The Mighty Container Garden

Spring is in the air and its time to get those peppers, tomatoes and zucchini seedlings in the ground. You might feel left out if you're lacking ground to plant in (by that we mean soil), but fear not! The Yard Farmer has an innovative solution for those with unused patio and balcony space -the container garden.

A well-managed container garden can help take a sizable chunk out of the
produce bill, and as our pictures can attest, the Yard Farmer is able to grow organic produce for you and/or your family even in living areas without a back yard or a large area for growing fruit and vegetables. We offer a variety of custom gardening solutions, as you can see from the pictures here.

In this garden we've planted freckled loose leaf lettuce, romaine, red velvet and mesclun lettuce, tomatoes, swiss chard, radishes, carrots, manzano peppers, bell peppers and "California Wonderful" peppers, spinach, bush beans, white sweet corn, broccoli and cantaloupe, just in this small space.

Also, using drip irrigation connected to a unique resevoir system, we're able to reduce the amount of water normally required to grow plentiful amounts of produce, and even less than is used in many kitchen gardens.

We'll keep you updated on how our balcony gardens are doing throughout the warm, summer growing season. If you're interested in Yard Farmer's balcony garden solutions for your space, please contact us at theyardfarmer at gmail.com.

Composting 101

Composting is something that most people have heard about but don’t necessarily practice. In the U.S., either due to misconceptions about the practice, a lack of a garden or lawn that might use compost or just a plain lack of knowledge, composting is not a common enough practice to reduce the impact households have on our environment.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has done research that shows just how much organic waste goes into landfills. Here are a few statistics:

• Yard trimmings and food waste made up 25.3 percent of the U.S. waste stream in 2007 (www.epa.gov/epawaste/facts-text.htm#chart1)
• The U.S. generated 31.3 million tons of food waste in 2006 but only 680,000 tons were diverted from the landfill, a 2.2% recovery rate (www.cool2012.com/community/collection/)

Although industrial composting is on the rise, as the statistics above indicate, individuals aren’t doing as much as they could do make sure more food waste is composted. Yard Farmer insists that its customers compost, and we make it easy for them to do so by setting up an easy-to-use composting system at each of our customers’ homes. That said, we believe that the more you know about composting, the more comfortable you’ll be with the process. Once you get used to it, composting is even less difficult than sorting out glass, plastic and aluminum trash for recycling.

What is compost?
Compost is organic material that we use to amend soil. Composting has been occurring in nature since the dawn of plant life on this planet. As vegetation from trees and other plants falls to the ground, it slowly decays, which provides minerals and nutrients for plants, animals and microorganisms.
The composting process that most gardeners use, however, produces higher temperatures that kills pathogens and weed seeds. It also encourages the growth of microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi that break down the organic material in the compost pile into humus. When added to soil, this black, earthy material increases the level of nutrients available to plants and helps the soil retain moisture.
Studies have also demonstrated that compost can reduce incidences of plant diseases and pests, help eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers and produce higher crop yields.

What can I put in my compost bin?
The EPA has a great set of basic guidelines for composting. Following are guidelines on what’s safe to add to your compost pile and what isn’t (and why).

What to Compost

Cardboard rolls
Clean paper
Coffee grounds and filters
Cotton rags (non-oily only)
Dryer and vacuum cleaner lint
Eggshells
Fireplace ashes
Fruits and vegetables
Grass clippings
Hair and fur
Hay and straw
Houseplants
Leaves
Nut shells
Sawdust
Shredded newspaper
Tea bags
Wood chips
Wool rags (non-oily only)
Yard trimmings

What Not to Compost and Why

Black walnut tree leaves or twigs: releases substances that might be harmful to plants

Coal or charcoal ash: might contain substances harmful to plants

Dairy products (e.g., butter, egg yolks, milk, sour cream, yogurt): creates odor problems and attract pests such as rodents and flies

Diseased or insect-ridden plants: diseases or insects might survive and be transferred back to other plants

Fats, grease, lard, or oils: create odor problems and attract pests such as rodents and flies

Meat or fish bones and scraps: create odor problems and attract pests such as rodents and flies

Pet wastes (e.g., dog or cat feces, soiled cat litter): might contain parasites, bacteria, germs, pathogens, and viruses harmful to humans

Yard trimmings treated with chemical pesticides: might kill beneficial composting organisms

NOTE: Compost should not be used as potting soil for houseplants because of the presence of weed and grass seeds.

