Mmmmm. Hot, hot, hot! Photo from schopie1 on Flickr.

And it’s finally Cinco de Mayo.

Between sips of margaritas, start scheming about planting some tasty jalapeños for a spicy, summer addition to salads and sauces.

Here are a few tips from Steve Aegerter, Colorado Master Gardener from Colorado State University.

Make sure nighttime temps consistently stay above 50 degrees before planting.

Use well-amended soil that contains plenty of organic matter, supplemented with a balanced fertilizer.

Plant in an area that receives lots of sun, spacing them about 18 inches apart with rows three feet apart.

Support with small tomato cages or a similar device to keep plants from splitting or falling over due to a heavy
crop.

For more tips and a list of possible peppers to plant, check out Steve Aegerter’s page or Cosmic Chile.

Turn these little greenies ... (Photo from Flickr on Graibeard's photostream)

Here are a couple of key tips from Emily Oaksford of Grown in the City.

Roots:  It is very beneficial to re-pot tomato starts at least once before transplanting them into their final outdoor location.

The first transplant: Once the start has two sets of leaves and the plant is 3-4 inches tall, re-plant the start just under the lowest set of leaves.

More transplants: You can transplant your tomato again (and again) once it reaches 8-10 inches in height, before you plant your tomato outside.

The final transplant: The transplanting of your tomato into it’s outdoor growing location should be done using a similar method of burying the stem above the current soil level.

Read the rest of Oaksford’s suggestions at DIY: Transplanting tomatoes (again and again).

Into these yummy, ripe tomatoes! Photo by Marty Caivano.

Allison

A few months ago I moved into a quiet apartment that had one amazing feature: A large balcony. We aren’t talking 4′ x 9′ or even 5′ x 10. We are talking a 6′ by 25′ balcony that had so many possibilities that the mind boggled.

I happened to move in next to a green thumb and, throughout the cold winter months, before she ran off to Arizona, we devised greater and greater plans for what to do with my space. Her balcony, even in the dead of winter, was a warm, cozy place with chairs spaced appropriately for company and gardening pots and tools carefully placed on the side, ready to be used again as soon as it was time.

Why compost?

So these grandiose plans came down to one simple fact: I needed dirt. Three options arose.

First, sneak out and “borrow” dirt from neighboring homes in the dead of night. Second, buy dirt from a dirt store. Third, and the most enticing, make dirt. Create compost using all the organic materials left around after making a meal, coffee and reading the newspaper!

The first one would land me in jail, the second was not very appealing due to a small budget and even smaller ambition to carry large bags of dirt up to the second floor where my apartment was located. The last one made the most sense. Eco-friendly, cost-effective and hey, I have a balcony, I have plenty of room to “grow” dirt.

What I knew about composting at that time could have fit into a very small paper lunch bag. With room left over. But, with the help of my gardening nerd neighbor and what I was able to find on the internet, I have successfully handcrafted a balcony compost system. A huge thanks to Balcony Compost for the directions, which I’ve slightly modified.

Materials needed:

Two 5-gallon buckets — available at any hardware store or at thrift shops — usually holding skis and other random objects for display in the store. Dump out the contents (carefully) and make the thrift store an offer.

One large plastic storage tub with lid — also available for pennies on the dollar at your local thrift shop.

Drill with small bit (or a hammer and screwdriver, my dad happened upon my grandfather’s old drill and gave it to me, bonus!).

Small, recycled plastic container with lid — you’ll use this in the kitchen to store your compost materials.

Shredded newspaper, about a weeks worth of papers — after using the color comics to wrap a gift for your bestie, of course! This is one of the things considered as “brown” material you need for composting.

Two cups soil/dirt — recycled from repotting a plant works perfectly.

One cup water — recycled rainwater, if your balcony and/or state allows you to catch it.

Kitchen scraps – as much as you can save up in a week or so should do. Carrot peelings, egg shells, coffee grinds, strawberry greens, etc. Nothing cooked and no meat. This is some of the “green” materials you’ll need for the composting process. Well, eggshells are considered “brown” but you get the gist.

