Give it One More Use

Some of us just hate to throw things away. We think we can find one more use for that broken object or modify that outdated gizmo to update it somehow. For those of us who are successful at this, there is a sense of satisfaction that cannot be described adequately in words and because of this, we don’t understand why others cannot see what we see.

Recently, I had one of those moments. My wife was updating one of the blinds in one of the bedrooms in our house. The blind was broken, didn’t function correctly and could not be repaired for less than the cost of a new one. Besides that, it was sun-stained and discolored which the intense sunlight here in the desert will do. So, she bought a new one and had my son-in-law install it one day while I was at work.

When I was taking out the trash to the curb that week, I saw it sticking out of the bin. Immediately two things came to mind. First, I was sure there was some salvageable components from this that would save me a couple of bucks somehow. Second, I hope the neighbors aren’t watching me pull junk out of the trash. After a moment of intense mental struggle, the former won out over the latter. I yanked it.

Back in the garage, I salvaged the nylon cord. I now have four pieces of tough cord to tie up vines to trellises. Then, I grabbed my scissors and cut a fistful of the slats. These are about 1” in width, have a good stiffening curve to them and are weather resistant. Satisfied with my salvage operation, I returned the rest to the trash.

The tools of the trade. Scissors, the salvaged blind slat, the ever-necessary Sharpie marker.

I used some of the slats recently to make some great plant markers for my buckets. A couple of strategically-placed snips with the scissors, a quick scribble with the Sharpie marker and voila! Free, weather resistant plant markers.

Strategic snipping and they are ready for the next step. 6" is a good length, longer than most of the ones in the stores.

Not the most I’ve ever saved on a recycle project, but at least I got one more use out of some of that old blind.  You take what you can get. It’s the Stealth Farmer’s way.

Add the name of the variety (in this case an heirloom tomato)...

Small victories are victories nonetheless.

Press it into the soil and there you have it; free, recycled, repurposed, reused.  Gotta love it.

Ezra Taft Benson Institute—Teaching the Principles of Stealth Farming for More Than 30 Years

Stealth Farming is all about the idea of doing more for yourself with respect to your food choices. It is about growing, producing and sharing what you produce with those around you. I’m a firm believer in the concept that we should do all that we can for ourselves and make the surplus that we produce available to others. A Stealth Farming principle supports the ideas of both charity and capitalism and that the producer gets to decide what he or she should do with their surplus. Give away a portion; sell a portion to support yourself. Both have their place in the SF life.

Recently, I came across the Ezra Taft Benson Institute which has been teaching that same concept for more than 30 years. Named after the Secretary of Agriculture during the Eisenhower Administration, the Benson Institute “has developed unique programs teaching village farm families and others in the Developing World how to become nutritionally self-sufficient and to greatly improve their economic circumstances.”

That’s awesome! Not only that, they use university students and have them travel to developing countries and teach the folks there how to produce good, wholesome food for themselves, enhance their nutrition levels and at the same time help them to become more economically sufficient by selling the surplus. Doesn’t that sound like Stealth Farming to you? It does to me.

 

Their Mission Statement from their website, www.bensoninstitute.org, is “To Improve the Quality of Life of the People of the Earth Through Improved Practices in Agriculture and Nutrition.” That’s a huge mission.

You know, I’m going to let them work with the whole earth while I try to help those in my little corner. I can’t do what they are doing, I’m just one guy. But I can do what I can do. If I can help one person, one family, one neighborhood to eat better, enjoy the passion of raising their own food, make a buck or two by selling their surplus, I’ll be happy.

I recommend that you read through their simple and straightforward website. It has some real gems of ideas that can easily be transferred to your corner of the world. The principles are the same, it’s just the application and administration that changes.

Good for you, Benson Institute!

Why Sub-Irrigation Makes Sense for Me

I have had folks ask me questions about the sub-irrigation buckets that I am using to grow my tomatoes and some other vegetables and I have written down most of the reasons that I have for doing these things. This probably isn’t an all-inclusive list of every reason that would explain what I’m doing with the buckets so as I add other reasons or explanations don’t think that I’m changing my mind. There is more, a lot more.

First, it’s a semi-automated system. With time being the most valuable commodity and the only real non-renewable resource I have, this is important. I only have to tend them a couple times a week because each container holds several days' worth of water. It only takes 10 to 15 minutes for me to walk down the row between the buckets with my watering wand and fill them up. Even if I had a timer on the watering system in the traditional beds, they would only get water during the morning or whenever the timer was set. 

Second, there are no weeds to pull because the soil mix that I have used has no weed seeds. Less time, less labor, and so far, very good growth. There is much more growth in these plants than those in the traditional beds in the back yard.

Third, these are designed specifically to reduce the amount of water stress the plants will go through during the hottest parts of the summer. This is a big consideration here in the desert. Since they hold a reservoir of water, the plants can drink whenever they need to, depending upon the temperature and humidity and wind. This is expected to reduce the number of split and cracked fruits because they don’t get stressed for water. 

Fourth, all of the water goes to the plant. None of it soaks down into the dirt beyond the roots. Since this method uses only 20% of the water that traditional in-ground beds do, I’m actually saving money on the water. In essence, I have to use five times more water on the terrace beds than in the buckets.

There is a way to change the terrace beds into the same type of water-reservoir systems and my son-in-law and I have talked about it and we would like to do it. Before we put in that much labor (removal of all the dirt, installation of a rubber liner, gravel, pipe, reinstall the dirt), I want to make sure that this system will work for me here in my climate. This gives me the chance to test and observe how this system works before I go all out on converting my backyard gardens. So far, I'm liking what I'm seeing.

Fifth, it’s portable, to a degree. I can move them to take advantage of the specific micro-climate that does the best for them for whatever the weather throws at us.  Right now, the tomatoes are growing in a place that gets optimum sunshine, later afternoon shade, and protection from high winds. That side of the yard opens into a southern exposure which should allow me to continue growing long after the “normal” season is over.

Sixth, it doesn’t look as sterile as a rock yard. I don’t know why people like rock yards other than the fact that they are very low maintenance. They are ugly and sterile looking. They are hotter in the summer than they need to be. They are tough to clean when debris blows into them and digging weeds out of them is a bear. The buckets give a feeling and appearance of lush plant growth. To me, it makes that side yard look nice. So far, there have been no complaints from either my neighbors or the HOA.

Seventh, I can’t keep the dogs out of the backyard garden beds. I can keep them out of these because the dogs aren’t in the front yard. Dogs like gardens, what can I say? There is, consequently, no dog poop or pee on any of these plants. I can’t say that about the ones I am growing in the backyard. I have lost several cabbages, 30 or so onions and a huge amount of chard and lettuce to the dogs pooping, digging, chewing and sleeping on the plants.

