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Does anyone have the intel on who to ask and which days to go, if we want pallets?
On the subject of recycled materials, last year we learned how to make self-watering gardens out of 5-gallon buckets, and for 2 months it was my husband's job to stop by Whole Foods on the way home and check the bucket corner. We grew 30lbs of potatoes, at least 30lbs of squash, 6 tomato plants, 8 pepper plants, and enough lettuce and swiss chard for the whole year, on our driveway! So this year he's on bucket watch again, before the rest of the gardeners key in to it.
I'm sure he'll be just thrilled to be on pallet watch too!
(Just kidding, he supports all of my manic hobbies because he gets the freshest home cooking around. And the whole family has accepted the "you help, you eat" rule.)
oh, can you share how to make those self watering gardens? sound like it worked very well for you.
It doesn't work as well as good, fertile ground with mulch. BUT... it works better than gardening in unenriched Nevada dirt, or any other container gardening I've seen. For our climate, it's a great way to container garden and conserve a LOT of water. I put a bucket in the shower, and the warmup water from the family's baths provided all the water needed for about 20 planters during the hottest part of summer.
For the best explanation and blueprints, go to www.globalbuckets.org
To get the buckets, hit up Whole Foods about 10am or within a few hours afterwards. Go to the north entrance, by the coffee bar. If there are any buckets sitting by the green shopping baskets, they are ok to take without asking. (I sometimes ask the coffee guy, just to be sure.) My husband used a drill to cut out the holes, red plastic cups for the wicking, and electrical conduit pipe for the fill-tube. The only thing that got expensive was the potting soil, since we planted so many of them.
A couple of things we learned...
1. Use potting soil. You can use the cheapest out there, but our garden soil has too much clay for the wicking properties.
2. Fit your plants to the bucket. 1 tomato plant, 1 squash plant, 2-4 potato chunks, 4 cucumber plants, or quite a lot of lettuce seed. If you hit up bakeries, you can get 3-gallon buckets for green leafy plants, and save on dirt.
3. This site says to use a black plastic bag, but I like the red garden mulch film that you can find from Burpee and other gardening companies. It doesn't get as hot, and it reflects the right wavelength for the plants.
4. You can start your garden 2 months early this way, as long as you take them in at night, and take them out if it's 38 degrees or warmer.
5. Beans work better in the ground. I don't know why this was, since they didn't need much root space, but we had 8 buckets of beans and they just didn't produce. The garden beans gave us tons.
6. If you do squash, do at least 4 buckets and set them beside each other so they can pollinate.
The tomatoes didn't produce a TON because they love their root space, but we got a lot considering they were lined up on a rock wall. The squash were ok... we planted too many per bucket and didn't set enough buckets side by side. We had the most success with peppers because we could then set them on a hot patio, using the bright light. They produced as many peppers as if we had planted them in the ground. Potatoes were also a huge hit because we lined them up on our blacktop driveway and they only took 3 months to grow. We started the first crop in April and just took them in at night, until it stopped freezing.
I would start collecting the buckets now, because urban gardeners are really starting to learn about this. Close to planting season, we had NO success getting extra buckets.
Does anyone have the intel on who to ask and which days to go, if we want pallets?
On the subject of recycled materials, last year we learned how to make self-watering gardens out of 5-gallon buckets, and for 2 months it was my husband's job to stop by Whole Foods on the way home and check the bucket corner. We grew 30lbs of potatoes, at least 30lbs of squash, 6 tomato plants, 8 pepper plants, and enough lettuce and swiss chard for the whole year, on our driveway! So this year he's on bucket watch again, before the rest of the gardeners key in to it.
I'm sure he'll be just thrilled to be on pallet watch too!
(Just kidding, he supports all of my manic hobbies because he gets the freshest home cooking around. And the whole family has accepted the "you help, you eat" rule.)
oh, can you share how to make those self watering gardens? sound like it worked very well for you.
It doesn't work as well as good, fertile ground with mulch. BUT... it works better than gardening in unenriched Nevada dirt, or any other container gardening I've seen. For our climate, it's a great way to container garden and conserve a LOT of water. I put a bucket in the shower, and the warmup water from the family's baths provided all the water needed for about 20 planters during the hottest part of summer.
For the best explanation and blueprints, go to www.globalbuckets.org
To get the buckets, hit up Whole Foods about 10am or within a few hours afterwards. Go to the north entrance, by the coffee bar. If there are any buckets sitting by the green shopping baskets, they are ok to take without asking. (I sometimes ask the coffee guy, just to be sure.) My husband used a drill to cut out the holes, red plastic cups for the wicking, and electrical conduit pipe for the fill-tube. The only thing that got expensive was the potting soil, since we planted so many of them.
A couple of things we learned...
1. Use potting soil. You can use the cheapest out there, but our garden soil has too much clay for the wicking properties.
2. Fit your plants to the bucket. 1 tomato plant, 1 squash plant, 2-4 potato chunks, 4 cucumber plants, or quite a lot of lettuce seed. If you hit up bakeries, you can get 3-gallon buckets for green leafy plants, and save on dirt.
3. This site says to use a black plastic bag, but I like the red garden mulch film that you can find from Burpee and other gardening companies. It doesn't get as hot, and it reflects the right wavelength for the plants.
4. You can start your garden 2 months early this way, as long as you take them in at night, and take them out if it's 38 degrees or warmer.
5. Beans work better in the ground. I don't know why this was, since they didn't need much root space, but we had 8 buckets of beans and they just didn't produce. The garden beans gave us tons.
6. If you do squash, do at least 4 buckets and set them beside each other so they can pollinate.
The tomatoes didn't produce a TON because they love their root space, but we got a lot considering they were lined up on a rock wall. The squash were ok... we planted too many per bucket and didn't set enough buckets side by side. We had the most success with peppers because we could then set them on a hot patio, using the bright light. They produced as many peppers as if we had planted them in the ground. Potatoes were also a huge hit because we lined them up on our blacktop driveway and they only took 3 months to grow. We started the first crop in April and just took them in at night, until it stopped freezing.
I would start collecting the buckets now, because urban gardeners are really starting to learn about this. Close to planting season, we had NO success getting extra buckets.
