[A series documenting my efforts to eat local! Kick-off post's here]
Why, oh why must these farmers markets close so damn early? I’d be at those things every week, except that many of them close at the insane hour of 1 pm. ON WEEKENDS! What up with that?
To combat this problem, I thought the best solution would be to just grow my own damn veggies. I have a lil balcony now — I can start a lil balcony garden :)
So with both a high dose of optimism and my eco-good intentions, I signed up for a “Back Yard Farm” event, organized by Slow Food LA.
The event featured James Birch (left) of Flora Bella Farms in Three Rivers, Cali, and promised to help me grow food, safely, in my own back yard.
I mentally substituted “yard” with “balcony.”
But while I found the event inspiring, I have to say that overall, I didn’t get a whole lotta good advice for starting my own lil veggie garden in my balcony.
I mean, the main, basic pieces of advice were: Halt the pesticides (don’t got pesticides on my balcony), compost or till back into soil (what soil?), and look into getting a lab done on your soil composition (again, what soil?).
On the upside, I discovered a yum new restaurant, Il Grano, where this event was hosted.
Apparently, Il Grano’s all about using local produce. In fact, the restaurant cooked local hors d’oeuvres for us, using seasonal fruits and vegetables from James’ farm.
Which makes me think — Maybe I should first focus on patronizing restaurants that go to the farmers market for me….
Update, 3/12/07: Read the whole series, posted both here and on Treehugger.
I’ve also been exploring the question of getting good local vegis in the LA area and it’s a challenge. I have yet to find a good CSA, but I recently heard that Phil McGrath is thinking about starting a CSA out of Oxnard. If you see their organic vegi booth at one of the LA farmer’s markets ask them about it.
With regard to growing your own, one group I’ve been in touch with a bit is Urban Farming (http://www.urbanfarming.org/). They got started in Detroit, but are working on getting some stuff up and going in LA. Personally, I’m lucky enough to have some soil to grow vegis in. My biggest challenge is finding the time to tend it, but I’m managing to keep things going. I just put in part of my winter garden (cabbage, kale, broccoli, chard, mache, argula). I’m planning on adding peas and maybe potatoes. For someone with just a balcony, this time of year, I’d recommend kale, peas and potatoes. There are some really cool ways of growing potatoes in very limited space using a barrel-like container and ‘earthing up’. Here’s a link I found with a quick google:
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0506/potatoespots.asp
As far as getting ‘seed potatoes’ you can just go by a farmers market or grocery with good organics and get some potatoes. I’d avoid russets since they are pretty much designed for mass production in Idaho, but other than that just about anything will work. You may want to try a couple of varieties to see what works best for you.
I’d be really interested to hear about any discussions or groups in the LA area that are focused on backyard (or front yard :-) vegi gardening.
Comment by Nathan — November 1, 2006 @ 9:30 am
The link above is a good one. You need a container garden for a balcony, but don’t deceive yourself into believing you can grow all your own veggies, year round, in such a small space.
Soil testing won’t be necessary, because you can buy premix potting soil. Perilte and vermiculite are ok, though the dust can be harmful if you breath it, the organic regs permit their use.
Is your balcony south facing? If not, it will be really tough to grow anything worthwhile in the winter. You may want to try vermiculture (worm farming) to digest kitchen and garden wastes and produce a really nice, hassle free compost. You can fit California Red Worms in a small space.
Congrats on making the move to garden. A garden is everything war is not. Feel free to email me with questions.
Comment by Agroblogger — November 2, 2006 @ 8:17 am
Wow! Thanks for the tips people! I’m really psyched to start a potato garden. It looks like I need to wait until January or early February though.
My balcony faces north :( So maybe I should really just focus on composting for now. I do have a small area that’s north facing too, but it’s shaded, so it sounds like most veggies just won’t grow right now for me –
The main prob is that — since I’m working on a balcony — I can’t just put the compost in a bin with holes at the bottom cuz it won’t be able to drain normally. I need to get a special composter like this one that has a lil thing that siphons off the liquid, but those things cost a couple hundred… Might take me a lil while…
Comment by Siel — November 3, 2006 @ 10:36 am