Eighth, the tomatoes that are growing in the buckets are growing 3 or 4 times faster than the tomatoes in the back yard. It’s obviously a better system for tomatoes and I’m hoping for other plants, too. Bigger, healthy plants, growing faster. Hmmm, what gardener would want that?

Ninth, I haven’t really put that much money into the garden this year, actually less than last year. I bought eight white buckets from the Re-Store, sort of a materials thrift store for Habitat for Humanity. They sold for half the price ($2 each) than they sell for in the big box hardware store whose name is on the front of the bucket. Most all of the other buckets came from dumpsters, the garage, my son-in-law, and the like without a cost. I like free, don’t you? The inner materials are all recycled. This has given another use to a lot of plastic bottles, food containers, milk jugs and plastic piping and kept it all out of the landfill. All of the plastic piping I have used has had at least one and often several uses before I chopped it up to fit the buckets. The only thing new, besides those eight buckets I actually bought, were the cable ties I use to hold it all together. I still haven't figured out how to get one of those things off without cutting it. If you know how, pass it on.

Tenth, I am also growing in the buckets to illustrate my blog and my book on Stealth Farming (the blog is in support of the book). It will be a part of the whole package deal with the book. I’m hoping that it will allow me to contribute to the growing trend in urban farming. That’s why I’m reading and researching all the stuff of food, and gardening and urban farming and alternative ways to grow in the city and stuff like that. It’s a huge wave of folks, ideas, concepts and perceptions. People are turning to growing their own food in the city like they haven’t done since before World War I. It’s huge and I want to be part of it. I think I can and I think I can help a lot of people and have some fun while I’m at it.

So there you have ten reasons why I’m growing food in sub-irrigated buckets. As I learn other benefits or the disadvantages of this system, I will be sure to pass that information along. As I discover more reasons for doing it this way, I’ll be sure to pass them on to you, too.

Why I am Opposed to the Concept of Guerrilla Gardening

There is a socio-political philosophy among some gardeners and food activists called guerilla gardening. It is, essentially, planting in some clandestine manner food and/or ornamental plants and seeds in public, non- or underutilized private land without obtaining either title, ownership, permission or waiver from the owner or responsible management organization before doing so. I have to admit that at first blush, I was an admirer of the concept. However, the more I have thought about it, and the more I have seen its effects, I have come to change my mind. I do not believe that guerrilla gardening and Stealth Farming are compatible systems.

First and foremost, Stealth Farmers accept responsibility for their actions, intentions and behavior. There is never a reason to resort to any form of subterfuge in order to grow useful and beneficial plants and foods. There are always honest and above-board ways to do it.

A Stealth Farmer must be accountable. They are accountable to themselves and to those in their sphere of influence and to the community at large. Guerrilla gardening does not accept that and in fact much of its appeal is derived from the pleasure some take in doing things in an underhanded manner.

A Stealth Farmer maintains his or her holdings and working areas and is diligent in keeping them looking good. This requires spending time in the field taking care of what is grown, including weeds. It includes removing the plants at the end of their lifecycle or pruning and trimming perennials. We don’t just let it go wild. For the most part, guerrilla gardeners do not. Once the area has been planted or “seed bombed” there is little, if any, attention or maintenance to the area. It is left to itself, even after the plants have completed their life cycles.

For those areas where maintenance actually does occur, guerrilla gardening violates the next principle, that of property rights.

Private property is just that, private. Owners of land, lots, fields, structures and buildings have the right to do with them as they please, even if that means they do nothing. Now I like flowers as much as the next person. I like the idea of lush growth providing its myriad benefits to everyone with whom it comes in contact. But I still have to respect the owners of private property and their rights. Uninvited gardening or planting on someone else’s land constitutes an unlawful taking (theft) of that land or its resources from the lawful owner. Regardless of the social impact, it is still dishonest.

Private use of public lands is also theft only in this case it is theft from all of us. There are laws and ordinances and civic and municipal groups whose responsibility it is to take care of our public lands, urban or otherwise. It is counter-productive to go against these simply because we don’t like what is being done with them.

If you want to change public policy, if you want to have a public discussion and make improvements in the stewardship practices of your city or county, there are ways to address it. While they are often involved and complicated, they do work and many locations are changing the way they look at public land with a sympathetic eye to making positive changes. Get involved with these activities in your community. Write letters, make phone calls, have a plan and act on that plan. Regardless of the level of bureaucracy in your area, there are legal, open, honest, ethical methods that can overcome any roadblock. Persistence and hard work have been know to literally change City Hall.

Vigilantism is not appropriate in any case.

Stealth Farming is always honest, open and above reproach. Stealth Farmers believe that their reputation is their most important quality and the most valuable marketing asset. They want to protect that at all costs and would never do anything to jeopardize that simply for money. Stealth Farmers expect accountability from themselves, endorse accountability in their community leaders and preach accountability to their community and to their customers. Guerrilla gardeners hold themselves to no such high ideal and because of this, actually become part of the problem, rather than the solution they wish to be.

How Much Does a Trip to the Grocery Store Actually Cost?

I’m a big fan of trivial knowledge. My kids say I have too much stored in my wazoo file, that place in your brain that stores those useless bits of knowledge that a) nobody uses, b) nobody cares about and c) everybody wonders “Where you learned that.” I don’t know why, it just is.

Anyway, one of those bits of pseudo-intellectual fluff is that it takes 15 calories of energy to bring one calorie of energy in food to your plate. That’s a lot of calories expended for calories consumed. Not a good rate of return I’d say.

Most of this energy is in the form of petroleum fuel and petroleum- and natural gas-based fertilizers. In today’s mega-farm world, it takes a lot of oil and natural gas to grow food. It doesn’t take that much to produce it yourself, though, and that’s the point of today’s rant. Since more people can relate to cost in terms of dollars and cents rather than kilocalories gained in exchange for total kilocalories expended, I’m going to use that method for demonstrating this idea.

Let’s follow the cost of bringing a pound of tomatoes to the table if we produce it ourselves. We’ll use tomatoes as our example, but the principle is the same regardless of which vegetable we use.

What does a fresh tomato really cost?
What does it pay in benefits?

My nearest source of seeds (other than the ones I save myself) is about 3 miles away.  It costs me about $0.27 per mile (gas only; does not include depreciation, insurance, taxes, time value, etc. Just the gas.) to drive my truck at today’s gas prices. So for a round trip to this store, my cost is:

Gas:                            $1.62

Seed Packet             $1.50

Sub total:                   $3.12

So far, so good, not too costly. But I need some good potting soil to start the seeds, so off to the nursery I go. It’s only about 6 miles away, in the other direction, of course. While I’m there, I’m going to pick up a bag of fertilizer, organic, a bag of calcium, to avoid blossom end rot, and a bag of planting mix for use in the final growing pot. I’ll get these at the same time to save the cost of another trip.

