Seeding Day 1, April 10

So I seeded all of my plants today. Depending on where you live, and if you have a green house, you will plant at different times. I’m a little behind right now for my climate. My cool weather plants should have been planted the last week of Feburary/the first week of March and since I’m starting my plants indoors I could have planted my heat loving tomatoes/peppers/basil a month ago. If you were planting in a green house you could plant your heat lovers at the same time as the cool weathers but with bottom heat – a heating coil under sand on a table with your seed containers on top. Since I’m starting all of my plants inside my heated apartment this division doesn’t really exist for me, and this might be a problem… one of many I’m hoping to sort out.

This will be my second crop this year (the reason I’m a month behind). My first crop was leggy (starved for sunlight and thus tall and gangly) and ended up getting nitrogen poisoned due to an over zealous fish fertilizing by myself and a friend. I now realize that despite having floor to celing south facing windows my plants do not get enough light. I’m trying to solve this issue two ways. 1. I broke down and bought a growing light. If I run it 8 hours a day, every day, for the next year it should cost me $7.84 on my hydro bill, but I dont see that happening. And 2. I found a giant mirror on a street corner in December and being a compulsive hoarder of all things free, I took it not knowing when I would use it… Ta Da! I’ve found it’s use. It now rests against a chair (that I also picked up off the street) and reflects the light from the windows back at the plants.

Now the heat problem. So far I’ve succeeded in forcing my kale to bolt – go to seed – at a shockingly young age. My apartment is far too hot for these plants. I’m kind of stumped on this one. I open the door to let air in but they just sit in the sun inside the apartment and bake all day. Since I’m out of the house most of the time I can’t move them in and out as the weather dictates. Days when I know it will be nice I can put them out, but sometimes it rains really hard and until the plants are ready to be hardened off – outside during the day and inside at night, not matter what the weather is like – I don’t feel comfortable doing that. So this problem has yet to be resolved. Hopefully they’ll cope. We’ll see.

So the plants I seeded today are (H = heirloom, if you want info on what ‘heirloom’ means look at the ‘seeding supplies’ on the right hand side):
In 1” pots

• Everygreen Long White Bunching – H 1880. These might not sprout. This seed is 3 years old and from a seed sanctuary. Onion and Carrot seeds only last a year. I over seeded these instead of doing a germination test… this was probably a bad idea as over seeding leads to weaker starts and can make them tough to separate… oops.
• Ledniky Lettuce – H from Czech Republic
• Dr. Dukat Dill – H
• Celery
• Siegfriend Frost Leeks
• Russian Kale
• Rainbow Chard
• Butter Crunch – H
• Broccoli – H (unknown name, got it in a seed trade)
• Scarlet Nantes Carrot. Like the onions, these seeds are very old.  Not sure how they will do.

2” pots

• Ardwyna Past Tomato – H
• Swallow Pepper – H Russian origins
• Oregano
• Cilantro
• Sweet Basil
• Muncher Cucumber. I grew these 3 years ago in Ontario and they didn’t do very well. It was a very hot summer, we’ll see how they do out here.
• Long Red Cayenne Slim
• California Wonder Green Pepper (your generic grocery store pepper, I grew this 3 years ago and this is my own harvested seed. It’s prone to black spot. I harvested the plants that did not get black spot but we’ll see. It’s not a great pepper, most varieties you find in stores have been killed by over production and are more prone to diseases)

4” pots

• Dragon Tongue Bush Bean – H
• Hubbard Squash

already growing

• Little Marvel Pea – H 1880
• Sweetie Cherry Tomato. Again, the generic store ones… ew. I grew 6 kings of heritage cherry 4 years ago but I didnt seed save… that’s frustrating.

I’ll Post pictures when the first shoots appear!!  I should also quickly say, that not all of these seed starts will be grown in my apartment garden. The cucumbers (while they can be trained to climb up walls) would require more space than I have, as well as the broccoli, squash (!! talk about large !!), onions, peas and celery. I’m going to try to get to get the biggest bang for my buck so to speak. I’ve selected highly productive varities to get the most out of each container (except for the seeds I had left over from my old gardens, those I used because I’m a geek who loves saved seeds). The Veggies that I am not growing in my apartment garden (along with triples of the ones I am) will go with my partner, Cel Ery,  to a plot down the street to be grown there as our back up crop.  Since this is the trail year I’m not gambling with our food security, if all goes well next year we’ll just use the balcony.

That being said, all of the things listed here could be grown without access to the earth.  Peas, Cucumbers, Squash, Eggplant can all be trained to grow up walls. Unfortunately the only walls my balcony touches are glass and those plants would have nothing to grab onto and would block out the sunlight from reaching the plants inside, so for me those options are out. However if anyone would like to know how that can be done, I will gladly pass on the theory, but unfortunately I won’t be able to give you any first hand advice.  Once those plants leave my house I wont be following them on this blog anymore (I can tell you what you would do if you were to keep them).

I started this webpage because I was frustrated at the lack of information out there for people without access to land and I’m determined to use my training to bring that information to apparement dwellers all in one handy location. I know I’m sick of all the searching, someone else must be too!

If you can’t eat it, why bother?

The Project: Produce fresh organic veggies 4 stories up. I’m determined to prove it’s possible to live in an apartment and still eat food you’ve grown yourself.

ignore the disturbing patriarchal message in the photo.

The challenge: Do it on the cheap, using recycled, free, or found materials.

This summer I’m going to see how much food I can produce on a 12 ft by 4ft south facing balcony and the first 2 feet just inside my apartment. When I decided to do this I started looking on the internet and library for information on vegetable container gardening. Surprisingly there is very little information out there.  I’m a trained Organic gardener so I thought why not, through trial and error, create my own website that would track my progress and provide information on exactly that, apartment container gardneing.

I want to see if it is possible for people without access to land to grow fresh organic produce on their balconies and inside their homes. I’m using found/salvaged/built containers to grow my veggies in.   At each step I’ll post detailed information on the supplies I’m using, the problems I’m facing, the solutions I find and the results I get.

This project is rife with problems, not the least of which is the possibility that my balcony will rip itself from the building due to the weight of the wet soil (1sq ft of wet soil weights 100-150 lbs). But I’m determined to make it work!  So follow along, join me, create you’re own apartment garden and post questions and advice.