Illustrated Guide to Seed Starting for Real People

"For budget-smart gardeners like you and me, the expense of buying new plants can be the biggest deterrent to establishing a new green space or adding to an existing vegetable or flowerbed. Fortunately there’s a solution that’s less difficult than it might seem: seed starting."

 

Source: Fix.com

Last year Richard and I grew our first vegetable garden. With the exception of a couple of bean plants, we began with plants we picked up at a community garden sale. This year I'm thinking about doing it all from seeds. The beans we grew from seed were so tasty and didn't require too much care.

I'm excited to dig into this awesome guide to Seed Starting for Real People.

Do you garden? Do you start plants from seed or prefer to begin with baby plants? 

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Easy Container Gardening with Bokashi Compost

 

Last year, I blogged about bokashi, an ancient Japanese, two step method of composting. Today, I'll explain in greater detail exactly how you can incorporate bokashi into your container gardening.

Let's start with mealtime. We try our best to reduce waste when cooking and eating, but sometimes it's hard to use everything without a pet goat or pig. Fortunately with bokashi you can turn any organic matter into compost: vegetable scraps, dairy, meat, and bones. Put scraps into a container specifically made for bokashi. (It's airtight and has a spout.) Cover the scraps with a handful of a special bran / microbial starter. Repeat every time you have food scraps until the container is full.

(Here's a convenient link to buy a bokashi starter kit on Amazon if you need one.)

Once the container is full, leave it alone for 2 weeks. During this period, it will ferment. The only thing you have to do is drain the liquid that's created every day. We usually just pour the liquid into our garden. It's really nourishing for plants. It's also good for houseplants and cleaning drains but it smells disgusting, so I'd rather only use it outdoors.

When two weeks a have passed you can then add the bokashi to soil. The awesome thing about bokashi is it can transform any dirt into high quality soil. As long as you use dirt that doesn't contain lead or other toxic contaminants, you're good.

Begin by emptying the contents of the bokashi bucket into a container filled with dirt. Mix it all together. At this point you have two choices.

Option 1 is what I believe Bryan McGrath, a bokashi expert, recommended: Take another container that has holes drainage holes. (You can drill holes into the bottom of a bucket.) // Add two or three inches of dirt. // Add the bokashi soil mix, filling up with about 1/3 of the container. // Cover with two inches of dirt. // Cover that with newspaper or straw. // Leave everything alone to ferment for two weeks. // Once two weeks have passed you can add a little more dirt and plant directly into the container. // Watch Bryan's YouTube video to see this in action and hear it from his mouth.

Option 2 is what my boyfriend and I did because we didn't mutually agree on what the expert actually said: Just leave everything alone in the mixing container for two weeks. // Expect maggots (Ew!) // Sandwich enriched soil with potting soil in a plant container. // Plant some seeds or baby plants.

Both methods work to create quality soil for happy plants. You don't have to be a gardening wiz to make this work. Plants want to survive and grow. You just have to give them a hand by getting started!

Do you compost? What method do you use? If you use bokashi, does the smell bother you too? Got any bokashi tips to share?

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Encouragement for Beginner Container Gardeners

In March I shared my decade-long dream of growing food. Today I am happy to share pictures of what's growing in my container garden.

My container garden

Isn't it awesome? Those shelling peas are just about to pop off the stalk. We're having some for dinner tonight!

If growing a garden is something you've been putting off, I have five morsels of encouragement:

1. Don't wait for the "perfect time" or to "know more" about gardening. Get some seeds and plant them now. Everything will be alright. And if it's not, seeds aren't expensive so you can always try again without much financial loss. 
2. Don't let your fear of killing plants stop you either. As far as I know, it's not illegal.
3. Growing plants is a great way to learn about and appreciate them. Planning a garden is not nearly as interesting which is why you should just jump in.
4. Once you plant your first seed or sprout a seedling, the Universe/ God/ whatever will start attracting more seasoned gardeners and other awesome resources to you. A net of support and garden love will spring up like magic after you take that leap of faith.
5. You really don't need to water outdoor plants as much as you think.