Gas:                            $3.24

Potting mix:               $7.49

Garden Lime:            $6.49

Fertilizer:                    $8.99

Planting mix:                        $6.99

Total so far:                           $36.32 (plus some sales tax, not figured in)

Wow, this is starting to add up! Nearly $40.00 and I don’t have a single tomato. This could be discouraging if I wasn’t able to plan for the future. I can see that at some point, I’ll have tomatoes so I continue undaunted.

Now, I start the seeds in the potting mix and wait for a few days before I see the sprouting plant. I water it and wait some more. After a few weeks, the plant has grown enough that it is now time for me to transplant it into a larger pot. It’s still too cold outside to put them there, but I don’t want the roots to be too bunched up. I’m using a recycled pot to transplant them, so I don’t have to add any cost to it.

I’m also not figuring in the cost of the water I’m using yet. Since I’m on city water, and it’s not cheap here in the desert, I will have to add that, but let’s just say I’m watering it with what’s left over from my glass at dinner.

Eventually, I will need to transfer this growing plant into the large, sub-irrigated pot that I’m making just for this purpose. Although I already have some of the materials on hand as leftovers from other projects, I’m going to add some cost to the project to reflect the true cost. The only things I won’t add are the plastic bottles I use at the bottom of the bucket that serve as the water reservoir. Since I scrounged these out of the trash (avoiding the landfill) there were free to me anyway.

Cost of the bucket as the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store:       $2.00

Cost of the plastic pipe used as the filler tube:                           $0.45

Cost of the zip ties used to hold it together:                                $0.06

Total so far, including all of the above expenses:                                 $38.83

Still under $40 so we’re not doing too badly.

This sub-irrigated pot uses about 4 gallons of water per week. I don’t mind that since all of the water goes directly to the plant for its use and not down to join the water table in the soil. My water costs here are about $1.45 per thousand gallons used, then my 16 gallons of water per month would cost me about $0.03 per month. Figure another 4 months, and I’m up to a whopping $0.12 for water costs.

I know this bit about the water costs sounds trivial, but think about how much water I would be wasting if I had a couple of rows of tomato plants in a traditional bed. Think about how much my lawn is costing me. Sub-irrigated containers use about 20 percent of the water that the traditional method uses. That means that my plant would cost $0.60 for the same output. Only, it wouldn’t be the same output because I have found that this method actually produces larger plants, larger and heavier fruits than the traditional method. But I digress….

So we add that twelve cents to the cost, and add a dollar for what we might have missed along the way and we are right about $40 for the plant. If I get a yield of 25 pounds of tomatoes for my troubles (and I’m sure to get at least that much if not more) then my cost per pound is $1.60. During the summer, I can get store-bought tomatoes for that much, during the spring and fall, I can’t come close to it. In the winter (if I bring my bucket inside which I can do because it’s portable) a fresh tomato would be worth its weight in gold.

So now, if you compare the cost with doing myself and buying my tomatoes, I’m not really ahead all that much. But this is for one plant in one bucket. Imagine what would happen if I spread my costs for gas, fertilizer, soil, amendments and materials over, say, a dozen buckets. If they all yield as much as this one does, and there is no reason why they shouldn’t, my cost decreases to about $0.55 cents per pound, or a third of the cost of the single plant.

If I buy more tomatoes at the grocery store, am I going to have my costs reduced? Of course not, but that isn’t the point.

The real benefits of raising your own versus buying them at the store are not the dollars and cents benefits, they are much more important, though often less tangile.

Here are some of the benefits that aren’t figured into this calculation. See if any of them would be worth something to you in your own personal cost comparison analysis.

Variety—how many different kinds of tomatoes can I grow? How many heirloom varieties are there? How many different kinds of shapes, sizes, colors and flavors can I grow?

Freshness—when I pick it off the plant after letting it ripen thoroughly, I notice the difference immediately. And it’s a positive and distinct difference for the better.

Nutrition—No chemicals, no pesticides, no herbicides, just sunshine, water and good, organic nutrients go into the production of my tomatoes. Can’t say that about the ones in the store.

Convenience—I don’t have to drive to the store. I can walk out into my back yard and pick them. And since almost nobody goes to the store for just one item, even if they only need that one item, think about how much money I’m not spending.

Availability—I don’t have to worry about truckers’ strikes, (everything where I live is brought in from somewhere else) recalls, salmonella, e. coli infestations, or any other issue that you see on the evening news.

Fun and Satisfaction—Don’t ever overlook these two concepts as having value. They are priceless. How do you think I feel when I get to provide, literally provide for my family in this manner? No amount of money could ever make up for what I would lose on that.

Labor and Exploitation—I don’t have to use “undocumented workers” or other questionable labor sources for my produce. I don’t have to support paying sub-standard wages for labor in my fields. (Since I don’t pay myself in cash…well, that just opens up a whole new discussion.) And I’m not taking advantage of anyone. Nobody suffers at my hand because I grow my own tomatoes.

Service—Since I’m growing more than a dozen tomato plants, I’m sure to have more than enough to share with others. How can you put a price on helping out another family? How can you put a price on the feeling you get when you give something to someone?

Independence—How much is the feeling of self-reliance worth to you? To me, it’s priceless.

By not providing ways to produce for myself, I am adding all of these costs to the price of the food I and my family eats. That’s just too steep a price for me.

All of a sudden, this little project seems like a religious, political and social statement.

The Four W's of Gardening, Part 4

Waiting

Do you remember when you were a kid and how long it took for Christmas to get here? Or your birthday? I do too. Now that I’m a bit more mature (read “older”) I don’t say that any more. Now I say things like, “Dang, is it May already? What happened to April? Did we skip April this year?”

That kind of perspective comes from experience, the experience of a lot of Aprils and Mays and Christmases and birthdays and such. That kind of experience also helps a lot of things. It helps in knowing that the summer heat will break, that winter doesn’t last forever, that there will be a spring and that fall colors are worth waiting for.

This principle of gardening is probably one of if not the most important one. Waiting. Another word for waiting is allowing, which is really what we are doing in gardening. We are allowing the natural processes to take their course.

Nature does what it does effortlessly and in harmony with everything else. Nature is in a constant state of change, either growing or decaying. Neither is good or bad, they both just are. There is no static condition, no “holding pattern” in Nature. Growing or dying, that’s all there is. But that’s good, too.

When something is growing, it consumes what it needs to manufacture or obtain the necessary elements and energy to grow. When a plant grows, it consumes the energy of the light, mixes the carbon, the hydrogen and the oxygen in the presence of chlorophyll and produces the energy it needs to grow. It consumes materials from the air and the soil and takes them and binds them together in the myriad combinations that form the roots, the stems, the leaves and the fruit.

