I’ve got two ‘gardens’ going this year. Both are made up of earthboxen, legitimate and home-made approximations, and a couple of hanging planters. I’ve got a mixture of tomatoes including Black Prince, Limmony, Atkinson, Chocolate Cherry, Sunsugar, Manitoba, Bonnie Select, and Italian Tree. I’m also growing a variety of peppers including Chianti, California Wonder, Habanero, Red Beauty, Alma Paprika and something labeled only as “Mini Belle”. Yesterday I received 2 blueberry plants in the mail- the one that was cross-breed at some ag department at the U. of Michigan and claims copious production. There are also a couple of yellow summer squash that are leaving me amazed by their growth daily.

One of the nicest features of using containers is that there is no clearing period before you can begin producing organic vegetables. If I were growing in-ground, as I understand the provisions, I’d have to begin growing organically and then wait three years before the produce could be considered organic. For large scale operations it might be possible that the cost of purchasing the boxes could be offset by the premium pricing of organic vegetables. Given the small scale of my gardening venture, I’m really just testing the waters to see what kind of production I can expect from each box/container. I’ll be weighing every viable fruit I pull from the plants. 

I’ve made connections with a connection with a local restaurant willing to buy whatever tomatoes I can provide.

While I’ve got a fairly vigorous rooftop garden here at my apartment, the boxes I set up in my dad’s driveway take so much less work. I’ve been spending good 45 minutes a day watering the rooftop garden. The Wissota Garden, as I’ve come to call the one at my dad’s house on the lake, uses the Earthbox Watering System. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

I finally, after being unable to connect or back up to my Time Capsule for weeks, figured out that toggling the IPv6 settings in the local System Preferences (>>Network>>ConnectionType>>Advanced) let’s me connect and reconfigure my settings. It used to say that there were too many users connected when I tried to connect over afp or smb, and would simply hang when trying to read settings with Airport Utility.

I’ve learned a lot about container gardening in the past year. My small balcony garden of self-watering containers is already out-performing my garden of last year and it’s only June. I have visions of improved container designs on an almost daily basis. Still, I’ve put more work into this garden than should be necessary. Admittedly, I could have purchased Earthboxes™, but I wanted a little more flexibility regarding size.

I came across food4wealth today when researching solar and wind power systems. In the time it took me to read the landing page, I became genuinely curious. The gist of the system seems haphazard, but I think that my inference of sloppiness is because of the deep-seated notion that cultivation of food requires some sort of precision– massive fields of neat rows– though I’ve never seen rows of plants in the wild.

This system, the food4wealth system by Jonathan White, makes sense. There is a traditional gardening method called “The Three Sisters” in which you grow corn, beans and squash. The plants are grown in a mound of dirt. The squash vines run down the mound, the corn grows up and the beans climb the corn stalks. It’s a great use of limited space for three crops, and you don’t have to trellis your beans. I think the food4wealth system may take this idea even further. Using mixed crops at increased density and allowing plants to seed themselves may be the best enhancement of the natural process.

I’ve always had intentions of getting “off the grid.” I still rent a downtown loft apartment so my options are limited. Perusing Amazon.com left me with the feeling that trying to generate electricity for my home would cost well more than it would save me in a couple of years.

I stumbled upon power4home today and bought it after reading for 10 minutes. I’ve always known that it would be possible to build a solar or wind power system, but I was pleased to find detailed instructions and video tutorials.

I’ll add to this post after I’ve taken on one of the projects.

UWEC graduated the class of 2009 today and they’re out in force on Water Street. Tonight will be busy, though I’ve my doubts about a favorable comparison with years before the smoking ban made every bar into a T.G.I. Friday’s.
Still, this means it’s summer. It means people who are here because they want to be, not because it’s stumbling distance from home. It means people who tip.
It means drinks with mint and ice cold beer from a cooler, horseshoes, farmers’ market, & sailing- which brings us back to drinks with mint and ice cold beer from a cooler..