no, listen, when I say I want to integrate more specific solarpunk stuff in my life, i don’t mean to ask for yet again new “aesthetic” clothes that now you have to buy or make to show your support of the movement (screw that i’m consuming enough as it is), or more posts about impossible house goals, or whatever, I’m asking you what my options to build a portable and eco friendly phone charger are, im asking you viable tiny-appartment edible plants growing tricks on a budget, im asking tips to slow down when my mind and society tell me im not fast enough, i don’t need more rich art nouveau amateurs aesthetics or pristine but cold venus project, okay, i know i should joins associations where I am tho i’m constantly on the move, thanks for that, just, you know, can we get a bit more practical ??? how do I hack my temporary flat into going off the grid for the time i’m here
Hello! ☀️ Here are a few practical suggestions for stuff you can do:
The garden spiral is like a snail shell, with stone spiraling upward to create multiple micro-climates and a cornucopia of flavors on a small footprint. Spirals can come in any size to fit any space, from an urban courtyard to an entire yard. You don’t even need a patch of ground, as they can be built on top of patios, pavement, and rooftops. You can spiral over an old stump or on top of poor soil. By building up vertically, you create more growing space, make watering easy, and lessen the need to bend over while harvesting. To boot, spirals add instant architecture and year-round beauty to your landscape: the perfect garden focal point.
One of the beauties of an herb spiral is that you are creating multiple microclimates in a small space. The combination of stones, shape, and vertical structure offers a variety of planting niches for a diversity of plants. The stones also serve as a thermal mass, minimizing temperature swings and extending the growing seasons. Whatever you grow in your spiral, it will pump out a great harvest for the small space it occupies. I’ve grown monstrous cucumbers in my large garden spiral, with one plant producing over 30 prize-size fruits. The spiral is a food-producing superstar!
Stacked stones create perennial habitat for beneficial critters, such as lizards and spiders that help balance pest populations in the garden. The stone network is a year-round safe haven for beneficial insects and other crawlies that work constantly to keep your garden in balance—and you in the hammock. A little design for them up-front pays big, tasty dividends later.
For whatever reason. Right now as of uhhhh Friday March 27, of 2020, within the quarantine of COVID-19 you are most likely want to garden in order to feed your family as you want to save money from the grocery store. And to ya know. feed your family.
SO. Here’s some YouTube videos. Mainly from this one YouTuber since she runs her own farm. She talks about what to grow and how to grow as well as saving seeds. (Trust me, saving seeds is better in the long run.) You can also regrow kitchen scraps too if you feel like you’re unable to get any proper seeds. And for fun have a post apocalyptic type garden.
What to plant in a small garden:
Fast-food growing options:
The importance of Seed saving:
How to build an arched trellis for $30:
A complete guide to virtual gardening:
How to PLANT & GROW with cattle panel arched trellises:
14 store bought vegetables & herbs you can regrow:
Save your kitchen scraps, these 7 plants can be grown out of them:
9 survival gardening crops to grow in a post apocalyptic world:
I’m a gardener by nature anyways, but I’ll happily take more resources.
my grandparents have to lock their car doors when they go to sunday mass because people have been breaking in to unlocked cars and leaving entire piles of zucchini
i feel like i should’ve added more context when i posted this. my grandparents live in a rural area where farmers and casual gardeners alike are, at this point in the year, suddenly being hit with unexpectedly abundant zucchini crops. there aren’t just some random vandals leaving zucchinis in people’s cars for the hell of it, this is the work of some very exasperated, probably very elderly, folks who have more zucchini than they know what to do with
Yep. You can also expect to find a bag of zucchini on your porch.
My grandfather once found his neighbor stealing his tomatoes out of his garden at three in the morning. Red-handed, with a basket of the nearly-ripened ones. He thought he was going to find gophers or something, but no, here’s Henry, taking his tomatoes. The best ones.
There was a long pause between them.
My grandfather (allegedly) said, “Henry… it’s OK. You can take some tomatoes if you want them.”
Henry sighed in relief.
“But,” my grandfather said, “you have to take two zucchini for every tomato.”
There was another long silence. “That’s a harsh bargain, John,” said Henry. “But I accept. I’ll tell Joe up the street, too.”
My grandfather said, “Tell Joe he needs to take three.”
a friend of my dad’s came by in the middle of the night, he seemed very nervous when my dad answered the door. he wouldn’t come inside but he leaned in and whispered to my dad in spanish, “i have some fresh grapes for you.” and then this happened:
the melon was a special bonus.