When the plant has completed its life cycle, it dies and decays. But in its death, it provides life for the animals and organisms that consume its form in their quest to grow. Growing or dying, that’s all there is.

When we plant a seed, we don’t think of the seed as the plant. The seed must, after a fashion, die and from it comes the plant that we desire. We plant seeds in the expectation that there will be a flower or a fruit or an edible root or a decorative tree or some other feature of the plant. We even plant seeds for more seeds. But whatever the reason, we begin with the end in mind. Stephen Covey in his classic “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” has that as habit number 2.

We want our plants to complete their life cycles. I want my tomato seeds to swell and sprout and send out roots and stems and leaves. I get excited as I see each of the phases the plants go through in their development and maturation. I like the process as much, if not more than, the end result of a sweet, juicy fresh tomato. But I plant the seeds thinking of the tomatoes at the end of the cycle. I begin with the end in mind.

Too many times in our instant gratification world we don’t develop the patience necessary to truly appreciate what is going on around us. We want it now and we are not going to wait for it. Fast cars, fast food, shorter lines, instant this and instant that. Without patience, we miss the miracles of what is happening.

I remember my first computer. It was a Commodore Pet 1000. It had a monochrome monitor, built in to the keyboard system. And it had a cassette tape recorder built in to act as a storage device. It weighed a ton and was a blast. I programmed stars and constellations and taught myself astronomy with that thing. Compare that to the computer that is on my phone now.

I had to wait for it to “warm up” and then boot up the operating system from the cassette player. There was no internet yet. We swapped programs by mail, not e-mail, postage-based snail mail. It was fun then, but would drive me nuts now. Later, my first external hard drive was 20 megabytes. I have a pen now that stores 4 gigabytes! I have a terabyte drive sitting next to my computer now, and I back up online with unlimited storage.

Now when I turn on the computer I want an instant multi-media experience with music, sound effects, colors and realistic images. I want to download software and send e-mail and write blogs and research vermicomposting in Florida or wicking beds in Australia or aquaponics in South Africa. And I can do all of that and more. I just had to have patience for these things to come about.

Nature cannot be rushed without upsetting the delicate yet power balance that exists in it. There is no natural rushing of the cycles, no manipulation of the cycles and patterns of nature. Nature just allows things to happen.

We need to allow things to happen, too. We need to be there when we are needed and get out of the way when we are not. We can enhance the soil, add water or nutrients and we get to plant the seeds where we want them and when we want to. By providing our earthworms with what they need, they are happy and eat more and reproduce more and I have more worms.

By working within the cycles of nature, I get to experience life and all that it has to offer. I get to learn the patterns of nature, that patience and perseverance are vitally important and that I’m not alone in what I am doing. Others have done it before and others will do it long after I am worm food.

That’s why we need to be thankful for the harvest even before we plant the seeds. we need to work to bring about that harvest and allow the things to happen as they are supposed to happen. We need to exercise our faith in the process, the outcome and the principles of nature that are at work even when we are planning our gardens. Give thanks for the harvest when you plant your seeds. Act as if the produce is already there. Do what you need to do to husband your garden, give what you can and then…

…then get out of the way and let Nature do her thing. She’s better at it than you are.

The Four W's of Gardening, Part 3

Watching

I look at gardening as an educational process. I cannot begin to catalog all of the things I have learned while trying to grow food and flowers. The list would be far, far too long and I’m pretty sure most of you have learned many of the same things, too.

Gardening is a universal activity. People everywhere do it. People do it in rural settings, urban settings, developed countries, developing countries and under-developed countries. Gardening and Stealth Farming are two great activities that can help you overcome the food dependency issue to a greater or lesser degree. It all depends on how far you want to take it. If you want to simply grow some herbs in a windowsill, fine. If you want to supplement your diet with fresh fruits and vegetables, fine. If you want to provide all the plant material you need for your family and your livestock, you can do that, too. If you want to grow enough to earn a living selling the surplus, that is certainly possible.

But you have to learn some things.

You have to learn how plants grow, what they need from the soil, how to make sure the soil can support them. You need to learn what plants will grow where you are, what conditions are necessary for their survival and maturation and how to harvest, store and use them. These and a thousand other things are necessary to be successful, but don’t let the list and the potential list scare you off. You learn most of these by doing and watching.

Whenever you are in your garden or Stealth Farm, you look at some things. You look at the weather, the sky to see what is in store for your plants. You feel the wind and see it as it brushes your plants. You see the sway of the trees, the plants and the grasses. You notice the color changes and the texture changes and the size changes.

You smell things. You smell the dust, the fragrance of the plants and flowers. You smell the oncoming rain. You smell the tomato plants as they grow in the sun.

You listen to the wind as it spreads the corn pollen. You hear the buzz of the bees and other insects as they flit around and do their work for you. You smile as you hear the birds in the trees and flying through the air. You pause and watch when you hear the hummingbirds dart from flower to flower.

You touch the soil as you press your fingers into it to test the moisture content. You touch the fuzz on the peach as you test to see if it is ripe yet. You feel the smoothness of the apple or the bumpiness of the squash or the prickles of the vines. You feel the heft of the branches laden with fruit.

Gardening is a sensual experience. You can’t get this level of involvement in an isolated cab high atop a noisy combine. Tractor jockeys are rarely this physically involved with their crops. This is the ideal level of interaction because you can almost instantly see how what you do affects things.

All of these things teach you. If you pay attention to them, they will show you what they want, what they need and what they will give you. By watching, observing and being involved in the grand operation as it unfolds before you season after season and year after year, you will gain an education that can never be obtained in a classroom.

Some day, I’ll have to write about the spiritual side of gardening….

The Four W’s of Gardening, Part 2

Weeding

The next “W” is weed. I do this when I’m watering, usually. I don’t like to let weeds get a head start. I really like to take them out when they are young. That’s when they are easiest. My favorite tool for this is my thumb-forefinger pinch-and-pull combination tool. It’s cheap, comes in two models (right-hand and left-hand) and it’s always with me. I never have to sharpen it, oil it or hang it up on a tool rack. Once in a while I do have to wash it. But the big thing to remember is not to let the weeds get the upper hand. 

It doesn’t take much. Once a weed, which we will define as an undesirable plant (undesirable either by type or location) gets a root-hold in your garden, your work has started. It doesn’t take much to stay on top of the problem, but they are tenacious. The key is to take care of them before the tops have had a chance to provide energy to the rest of the plant. If you pick them small, the roots will eventually die out. Never let them see the light of day.

