Wow- I’ve been gone a long time. Funny how the things I love to do and the things I need to do don’t often appear on the same list. I’d like to change that.

This year is going to be so brilliantly exciting for me. I’m moving in the spring and as much as I love vegetable container gardening and think its a very important trend for the future of cities and city livers (not to be confused with chicken livers) I’m thrilled that I’ll be able to have an inground vegetable garden again. And I’ll be adding a few small nursery beds to fatten up some of my beloved outdoor bonsai trees including hornbeams (if they make it through their first winter) Amur Maples, Japanese black and white pines, Sargent’s crabapples and some lovely larches.

Late in the summer, if all goes well, I’ll get my greenhouse. It won’t be a big honkin’commercial size, but I’m looking at something between 8×12 and 10×14- I just need to fit it to my site and my budget.

The yard that will house these wonderful things belongs to a house whose current owners have two large dogs and so the back yard, which isn’t immense but is a more than reasonable size has never had anything done with it. It’s a blank slate and to be able to plan from scratch is just a delight to me.. I’ll be adding a small private yoga garden and of course a patio for outside eating and entertaining and some perennial and annual flowers.

I’ll be incorporating as many food bearing shrubs and plants and trees- so I already know that blueberries will feature in the foundation shrubs and a hardy kiwi vine will make an appearance along with rhubarb and maybe a peach tree.

As a rental gardener I handed out pieces of favourite plants every time I moved so there are some daylillies and a peony or two whose offspring will return to my garden in the next year or so.

Happy New Year to one and all. I’ve been waiting for this one all my life.

Yesterday I had to clean up my vegetable garden for the winter season.  It would be a sadder time, except I try to choose a beautiful fall day to do my clean up. – Actually, I stage the job over a few days because my back just isn’t what it used to be.

I pulled the beefsteak tomato, green bell pepper, Brandywine tomato and flat leaf parsley – each in their own one gallon pot (which is only 6″x 6.5″high) from the planter they shared with a single gravity feed valve.  Of all the hydroponic designs I played with this summer this simple configuration – 4 pots in a single tray, with a single valve, from a single purposed nutrient reservoir- was the most successful.

when I pulled the plants from the pots, I was gratified to see the kind of solid mass of roots that you’ll be shown in any picture that demonstrates what a root bound plant should never look like.  But since I had no intention of either increasing the pot sizes, planting them into the ground or extending the life beyond a single growing season the solid mass of roots was good news to me becuase the purpose of the exercise was to confirm that – You Can Grow a Full Sized Tomato or Pepper in a Six Inch Pot!

OK,  so neither the beefsteak tomatoes nor the peppers will yield Fall Fair Blue Ribbon sized fruit ( yes they’re fruit!)  but they will yield a steady, generous crop of food – and you can do it in the lowest maintenance container garden that you can imagine.

Since I’m about the worlds worst artist,  I won’t be sketching out the designs but I’m going to create a PDF with photos to show how to make these gardens.  I hope that for anyone who would love to grow their own organic vegetables and herbs, but don’t have the space to plant a garden – these designs will set you along the road to your first harvest.

I’ll post information about the designs here – and probably post the PDF on my ecommerce bonsai site – Zen Garden Bonsai.

Oh – the flat leafed parsley is actually still good until a hard frost takes it out – here’s a shot of what it looks like.

There is a famous marketing saying, the gist of which is that it can be difficult to see  beyond the end of your nose – particularly if your head is stuffed up your …….. Oh, you’ve never heard of it?  Well, repeat it to enough people and you’ll hear of it.  That’s called viral marketing.

I Love to Garden.  Always have.  I planted my first vegetables when I was about 8.  They all died, but that’s hardly the point.

I’ve tried to do lots of different businesses on my own but in spite of wanting to be objective about what business I’ll go into and evaluating the opportunities based on research, somehow I keep ending up growing something.  But looking at my ideas for outdoor-hydroponic- container-vegetable gardens, that truly are effortless and idiot proof, I’m wondering if there will be any appeal beyond pure gardeners.