MY DREAM
A friend of mine lives in a rural area and he has been surrounded by zucchini for most of May, June, and July.
At one point he was so done with the whole zucchini madness that he came to classes actively begging people to “Please please please!! Take some my family’s damned zucchini!! I’ve been eating zucchini for weeks!! I’m going insane!!!”
Having grown up in a rural area and having come home to zucchini on the front step or in the mailbox, i find it highly amusing the OP had to clarify. I’m sitting here nodding “yup.”
I have a friend with a garden in Oregon who literally made Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies and sent them to me in Indiana. I texted her back “I SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING HERE”
I’m waiting for the day when someone will hear about my background in Botany and ask me for advice on what someone who’s just wanting to start exploring planting vegetables should try.
I know fuckall about gardening because my background is wild plants and not agriculture, but I’m gonna tell them
“Zucchini. Definitely try Zucchini. Just plant plenty of them and you’ll get a decent sized crop! They’re very rewarding to grow.”
It may be a bit of a long game, but I’ll enjoy their screams of despair from across the void as they realize that they will eat zucchini forever
This is NOT an exaggeration, guys. Zucchini (and most squashes, really) will outgrow you so fast. Let our tale be a caution– or an encouragement, whichever. You decide as you hear the story of Squish.
When we were so broke we had to choose between gas and store-bought-food (I think I was about 10?), we had a garden so we could eat regularly (we also had chickens and pigs and hunted, but that’s beside this point). One summer, we planted 6 rows of yellow squash and 6 rows of zucchini. Each row probably had 10, maybe 12 plants in it. We created this giant squash-block in our garden plot so it was all right there together in the middle, and the needier plants like tomatoes were on the outside of the whole plot. We thought we were clever, til the first crop started coming in.
The outside two rows of each squash, yellow and zucchini, were normal. High yield, of course (because squash), but standard size for both summer squash and Italian zucchini. The inner 8 rows, however, created this hybrid monstrosity that we called Squish. It was pretty– a nice swirly yellow and green combination that made it clear the squash and zucchini had interbred.
Squish became a living nightmare for us. Something about the hybridization caused them to forget how to stop growing, or at least how to grow at a normal rate because those suckers were longer than my dad’s forearm, and bigger around than my (albeit child-sized) thighs. They didn’t get all hard and nasty on the inside, either, for some reason, like most squash will at that size. And they just kept coming. I don’t even remember seeing that many flowers, but every day we were pulling upwards of 20lbs of Squish out of the garden, only for there to be more the next day, or sometimes by the end of the day if we harvested in the morning. I don’t know where they were hiding, but it was like some sort of squash portal had opened into our yard and started crapping out Frankenstein’s Squashes.
At first, it was great. We could eat all we wanted and not worry about rationing it. But the growing season in Arkansas is long, and we had incredible weather that summer, so those darn things kept alternating flowers and fruit. Pull off a few Squish, new flowers budded out, and they ripened super-fast in the heat. We were absolutely swimming in Squish, because they were so big that even gorging on them meant only 1 or 2 got eaten per meal. (I think I recall using a few particularly enormous ones as swords for a duel with my sister, if that says anything about their size. I cannot overemphasize how absolutely, heinously gigantic they were. You probably don’t believe me but I am not kidding. Those things were bigger than a newborn by several many inches and a couple pounds.)
We had (luckily) a big deep freezer, and someone gifted us a bunch of freezer ziploc bags, so we started chopping them up and freezing them as we pulled them off. We ran out of bags real fast, so we caved and bought a ton more. We filled that deep freezer near to bursting. It was probably 3-4 feet deep, (as I remember barely coming up to the edge of it), and at least 4-5 feet long, about 2.5 feet across, and we filled it to the top with Squish. And that’s while we’re eating fresh ones every day with dinner! But still more Squish came before the first frost, so we started packing the fridge. And my grandma’s freezer. And my grandma’s fridge. And feeding them to the pigs and chickens. And giving them away at church.
Do you realize how big a deal it is that people who were so broke that they had to choose between gas and the power bill were GIVING AWAY FOOD??? That’s how much gosh darn Squish we had. And little did I know, but apparently, my dad HATES squash. He only planted them because they were a cheap, quick source of food and my mom loved squashes. And he got stuck with the folly of his decisions. For over a year.
Yep. We had Squish in the freezer for over a year. Eating it regularly. It lasted for over a year. A family of 5, plus often feeding my grandmother, we ate off a single garden’s haul for over a year. Of just the Squish. I tell you, if we’d had a farmer’s market back then, that Squish could probably have single-handedly lifted us out of poverty. Well, maybe not, but you get the idea.