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Plotting My First Vegetable Garden

Victory Garden (via)

I've wanted to grow food forever. Okay, slight exaggeration, but about 10 years ago I bought a copy of You Grow Girl. Despite my never really reading it or even buying a bag of soil, the book has survived three apartment moves and in-numerous downsizings. In fact, it even found a shelf mate in A Little Bit of Earth: How to Grow Your Own Food in Small Spaces.

I'm tired of shelving my aspirations. Spring 2013 will be the season my garden finally becomes a reality. So many wonderful resources and inspiration for beginner gardeners have been presenting themselves lately. I'm certain the Universe is plotting for my garden.

• I saw a TED Talk with Ron Finley, a guerilla gardener in South Central LA who says growing vegetables is like being able to grow your own money. I could certainly use more money! My grocery bill has grown three-fold since moving and leaving the Park Slope Food Coop.
• I remembered The Urban Organic Gardener blog and the awesome resources the site provides from people growing food in small spaces including how to start growing vegetables in self-watering containers.
• I recently noticed a poster for upcoming urban agriculture workshops in the window at my job. The Southside Community Land Trust is hosting classes and events across Providence this spring. I'm excited about the Beginning Organic Growers Series 1 Workshop that is happening as part of the Neighborhood Hub Day on Saturday, April 6.
• Our new bokashi is about to bust with pickled food scrap goodness. I think we'll have lots of great compost to work with! We just bought a container and some soil to mix with the fermented scraps since we don't have a yard.
• Last week in Whole Foods Market I ran into a new friend, a professional gardener, who I met in January but hadn't seen since. I remembered she had offered to help me get started.
• The surest sign that this garden will happen is my boyfriend's enthusiasm. He won't let me push it off to next year. He's totally on my back about reading those books I mentioned earlier. He's a supermotivated, get-stuff-done kind of guy so I'm lucky to have him in my corner.

Do you grow any food? Are you thinking about it? If you have any beginner gardener resources to share please leave a comment. Thanks!

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Bokashi: Another Composting Option for Lazy Folks

Bokashi is an ancient Japanese, two step method of composting organic waste. The first step is placing waste in an airtight bucket and allowing it to ferment with the help of a microbial starter. The second step is burying the fermented waste into the ground to create healthy soil.

Blogger Jenny is all about bokashi! Image via Bokashi Composting HQ

Embraced by permaculture enthusiasts, bokashi differs from other composting methods. One big difference is animal waste (dairy and meat) can be composted alongside plant waste. You can even compost pet waste with bokashi! Waste takes less time compost with bokashi. It's also unique because the alcohol smell of the fermented waste deters pests like rats and flies. There is minimal labor required. Once you've buried your trench of waste, you never need to turn it or do anything else.

You can start your own at home bokashi compost project with this great bokashi resource guide from The Compost Guy. You can purchase an entire Bokashi system kit via Amazon. Fermented starter can be purchased via my friend DeeDee at MoS Collective.

Bokashi seems so easy! I am totally going to give it a go once my CSA share pick-up ends in November and I can no longer drop off my scraps for composting as part of my weekly routine.

NYC residents and small businesses have the option of signing up for Vokashi, a Brooklyn-based composting service. Vokashi provides members with savvy green air tight buckets and a supply of ferment starter for $40-$60 a month. They also pick up the buckets once they are full. (Yay!) Vokashi then uses the waste to improve the soil in community gardens and other public green spaces.

Random fact: The liquid created by bokashi fermentation process can be used to clean drains!

Olivia Lane is a Blogger, Green Living Educator, and Health Coach trained at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition. She's also author of Baking Soda & Bliss: The Healthy & Happy Guide to Green Cleaning.   

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Lazy Person's Guide to Composting

You can compost! Even if you live in a tiny apartment. Even if you're not ready to share your tiny apartment with a few hundred worms or a few thousand fruit flies. Even if you don't have a few spare hundred dollars bills to plunk down on an electric composting machine. Even if you have a million other things to do. Even if you're just plain lazy. You can compost by participating in community composting efforts.

Here's how:

Image from Ditmas Park Blog.

Find a community composting project in your neighborhood. Ask Google. If you don't find anything, don't be deterred. A lot of community stuff like this isn't on the web yet. Ask at the info booth at your local farmers market, drop in at a community garden, call the local food coop, and ask customer service reps your Whole Foods or natural foods store. Crunchy people are always in the loop with composting.

