| In 2009 I recognized that the economic situation was making a lot of people suffer terribly. Many were not accustomed to having to struggle to get by. It was a year for community gardening, but with a twist. I decided to talk to friends in the community and ask them to grow food in their own yards. The public space option was too risky. I also recognized that the size limitations of my own yard would severely limit what and how much I could grow. That is if I didn't start thinking differently about growing space.
My first thought was potatoes. Last year I really wished I could grow more potatoes, but the traditional rows heaped high with straw took up too much room. I decided on stacks of tires. My husband kindly dragged some home. They were huge - and they were heavy.
 There are several schools of thought on this method. One plan is to lay them out as described at Stop the Ride frugality blog. The author draws on the writings of Backwoods Home. However, the plan presented here seems to take up just as much room as the traditional row. So what's the point? Unless you have a bunch of old tires you can't get rid of.
 You can stack them up - which makes the most sense like the ones pictured above - and described at this site. But you still have a stack of dirty old tires in your yard. I thought of painting them. But I then I came across a terrific post at Tip Nut.
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A friend sent me a link to Tip Nut, and I'm now addicted. What great down to earth ideas. Be sure to visit them.  Anyway, they had an article entitle How to Grow 100 lbs of Potatoes in 4 Square Feet. What an idea! So much more attractive than old tires. A great idea and attractive, but as I read on, it started to sound complicated. For starters, if you wanted to harvest potatoes from the bottom layer, you had to unscrew the thing. Too much work!
I put on my thinking cap and my darling husband said, uh oh. I showed him the potato box above and then I started to describe what I wanted to do. He didn't run away. Instead, he took my idea and improved on it.
We got pallets which are everywhere for free. He sawed them in half and fashioned a side by side compost bin / potato box. He fitted the front with wood bars so that it could (in theory) just slide up instead of complicated unscrewing.
I slid "books" of hay into the openings to keep the soil and potatoes from falling out, and also to allow air in. The best part is it was free! What a team we make! But we weren't done. |
 Our new potato box / compost bin was in place, but unfortunately it was over the spot where Feeney liked to dig to try to reach the neighbor's dog. He hopped in and couldn't get out. To make matters worse, the feral cats in the neighborhood thought it made a swell litter box. And Puggles just love stink. Ugh! A quick covering with a chicken wire frame took care of that.In the days that followed, it was rainy and I couldn't get into the garden, but my brain kept going. I saw some alternatives to those pricey Topsey Turvey planters for tomatoes and thought, that's just a bag. Some folks were hanging 5 gallon buckets. Too heavy. Hmmm, I said to my husband. Uh oh, said he. What if we put up a frame. It could fit right into the opening of the pallets. Then I can make planters out of 3 liter soda bottles. He agreed. What a team!
The planters were fashioned from a variety of soda bottles, a bleach bottle, a pretzel canister, and a water dispenser. I planted not only tomatoes, but also strawberries and cucumbers.
So far so good. |
| The planters looked a little blah, so I decided to stick some petunias in the top to add color 
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I should add that the area where this wonderful construction was built is along the edge of our driveway. It is no longer than 15 feet and about 4 feet deep at the widest. At one point I had a pretty pink rose bush planted behind a shrine of the Virgin Mary. It never did well. Finally, I realized that was because there was concrete just a few inches down.
 Remember that falling down brick wall from last year that never got fixed? Well, with a little help from my son, we dug out all the remaining soil and the tubers from the very invasive spiderwort and paved the area with some of the bricks.
A small space container garden was born -- and Mary still had her place in the center of it all. |
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| In case you think this all looks very expensive, it's not. The pallets were free. The lumber for the frame was left over from a neighbor's deck. The bricks were given to me by the City. Some of the pots were found and others were given to me by a neighbor who moved away. The 5 gallon tubs were found at the local bakery. They took a lot of scrubbing, but they were free! |
The beautiful teak trellises had price tags on them - $39.99 for the small ones and $49.99 for the large one. I got them at a church sale for $2 each. The strawberry pot was another purchase at a garage sale for 50 cents. As for the plants, most were grown from seed donated to our program. Oh, one other cost. 5 cents each for the soda bottles we didn't return for deposit. |
Food Security 2009