We never planted both again, probably because my dad would have combusted out of rage if he’d ever seen another Squish in his life. But manthose were the days for thems of us what loved squash.
So survival tip: If you need an absolute crapton of food, plant you a row of yellow squash and a row of zucchini, and keep that pattern going for as many rows as you like. You too can drown in Squish and love it.
Oh wow.
The last story is well worth the read. It might be long but I found it absolutely delightful! Thank you for sharing your childhood Squish gardening adventures!
Meanwhile, people are starving to death.
Ands What do you expect poor rural farmers who just have excess zucchini to do about that exactly? Mail them to Africa?
I was just talking to a friend today about gardening and she said “I’ll plant zucchini for this project.”
“Oh dear… what’s your damage control plan?”
“Oh,” she said, intuiting what I meant. “Eating the blossoms. Love stuffed blossoms. Pumpkin, squash, zucchini. It keeps the crop down, and you get lots of mileage out of them. You keep a mixed crop that way, too. Plus, people don’t always welcome gifts of zucchini, but they find gifts of blossoms exciting.”
This struck me as absolutely game-changing.
My problem is that I legitimately love zucchini. “Lizard,” you ask, “why is that a problem? Just eat the zucchini!” The problem is that in the middle of the growing season, there will be a point where I physically can not consume enough zucchini to keep up with what the plants are producing. It does not matter how much I chop, freeze, fry, bake, etc– there will always be a point where I have more zucchini than I have time in the day to do something with that zucchini.
But eventually it runs out. Like summer, it’s as intense as it is fleeting and come November I want for some zucchini fried with onions. By January, when I’m planning out the spring garden, there’s always that thought, that voice of hubris whispering in my ear… “maybe I should grow more zucchini?”
Children, it is a trap.
It’s getting on planting season so this is your annual reminder to ignore the siren song of zucchini.
During a late night market run on December 23rd, 2021, I saw this herb trio in the produce section. They’ve got rosemary, sage, and thyme; that’s three plants for the price of one!
Before and after unwrapping!
Closeup!
On Christmas eve, I came to the conclusion that Herbie needs a bigger jar… Decided to use some water beads so that they aren’t sitting on their roots as much.
Here’s closeups of the roots and the water level.
Looking forward to expanding my misadventures into cooking experiments!
I noticed the other day when repotting my herbs that there was a tiny spider who seemed enamored with my lemon basil.
Last night it got really cold so I had to bring the herbs in. Brought the basil out and like two min later I see tiny spider scuttle out from hiding to come play in the basil pot. Adorable.
He’s a jumping spider so I’m not like. Worried too much about him getting on me or anything. Somewhat amused bc according to the internet he is a ‘Bold Jumping Spider’ but as soon as he clocks me trying to get a good pic of him he immediately runs away from me. Shy Bold Jumping Spider.
Do you know what’s delightful? Growing plants that don’t do what you want. Pea tendrils are really grabby at all the wrong things and I love it. Everyone go grow something that’ll thwart your desires.
brooo I just found the best paper (article?) about CAM plants appropriate for food production in a region the writers term “Aridamerica” (in contrast with mesoamerica) that encompasses northern mexico, the sonoran desert, and part of arizona and nevada….it’s so fuckin good
The article is the work of some researchers who examined ethnobotanical and historical sources, interviewed native people, and did ecological surveys in “Aridamerica”
Primarily they drew from the current and historical practices of the Comcaac (Seri people), O'odham, and Pima Bajo peoples. Here are a few excerpts from the article I really liked!
Agricultural visionaries from Argentina, Australia, North America, and elsewhere have been calling for “new roots for agriculture” for more than 40 years (Felger, 1975; Jackson, 1980). Their visions favor high biodiversity-low input agroecosystems, with greater emphasis on perennial polycultures. To quote pioneering desert botanist Richard Felger, to whom this article is dedicated, we must “fit the crops to the environment rather than remaking the environment to fit the crops.” Yet, to date few agronomists have given sufficient attention to effective means to reduce heat or moisture stress in crops and livestock, or in the humans who struggle to manage them (Nabhan, 2013).