When I was a teenager, my brother planted a garden in the backyard. It was wonderful. He planted all kinds of veggies and flowers. I would sit out there for hours just looking at the plants, pinching off bugs, pulling weeds. It was pretty big for my mind, about 25 feet square. He had a job and that took a lot of his time. (Come to think about it, I’m remembering that he was working for a nursery in town. That was fitting. Mom always referred to his “green thumb.”) So he hired me to weed the garden. He was going to pay me $20 to weed it. At the time, I thought it was a good deal. It was, just not for me. I didn’t know that the Bermuda grass that is so common here in the desert had taken hold of his garden. And I didn’t know how hard it would be to eradicate it. I’m an expert on it now. I can tell you exactly how much work it is to dig up, pull the long roots and runners and then sift the soil to find the little pieces that break off and will grow again if you let them.

I worked for hours and hours over the course of several days for that $20. After a while, it got to be a mental challenge. It was going to be me or that dang grass. I won, but at a great cost. But by working on it a little bit each day, often less than 10 minutes at a time, I could keep that stuff from coming back and taking over the garden. That was the best lesson I learned.

So now, that’s the way I like to weed, a little bit at a time. I don’t like weeds and if I let them mature to the point that they set seed, it’s my own fault. Pinch and pull, pinch and pull.

This year my onion bed hasn’t been much of a challenge, weedwise. I planted 400 onion sets, yellow, red and white onions. They all seemed to come up. (That’s what I like about onion sets. They grow and you get a fast flush of green. Feeds the gardener’s ego first, then his belly.) I intercropped a lot of radishes over several weeks so that I would have a staggered harvest of those. I think they all came up, too. Since I planted the onions and the radishes along straight lines and with standardized spacing, I knew that if something came up outside of that grid pattern, it was a weed and would get the old pinch-and-pull treatment. So far, no significant weed growth has taken place. Pinch and pull.

The lettuce bed, however, has been more of an issue. I didn’t plant the lettuce mix or the specific varieties in straight, even rows. I used the scatter approach to lettuce sowing. Since I had never grown lettuce prior to this at least not any that actually germinated, I didn’t know what it would look like. So, I let them grow and grow and I watered and watered. Once the leaves began forming, it was easy to see what was lettuce and what was not.

Unfortunately, many of the lovely little green plants in this bed were neither lettuce nor anything like unto it. They were weeds. The grass-like ones were easy to remove, I recognized them right away. But I let several weeks go by before I recognized that some of those plants crowding my lettuce were not the ones I wanted. So I had to weed.

By now, their roots were well established and intertwined with the lettuce roots. I pulled and pulled and would sometimes uproot one of the lettuce plants. Casualty of weed warfare, a sad but inevitable loss. I rationalized it as “thinning” my lettuce.

But I looked at this experience as a benefit for me, too. Next season, I will grow my lettuce in nice, straight, even patterns so that I won’t have to wait and see. I now know what weed seeds exist in that section of my bed and I recognize what has to be pulled immediately. See, I can be taught.

You can’t really blame weeds from doing what they were created to do. When we build great soil, add nutrients, amendments, worms, mulch and water, we create the ideal conditions for weeds to grow. After all, they want the same things that the plants we choose to grow want for themselves. All we have to do is spend time in the garden, be vigilant and act early. So far, I haven’t felt the need to reach for some chemical weed killer. That’s the lazy way out. I’d rather not have to worry about what kind of inorganic glop my plants are growing in and how much of that is actually in the food I eat.

Pinch-and-pull rules.

The Four W's of Gardening, Part 1

Everybody makes lists. Some people make lists that rhyme or are onomatopoeic. Some people make lists that are alliterative. I try to do all of that to one degree or another. Lists are great things to help us remember stuff that might otherwise get overlooked, missed or done out of order. The same is true for gardening lists. My list today (and for the next several days) is the Four W’s of Gardening. These are the four things you have to do after you plant your garden and before you can harvest from it.

The first one is water. The next is weed. Third is watch and the last one, the hardest, is wait. Water, Weed, Watch, and Wait. I’m going to discuss how these terms apply to the Stealth Farmer in this post and in the ones that follow.

The Four W's of Gardening, Part 1 

Water

You have to make sure that your garden has a sufficient and consistent supply of water. I live in the desert so I cannot count on the rain to water my garden unless all I want to raise is dust. It just doesn’t rain here enough to support much of anything except cactus and the assorted desert plants. I don’t know about you, but I really haven’t developed a taste for munching on sagebrush and I don’t think I will any time soon. So I water.

I don’t have my watering system set up on a timer yet. I do this on purpose. It forces me to get out into my garden regularly. I know that it will die if I don’t do it so I must go to it to water. This gives me a chance to see what’s growing, how they are growing and the general condition of the garden. I don’t have to water everyday once the plants are established and I’m finding that with good mulching practices and good soil building with lots of organic materials, the soil will hold the water longer than it used to when it was just sand. I’ve never found that sand holds anything except my toes apart at the beach.

I have a watering wand on the end of a hose. This lets me walk along the garden and pick a weed here or look under a leaf there or squash an undesirable bug if I happen to see one. I get to see the changes in the garden every couple of days. When things are blossoming and flowering, I get to watch them unfold. I get to see and watch the bees and other pollinators as they do their work. I find that it is a peaceful activity, very calming and gentle.

I wondered why my sunflower plants had skeletonized leaves starting with the lower ones and then moving up. The whole leave wasn’t gone, just the parts between the veins. And only on the part next to the main stalk. I searched and searched for some kind of bug or egg capsule but to no avail. It was starting to make me mad. What was eating my sunflower leaves?

One morning while standing on the wall watering the plants, I happened to notice a finch fly by. We have wonderful finches here in the desert. Bright yellows and reds and greens. They are small and fast and you don’t see a bunch of them, but they are cool when you do see them. This little guy flew out of the ash tree nearby and landed on a lower leaf on the nearest sunflower. I thought, “Great, he’s going to eat some bug, maybe the bug that’s eating my leaves. My problem will be solved.”

Did I ever have it wrong! This little guy was the problem, not the solution. As I watched him, he sat on the stem of the leaf next to the stalk. As he sat there, he quickly pecked at the leaf. He pecked and pecked until he tore a piece off. Then he flew away. He came back a bit later and did it again and again. Next thing I knew, he had invited 30 or 40 of his closest friends to come join him. I just shook my head. But the point is, I never would have seen that had I not been out in the garden that morning watering by hand.

The water wand lets me imitate rain as it comes down on the plant. Sometimes I water on the top of the plant and let the water run down. Sometimes I water on the ground around the stem. Some plants get a little, others a lot depending on their needs. By doing it by hand, I can tailor the amount they need at the different stages of growth. I get to feel very connected to my garden because it makes me feel like I’m giving it something it needs, which I am. I feel responsible. I understand the term “husbandry” better since I garden than I did before. I feel like a steward and it’s a good feeling.

