Starting this thread for the knowledgeable folks among us to share some intel. I plan to get started on this in my yard -- thus far have only planted a few seeds and plants but plan to expand on this later this year and get the offspring more involved.
A few snippets from the 'Supply Chains' thread to help kick things off (we should also cross-post any prior advice/tips into this thread as well).
Harvey » Mon Feb 14, 2022 7:13 am wrote:...Almost all the fruit and veg you buy will have viable seeds, start keeping them. Grow a little lemon tree or two on your balcony and in just a few years you'll have fresh lemons, a few tomato vines, they're easy but need regular water, a good pot of basil plants (five or six plant gives hundreds of seeds after flowering and should keep you supplied for a good while) and carrots are easy. Plant a Bay bush too.
alloneword » Mon Feb 14, 2022 7:54 am wrote:
... I moved a couple of years ago (only by about 150 miles) and am having to un/re-learn a whole load of stuff (things like the likelihood of -5 °C frosts in May, for instance).
So start local when looking for information, so it's more applicable to your climate/seasons/pest threats etc. Local seed/equipment suppliers often have good information freely available (e.g.). I regularly download my local suppliers entire website to ensure I'll always have access to the information.
You'd think it's obvious, but grow stuff you like to eat. I grew a few cucumber plants a few years ago, which did spectacularly well. A fuckton of cucumbers. I hate cucumbers.
Expecting to fail at first is a healthy attitude to begin with, but don't be put off by other's seeming success - gardeners rarely blog about their failures.
Go for 'heirloom' varieties (non-hybrids), particularly if you want to save your own seed (actually often easier than it sounds).
For a roof terrace, composting is probably not going to be suitable, so look at getting a wormery (check if your local council might still be offering kits at a discount).
But mainly, seek out any local groups or projects you can find, visit them and see what works for them. Steal ideas. Hell, take a ziplock bag and steal cuttings. (skyfarm? Vegout? A fair few links in this old blog post, some of which are not dead). A lot of the best info will be found offline, though. A lot of older folks who have been doing this a while don't even have email addresses. You have to get out and find them.
Joe Hillshoist » Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:32 pm wrote:Start at the seed savers network.
https://seedsavers.net/local-seed-networks/
You'll get advice and good seeds and you'll be helping fight Monsanto.
Build a worm farm. Plenty of guides online. Compost your organic rubbish if it doesn't go in the worm farm. You can go to a park and get handfulls of green matter for worm farming and composts if you're careful.
Use that to fertilise your plantings
Grow herbs cos they make all sorts of food taste nice. You can share them with neighbours too and get other food in exchange. And they work in a garden because they are useful for companion planting.
Depending on how much room you have you can try this.
Get old tyres, put one down and fill it with straw, then plant seed potatoes. As the grow add tyres and straw so what was the stem is now "underground", but make sure you leave a healthy growing tip to keep growing. Repeat this process as high as is practical. When its as high as possible and the potatoe plant dies or matures enough and you're hungry you can harvesy and get soil out of the tyres.
There may be some issues with using tyres cos they aren't exactly pollution free but if you live in a city you're exposed to heaps of toxins anyway. I'm not sure of how bad they might be. But you can replicate the process by using garbage bins from bunnings and just planting the bottom 6 inches then backfilling slowly as the potato plant grows. You can also build short tressle thingees off the balcony and then grow kiwi fruit or passionfruit or other vines onto them, expanding the amount of sunlight available.