Instead of tossing vegetable scraps, bread, grains, wilted flowers, coffee grounds, hair, pet fur, nail clippings, and a lot of other compostable things in the trash, save them. Store them in a paper or plastic bag, a coffee bag, a compostable bio bag (including the green bags that Whole Foods offers for produce), an empty juice or milk carton, or a plastic salad greens container. Tuck the bag or carton of compostables in your freezer where it won't decompose, get funky, and attract fruit flies.

Tip: Keep bread or old produce bags organized by storing them in a toilet paper tube near your food scraps.

If you want to hold your compost in something more sturdy, use a milk carton.

Next time you're headed out to your community compost collection site, carry your frozen compostables with you. It's a good idea to double bag them if there is a chance you'll be out long enough for things to thaw. Definitely double bag or put it in something waterproof if you are using a paper bag.

When you get to the compost collection site, follow the rules. If you don't know the rules, ask the person managing the booth. Some places require that everything be frozen. Some places let you dump the whole compostable bio bag or paper bag into a bin. Some require that you empty the contents of the bag in to a bin. Some gardens ask you to put your scraps into the actual composting bin and cover it with newspaper scraps. Do whatever they say will help them the most.

LES Ecology Center collection booth at Union Square Greenmarket. Image from The Power Brokers.

If you are in NYC, Grow-NYC collects food scraps for composting at farmers markets in four of the five boroughs. (More info on their composting program.) Some farmers have their own indie collections going too! We used to leave our scraps with a farmer at the Grand Army Plaza Farmers Market on Saturday mornings.

Now that we live in Providence, RI we drop off our food scraps at the collection site near our farm share pick up stand at Thursday Armory Farmers Market.

Check out this list of 75 Things You Can Compost, but Thought You Couldn't. According to the article, you can compost latex condoms, ripped up pizza and cereal boxes, and pencil shavings. Of course, it's always best to consult with the collection site before you put anything too weird in the collection bin. Some composting systems are more delicate than others.

Olivia Lane is a Blogger, Green Living Educator, and Health Coach trained at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition. She's also author of Baking Soda & Bliss: The Healthy & Happy Guide to Green Cleaning.   

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Get Dirty this Summer!

I just have to share info about this cool site: "Get Dirty NYC! is a newly-formed non profit whose mission is to connect New Yorkers to gardening and farming opportunities around the city. We've created a one-stop virtual meeting place for volunteers to find hands-on projects, and for farms and gardens to find the help they need. Please visit www.getdirtynyc.org if you're interested in volunteering or if you'd like to list your farm or garden project." (P.S. Follow @getdirtynyc on Twitter for up-to-the-minute announcements of gardening opportunities.)

Olivia Lane is a Blogger, Green Living Educator, and Health Coach trained at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition. She's also author of Baking Soda & Bliss: The Healthy & Happy Guide to Green Cleaning.   

 

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I stopped n swapped then I met a son of a farmer.

I went to the Stop N Swap in Fort Greene today. The swap was full of the busy energy of workers organizing incoming goodies and swappers of all ages and genders doing some intense digging. Also present was a lovely joy people seemed to take equally in sharing with others and finding fun things for themselves. I discovered this amazingly creepy, quirky handmade wooden and cloth monkey doll. It was a such jewel! I wonder where it came from and who took it home.

Later, I went to the Brooklyn Public Library for a reading and Q&A session with Eric Herm, author of Son of a Farmer, Child of the Earth. Herm is a fourth generation farmer from Texas who is in the process of going organic on the huge areas of land he farms with his father. Apparently the transition is a long, hard, and expensive one, but one Herm views as imperative for the future of the planet. Herm also emphasized the urgent need to move away from the model of shipping in our food from afar, suggesting we rely more on local food production as oil becomes more expensive and more difficult to obtain. Herm was quick to point out that lots of inspiring things are happening here in Brooklyn: the food coop, the Greenmarket, and all the rooftop farms. He encouraged us all to start growing on what little land we have-- be it a few inches of soil surrounding a tree or even a box on our windowsill.

Olivia Lane is a Blogger, Green Living Educator, and Health Coach trained at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition. She's also author of Baking Soda & Bliss: The Healthy & Happy Guide to Green Cleaning.   

 

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