Materials

Make your compost bin:

First, I’d recommend safety glasses, just in case. Take the two plastic buckets and plug in your drill or get out the hammer and screwdriver.  Around the bottom and top of the buckets, drill holes approximately one inch from the top and bottom, two inches apart, around the entire bucket.

Then drill five holes in the bottom of each bucket, this is to let water or “compost tea” drain.

Next, drill holes throughout the body of each of the buckets. You’ll want them to be about three to four inches apart, going around and up the bucket. This allows air to flow through and help create a nice, warm, composting friendly environment within the bucket.

Air holes

Start your compost:

Now, with the hard work out of the way, let’s make dirt!

Place one bucket into the plastic storage tub (this catches any water and/or compost tea from dumping all over the balcony and your neighbors heads if they live below you).

Place two inches of the shredded newspaper in the bottom of one bucket. Wet with the cup of water

Dump the kitchen scraps on top. Add the two cups of soil to jumpstart the composting process. Cover the bucket with the storage tub top and weight with a rock (or in my case, a large, purple hippo paperweight).

Place in sunny corner of your balcony and sit back to enjoy the feeling of a job well done.

Keep it up!

Use the small plastic container in your kitchen to save scraps as you make them. Mine usually has fruit discards, egg shells, coffee grinds (a lot of coffee grinds), flower cuttings and leaves from plant trimmings. Again, nothing that has been cooked and NO meat. Oh, and no used kitty litter or other animal droppings. First, it doesn’t break down quickly and second, you might be using this compost to grow peppers on your balcony next year. Do you really want it to be grown in poop compost?

Compost's temporary residence

Continually add more kitchen scraps until you get a good three to four inches of scraps in the bucket. This is where the second bucket comes in. Take the first one, dump the scraps and newspaper into the second one so that it gets a breath of air and decomposes more quickly. Drop in a few more scraps of newspaper, water with a bit of recycled rainwater (or tap, of course), recover and start the process all over again.

A few notes:

1. Scraps being left on the kitchen table in the plastic bin. I make sure and dump it every few days, but even when I have forgotten to, it hasn’t smelled bad. A little mold, but nothing too icky.

2. The compost bin on the balcony – does it smell? No. Except when I put garlic cuttings from my best friend’s garden in it. Then it smelled like I’d made pesto and forgot the basil.

3. This isn’t going to make you a lot of compost very quickly. In order to set up my garden, I did in fact have to purchase dirt in bags. But, it will be great for when you need to replant indoor plants or want to set up seeds for next year’s growing season.

4. Compost tea, if you collect it, can be used as a non-chemical fertilizer. Pretty cool, right? Google it!

Finished product:

Interior

And outside…

Exterior

Allison Barrett loves everything online, gardening and figuring out how to make things work. She works at the Camera as their Online Coordinator and always knows where her towel is. You can catch up with her on Twitter (@tofallfromgrace).

Patrick Doyle made this trellis with lead spun from Thor's loom or something. I don't know, just click through and find out how yourself.

OK, actually, the trellis here won’t make any beer for you at all. The fellow who made the trellis however, Patrick Doyle, will be a strong candidate for Vanity Fair’s “Awesome Gentlemen” issue in about 25-30 years, and does make a good beer. 

Here’s what he has to say about his newest design for urban gardening — the Most Indestructible Trellis Ever 2.0:

Introducing the Most Indestructible Trellis Ever 2.0, which is so strong, I’m confident I could grow watermelons and pumpkins on it. (Which I’m not planning on doing, but it’s that beastly.) All that stainless steal is just gorgeous.

Looks awesome. I’m going to grow bowling balls and anvils for my famous Most Inedible Chili Ever recipe.

Check out the specs over at Grown In The City.

You can do it, too!

Hope Mom loved it, Nick!

It's built, it's re-enforced, it's painted. So where's the sunshine?

You may recall that a while ago, I started working on a DIY terraced urban farm, which is my fancy-talk for four shelves on which we’re going to put containers.

