Today, I took the first step in setting up my project for the summer and I’m very excited about it. You see, I’ve loved gardening all my life and lately I’ve been really interested in things like small space, urban and container gardens, vegetable gardens, the whole idea of eating as much locally grown food as possible and what are the best ways to make that happen. I put myself in the shoes of someone working outside the home, maybe travelling a lot and maybe living in a condo or simply having only a tiny amount of ground or just a deck to work with.

So, here are the questions my summer project is going to solve:

1. Can I make it easy enough for busy, inexperienced gardeners to successfully grow vegetables in containers on decks, patios and postage stamp yards?

2. What vegetables will give them the best bang for the buck – so to speak?

3. Can they maximize the yield and minimize the work at the same time?

4. How does hydroponics play a role?

5. How can I make it affordable?

I am intrigued at the role that outdoor hydroponic systems can play to solve this problem and when I first started looking into it couldn’t understand why they aren’t used more widely. Now I understand all too well – the currently available systems are too expensive for broad adoption – unless of course your aiming for a far more lucrative cash crop than tomatoes and as far as hydroponics goes right now it’s WAY TOO COMPLICATED.

I want to fix that and that, is the project. I have some tomato seedlings on the way (I hadn’t really thought of my grand plan when I first ordered them) and today I started acorn squash, two types of hot peppers and pickling cucumbers. I have half the seeds started in jiffy pots and the other half in rockwool. I’m going to grow them side by side and compare the results.