My Garden of One

Our backyard, with its dozen or more trees, is very shady - great for keeping things cool, but not ideal for having a vegetable garden. So this year I decided to try growing a garden in the one place in our yard that does get a lot of sun - along the back side of the house, about 5 feet off the ground. I used a Topsy Turvy planter and one cherry tomato for my experiment.

The Topsy Turvy planter is a simply-designed planter that hangs either on a pole or from a wall bracket, like mine does. The novelty in this planter is that you grow your plant... upside-down! Well, the plant is planted upside-down, but as I quickly observed, it immediately begins to grow right-side up. Within one day, I noticed my little tomato seedling begin to curve upward, and after just a few days I could see it grow steadily taller, as any plant would. It's pretty amazing to see, and made me wonder at the versatility of plants.

The trick to this planter is that it simply makes use of the plant's natural tendency to respond to light (phototropism) and gravity (gravitropism). Influenced by a hormone called auxin, plant stems tend to grow toward light and roots tend to grow downward. Although I can't see them, I would guess that the roots of my tomato are clustered at the bottom of the planter, firmly holding the tomato in the planter. I've filled the top third of the planter with rich compost (from my worms, of course!) and when I water (daily!) the nutrients trickle down toward the roots. The planter allows gravity to bring food and water to the roots, so I would expect that there might be fewer and finer roots on this plant than in a traditionally-planted tomato, as they do not need to seek out nutrients, nor are they needed for structural support.

All-in-all, this planter was a good compromise for me - I still got to have a "garden," even if it is just a garden of one plant! I plucked my first tomato last night, and WOW - sweet!

PS - I am signing up for a community garden plot at MLK and 12th so I might have a bigger garden next year.

Come to the community gardens TODAY to reserve a plot:

Thursday, July 28th, 6 pm

MLK & 12th Ave.

$25 for a 10'x10' plot and $50 for a 10'x20' plot.

An additional $25 is required as a cleaning deposit.

Worm Bin Construction

Our first Crop Swap of 2011 was a huge success! We built worm bins- 9 to be exact. The process of building a worm bin is easy.

Step 1:
Obtain solid color plastic bins (we purchased ours from Home Depot). Drill holes around the sides of the bin:


Step 2:
Shred newspaper and place in bin, then get newspaper damp



Step 3:
Release the worms!





Step 4:
One very happy worm farmer!



Of course once the worms are brought home, they need to be fed. Worms like to eat kitchen garbage and produce "black gold" to be used in your garden. It's a win, win, win situation. And since the worms were purchased from a bait shop, 600 worms were spared the fate of meeting a fisherman!