FarmTina

Project: DIY Outdoor Vertical Planter

 

When I talk about my FarmTina project, I often hear the response, "I wish I could grow food but I just don't have any space!" To that I say, PHOOEY. Excuses, excuses.

Yes, lack of space is one of my biggest challenges in gardening in the city, but that has actually been a fun obstacle to overcome. As a reminder, I've had only a paved patio for the last 2 years, no ground soil at all, so everything I've grown has been in containers of some sort. I suppose I could've filled my yard with fancy terra cotta pots and structured grow beds, but that just seems wasteful and expensive. Instead, I got creative.

For example, I punched drainage holes in the bottom of found tall metal trash bins from Ikea to grow my potatoes. I also drilled drainage holes into large Rubbermaid storage tubs to grow corn. I used a long, flat under-the-bed plastic storage box as a lettuce bed, a box which I had used for storage for years and was going to throw away because it was cracked. I even created quite a bit of vertical grow space using an industrial pallet that my mom "found" (ok, maybe stole from) in front of a warehouse.

My most recent space-saving project was featured in an episode of GROW, a Whole Foods video series documenting urban farmers around the country. I simply needed more space, so I decided to build an outdoor-strength vertical grow bag that would hang on the fence surrounding my yard. And, of course, it would need to look cute.

Check out the video to see the grow bag in action, and then make your own! The "instructions" are more like beginner's guidance, and I'd love to hear your updates & improvements to my first-time experiment. Here's how to make my outdoor vertical planter (written instructions below the diagrams):

My New Pallet Garden

After reading about Life On The Balcony's pallet garden-- a garden that is built in the cracks of a discarded wooden warehouse pallet-- I decided I absolutely had to make my own. Finding containers to plant in has been one of the challenges of city gardening in a concrete backyard, so I was excited to see what kind of things I could grow in this unconventional and space-saving "planter".

First, I had to find a pallet.

Vertical Gardening

I've been reading a lot lately about vertical gardening, the many space-preserving systems that are popping up for growing plants vertically instead of down on the ground. This is definitely appealing to me-- me, who lives in a 300-square foot apartment. I'd love to be surrounded by plantlife on every wall to feel like I'm living in a rainforest!

I've come across some great vertical gardening solutions that I wanted to share with you, and many of them you can make yourself.

Pallet Garden from LifeOnTheBalcony.com

This is an amazing way to upcycle an old warehouse pallet and use very little space to grow quite a few plants. Take a look at the tutorial on Fern's site to see how easy it is to make your own, but don't forget, this type of wood is chemical treated and shouldn't be used for growing food. Now I'm just trying to figure out how to steal a pallet from the beer warehouse on the corner...

 

Growing Sprouts in Your Kitchen: The Jar Method

Don't have a yard, or even a sunny window in your tiny city apartment? Still want to grow your own food? You should grow sprouts!

Sprouts are newly germinated seeds that are eaten at 4-7 days old, before they grow into the adult plant they were meant to be. Usually you'll find them grown from seeds of alfafa, clover, radish, broccoli, and mung bean, and you'll find them mostly in salads and chinese stir fries. Sprouts are easy to grow in your kitchen and require no soil and barely any sunlight-- just a bit of waiting. I grew some sprouts last week, take a look to see how I did it.

Thank You, BK Farmyards!

I got a very cool thank-you gift in the mail from BK Farmyards! They sent me some home made beet liqueur from Sister Liqueurs and a cute tote bag made by one of their teen farmers.

BK Farmyards is a farming network that reclaims spaces in Brooklyn (school yards, private backyards, community lots) and turns them into mini-farms producing fresh food for the neighborhood and giving jobs and education to local adults and teens.

Way back in February of 2010, I donated to a Kickstarter Campaign with BK Farmyards to help raise money for a youth farm at a highschool in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. (So, sidenote here, if you want to help out your community but don't have hundreds of dollars to donate to large non-profits, Kickstarter.org is a good way to find people who could really use your $1 or $10 donation.) The campaign ended up raising more than it's goal, and I was very happy to be a part of it!