Coming Soon to the Yard Farmer Blog...

Hi everyone, this is just a preview of what types of content we have planned for the Yard Farmer blog in the coming year. You'll be seeing profiles of the produce growing in various projects, recipes for those vegetables and fruit, more content about environmental issues and how we can do our part, photos of projects, gardening how-to content, discussions with other local farmers and more. We'll also be launching a basic website soon. Yard Farmer has big plans for 2009, so stay tuned.

Why grow (and eat) seasonal produce?

Throughout human history people have eaten what grows in their geographic area in its season. Today, although there are occasionally some fruits and vegetables that you can’t find on a given day of the week, Americans can find most types of produce in markets regardless of season.
Even though having that kind of choice in our diets seems like it’s an absolute good, is it really? At what cost to our planet and ourselves do we continue to invest time, energy and resources into making sure produce from all over the world is available in supermarkets year-round? As concerns about energy costs and sources and pollution from transport and traditional farming methods grow, Americans need to take a hard look at whether we can sustain this type of one-size-fits-all approach to agriculture in the decades to come.
So what kinds of costs to our society and our collective health are we talking about? According to an April 26 article in the New York Times titled Environmental Cost of Shipping Groceries Around the World, fuel for international freight carried by sea and air is not taxed. This has led to some pretty strange food production strategies where locally produced food is either sent far abroad for processing or left to spoil because importing food from thousands of miles away is less expensive due. One example is the citrus market is Spain. Spain imports lemons from Argentina but lets local lemons fall of the trees and rot.
So what about buying domestic produce at the grocery store rather than fruits and vegetables grown in a foreign country? This should make sense, but it’s not that simple. You can approximate the amount of energy required and pollution generated by shipping produce using a concept known as food miles.
On the National Resource Defense Council’s website (NRDC's This Green Life Page) the organization provides some examples of the number of miles various food products travel to get to a typical market in New York City. Washington apples must travel more than 2,900 miles in refrigerated trucks to get to that store. The peaches in the store are from Chile, and travel 5,000 miles by ship. Both methods are energy intensive and polluting, but which method produces more pollution? The method of transport, whether by air, ship or truck, changes the amount of pollution dramatically. Marine transport produces the least amount of pollution of the three transit types though it’s still bad for the environment and marine life.

The following chart from the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, an organization managed by the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) and funded under a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture's Rural Business-Cooperative Service, offers a useful quick comparison:

There’s also a basic social cost. As a kid in Orange County, California I can remember the annual strawberry harvest. Along Valley View St., now taken over by office parks and warehouses, were fields of strawberries. When spring turned to summer, each field would have its own small stand selling fresh strawberries. The local markets all of a sudden had baskets and baskets of the red berries, and even local chain restaurants like Marie Callenders’ had strawberry pie from mid-summer through early fall. My grandfather also used to grow strawberries right in his backyard, and throughout the summer my sister and I would grab a few to snack on.
In California, even though strawberries harvested across the state are actually produced locally, they are still shipped by truck to large cooling rooms where they are stored until they are shipped to stores. Here’s an interesting look at the USDA’s recommendations for storing and transporting strawberries to keep them fresh. USDA Strawberry Recommendations
So what can we do to make our global approach to agriculture more sustainable? First, we can use available land in urban areas, rather than clearing more wilderness, to offset some of the costs of traditional agriculture. Using community gardens, CSAs and our own backyards is a good place to start. And when it comes to making our own yards productive, that’s where Yard Farmer comes in. More on this subject in an upcoming post.