I like the sub-irrigated planters that I’m using and am looking forward to the day when I can convert all of my growing beds to this type of system. Here is why: I don’t have to water every day and my plants don’t get water stressed.

Yesterday, the temperatures got into the 90’s. Now in most places, that would be considered a hot day. Not here. To be hot here, you have to cross the dreaded 100-degree mark on the old mercury stick. That’s when you can get away with calling it hot. We haven’t hit that yet this season and I’m not looking forward to it when we do. (Why? You might ask. Well, because that’s hot.) With the temperatures that high, it would be easy to stress my tomatoes and end up with split fruit. That happens here when the dry air makes the skins of the fruits dry and harder and then the gardener tries to compensate by watering more. The plant takes up the extra water, but the damage has already been done and as the fruit grows and swells, the skins split.

By letting the plants have access to a reservoir of water so that they can take up water as they need it, rather than when you get around to watering them, you can avoid problems like splitting, wilting, flower drop, low fruit-setting rates, etc. The plants are healthier and grow faster, too.

There is also the little matter of the cost of water here in the desert. It’s a commodity that is metered and sold and the more you use, the more it costs. There are several thresholds where once you hit them, the cost per thousand gallons goes higher, very significantly, too. (I can't even supplement the water by saving rain water because as I said before, it doesn't rain here.) By watering on the ground, I am literally pouring money on the ground. The water sinks and what isn’t held by the soil or taken up immediately evaporates or sinks beyond the level of the roots and is lost to me. Then the water purveyors will pump it back up and sell it to me again.

With a sub-irrigated planter box, the water stays in the ground reservoir until the plants need it and then it is used. When properly mulched or covered, the evaporation rate is significantly reduced or eliminated. I have seen studies that have shown that water usage is reduced by 80 to 90 per cent in some cases. That means that I would only use about one-fifth the water I do now. Can you see why I want to convert my grow beds to sub-irrigated versions? I would recoup the costs in less time than it would take to grow a bed of lettuce.

None of this makes sense to folks in places where it rains sufficiently for farmers or when their irrigation system starts with a well, but for those of us on city water (and where wells are actually outlawed like they are here), something like this makes a great deal of sense. It becomes a very Stealth Farmer thing to do.

Tomorrow, we take up the subject of weeding.

Potted Plant Pity Party

Recently, I had occasion to stop by my neighborhood garden center and nursery for some supplies. While I was there, I noticed the sad plant rack. I don’t know what they call it, but to me this name fits. It’s that rack where they put the seedlings they can’t sell for full price at a significant markdown hoping that some poor schmuck (like me) will come by and buy it hoping that the plants will live long enough to get them home to some decent dirt and a drink of water.

I was moved, not by the plants themselves (though I would have been if they had been people) but by the idea. Could I take a marginally healthy plant, nurse it to a healthy status and get produce from it? Seemed like a Stealth Farmer challenge so I took myself up on it and bought two six-packs of tomatoes and four other seedlings in 4-inch pots. Total cost? $4.00.

I stopped at the dollar store later that evening and bought some $1 buckets. These are about two gallons in volume and I was betting I could make some serviceable SIPs out of them. When I got home, I made up five SIPs from them. I used some recycled 2-liter soda bottles for the wicking cups, some political yard signs for the soil shelves and a few lengths of pvc pipe for the filling tubes. I secured everything together with some zip-ties, 3 per unit. Total cost? $5.00 for the buckets, I had everything else.

I filled the SIPs with some composted potting soil mixed with local soil from my garden beds. I bought a bag of the potting mix for $6.00 before I left the garden center. The total time it took was less than an hour to assemble, fill and transplant into the 5 SIPs. I’m waiting to get some more 5-gallon buckets for the tomatoes so for now the jalapeno pepper, the two kinds of cucumbers and the eggplant are planted in the new bucket SIPs.

This project has cost me a total of $15.00 out of pocket. I was able to recycle and re-use the rest of the materials so there was no other out of pocket expense for this project. If I can get a few pounds of tomatoes from this, or a few pounds of cucumbers or several eggplants, I will consider this a successful venture. I’m NOT looking just to break even on this, rather I want to make a profit on it. I want my return on investment, my ROI, to be significant for several reasons.

First, that we don’t have to have the best plants in the nursery to achieve a satisfactory yield. If everything we get from this is considered a “bonus” then it’s all good. Everybody doesn’t start plants from seed. Some don’t have the space, some don’t have the time, some don’t have the inclination. If that were not the case, nurseries wouldn’t sell so many seedlings and young plants.  There is obviously a solid market there.

Second, that we can save a few dollars in the initial stages. I used a lot of scrounged materials. I used 2-liter soda bottles and I rarely drink soda, let alone 2-liters worth. I’m sure I saved this plastic from ending up in the landfill. I recycled the materials that the political yard signs were made from. That stuff is hollow-core plastic board that is lightweight and fairly cheap which is why they print campaign signs on it. This stuff would have gone to the landfill for sure. (Neither of the gentlemen from whose campaigns I supported won their elections.) The pvc pipe I used was left-over cuts from previous irrigation projects. I didn’t have to go buy some, although technically, I did buy this stuff. But since I’ve had it in my garage for more than a couple of years, I figure that it had long since been depreciated from the budget. The zip ties I used were purchased specifically for gardening projects and they cost less than 2-cents each. I used 15 of them. So I might be into it for $15.25, but that’s really squeezing it hard. I’m sticking with the $15.00 figure.

Now all I have to figure is how much produce this project will have to yield to bring in a value greater than $15.00. Five pounds of tomatoes? Six? I don’t know how much cucumbers will cost when it comes time to pick these, but a couple of dozen good-sized cukes will hit the $15.00 price point. And eggplant? These are black beauty variety. They should have large ovid purple fruits. At just over 3 pounds, I’ll break even on that. So with all figured in, I have a good chance of making this pay. But like all good gardening plans, you got to get them to the harvestable stage first. I’m a long way from that.

We had some serious wind the past few days and I was a little worried about the new plants. They haven’t had time to put down any new roots to help anchor them down but every time I checked on them, they seemed to be doing just fine. They didn’t wilt when the top of the SIP dried out from the sun and the wind. I watered them a couple times from the top with the idea that it would help keep the soil moist which would help hold the plant in place. All I can do now is wait and watch and water.

I’ll post back again after I get the tomatoes in place and then regularly as these grow, or don’t grow.

The Possibilities are Endless

I love a good find.  I also love it when I can re-purpose something that someone else has owned and use it in an entirely different way than it was intended to be used. I think this is a good skill for everyone to develop.

I saw a trellis made from an old bicycle. The folks had taken the tires off and removed the leather from the seat and sunk it down into the garden and anchored it there. When the climbing vines needed a hand up, there was the bike to provide it.  That’s cool. That’s repurposing. We don’t have to invent a bicycle to use it as a trellis.

