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  • From: yarrow@sfo.com
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] $700 of Food in 100 Square Feet?
  • Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 11:32:01 -0800

I'm sure all of hers got eaten. She lives within 10 miles of here, and we have a wealth of places to donate extra garden produce. She's had an edible front yard for decades, in a suburban neighborhood of (I'm guessing) 1/6-acre lots where lawns predominate.

I used to avoid summer squash until a globe squash volunteered in my garden a few years ago. I ate it and liked it. Since then, I've grown summer squashes on purpose and love them roasted. I even enjoy the occasional giant zucchini that other gardeners give away. At a garden potluck I had "spaghetti" made with a vegetable spiraler -- I didn't notice it wasn't an angel-hair pasta until the person who made it pointed it out! (She got the spiraler so her kids would eat more vegetables, or rather, so she could camouflage them so the kids wouldn't notice what they were eating.) Squash can also be grated and frozen to use throughout the year in muffins, to thicken soups, etc. Still, I don't grow more than 2-3 squashes, and since I don't have all-day sun for the whole garden, I put the squash plants on the shadier side.

If I had only 100 sf, I'd grow towers of romano and rattlesnake pole beans (usually I plant at least 24 plants per tower), 2 cherry/salad tomatoes (chosen from Galina's, Black, Tommy Toe, Super Snow White, Aunt Ruby's Green Cherry, Bulgarian Triumph, etc.), 3 red russian and 3 purple peacock kale, 2 burpless and 2 suyo cucumbers, 4 basil plants (genovese, purple, thai, lemon), and a couple summer squash (benning and a climber such as trombocino). In four 5-gallon pots I'd grow peppers (healthy, sheepnose pimento, pimento, chervena chuska) -- they do much better for me in containers. I'm assuming a plot 4 ft. wide by 25 ft. long. If that was all the garden space I had, I'd find a way to squeeze in a few more herbs and some flowers, too.


At 9:50 AM -0600 10/22/10, Tradingpost wrote:
Excerpts from article - hybrid tomatoes? bell peppers? lettuce? Not me. And how much zucchini can we eat? Can't we do better? And how much of hers got eaten?

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Grow $700 of Food in 100 Square Feet!
ROSALIND CREASY
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/Square-Foot-Gardening-Food.aspx?utm_content=10.22.10+FG&utm_campaign=FG&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

If more Americans grew a little food — instead of so much grass — our savings on grocery bills would be astounding.

In 2007, I began to get lots of questions about growing food to help save money. Then, while working on my new book, Edible Landscaping, I had an aha! moment. As I was assembling statistics to show the wastefulness of the American obsession with turf, I wondered what the productivity of just a small part of American lawns would be if they were planted with edibles instead of grass.

I wanted to make this garden simple — something anyone in the United States could grow. I didn’t include fancy vegetable varieties; I chose those available at my local nursery as transplants. I also selected vegetables that are expensive to buy at the supermarket, as well as varieties that my experience has told me produce high yields.

The first season (spring/summer 2008), I grew the following:

* Two tomato plants: ‘Better Boy’ and ‘Early Girl’
* Bell peppers, which are often luxuries at the market when fully colored: two ‘California Wonder,’ two ‘Golden Bell,’ one ‘Orange Bell,’ and one ‘Big Red Beauty’
* Four zucchinis: two green ‘Raven’ and two ‘Golden Dawn’
* Four basils (expensive in stores but essential in the kitchen)
* 18 lettuces: six ‘Crisp Mint’ romaine, six ‘Winter Density’ romaine, and six ‘Sylvestra’ butterhead


From April to September, this little organic garden produced 77.5 pounds of tomatoes, 15.5 pounds of bell peppers, 14.3 pounds of lettuce, and 2.5 pounds of basil — plus a whopping 126 pounds of zucchini! Next time I won’t feel bad about pulling out those extra plants.

I figured the total value of my 2008 summer trial garden harvest was $746.52. In order to get a fair picture, I also needed to subtract the cost of seeds, plants and compost (I can’t make enough to keep up with my garden), which added up to $63.09. That leaves $683.43 in savings on fresh vegetables. Of course, prices vary throughout the season and throughout the country. I live in northern California, and for comparison, Cathy, who lives in Iowa, checked out her prices and figured the same amount of organic produce in her area would be worth $975.18.

I started this garden to see what impact millions of organically grown 100-square-foot gardens would have if they replaced the equivalent acreage of lawns in this country.

According to the Garden Writers Association, 84 million U.S. households gardened in 2009. If just half of them (42 million) planted a 100-square-foot garden, that would total 96,419 acres (about 150 square miles) no longer in lawns, and no need for the tremendous resources that go into keeping them manicured. If folks got even one-half of the yields I got, the national savings on groceries would be stupendous: about $14.35 billion! So, a 100-square-foot food garden can be a big win-win for anyone who creates one — and for our planet.

I have decided to keep the records from my 100-square-foot garden going indefinitely. Last fall, I planted broccoli, chard, snap peas, cilantro, a stir-fry greens mix, kale and scallions. This took much less time, as the soil preparation was done and the drip system was in place.

Getting the Most Food from a Small Area

* Choose indeterminate tomatoes. They keep growing and producing fruit until a killing frost. (Determinate varieties save space but ripen all at once.)

* In spring, plant cool-season vegetables, including lettuce, mesclun and stir-fry green mixes, arugula, scallions, spinach and radishes. They are ready to harvest in a short time, and they act as space holders until the warm-season veggies fill in.

* Grow up. Peas, small melons, squash, cucumbers and pole beans have a small footprint when grown vertically. Plus, they yield more over a longer time than bush types.

* Plants such as broccoli, eggplant, peppers, chard and kale are worth the space they take for a long season. As long as you keep harvesting, they will keep producing until frost

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