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| Thursday, May 17, 2012 |
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| Gardening advice from the Church | ||
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Aug. 5th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
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Here is a page in the Church’s FHE manual that discusses container gardening:
My wife and I recently moved into a house on 2 acres, and while we plot and scheme the vast garden we intend to grow in our yard next season, we decided to try container gardening on our deck. We bought a hanging tomato grower as seen here, and planted 4 varieties of tomato plants, as well as basil, thyme and bay on top. So this is what container gardening looks like for us. The first picture is from when we first planted, around June 20. The second was taken Saturday morning, August 4. The best part is, we can bring these plants indoors during the winter and grow year-round. This is my first experience with gardening, and I love tending to this thing every day, though admittedly this is a much easier arrangement than a larger, in-ground garden with more pests and soil pathogens. Now, to learn composting…
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Aren’t you loving those tomatoes? I’m envious, I can’t wait. I’ll post our garden, not to make you look bad, but Bill is a primo gardner. I sort of don’t pay it much attention until canning season. He always brings in the first tomatoes of the season for me because he knows I love them. You know, it was summer of 1975, me and my little Jamie had a garden about 4 X 10′, in back of our trailer. I had no clue what I was doing, I think I planted peas, carrots, corn and tomatoes. They grew! And it was so fun to eat our little crop. I like the church’s little directive. |
Ann, The first time I had garden-grown tomatoes a few years, it kind of rocked my world. I had no idea a tomato could taste that rich and flavorful. I am so excited to start eating these in a week or two. I’m going to enjoy making a tomato-basil sauce with these home grown ingredients; I’ll put it over Dreamfields pasta and take that to work for my lunches. |
I put up three tomato plants in walls of water this spring. We ate out first tomatoes on July 4th. Now the volunteers (I tilled last year’s plants under and they sprouted) have fruit as well. Make sure to plant a basil with your tomatoes for some fresh caprese during the summer. |
that container is SO cool! i swear by square foot gardening. even though my parents had ample space when we were growing up, they only ever used the square foot method. it was years before i found out that gardens were made in rows. it’s great because it is very efficient and economic in terms of space, planting effort, harvesting effort, and so on. we currently have tomatoes, cukes, lettuce, onions, marigolds, bell peppers, bush beans, spinach, carrots, and radishes. we’re moving soon and i’m frantically plotting the yard in anticipation of the wide, open spaces. composting is easy and (i’m weird) fun. i like the whole circle of life aspect. we just started vermicomposting (worm composting) and are having fun with that. i think the kids get the most out of the worms and the garden. we’ve had so many learning opportunities outside. |
arj, The huge green plants on the top of the planter are basil; the only difficult thing about caprese is finding the buffalo mozzarella like we had in Italy. I’ve only seen it once here in the states. But I think the tomatoes will definitely approximate the ones in Italy in terms of flavor. makakona, Will you give some pointers on composting? How do you do it? What kind of bin(s) do you use? |
Ellsworth, Great post– I’ve been putting off getting into gardening until we have more land, but this is the perfect solution. Fresh tomatoes every day, year-round, sounds incredible. |
Dearest Tagore, The response to this post has not been overwhelming by any stretch, but if we can persuade one person to begin thinking about gardening, this is a smashing success! |
Ellsworth, Thank you for those wise sentiments. Like it says in the Book of Mormon, “It is better to give yourself completely for one soul, than to labor diligently for the masses.” I think that’s in Omni. |
It was funny telling a yankee back in April, “our leaves are yellow, what do you think it is?” And he replied, “It’s too EARLY to plant tomatoes.” Not in Louisiana, dude. Our beans were poor but the yellow tomatoes taste delicious and the yellow peppers are wonderful. One year, when I had no idea what I was doing and had never planted a garden before, I had a friend till up my back yard some and I planted tomatoes and peppers and broccoli and cucumber and they grew and grew and grew. I paid almost nothing and I had free food all summer. I’ve never had a successful garden since. |
I even bought seeds to do this this year, but didn’t get to it soon enough. Where did you get that container? My father-in-law uses the big buckets that Costco detergent comes in. And I never thought about being able to do this inside. Just find a sunny window/ |
That was supposed to be a question…just find a sunny window? |
I saw the container in a skymall catalog on a flight, but they also sell them on Amazon- just search “hanging tomato grower” or something like that. Apparently, you can keep growing throughout the year if you have a sunny window, but I imagine the growth will be less during winter than in the sunny summer months. |
Bill just brought in the first five cherry tomatoes from our garden. Yum! Nothing like tomatoes from the garden. |
[...] we being commanded to do more? Just how much earth-replenishing are we committed to? Should we be composting? (How much?) Eating locally grown food? (But what about the gorgonzola?) Planting (non-invasive) [...] |
You should check out Square Foot Gardening… much better than tilling the land and very easy. I love it. |
