of those things you can find outside, but can also order if you don’t live somewhere it doesn’t grow naturally). - Paula Hayes - Eco Sphere
Rosalind Creasys new Edible Landscaping | L.A. at Home | Los Angeles Times After Rosalind Creasy tore out her front lawn and planted a vegetable garden, real estate agents stopped by to offer their services. With such great curb appeal, they said, the home would be an easy sell. That was in 1984, two years after the publication of Creasy's groundbreaking book, "Edible Landscaping." Since then, designer Creasy has established herself as one of the pioneer foodie-gardeners, and Sierra Club Books has just released the much-anticipated second edition of "Edible Landscaping" ($39.95). (That's the author's Black Satin blackberry vines, above, fruiting among the blooms of her climbing rose bush. The book recounts how for decades Creasy accompanied her husband on business trips to places such as Cairo, Hong Kong and Venice (the Italian one). Creasy noticed that home gardeners in these far-flung locales made no distinction between edible and ornamental. In Israel, she learned how vegetable waste could be composted and added to soils to support food crops.
How to grow a vegetable garden | Free help with growing a vegetable garden from The Beehive Growing a vegetable or kitchen garden will bring you many health benefits: eating better food, staying active and reducing stress. It also is good for your pocketbook by saving you a great deal at the grocery store. Here are ten helpful tips on how to grow a vegetable garden: Know what to plant. To find out what and when to plant in your region, contact the nearest Cooperative Extension office. On the other hand, companion planting can help protect against pests and disease. Happy gardening!
How to build a shed, free shed plans, build it yourself! This page contains information on how to build a shed and storage shed plans. Here are a couple of things to consider before you begin this project. Find out before building a storage shed if it will be allowed by zoning regulations. Find out if you need a permit. Also, you want to check for utility lines. I have included pages with garden/storage shed plans. The Slanted Little House It was a cold wintry day when I brought my children to live in rural West Virginia. The farmhouse was one hundred years old, there was already snow on the ground, and the heat was sparse—as was the insulation. The floors weren’t even, either. My then-twelve-year-old son walked in the door and said, “You’ve brought us to this slanted little house to die.” Products of suburbia, my three children wondered why there was no cable TV or Target, not to mention central heat. I was at a turning point in my life, a crossroads where for the first time I could choose where I would live, not simply be carried along by circumstance. When I was a little girl and we lived in a suburb of D.C., my father took us every summer to an old cabin in West Virginia that stood on the last family-owned piece of a farm that once belonged to my great-grandfather, a farm once spanning hundreds of acres on the banks of the Pocatalico River. And he’s right—everyone is friends with everyone.
Aluminum Can Plant Markers Thank you for visiting Little House in the Suburbs. Please subscribe and you'll get great simple living tips and how-to articles delivered to your inbox, for free! This is not the easiest way to mark your seedlings. It’s not the most gorgeous. But it’s free, lasts indefinitely and it’s kinda fun. Supplies & Equipment: Aluminum Drink Cans Cheap scissors Dried up ball point pen Straight edge (for the straight plant markers) Impressionable work surface, like the cork back of a place mat or coaster, mouse pad, etc. 1. 2. 3. This is how it will look on the right side now. 4. 6. You can make them any shape you can think of besides the typical “stake”: Soda can aluminum is relatively soft. If you are not feeling up to aluminum can cutting–and I understand completely, a lovely reader sent in her way of using old mini-blind slats, cut into stake form, and labeled with a Sharpie marker.
10 Amazing gardens on wheels In today’s fast paced life, man cannot find enough time to be with nature and take care of it. Left to itself, plants can thrive on their own, provided the suitable conditions are given to them; which,however, is not found in case of potted plants. So, due to lack of proper care, they wither away and leave a void in the ecosystem. As a panacea for all the problems, Samaritans have come out with a revolutionary idea, that of garden on wheels.This means the Bougainvillea need not be restricted to your lawn itself. These are not only awesome and pretty, but also invokes a sense of surprise. Chicago Subway Train transformed into lush mobile garden on wheels A Chicago-based non-profit organization, Noisivelvet exhibits the Art on Track. The commuters had an amazing experience of traveling in the garden. Planted mobile allotments Yet another specimen was found in Wiesbaden, a city in southwest Germany. Caravan that turns into a mobile garden Gardens on wheels So what is so unique about this?
Self-Seeding Crops You’ll Never Need to Replant One of the characteristics of a truly sustainable garden is that it produces at least some of its own seed. This is most often done when gardeners select, harvest and store seeds until the proper time for planting the following year. But some self-seeding crops produce seeds so readily that as long as you give them time to flower and mature, and set seed, you will always have free plants growing in your garden. You can simply let the seeds fall where they are, or toss pieces of the seed heads into the corners of your garden, or whichever area you want them in — no harvesting, storing or replanting required. With most self-seeding vegetables, herbs and annual flowers, you’ll just need to learn to recognize the seedlings so you don’t hoe them down. Should seedlings require relocation, you can simply lift and move them — after all, they are sturdy field-grown seedlings. Spring Seeds for Fall Crops Managing Annual Self-Seeding Crops Volunteer Veggies Controlling Rampant Self-Seeders
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