Becoming Self-sufficient

I have been growing a few things indoors for some time now. I started with a dwarf banana that I got at IKEA after Doug and I got married. I think that one was inspired by our honeymoon in semi-tropical Puerto Vallarta and my childhood in a similar climate. Our plant collection grew over time; my friend Megan brought an amaryllis bulb to me for my birthday, I inherited another, I got a gift card to Lowe's and purchased plants that were on sale, etc. I think my dad is responsible for kicking off the gardening bug, though. For Christmas, he sent Doug and I one of those cool AeroGardens that you can find at Bed, Bath and Beyond. They grow plants indoors through automatic settings- for peppers/tomatoes, greens/lettuces, herbs, etc. All you do is pop in the little seedlings cases, a couple of nutrient tablets, fill with water and the system does the rest. Couldn't be easier! It's almost like cheating- we've got about fifty cherry tomatoes on their way right now, with new ones popping up all the time, and we only have to remember it every two weeks when it needs new tablets and water.

Photographic Timeline (up to present) of our AeroGarden Tomatoes (click on any pics to enlarge):


Anyway, after receiving this miracle grower, Doug and I did a Family Home Evening about food storage and basically about becoming self-sufficient. For those of you who are LDS, this will sound familiar. The church is all about its members being prepared in case of hardship or castastophe; part of this is done through food storage and another is by planting your own garden (if you are able). This, they say, helps save the family money and it's more nutritious anyway. Well, we don't really have the room to plant a garden.

Or so I thought...

The Family Home Evening activity we did in conjunction with the lesson was preserving some fruit through dehydration (my mom got me a dehydrator right before I got married). It made me think of all the other things I could preserve if I had more things in my fridge. My mind went crazy with grand ideas of a beautiful home storage supply. I started rummaging through my fridge and cupboards and saw baby bell peppers, a sprouted onion and sprouting fingerling potatoes, over-ripe avacados, ginger root, some clementine oranges, and watermelon. Instead of cutting these up to dry (what a mess that would have been with the watermelon!) I suddenly had the urge to plant. I cut everything open besides the sprouting veggies and grabbed all the seeds I could, planting them in little yogurt containers with holes punched in the bottom and their lids used as catching trays. It was an experiment. I didn't really know if any of them would grow, since many things are hybrids and seeds aren't often viable from store bought plants. But whoever told me that was wrong.

Besides the avacado (which, from my experience takes forever to germinate) everything is growing, including, to my surprise, the citrus tree. My baby bell peppers took off like crazy and are ready to be transplanted. My onion continued sprouting and I used it for fresh green onion in my cooking. The ginger is slow-going, but going. The watermelon sprouted, but then I promptly killed it because I got impatient and unearthed the just-germinated seed. Oh well.... like I said, it was an experiment.

My pepper plants as seedlings, in their yogurt cup home:


All this got me excited, and I wondered how I could have a garden in my little one-room apt. I started researching, and remembered hearing about container gardening. The premise of this type of gardening is that no matter how small your space, you can grow a little garden by using a pot to plant the crops in. Depending on the size of the pot, you can grow most anything, including fruit trees. I took all this to heart and checked out the acclaimed "bible" of container growing, The Bountiful Container.



Wow! What a book! Lots of inspiration and information later, we found our tiny deck area stuffed with planting supplies- six huge bags of potting soil, peat moss additive, marble chips (for aeration), seeds, river rocks (to help with drainage), huge pots to plant in, root stimulator, pine boughs and chips, a pH tester, little pellet seed starters and greenhouses, and little plants. A couple more things, actually... an apple tree and a peach tree, just for good measure (hopefully they live up to their claim of being dwarf).





We spent all day yesterday mixing soils, testing pH, running back and forth to Lowe's and trudging up stairs with supplies. By the time the day was fully spent and the full moon was lighting our endeavors, we had finished our project. Strawberries planted, blueberries (hopefully) happy, raspberries standing tall in their container. The peach and apple still need to be staked, but all are mulched with their various likes (blueberries like pine needles for acidity, peach trees don't like too much moisture around their trunk- kept the mulch away). After a good drink of root stimulator, we said goodnight to our little plants, but then ended up staring at them for about twenty minutes through our front window.

It was a cold night last night, but above freezing, so, as they are all cold hardy, we hope they pulled through.

Here's how they looked this morning:

(Top to bottom, L-R: blueberries, raspberries, apple and peach tree, strawberries)

Apple and Pear Tree beginnings:




One last thing... inside we are starting our seeds- chives, cilantro, bunching onions, spinach, rosemary and watermelon. We are germinating them in little pellets and greenhouses.





Once they get large enough, the pellets can go directly in the soil outside (and once it gets consistently warm enough!). We are hoping that we can build some window-box type planters and grow some more; invite the butterflies and hummingbirds in with a special flower garden for them. We are planning a system of crop rotation, so we'll have fresh produce through fall (I might even try growing a few stalks of corn outside the roofline!). So once the spring plants stop producing, we'll have other plants coming in- beans, snowpeas, squashes, lettuces, etc.

Now if my banana tree would only produce instead of growing cute little leaves, we could have some homegrown bananas in Utah. Imagine that!

Our mini-garden as it looks after planting, (and our mini-grill for our mini-deck!). Still have some supplies left over, but it'll all be cleaned up after transplanting is done!