We grow potatoes in tires, tomatoes in paint buckets, cucumbers on fences and fish in bathtubs. That’s also a kind of repurposing. Potatoes don’t know they’re growing in tires, any more than fish know their swimming in a bathtub.

I like the way we can take weird components that don’t have any real value in and of themselves and turn them into good, usable additions to our Stealth Farming repertoire. Most of my sub-irrigated planters, well, all of them actually, have recycled and repurposed components in them. The water reservoirs are made from plastic containers that had other uses first. Most of the containers themselves had other uses first, some more than one. Since I can’t figure out how to re-use zip-ties, I must admit I’m the first user there. But I feel good about the rest of it.

The biggest thing that I have recycled or repurposed isn’t even a tangible thing. It’s the idea: the idea that I can grow my own food, the idea that I can reduce my negative impact, the idea that I can do any of it. I didn’t have that idea first myself.

I am grateful for the amazing exchange of ideas that occurs everyday on the internet, in gardening clubs, at farmers’ markets and over back fences. Those ideas that other people have and are willing to share enrich the lives of those who listen, begin to dream and then apply those ideas.

Sharing ideas is powerful. It’s kind of like planting a seed. You give someone an idea about how to grow tomatoes himself and he begins to think it’s possible. He dwells on the idea long enough and adds to it, looks for ways to bring it about and then acts on it. This is like the fertilizing we do. We feed those ideas with other possibilities. Then he acts on it and plants the seeds or buys a seedling and puts it in his own dirt, waters it, feeds it and helps it to grow. He makes sure that it gets enough water, enough sunshine and that the bugs are kept at bay. Eventually, he gets to see the flower and then the swelling fruit and then the color changes and the smells and the sights and gets excited. By the time he gets to pull that tomato off the plant, he already knows how it will taste because he has done it so many times in his mind. While he eats it and savors it, his mind is turned to “next year….”

And he knows he can grow his own tomatoes. He has moved way beyond thinking it’s possible.

I remember my mother telling me many, many years ago that if I wanted to accomplish something or do something, I could. All I had to do was work toward it steadily and it would be mine. I have to give credit to her for any optimistic outlook I may have in my life. It was taught to me by lessons in life but mostly by her example. She actually believed what she was teaching me and showed it in the way she lived her life.

Because Mother’s Day is this Sunday, I can’t help but to reflect on my mother and what she taught me. She grew African Violets for years. I watched her water them, turn them ¼ turn each day, sing to them, play classical music for them and enjoy them. When nobody else I knew could grow them, she could and they thrived for her.

My mother knew her way around the kitchen. There wasn’t anything she couldn't make or do. She made the most wonderful bread. I would come home from school in the afternoon and smell it baking a block away. She would time it so that it was just coming out of the oven when I got home, just in time for a steaming slab with gobs of butter and warm honey drizzled all over it. She and I would sit and talk and eat bread and life was good.

My mother knew more about food than I could possibly know. She knew what spices and seasonings to use to dress up a dish just right. She knew which foods to serve with which entrees to compliment the flavors. She knew which foods to place on the plate just so to balance the appearance and lend their strength to the visual impact of the meal.

When my son was found to have food allergies to everything except corn and rice, she disappeared into her laboratory (the kitchen) to develop recipes that he could eat with enough variation that he wouldn’t be bored with food.

I miss my mother. She has been gone for several years now. The biggest loss I feel is that my children don’t have their grandmother to teach them these things. My older children have their memories of her but my younger one’s don’t. It’s hard to miss something that you never had.

So for all those mothers who are teaching their children and spending time with them, thank you for continuing the tradition. Mothers are amazing and my own is no exception to that rule. She was simply exceptional.

I love you, Mom.

Goals of the Garden

Some reasons for Stealth Farming

There are many reasons to grow your own food and to do the other things that are associated with gardening. There are probably as many reasons are there are gardeners, if you consider that your reason is different from mine even if we use the same words to describe it. If I grow one because I want to, and you do because you want to, those are different reasons even though they sound the same.

I have been thinking recently about what I’m doing here and what I want to get out of this project and I thought I might jot down a few of the reasons to share with you. This will help you understand me better but the biggest thing it will do is to help me focus my thinking and become much more clear on my own motivation.

I like fresh food. I like the taste of tomatoes that actually have flavor. Too many of the fruits and vegetables that we buy in the supermarkets, no matter how ‘fresh’ the signs say they are, have no taste or at most a very bland, watered down flavor. That’s not going to make me enjoy eating. I want to eat because it tastes good first. It can be nutritious, that’s fine, but I want it to taste good first.

I can’t get good tasting lettuce in the stores. It’s just not there. I’m not shopping at the Whole Foods store to get the organic stuff they sell because there isn’t one anywhere near my side of town. To drive 15 or 20 miles to the store to get organic produce to reduce my impact on the environment seems counterproductive if you consider all the gas I have to use to get there. I can grow organic lettuce at home and did this spring.

The stuff I grew tasted. It had flavor. It wasn’t bland or plain or tasteless. It was good. I lament the idea that it gets too hot here too soon for lettuce and I’m looking for more heat-tolerant varieties to plant. I also loved the idea that it was fresh. Step out the back door with a bowl and a pair of scissors and voila! You’ve got a salad. I didn’t even need to drown it with dressing, either. Its flavor stood on its own.

That’s one reason.

I like the challenge of finding ways to grow lettuce more than just during our short Spring. I’m looking into Fall production and Winter growing, too. The idea of a fresh salad at Christmas is very intriguing.

That’s another reason.

I also like the idea that my daughter could go out back and pick fresh lettuce for the sandwiches she made to take to work for her lunch. She got a kick out of it, too. To be able to share an appreciation for good, fresh, healthy foods with your kids and grandkids is wonderful. To be able to introduce to them other vegetables than what they are used to is also great.

Sharing the garden is another reason. (I just don’t want to share it with the dogs. Yesterday, they left 4 separate deposits in my garden. Four. Who feeds dogs that much?)

I like the idea of self-reliance. Too often the term used is self-sufficiency. Those are completely different terms. While there are, maybe, some things in which a person can be totally self-sufficient, living on this planet isn’t among them. We need people and we need to be needed by other people. It’s the way we were wired. Being self-sufficient means that we can provide for whatever we need or want. We don’t need or even have use for other people. That just ain’t so.

We need to be actively involved in doing as much as we can for ourselves and we need to be actively engaged in doing what we can for others. If we see something that another person lacks that we can fulfill, we have an obligation to offer it to them. We cannot force it upon them, it’s still their choice whether to accept it or not. But we are obligated to make it available to them if they want.

The flipside to this is that when they see a need in us that they can fulfill, the obligation becomes theirs.

I like that and hope to be able to do more of that in the future with my Stealth Farming.

