Comments on: Voting with my fork: Gardening preview!

By: Siel

Siel — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 18:36:12 +0000

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…

By: Agroblogger

Agroblogger — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:17:11 +0000

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.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 17:30:10 +0000

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.