The idea was that I wanted an attractive, mostly out-of-the-way place to put plants so they’d get sun that they need — while also protecting them a bit from the high Colorado winds that we get. (If you hear faint tink-a-tink chimes from the north in Boulder, duck; it’s not an ice cream truck — it’s my neighbor’s wind chimes migrating south at about 70 mph.)

So! To recap: I drew what I thought would make sense based on literally nothing except a sentence from a book, I bought some culled wood at a hardware store and screwed it all together; I realized it was horribly wobbly so I got more culled wood and added supports; I sanded it down; and I waited.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the weather has been ridiculous here lately. So we only got to paint the thing today. But hey! It’s painted! And it’s ready for planters… after the snowstorm we’re supposed to get on Wednesday.

What I’m saying here is — if I can do this, you can do it. What’s your solution for farming in your tiny little space?

Mosquito | flickr user freakyyash

I don’t know about you guys, but the mosquitoes are trickling back into my neck of the woods. We’re thinking about making our own bug repellent, so I thought I’d share a find with you.

Here is an easy repellent to make that has a shelf life of around six months. Label jars “mosquito,” “tick,” etc. for quick identification.

1o to 25 drops essential oil

2 tablespoons vegetable oil (olive oil is fine)

1 tablespoon aloe vera gel (optional)

Combine the ingredients in a glass jar. Shake to blend. Dab a few drops on your skin or clothing.

Read on at Care2 to find out which essential oils to pick up. Or check out this alternate natural mosquito repellent recipe, which uses grain alcohol.

We have a very small balcony, but it gets so much sun that it seems like a waste not to grow tons of stuff. We’ve already started with hanging tomatoes — don’t worry, we bring them in at night still — and strawberries. But we’re fired up.

This whole year, I basically promised myself I’d try things I’m not good at way more often. Sort of a masochistic New Year’s resolution. Judging by the amount of times I’ve felt very stupid this year, it would appear to be working. In any case, growing food certainly qualifies, so we’re going at it, full steam. Pictures and tales of adventure below the fold!

I wasn’t sure how I was going to maximize the amount of sun we could use until I was reading — you guessed it — Fresh Food From Small Spaces. R.J. writes about how beautiful terraced farms can be, and I thought, hey, that might be an attractive and neat way to use our south-facing balcony. So! To the Internet! I searched “terraced planter” and a couple of variations on that to no avail.

I have enough faith in my Googling skills to believe that such a thing either doesn’t exist or is out of my price range. Next step: sleep on it. Then, wouldn’t you know it, I get a picture of a very clumsy terraced planter in my brain. So I woke up and drew it and thought about it at work all day.

After work, I had about half an hour to kill, so I raced over to Home Depot to get some lumber. No turning back now! A nice fellow named Rick or Nick cut lumber from their culled pile (a.k.a. a little beat up or scrap or something and therefore very cheap), which set me back $2.04, and I bought a box of wood screws, which were like $5, and then I picked up my girlfriend and we went to McGuckin and bought planters which, at $9.99 apiece, were the most expensive part of the operation.

Probably didn’t have to be that expensive. Easy to feel dumb about that but hey, there’s bigger and better stuff to feel dumb about and those guys are nice ‘n’ local and there are invisible benefits to that, so there you go.

Here’s where I am so far, and I’ve only quit for the night so I don’t bother the neighbors with drilling.

Two out of four shelves for the DIY terraced planter.

You can basically see what’s going on here. I should really put another piece across each section close to the ground for stability, but obviously I didn’t think of that at first so I didn’t buy those pieces. There will be two more sections, shorter than these two.

A better idea of how we'll use it.

It’ll go up against that far wall, pictured at left. I have to move the other junk.

We’re thinking we’ll get some spinach in there, some chard (at Cindy’s recommendation, it’ll probably be in the lowest tier) and the jury is out on the rest. But it’s really cool that we suddenly feel like we have a bunch more room!

Initial thoughts: I could have made the shelves closer in height. And I could use that support for these tall sections, though I sort of have a backup plan on that.