Comments on: Small Footprint, Big Yield: Create an Easy Micro Organic Urban Garden Today!

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Sun, 18 Dec 2011 21:13:18 +0000

[...] Small Footprint, Big Yield: Create an Easy Micro Organic Urban Garden Today! [...]

By: Merewether

Merewether — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 23:27:30 +0000

Love the variation on the terrace theme – makes such a great use of space without compromising sunlight access.

By: Have A Small Space? Create An Easy Micro Urban Garden Today! - The Greatest Hits of All Time

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:57:11 +0000

[...] you are short on space (or in my case, time). This might be the perfect small garden for you! The Micro Urban Garden! Check it out! Category: Food, Gardening, Health Tags: garden, micro, organic Share on facebook!Share on [...]

By: Feuerschale

Feuerschale — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 05:13:46 +0000

This is an old design, but still very nice and effective. I once saw in Africa a similar idea but using drums. 2 drums of different diameters were used to create a vegi patch that handicapped verterains in wheelchairs can tend to.
And as if by accident, it looked stylish as well!

By: Linwood Campbell

Linwood Campbell — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:24:18 +0000

All the comments are very interesting. I think you can “stair-step” your raise bed if you want or just create a single layer raised bed – the idea is to do something for yourself and the environment. A good resource that one person mentioned is “square foot gardening” (http://squarefootgardening.com/). Whether your bed is on the ground or on legs to prevent bending over, all of these thoughts and ideas are moving in the right direction. one final thought – balcony gardeners could always use something plastic akin to the bottoms of rabbit cages to catch excess water runoff, and then let the sun evaporate the water – might work! Just glean what you can from these sites and run with your own ball!

By: Sarah Hazel

Sarah Hazel — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 23:47:24 +0000

I love the look of this idea, but I used 5 gallon buckets with ollas buried in them to plant my garden this year. I have a yard, but the choke vines and the mint are so invasive that nothing lasts long in my beds before being overrun. And, everything dries out quickly in other pots, so it dies. So far, my little garden is looking good and it takes up very little space. Look at globalbuckets.org for instructions!

By: Robin Plaskoff Horton

Robin Plaskoff Horton — Fri, 27 May 2011 20:38:36 +0000

Thanks for your comment Bill and a lot of what you point out makes perfect sense. It’s great to have everyone’s point of view on these things, and I really appreciate your feedback. I like to showcase many things, some that people don’t really like for various reasons while others love those same things. I encourage the dialogue.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 24 May 2011 07:11:27 +0000

Robin, you keep calling this a space-saving design. It might look good, but it does NOT save space. Do the math. It’s primary virtue is its appearance, but its actual growing space would be greater if it only used the bottom layer. As for the deep-rooted carrots, there are short varieties (Danvers half-long, for instance) as well.

I garden in 240 sq. ft. in raised boxes with 10 ft tall trellises. Raising them higher would not add a single square inch to the plantable area. Lowering them would take nothing except convenience away. Those trellises are what make the difference, not the height of the boxes. Thanks to those trellises, I grow >$10.00 per square foot per year in those boxes, canning or drying most of it. It sure makes a difference in my grocery bill.

Plain old ordinary yellow pine, treated with linseed oil, will last at least ten years … that’s what my boxes are made of and they are presently in their 12th year and just now starting to get ratty-looking.

Joe said that celery “requires 3-4 feet deep of rich loam soil to grow well”. Really? The soil horizon below the first 12″ rarely has appreciable amounts of organic material in it. See here: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wiktionary/en/wiki/loam . I can give my plants 4′ of root depth … but that is unusual and only because I have 2′ deep boxes over 2′ deep trenches that were back-filled with baled straw 10 years ago. As the soil above subsides it is replaced with lightly forked in compost. I know of no other (sane) way of getting organic material 4′ deep. The boxes shown cannot possibly make good financial sense.

By: Leroy

Leroy — Thu, 19 May 2011 03:08:10 +0000

With the right plants, and location, you could help increase feed for hummingbirds and plant wildflowers to help feed the bees that pollenize our food products and fruit trees. For those who have limited garden spaces, raised beds are the way to go.

By: Syl

Syl — Thu, 19 May 2011 02:55:58 +0000

I am a container gardener and really like your project. Thanks for sharing as I may do some additional containers this summer, and yours would certainly fill the bill and a good way to use up scraps of lumber and accumulation of other stuff..go green…enjoy good food..