New Garden Beds And Hydroponic, Aquaponic Gardening Coming Soon!

This is a very difficult time for me to be writing blogs, but I still have ideas and plans that I would like to share, so, my posts may be brief (and possibly boring!).

We now live in a new home with over an acre of land. Much of the yard is taken up with trees and a large barn, for which I am grateful. The front yard is large, and I don't think I can do much gardening there, because we have to use as much of that part of the yard for cars to park when we have events.

Nevertheless, I have worked with ideas on how to do gardening with little space, when I was at the old house. Many of those ideas will serve me well as I implement them in this yard.

We hired a man to redo the garden area. It will be just like the garden at the old house, but will not have trees interrupting the garden. If you ever pick a place in the yard to place your garden, placing the garden area under a tree is not a good idea! Been there. Done that. Won't do it again.

Garden Area When First Dug Out

I planted seeds in pots months ago, and they are ready for transplanting into the garden or into a larger pot. One of the seeds I planted was called St. John's Salvia, which produces a pretty red flower which attracts bees (hopefully!). I planted two of them in the garden bed near the aloe plant that a friend gave me.

Garden Bed Featuring Aloe Plant, Pineapple plants, and
St. John's Salvia plants

You won't be able to see the St. John's Salvia plant here unless you enlarge the picture. It is on the bottom right corner of the bottom garden bed. I have a couple more to plant, but will put them in another garden bed. 

Bees, you are welcome to come now! In that same garden, next to the St. John's Salvia plants, is a pineapple plant which I grew from the top of a pineapple that I grew at the old house. I was surprised that I could actually grow a pineapple, and one that looked like a pineapple and tasted good. Let's see if we get a pineapple from that plant.

So, here are some of the things I will be growing in the garden beds, Lord willing:

* Corn (non-GMO)

* peanuts

* squash

* potatoes

* peas 

* beans

* pollinating flowers

* pollinating herbs

* sweet potatoes

* beets
* celery
* carrots

Now, for the other ideas. Did you know that plant food that is made from minerals cannot be labeled organic? The word organic applies only to living things, and minerals are not living. So, my next adventure with gardening will be with hydroponics and aquaponics. I have a hydroponic set up, and as soon as the weather cools down, I will start the seeds for that. I tried this before on my balcony porch at the other house, but the plants never came to fruition. It looked like they were not getting enough light and there didn't seem to be anything I could do to fix that problem. Then a bird built a bird's nest around a broccoli plant. It was hard to clean it and change the water once that happened. So, I took the hydroponic set up down and will put plants back into it again. 

Have you ever gone to Epcot and ventured on the ride called, 'The Land'? I have always been intrigued by this and have loved this ride. Anyway, the idea of growing plants in a Tower Garden came from this whole concept as you can see it as you ride in the little boat through 'The Land'. 

That will be my next adventure. Here is my web site for this type of garden: http://www.ss.towergarden.com

I don't have one yet but look forward to the day when I can order one and learn how to use it. I want to grow strawberries, spinach, lettuce, and maybe some type of catnip or cat grass in it. Maybe I can grow wheatgrass too. 

Youtube has several videos on the Tower Garden. In NYC, there is a restaurant that uses Tower Gardens on their roof to grow their food! We visited this place but winter was just ending, and when I asked if their food was going to be from their Tower Gardens they said that it wasn't, because the weather was cold (it was even snowing while we were there). But if you go during the summer, you will probably have a choice of many food items that will have been grown on their rooftop (6 stories up!). The name of the restaurant is Book, Bell, and Candle.