Post Punk Kitchen Forum

So my PPK100 list is lacking in gardening news! What changed your gardening life in 2012? Or is there just something (a tip, trick or just advice) that you think the people NEED to know? Have a sentence or two to express your love for it?

Here are last year's entries
Down To Earth Fertilizer: http://www.theppk.com/ppk-100/21-down-t ... ertilizer/
Garden Tomatoes: http://www.theppk.com/ppk-100/7-garden- ... -you-live/

The only one I have on the list right now is Scattered Kale Seeds.

My season has just begun so I don't have any revelations yet.
So far I've learned:

shredded paper makes awesome mulch
green beans can get sunburned
tomatoes are impossible and i should just give up, but the bugs sure do have fun eating them
shiso, once you get it to grow, will take over your yard
and
mulberries make some frigging awesome pie.

i also learned that hoarding seeds is stupid if they're corn. old kale and chard may sprout if scattered and left alone, but maybe not.

nothing in this random post is "need to know". I'll have to think about what's critical.

Hand watered hydroponics in coconut fibre! ..Ok maybe this hasn't quite caught on yet, but it should. Great for people who haven't got a big backyard to dig up, and nowhere near as complicated as people make hydroponics out to be.

I realized that gardening is way too expensive for me. The weather here sucks--everything burns to a crisp, including non-bolting cilantro. What little we did have, squirrels, deer, bugs, or bears* got to before we did.

*forker destroyed Molly's net covered blueberry bushes and then pooped and left.

Potato towers?

yeah potato containers were awesome for me this year!

and coconut fiber in general. i did all my starts in it this year and it worked beautifully.

i gardened all year, but i don't know if i discovered anything new? i realised i need to seaweed emulsion my garden more. and that i need to mulch more. and i am currently obsessed with succulents. echevarias, crassulas, semperviums, aeoniums... but these are hardly new things, i think i have turned into a granny from the 70's.

I was just coming here to say potato towers! I love mine.

so now i want a potato tower...

Golden Treasure Tomatoes. They're a long-keeper type and I'm still eating them fresh! They are a very firm tomato, which helps them store, but also have a fabulous flavor.

This year was my first garden! I'm bummed that I can't use a lot of my new knowledge this coming year, since my new apartment doesn't have yard space for gardening...but I do have a balcony, so I will be doing some container gardening!

Anyway, this year I learned:

-Not to plant broccoli and cauliflower when you have limited space. They take up a lot of room, and they took a million years for me to get anything out of them.
-It is possible to grow just about anything from seed if you have enough window light in the early spring! I grew all of my plants from seed, including tomatoes and peppers, even though the seed catalog specifically said that they wouldn't grow with just window light (meaning I would have to get a grow light). Saved a lot of money, and learned so much!
-Root veggies are super easy to grow and you can get a lot of them out of a small space.
-Even thought it may look like you have a ton of pea pods, you will get very few actual peas out of them. Fun for a novelty, and maybe made one risotto out of my entire crop, but don't expect to get a huge yield if you don't have a boatload of plants.
-Leeks need more light than I thought they would.
-Butterhead lettuce is incredibly easy to grow, as are radishes!
-Don't try to grow anything that vines (aside from peas, which grow toward the sky and don't take up too much space) in a small raised bed. I grew a winter squash this year that took over my entire yard and deck. While it was fascinating, it was also sort of terrifying; I kept expecting to hear it tapping on my bedroom window one morning, having taken over the whole house.

I learned the joy of winter gardening! So much easier here than in the hot as hell summer with all the bugs. Plus, as much as I love tomatoes and peppers, I eat a lot more kale and chard so it makes a lot more sense.

Not that I'm going to quit summer gardening, it's just nice it's so easy. I didn't really believe everything would survive through the cold.

Hee.

I posted on our local vegan board about a new(ish) company making bagged veganic soil & compost. They're only in Texas right now (I think) but here's to hoping they spread nationwide! They're called The Ground Up.

Wee is free fertilizer!