Mountain Biking: Rubber side down- Time for a TurnaroundWell, my friends, things are finally looking up, and good timing, too, since I’m sure you’re all sick of me bitching. Recent bike build, including wheels… fun! In what feels like a fairly short time, I’ve come from sitting around … Continue reading → […]
- This Raised My PulseHey, baby… wanna ride? I may be injured, but I’m not dead yet. I can still have racy thoughts. Here’s more info. In other news, UBI was an awesome success! I had a blast. I highly recommend it. Overhaul day…. … Continue reading → […]
- Time for a Turnaround
- Edgy Veggie
DIY Garden: transplanting tomatoes
Need a little help ensuring that your green tomato plants grow into juicy, red balls of deliciousness?
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.
Community Food Share, Sister Carmen Center, others want to make fresh food more accessible
Bert Nett (front), John Spencer (back left) and Jane Spencer (right) plant squash seeds at an Earth's Table garden in Boulder | CAMERA/Mark Leffingwell
If there’s one thing the United States isn’t known for, it’s eating well. We’ve got a heck of a reputation for junk food out there.
For some people, it’s because there are six-packs of tiny powdered donuts in the vending machine down the hall (damn you) and they have a problem/are weak-willed*. For others, it’s simply because they can’t afford to eat fresh vegetables day in and day out.
Community Food Share, Sister Carmen Center and others in our community want to help with that second reason so, for one, they’ve set up a plot they call Earth’s Table, where veggies are grown for those in need. Read more
Plants stolen from school’s educational veggie garden
How do you get the lamest street-cred ever? You steal plants from an elementary school’s educational vegetable garden.
The Smith Renaissance School of the Arts, located in northeast Denver, got plant-burgled recently, but is rising above it.
Two weeks ago, on a Friday, the students planted the seedlings and others that were donated. The following Monday, the plants were gone.
“One student wondered if it was a clever rabbit,” said Lindsay McNicholas, the school’s resource advocate. “It was deflating. We had just planted them. We didnt even make it 72 hours.”
Read the rest of the story at The Denver Post. Or check out photos of the students replanting the Smith Renaissance School of the Arts vegetable garden.
DIY terraced planter construction complete!
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.) Read more
Colorado square-foot gardener answers beginner’s questions
A great post for veggie garden daydreamers over at Jacqueline’s Journey. Go check it out and find at least one nugget of information that’ll make your local veggie garden better this year!
7. What are good crops to grow for Colorado’s climate? Colorado has cool, wet springs and hot, dry summers which is pretty annoying to the vegetable gardener. Cool weather crops like lettuce and radish will do great if you get them going early enough but by the time late June’s heat and lack of humidity come along they will require intensive watering and may even stop producing edible leaves. I found that Collards and Kale are cool weather crops that also do very well during the summer months. Other excellent crops are raspberries, onions, garlic, chives, shallots, tomatoes, tomatillos, potatoes, and squash.
8.What was the most difficult thing for you to grow? I have had particular problems growing peppers, eggplant, and okra. These plants require steady warm temperatures or they will drop their flowers and/or fruit or not grow. Depending on your Colorado micro-climate these plants may work great for you or may never get enough heat to be productive.
Found via Tall Tara!
DIY terraced urban farm, part one
So I’m making a thing.
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! Read more
Edible gardening book: R.J. Ruppenthal’s “Fresh Food from Small Spaces”
Wow — I just found out that a great book for the urban gardener, “Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square Inch Gardener’s Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting,” is on Google Books!
Some of it, anyway. R.J. Ruppenthal is somebody who graciously sent content to me when I worked at HuffPost Green (like this great post on how to grow strawberries) and his book is just great. I own a copy of it, and I recommend folks buy it if they’re into the idea of growing food in their small spaces, but hey — want to try a little under half of the book for free? Here are 76 pages of it (link here for larger version):
And of course no post about a Chelsea Green book would be complete without thanking my friend Jesse for introducing me to a lot of their materials when he was a Web and publishing genius there. Now he’s a Web and publishing genius on his own. (Hire him.)
Aquaponics: Fish poop makes for good vegetables
Fish poop makes good vegetables. That’s what I learned about aquaponics from the Camera this week.
You know about hydroponics, but here’s the picture with aquaponics: you’re growing veggies and raising fish at the same time:
The vegetables and the fish work together in a sustainable loop. The fish waste provides fertilizer, which is made accessible to the plants via bacteria that convert the ammonia to nitrates, which feed the plants. Once the system reaches bacterial balance, the only work is tending the plants.
That way, you’re not using chemical fertilizers, like you might in hydroponics.
Boulder’s Sylvia Bernstein uses aquaponics to grow pepper plants, six kinds of heirloom tomatoes, English cucumbers, peppers and herbs “with nothing but fish waste and trout chow.”
Trout chow! Mmm! Read more
Tomato troubleshooting — and the NatureSweet Homegrown Tomato challenge
Saturday, Saturday, Saturday!
Hide your children and tighten your chinstraps because in just under a week it’s time for the NatureSweet Homegrown Tomato challenge!
Colorado tomatoes | flickr user StacyK
The event, whose Colorado portion takes place at a King Soopers in Arvada, pits home gardeners against one another to see who grows the best tomatoes (or “love apples” — why? Well, the Internet says “Probably translation of French pomme d’amour from the former belief in the tomato’s aphrodisiacal powers,” but we still think it sounds funny).
And in case you’re not fully confident in the aphrodisiacal powers of your own love apples, might we suggest gardening columnist Carol O’Meara’s tomato-growing tips? Read more