When I am working in the garden, I feel the life that’s there. I talk to my plants, to the birds, bugs and worms and they talk to me. (Not in actual audible words, I’m not wacko.) By watching them and following what they do, I learn a lot about them. Learning is fun.

That’s another reason.

When I read in the scriptures stories about gardens, plants, and planters, I see how they relate to me by comparing the stories to what I do when I farm or garden. My spiritual education grows in the garden, too. I feel closer to all of creation when I do.

That’s a great reason.

These are not all of the reasons I put seeds in soil and tend them. These are just a few of my reasons.

What are yours?

Dollar Store Bucket SIPs

On a recent trip to my local dollar store, I came across these buckets. They cost, you guessed it, a dollar each. Now, they’re not too heavy duty, but I didn’t need them to be. They hold about two gallons of water, but I don’t want them to just hold water. I want to grow things in them.

Cheap, $1 2-gallon bucket

The first thing I did was wash them thoroughly. I don’t know what kind of mold release agents the manufacturer used, what kinds of oils may have built up on these things in their processing and handling and shipping from point of manufacture to here. So I washed them off.

Ummmm, clean bucket.

Next, I measured the length of PVC pipe I needed to be the fill tube for the water reservoir. I did this in the most scientific manner I could. I stuck the pipe into the bucket and market where it stuck up over the top. I added a couple inches to that and voila! A fill tube.

Since I was making 5 of these at once, I cut 5 tubes the same length. I cut one end of each one at a 45-degree bevel so that the water would have an outlet into the reservoir. Then I set them aside.

The next step involved making the soil/water interface area, also known as the wicking cup. I made these by measuring 3 ½” from the bottom of several two-liter soda bottles. I marked these with a marker so that I could see where I was going to cut them.  Then I used a drill to put about 20 holes in this area of the bottle, spaced evenly in four rows of 5 holes. I don’t think that the number of holes is particularly significant; a few more or a few less won’t change the function.

Finished Soil Wicking Cup

Then I drilled two more holes about a half inch below the marked cut line directly opposite each other. These will be used to attach the cup to the soil shelf.  Then, I cut along the line with a pair of scissors. I tried to keep it as level as possible so that it will fit snuggly against the soil shelf bottom.  I did this to all five of the soda bottles and ended up with 5 cups.

The next step involved marking and cutting out the soil shelves. Since I was making five at once, I wanted to have a template for the round. I didn’t want to have to measure more than once to make the shelf. I don’t draw circles very well.

I measured up about 4 inches from the bottom of the bucket and measured the diameter of it. Then I traced the bottom of the bucket on my shelf material. I used hollow core campaign signs from a recent election. I believe in recycling both plastics and politicians (because they can be quite plastic sometimes). This is a good, strong material that will support the weight of the dirt and the plant without weakening in the presence of water. (I wish the politicians would remain strong without weakening in the presence of money. The signs are made of tougher stuff sometimes.) I cut this one out with a knife and checked it against the bucket and trimmed and snipped until it rested on the cup without binding on the walls. I used this one as a pattern to cut out the other four.

Using the first one as a template

After I had them all cut out, I stacked them together to drill the weeping holes around the edge. This is a way for excessive water to drain into the water reservoir and out through the drain hole if they get caught in the rain. You don’t want your roots standing in a muddy bath all day. The lack of oxygen will kill the little guys.

All the shelves cut and ready for drilling

I drilled holes around the circumference of the disks with a power drill. I simply left them stacked together and drilled about every inch or so around the perimeter.  This gives us enough holes to effectively drain the growing medium and allows us to hold the water below until the plant needs it.

Drilling the weep holes. You could also use a
soldering iron to melt holes in this stuff.

 The next step involved marking where the fill tube will pass through the soil shelf. I did this by tracing around the pipe pieces with a marker with the pipe held fairly close to the edge. Since the pipe will stay close to the edge of the bucket, the hole should also.

Weep holes with fill tube hole drawn, ready to cut.

Then I used a roll of tape to mark a circle in the center for the soil cup. I made this just a little smaller than the diameter of the soil cup because I want the cup to help hold up the soil shelf.

Fill tube hole cut and the wicking hole roughly marked out for cutting.

 After I cut these center holes, I stacked all five of the discs together again and drilled two more holes through each of them about a half inch from the center hole and directly opposite each other. These are for the zip ties that I will use to fasten the cup to the shelf. It may not be necessary to fasten the cup to the shelf, but I do it to avoid the cup slipping to a side and upsetting the soil and the plant.

I attached the cup with the zip ties. Don’t tighten them too much; this stuff can’t take a lot of torque. Cut off the excess zip tie. I don’t think it will interfere with the plant, it just looks messy. (Yes, I know it will be covered with dirt and nobody will see it. But I will know that it is still there and it will bug me all growing season.)

Then drop the assembled cup/shelf system into the bucket. Slide one of the fill tubes down into the hole, bevel cut down. Hold the fill tube to the side of the bucket and drill two more holes, one on each side of the tube. Use another zip tie to keep the fill tube in place.

The last step is to locate a point on the opposite side of the fill tube about a half inch below the soil shelf. Drill a hole here to serve as your overflow. This will allow oxygen to get in below the shelf so the roots will have access to it and will allow for water to escape if your bucket is out in the rain. When I’m watering, I water through the tube until it comes out the overflow, then I know it’s full. The purpose of the cup is to provide a place for the water and the potting mix to come into contact with each other. When the dirt in the cup is wet, capillary action will raise the water through the soil to where the roots of the plants can get to it. It keeps the soil moist without saturating it and allows for oxygen transfer also. The plants have access to water when they need it and not when I can get to it.

When you fill the bucket, make sure that your soil mix is moist. You don’t want to have your plants die waiting for the water to wick up through the soil into the bed. If it is moist going in, it will stay moist as long as you have water in the reservoir. Fill the soil cup first and make sure that it is pressed down firmly. Add your soil mix and then your seeds or seedlings.

Internal view of a finished SIP. Total cost is $1.00 for the bucket,
everything else was free on hand.

I strongly recommend a mulch of some kind. Although using these types of growing containers will reduce your water usage by up to 90%, you must make sure that you are not losing water through evaporation from the top of the soil mix. You can use plastic or aluminum foil or even a piece of cardboard cut to fit the top with holes for the plant and the fill tube. You can even plant a second plant below the first if you plant a tall or vining plant in the middle. The leaves of the second plant can act as a mulch for the system.

You can use the bucket sides to attach stakes and poles or cages to support high-growing or vining plants. Put them perpendicular to the fill-tube-drain hole line and anchor them to the sides with zip ties like the fill tube.

These are not as large nor as heavy-duty as when you use a 5-gallon bucket but the cost is great and they work.

Have fun!