Hey all,  This is a great story and an easy way to create your own garden. Greg

My Instant Garden
By Parri Willie
Phoenix, AZ

When I was a little girl we lived in New Jersey, and my mom always had a garden — growing green beans and tomatoes among other things. I can remember going out in the summer months and picking the beans and eating them right where I picked them. When I was 25 I moved to Phoenix. Living in the “desert” I didn’t think it was possible to recreate that garden. And then, 2 years ago, after a tour of the Urban Farm I realized it is VERY possible.

My home is a typical Phoenix tract home in a development where every house has colored rock for a yard. To remove the rock and dig up the ground underneath seemed like a huge undertaking and then I could only hope that the dirt there would sustain a garden. It would be much more practical and successful, I thought, to build a raised garden and fill it with proper soil and compost.

Planning to build a raised-bed garden that was 5 foot x 10 foot and 12 inches deep, I enlisted the help of a friend and we purchased three nice quality pieces of pine, 10 foot long x 2 inches wide x 12 inches tall and enough brackets and screws to hold all the sides together. We cut one of the boards in half for the 5 foot ends of the garden and then connected the four sides together securely with the brackets. After raking away much of the rock from our selected area, we set this outer “shell” of our garden down, made sure it was level and then filled it with a mixture of organic soil and compost. After planting my chosen vegetables, I wrapped a wall of chicken wire around the outside of the garden to protect my veggies from our little rabbit visitors. This garden project was fairly easy, cost under $100, and took less than a day to put together.

This past summer I successfully grew tomatoes, zucchini, strawberries and green beans, and, yes, I picked the beans and ate them right there in the yard. Some sections of the garden didn’t grow as well as others so I spent time fertilizing and moving the soil around a bit before getting the fall garden planted. I expect to harvest, red and yellow onions, broccoli, sweet peas, eggplant, tomatoes, 2 kinds of lettuce, spinach and carrots as my winter crop.

Part of the thrill of having my garden is the sense of accomplishment in seeing the plants grow and produce food, but a bigger part is knowing that I am feeding my family healthy, organic food that is full of nutrients and free of pesticides and chemicals. I can definitely see adding another garden box at a later date and doubling my harvest!

Technorati Tags: edible landscape, gardening, Greg Peterson, Instant Garden, Living Green, Parri Willie, permaculture, Urban Garden

Hey all,

Last fall I wrote a book called Grow Wherever You Go where I explore the different places our gardens can live.  One of the things that I did in the book was to reach out to the community for their urban farm stories.   I have to tell you I received some incredible stories and was inspired by what I read.  Each Tuesday I will be posting a new inspiring urban farm stories from all over the world.  I actually received a response that I will post in the coming weeks from Thailand – woohoo.

My first post is about my friend Mike Lieberman the Fire Escape Gardener in New York City…Really – this is really incredible – check it out.

Mike Lieberman
Fire Escape Gardener in New York City

I just started my fire escape garden in the spring of 2009. I wanted to reconnect with my food supply because it seems like we just kind of think of produce as “growing” in grocery store. We’ve kind of lost perspective on how food really grows. I was reading a book on eating locally and was amazed to learn that, on average, food travels up to 2,000 miles from the farm to our tables. Since I eat a lot of fresh vegetables and fruits I wanted to cut down on my food budget and get better connected with my food. I joined my local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and started going to farmer’s markets but even that food is grown far away or treated with pesticides. So I started reading more and asking for information from the growers at the farmer’s markets. You might think this is crazy, considering I live in an apartment in New York City, but it all came together when I discovered self-watering containers that I could make to fit in a space as small as a fire escape landing.

I made modified versions of ones that I saw online and was able to make them out of mostly recycled materials in 20 to 30 minutes for under $5. I put the directions on my website directions for the planters I make out of coffee cans, gallon jugs and two liter soda bottles. I cut the bottom part of the soda bottles off, reinforced them with duct tape and was able to hang them on the fire escape railing. All of this has been done within the fire code and apartment regulations and now I enjoy kale, Swiss chard, lettuce, sweet peppers, chili peppers, cherry tomatoes, basil, apple mint, Greek oregano and a type of parsley.

When you really think about it, food is essential to our lives and I want fresh real food, not the great science experiment that we call processed or GMO’d food. I was told that food has changed more in the last 50 years than it did in the 1,000 years prior. I didn’t go to school or get a fancy certificate to do this and I’m not preachy, but I did start a website to show people how easy and really delicious it is to grow some of your own fresh, pesticide free food…even on a fire escape!

Technorati Tags: Fire Escape Gardner in New York City, Greg Peterson, Mike Lieberman, Urban Farm