The majority of widespread crops (e.g., rice, wheat, soybean) are C3 plants with low water-use efficiency and reduced photosynthetic efficiency under high temperatures. C4 crops (e.g., corn, sorghum, sugarcane) have higher heat tolerance but usually require reliable irrigation in arid and semi-arid land settings. As temperatures increase, so do evapotranspiration and water input required to maintain crop yields. Thus, even drought- and heat-tolerant varieties of conventional C3 and C4 crops may be unable to weather—let alone mitigate—the stressful agronomic conditions predicted for arid zones over the coming century. In contrast, wild desert plants have evolved multiple strategies to cope with heat and drought (Gibson, 1996). Desert plants with the crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) pathway uptake CO2 nocturnally when temperatures are cooler, thereby optimizing water-use efficiency (Nobel, 2010).
I really like the points they make here about C4 plants! Corn and sorghum are often listed as being more suitable for arid climates because of their improved temperature tolerance and water use efficiency compared to (for example) wheat or soybean. That said…both were originally tropical plants iirc, and while there are certainly drought-tolerant cultivars of both, they still use a *lot* of water in very hot and dry regions, and those well adapted cultivars aren’t the most commonly grown.
After gathering a list of plants commonly used as crops by the native people of these areas “For each species, we determined the photosynthetic pathway (C3, C4, CAM) and categorized water-acquisition strategy as extensive exploiter (e.g., Prosopis/mesquite), intensive exploiter (e.g., Salvia columbariae/chia, Phaseolus acutifolius/wild tepary bean), or water storer (e.g., Agave/agave, Opuntia/prickly pear)”
It’s really interesting to think abt those different drought strategies! For reference, extensive exploiters tend to have very wide+deep root systems that collect water from an extensivearea. Intensive exploiters tend to be found near temporary water courses that only hold water temporarily/for part of the year. This could mean washes/dry streambeds that flood in a storm, or rivers that dry up outside of the monsoon season. I know tepary beans typically grow quickly (often quoted as taking only 60 days from growth to seed set!) when water is available, then die and weather the hottest and driest season as dormant seeds. Water storer is pretty self-explanatory–agave and prickly pear are succulents that can store a tremendous amount of water in their tissues, saving it to tide them over until the next precipitation event.
Ultimately, the article graded a variety of plant genera on their agroecological suitability (how well they grow in an arid environment), any potential medicinal uses, their community/social value (cultural importance, providing shade in communal areas, etc.), and their agronomical suitability (can it be grown at scale, is there a market for it, etc.) I won’t bother to list them here–you can go see the whole chart in the linked article–but it’s a very interesting list!
Now is the easiest time of year to start a new garden bed (assuming “now” = early fall, day time temperatures around 45f). All you have to do is lay down cardboard:
Top it with still some nitrogen rich compostable matter, in this case grass clippings:
Some carbon-rich matter, in this case old wood chips:
And keep layering until it’s pretty thick:
And then walk away and ignore it until spring. All winter long, it’ll be decomposing, while killing the grass and weeds underneath. By spring time, the soil underneath will be nice & loose and fertile, and you’ll be able to plant straight into it.
(If you want to meet organic standards, then make sure any cardboard or paper is non-glossy and black & white. This was for someone else’s flower bed, so the red ink isn’t going to be an issue)
To answer the weed seeds question, I personally usually top it off with a thick layer of fall leaves or wood chips, which doesn’t give seeds a good place to start. Both of these are used as weed-preventing mulches here. It also helps that were going into the cold season, so they’re not going to get much of an opportunity to grow.
I forgot to mention, but the name of this method is sheet mulching or lasagna gardening, so search those terms if you want more info.
A chop-and-drop mulch plant is one that produces a lot of biomass, which can be periodically pruned, pulled or coppiced (cutting the plant down to a stump), the organic matter then allowed to fall right to the ground as a layer of mulch. Hence, why it’s called chop-and-drop: we cut the plant and let the trimmings fall seemingly carelessly to the floor.
When naturally revitalizing soil, a collection of choice chop-and-drop plants helps to create well-balanced, nutritionally rich earth in which we can easily cultivate other plants. Aside from providing easy-to-reach mulch material, mulching being a must in healthy gardens, typical chop-and-drop plants come with some special characteristics that increase their worth.
Mulch is awesome! I would like to note that if you are using kitchen scraps or manure, they need to decompose first, for two main reason. The first is that the process of decomposition uses nitrogen, and will pull it from the soil and away from plants. The second is that both, though manure is more of a concern, can carry bacteria such as salmonella and E. coli.
I find that there’s not a lot of talk about how large a population you need when people do talk about seed saving. I think it’s a lot bigger than most people expect, especially for out-crossers like broccoli and corn. On top of that, if you want to be growing something different than your neighbors (or say, want to save broccoli seed when a lot of people let kale go to seed around you), you need to consider isolation distances. Let’s look at population size first.
