Grow your own herbs, vegetables and fruit!

[GrannieAnnie06]

Plant in large pots... set them on your deck/balcony/patio if you have one... Your space will be limited, but you can do lots of herbs, and some veggies successfully in containers...
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[Ellie]

Container gardens are just large pots with one or two veges in them. My Nanna has potatoes growing in a pot, also capsicum, tomatoes and lettuce. Use the largest, cheapest pot you can find & put a mix of good potting mix with water crystals and animal/bird manure and fill to top of pot. Leave for a couple of weeks then plant seeds or seedlings. Tomatoes I would put 1 per pot as they are greedy. Corn probably 3-4. For potatoes, leave the first 12" of soil then put a couple of seed potatoes, put 12" soil on top, then seed potatoes and keep layering till the pot is full. The plant stops flowering when they are ready to harvest. You can put almost anything in pots or you can make raised garden beds by using old bath tubs, washing sinks, washing machine middles, troughs or get someone to make you a couple of beds on site. If you are worried about the soil leaching out of the holes in the bottom, put a layer of flyscreen mesh in the bottom. Pots need thorough soaking 2 or 3 times a week and need a fair bit of sun. Hope this helps

[A_nony_mouse]

I found this letter and thought the sentiment should be shared over a larger audience~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To the Editor,
Now that we approach the end of the holiday season, we will soon see the seed catalogs in the mail. To that end, I would like to suggest a story idea on growing an extra row in our Madras area gardens for the Jefferson County/Seventh Day Adventist food bank and outreach programs.
At a time when the economic crisis is growing, and job loss for many looming, feeding families and seniors dominates the daily worry of many. The federal governments programs to aid hungry seniors and families has reduced their supplies to food banks from five days a month to just over two days. For those who were just making it, the current economic crisis has pushed many into desperate circumstances. Local gardeners could help a lot if they knew how and where to share excess fresh, clean produce.
There is a national organization call Grow a Row www.americasgrowarow.org/ and it was started in the 1990s by some master gardeners in the south as a means of sharing their excess produce and assisting the local food banks as they tried to assist those seniors and working families who could not meet all the needs for food and housing, and other expenses.
While we don't have a local chapter of this organization, we do seem to have many gardeners, a number of which donate their excess produce. However, since the support from federal agencies has been cut back, local agencies find themselves having a hard time helping the most vulnerable in our community.
So I see this time in our lives as an opportunity to reach out to others through our gardening hobbies.
Nancy Petersen
Madras
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Have a mice day.

[knittingmama]

DH and I discussed donating extra food to a local church that runs a food bank. We are also going to talk to the pastor to see if there are men in the church who would be willing to help cut up a couple of pigs and a beef and divvy out the meat to needy families. We don't have money to give, but raising an extra hog or two wouldn't be difficult, as they eat garden scraps anyway. It's something that we can do to give a little.
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Help find a cure for ALS!

[A_nony_mouse]

[Doseydots]

We never bothered about the garden apart from keeping it tidy and cutting the grass, because we both worked. Now we're both retired/sick, we are putting in veg for the first time this year. I already grow herbs. My problem is that I'm high on grouse moors and its open, windswept, with cold snowy winters. However I wanted to ask if its hard to grow carrots ?

[knittingmama]

If your soil is nice and loose, you should get nice carrots. Keep them watered really well when you first plant them.
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Help find a cure for ALS!

[Doseydots]

Ok ta-- the soil is dry and crumbly, as we're on a slope it drains aways well. I will try them and keeo them nice and watered .