And if so, who are my buyers?  Are they organic and natural health types?  I can certainly understand why this group would want to grow their own vegetables, but do they live in high rises? and if so will they pay about $80.00 for a planter that will grow a few tomatoes a herb and some peppers?

This is not about the price of the food or even the quality.  It’s about choice.  Its about going out to a balcony in the middle of Manhattan and being able to pick organic produce for your dinner.  Its about a feeling and bragging rights.

But I just don’t know if anyone will care.

The great summer experiment this year is coming along very well and I’m very close to finalizing a design for a balcony, patio, deck or terrace (whatever you want to call a small private space with no place to stick a shovel) hydroponic vegetable garden.  It’s very exciting because at this point I have a design that not only is dead simple to work with and  is recognizable to just about anyone as a garden but it can also be brought to market for a better price than anything else out there.

I can swear to you that the plants I have in the hydroponic gardens are growing better than my pampered little beauties in their pots of compost- and they are much easier to care for- probably because I don’t have to water them every day and don’t need to worry that they’re going to just about expire if we get a hot day and I’m not around to water them

This is what I was aiming for when I started this project.  High yield, organic and super low maintenance vegetable gardens in a small space.  It’s all coming together now, but there was one thing I had forgotten about – Earwigs!

In my 20′s I did battle with them, only to learn that it isn’t worth the trouble and now I have them again, hiding in the lettuce, dining on my basil and chewing great jeezly holes in my peppers.  Thirty years later and almost nothing has changed – except me.

If you want to grow vegetables and you don’t have a lot of room, it doesn’t really matter if you have a balcony, a deck, a patio or simply a small unplantable space because what you’ll all have in common is the need to plant your vegetables in containers.

And everyone is working with the same simple equalizer- sunlight.  If you want to grow vegetables you need sunlight and lots of it and preferably you need sun morning – noon and afternoon.

The amount of sunlight you get is the number one factor you need to take into consideration if you want to grow vegetables in containers and it’s probably the only consideration that you won’t be able to find a work-around for.

I’d say as a rule of thumb your bare minimum to grow vegetables is 5 hours of direct light and I mean direct afternoon sun.  A spot that only gets morning sun simply will not cut it- sorry.  So think of sun from lunch to 5 and remember that’s the minimum.  You’ll get growth and a few things will grow reasonably well- but most of your plants will never hit their maximum potential unless they get the light all day.

This is especially true of tomatoes. They are -without a doubt -the numero uno vegetable choice, which you have to admit is a little ironic since technically, tomatoes are not a vegetable- they’re a fruit. sorry I couldn’t resist.

Acorn Squash

I guess that, in a way, gardens are like your children.  They grow a little bit every day, but you’re so close you don’t realize it, until something makes you stand up and take notice.  The garden that I’ve referred to as my summer project is absolutely taking off.  The hydroponic versions have pretty much outstripped the regular soil- in-container versions, with the exception of the Thai hot peppers and I realize that the soil versions are getting about 1 1/2 more hours of sun each day and it’s making a real difference.

If I start thinking now about all the new ways to use acorn squash I might be able to manage what is looking to be the start of a bumper crop.  The snow peas are starting to produce very tender and very tasy pods and I’ve recently added some beefstake and heritage “Brandywine” tomatoes in a newly configured garden that I’m hoping will create “The Tomato Solution” because I cannot possibly bring this to market without a tomato configuration.

But what has truly blown me away beyond my wildest expectations is the cut-and-come-again salad garden.  I’m a big salad eater and so far, from a 4 foot planting of mixed greens I’ve taken at least 6 salads for 3 people in a two week period and it just keeps getting fuller.  And the taste and texture of these greens is like nothing else I’ve ever had- which is I guess what happens when you’re not eating a commercially grown crop that must be a variety that travels well.

Here are some more shots!

Salad Greens

Snow Peas