I am not completely new to gardening, I have an education in ecology, but bio-intensive urban farming is a new adventure for me.
In the beginning - years ago I used to find a patch of lawn without grass throw some seeds out and say 'good luck!' If anything grew, which inevitably something would, that was great. I graduated to something a little more organized with 6 raised beds (this was 7 years ago) in the backyard of a small town-home. But I used the same low-intensive method of throw some seeds out there - maybe plant a few seedlings and wish them well. Two years ago was my first attempt at an intentional vegetable and herb garden. I thought out what I would plant and where I should place things. It was a small corner plot with carrots, strawberries, dill, and thyme.They did pretty well, except the clay was so impacted around the carrots I had a really hard time getting them out!
Last year I opted for something a little more formal and modeled my garden after the farmers I had seen just outside of town. Of course my rows were much shorter. I sowed the seeds directly - probably a little late into the season, and probably should have watered the garden a little more... We had a great ever-blooming crop of raspberries and strawberries. The peas did not produce much. The cantaloupe, watermelon and pumpkin never matured enough to make anything larger than a baseball sized melon. The beans did well, and my dill took over the garden. I had a couple of rows of corn, which we did enjoy over a meal or two. The lettuce did not do well at all, but the swiss chard and kale made up for that. The carrots, I had learned from previous year were not going to do well in the clay and I had converted an old wood toybox into the carrot box - where they did fantastic!
This year I decided to start things off a little early to give everything a fair shake. Conventional wisdom suggested 'peat-pots,' but I had remembered reading about the ecological effects of harvesting peat...
http://www.naturallifemagazine.com/0712/asknlpeat.html
http://www.saveourpeatbogs.com/Pages/ourimpact/ourimpact.htm
http://www.ciwem.org/policy/policies/peat.asp
http://www.herinst.org/wingecarribee/mining/impacts3.html
The short of the long is that using peat moss to start plants is like clear cutting a forest for mulching a garden... The damage done to peat bogs is reprehensible and though a bog may technically be a 'renewable resource' it take hundreds of years for that bog to regenerate and the immediate impact on the environment (local and global) is significant. I knew I needed an alternative... Luckily at Canadian Tire there was an alternative... Coconut Coir Pellets (like Jiffy Peat Pellets - but made of Coconut Coir). A greener choice for sure! But it was imported so it wasn't the greenest choice. At the time I still wasn't educated enough to make a greener choice so I purchased the Coir Pellets, some packets of organic seed and went home to get started. I am still researching a better alternative, and experimenting with different ways of sprouting - more to follow on that in a later article.
Initially I started with a set of 50 coir pellets in a covered seed starting tray...
At the end of each row of 5, I labeled what seeds were planted and how many out of 5. For example if in row 1, I planted 5 cucumber I would write in permanent marker on a piece of masking tape "Cucumber April 2 (1-5)" Indicating it was a cucumber planted on April 2 in all 5 pellets in the row. If I only did 3, I would write "Cucumber April 2 (1-3)" and on the opposite side of the row would seed 2 other plants eg "Pumpkin April 2 (3-5)" indicating which pellets pumpkins were in - dont mix up the pellets.
My pellet seeding quickly expanded to 200 pellets, that weren't getting enough light. I read an article - I believe in Mother Earth News about setting up your own plant lighting system with shop lights from a hardware store. I headed out to Home Depot picked up a ballast and two fluorescent plant/aquarium tube lights for under $50. The same set up at the hydroponics store was almost $300. I realized when I got home, this was too small and pick up another ballast and two more lights.
It was easy enough to set up in our unfinished basement - I created a knot and pulley system with a little rope thrown over the open beams in the basement ceiling, and used a trucker's hitch* to adjust the height. This way as the plants grow I can retract the lights to give more space as well.
(* tie one end of the rope to the ballast, throw over the beam support, tie trucker's hitch, feed rope through second side of the ballast - like the guy did with the piano leg - pulley through the hitch and tie off securely!)
I noticed I was loosing a lot of light so I secured some recycled aluminum paper around the lights and plants. This helped a lot! I did the ends as well to create a fully enclosed (mostly - some spaces left for venting) reflector box. As you may notice in the photo there are tea towels laying over parts of the cover... because I kept adding plants (I am at a few hundred now...) I didn't put them on the containers according to days to germinate - which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND, so I had to keep some in the dark, while others were ready for the light. The seed packets usually list days to germinate. Try to match the germination dates when filling a tray so you don't have fold tea cloths over parts of your tray.
For the past couple of weeks I have enjoyed watching the plants grow...kept notes so I can improve the system as I go...
Next article: Up-potting and the tragedy that ensued.... :(