Wired.com is running a story on how to set up a smart home garden. Doesn’t matter if you are in a West Campus apartment or have a quarter acre of dirt in Westlake, they have a plan for you: 3′x5′ balcony hothouse or 20′x30′ urban plot. They make a few good points and miss a few. Anyone talking about gardening is a good thing, but if you are going for it for the first time you might want to pick up the Austin Master Gardeners Guide as a supplement.
Wired.com : Geek Gardening – A Wired Guide to Domestic Terraforming
The oregano is growing like a monster in my side of the garden. I say my side, because we have a segregated planting area: Lady’s garden and the Man garden (jammed in by the street). Other wise known as the Marden. It mostly grows herbs and empty beer bottles. Which I hear the ladies love.
I forgo the traditional fertilizer mix. That’s old school thinking. I prefer instead a mix of organic compost, gun powder and Five Hour Energy drink.
It’s official. The strawberries told me so. The garden is firing up. If you haven’t started yet, get out there this weekend. Things are on the move. Below are some of my favorite places to get seeds and starters.
Natural Gardner : 8648 Old Bee Caves Road Austin, TX : (512) 288-6113
Shoal Creek Nursery : 2710 Hancock Drive Austin, TX : (512) 458-5909
Great Outdoors : 2730 Congress Avenue South Austin, TX : (512) 448-2992
This is serious. I met with Carla of Austin Urban Gardens to witness her current installation. Six 4’x16’x18” garden beds. Each bed holds 3 cubic yards of soil, tiered down a sloping back yard off of Bull Creek. The cool thing about the frames is that they are modular (I’m working on a bed in the shape of Abe Lincoln). The planks are made out of smushed together recycled plastics. It comes out looking like wood. Get ready for a whole lot of confused termites.
Every garden bed needs a little drink from time to time. I don’t know if you can get proper scale of this cistern. It’s quite large. Imagine six of our Earth’s Suns stacked end to end. Then, subtract five and .9999999995 of those Earth’s Suns. That is approximately the size of this thing. Five thousand gallons. It will store rain caught from the home’s roof that will then be piped down to soaker hoses in the beds. Pretty impressive, huh? Almost as cool as the metric system.
Action Shot! Sweet, sweet earth. Carla brings in soil from the Natural Gardener. I live on a slab of rude black clay. The only thing that will grow in that is more cracks in my house. The bed pictured here is being filled with Hill Country Garden blend. It’s a mix of reclaimed composted topsoil, composted rice hull, decomposed granite and a special blend of composts. This is a versatile mix, as it provides a variety of microbes and nutrients that benefit a wide range of plants. This means that you can grow almost any type of plant with it. Or, hopefully like this homeowner, 14 million carrots. I love carrots.
Austin Urban Gardens : Patrick @ 512-632-3599 or Carla @ 512-619-7966
Frozen and now drowned in rain. It’s a tough season to be a garden in Austin. It seems like a good time to lay low, but the Travis County Master Gardener Association thinks different. Things to do this month: start seedling tomatoes, peppers and eggplant (inside), turn soil and add compost (it will need to chill for awhile to work it’s way into the soil). Now, is also the time to move any plants or plant any new bushes or shrubs.
That was a heavy-duty cold snap and I don’t even think it will be our last this year. How did your garden do after the freeze?
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