Monday, July 25, 2011

vertical gardening...

Do you live in an apartment? Do you live somewhere with not much green space? Do you want to grow? If so, vertical gardening can be a perfect solution. There are soo many different ways to "grow up" but we decided to use recycled shipping palates. They can be found anywhere (even look on craigslist!!) and don't many uses (or at least I thought..).

Laura, also known as "the garden lady" collected some old 2 liter pop bottles cut off the bottoms, painted them black, and beautified them with some lively colored acrylic paints. wow!

Laura is not only a great gardener but a great colorist! Look at this shipping pallets!! So vibrant! This is just what we need in gloomy Snohomish co. She used spray paint that you can find almost anywhere (i.e. Home Depot, Lowe's, Fred Meyer, etc.)

You're almost ready to plant!! The next steps are so easy:
1. Drill the bottles to the boards.
2. Cut a small square of landscaping fabric and place in the bottom of each bottle
(we don't want the soil falling out)
3. Removed the caps on the bottles
4. Add soil/compost mixture to bottles
5. PLANT!!!!!

TIP: You can arrange the bottles in any order you like but remember if you have bottles above other bottles like this:
I     I     I
I     I     I
I     I     I
be sure to put the plants that need the MOST water ON TOP. 

TADA!! We are still adding more bottles but here is our work in progress...
So easy and affordable! Some people like doing an herb garden, others have made salad gardens,  what would you like to have???

Have you made a vertical garden before? Do you have any tips for us?
 Please share!!


Friday, July 22, 2011

planting day...


One of our 4x4 beds with a raised section for
plants that need a little more deepth to grow!
 

This is going to be our salsa garden!

                                    
Busy at work!!! Our Care Coordinator, The Garden Lady,
and our Nutritionist planting away!!


 


                  

rainbow swiss chard! yum!

our health educator and dietician planting away!!
                    
                                                               Planting day!!! WAHOO!! 
As you can see it was quite a success!  Can you believe it? 
Someone described it as "our little garden that could!"We are so excited to be growing!
We got some great green thumb help from our Nutritionist and our Chronic Care Coordinator!

Next week we'll be talking more about vertical gardening!!

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

day two

Day two was filled with painted pallets for vertical gardening (see bottom picture). Have you heard of vertical garden?? Everyone can do it (even apartment dwellers and lawn lacking people!!)!! 

We also sawed off the bottoms of some old Home Depot buckets (see top picture). Bucket gardening is perfect for those wonderful YET invasive plants such as mint, lemon balm, and other wild growing plants. This way you can enjoy them with them taking over your life (I speak from experience.) 

Laura has been checking out all the local nursery sales for end-of-season goodies...
stay tuned to see what she has found!!

day one

  

So the journey begins with bags of compost, a tool box, and our starting point garden. Then we got rained out but still very determined we decided to begin building our 4x4 beds in the staff lunch room! By the afternoon the sun was out and we were ready to ripe up some sod and our 3 4x4 beds!!
  

        It was a successful day one! Three beds ready to go and our pile of sod is on it's way to become great compost for later in the season! (Yes, that is an answering machine holding it down oh the things you find by train tracks!!). Stay tune...

Monday, July 18, 2011

.the beginnings.

we are starting a community health garden.

we are starting despite lack of funds, despite the gloomy weather in the pnw, despite our insecurities that we don't have green thumbs.
we are growing.

we are growing a garden because anyone can grow food. we can grow a garden with a little or a lot.
we are growing a garden.

join us for the journey.