Here's the rundown on how my money is being spent:

"We will develop the 1-acre farm over the course of the next four years incorporating farming into the science, health, art, and media classes. We will have a summer youth employment program which will provide summer jobs for the students as well as after-school volunteer programs. In the first year, we will provide fresh affordable produce to 20 families in the community for 16 weeks, and by year 5, we will be providing produce for 80 families. This farm will be one of the only fresh food sources in the neighborhood."

One of the thank-you gifts I received for my donation was this great fresh beet liqueur made from a BK Farmyards space! Here are my ideas for cocktails to make with it:

1. Beet Salad Martini: Sister Liqueurs Beet Beet, Nux Alpina Walnut Liqueur (which I actually got a bottle of for Christmas this year), a dollop of something creamy on top-- would it be weird to put goat cheese on a cocktail?

2. Summer Beet Spritzer: Sister Liqueurs Beet Beet, seltzer water, lime juice, mint garnish and a sugar rim

3. Bloody Beety: Sister Liqueurs Beet Beet, plain old beet juice, lemon, horseradish, salt and pepper, celery swizzle stick

4. Beet Beer: Sister Liqueurs Beet Beet, ginger beer, celery salted rim

So... do you have any other ideas?

Here's the beet liqueur, posing stylishly on my couch surrounded by blankets made by my great-grandmother, a pillow from Marimekko, and a heart buddy made by my friend Alex.

Is it fair for this group to trademark the term "Urban Homesteading"?

I consider much of what I do to be steps towards living as an Urban Homesteader, creating a self-sufficient lifestyle that gives more than it takes. I grow my own food, compost my waste, pickle and preserve, infuse liquors and oils, make homemade bath products and try to make whatever I can out of my own materials instead of buying. The "urban" part just means that I'm doing all these things in New York City, where so much seems to be wasted around me every day and my rental apartment is only 300 square feet.

So here's the deal: The online community of urban homesteaders are in an uproar this week over a group in California who has trademarked the terms "urban homestead" and "urban homesteading". The group is also allegedly sending out cease & decist orders to other websites using the terms, which are now legally considered their intellectual property.

My favorite part is their suggestions of other terms to use in place of urban homesteading. This is quoted from their letter that they are sending to trademark violators:

If your use of one of these phrases is not to specifically identify products or services from the Dervaes Institute, then it would be proper to use generic terms to replace the registered trademark you are using. For example, when discussing general homesteading or other people’s projects, they should be referred to using terms such as ‘modern homesteading,’ ‘urban sustainability projects,’ or similar descriptions.

So instead of supporting fellow urban homesteaders around the country for being involved in the movement, this group has trademarked the term and turned it into an issue of marketing and money-making. Ick ick ick.

My dayjob is actually at an advertising firm, so I do understand why it's important to own your brand. But it's not fair to claim you own a lifestyle, and it's ironic that this lifestyle they're trying to own is about community and sharing.

There is some good reading on the subject at GOOD magazine's website.

Watering My Garden All The Way From Canada, Dontcha Know

This week is going to be an experiment: I'll be out of town for 8 days (going to Montreal on a romance vacation!), and it'll be the first time I will have been away from my garden for more than a day or two. In the past when I've been absent for less than 48 hours, I've had an assortment of friends and neighbors pop in to water the plants and take a few tomatoes for themselves in exchange. But this time, I've devised a plan: I call it The Self-Sufficient 8-Day Garden Machine!

Just like everything else on my farm, I totally just made this up myself and I have no idea if it will actually work...

Farm-made shampoo

I was inspired by this Grist.org video to make my own shampoo using only baking soda, water and some herbs that I'm growing in the backyard.

As with many other cleansers we use on our bodies, shampoo can become addictive for your hair: the more you use it, the more your hair comes to rely on it to stay healthy. Plus, whatever you use to wash your hair is being absorbed into your hair and skin on a regular basis, and that could be scary if you can't trust your shampoo ingredients. You can check the health of your beauty products on the Cosmetics Database safety review... you'd be surprised at how unsafe some greenwashed "all-natural" brands of body products are!

Aside from all that health stuff, making my own shampoo is cheaper than buying it. That's good enough for me!

Here's a simple recipe for home made shampoo that actually works: