The top of the hill should air-drain pretty well. I don’t think I’ve ever had any freeze damage (other than some kiwis one year in another part of the yard)…knocks on wood… The hill is tilted almost due South, so it gets pretty good light. Especially after all those big trees in the “before” pic were removed.
The bottom of the hill really collects the cold, so I may see some damage on the plums down there in future years. But between the fence providing shade and the cool air, the area is staying cold longer than others. There is still snow down there, while it has melted from the rest of the yard over a week ago.
For a few years I grew many tomatoes (nonwoody, herbaceous, annual plants…still, technically a fruiting plant) in pots…then, I switched to ‘Earthboxes’…then, I made my own hydroponic pots. This pretty much entails a pot with a reservoir of water at the base, a screen between the water and the soil medium, and some kind of pipe/tube at the top of the pot that feeds water into the reservoir. These pots have an overfill hole at the base for excess water to drain out. The plant ‘drinks’/wicks water up as it needs it. I guess you could call this more of a hydroponic growing method…whatever one calls it, it saved me time and money watering the plants. Have you tried a system like this with woody, fruiting plants? I may try it with figs and citrus this year.
I thought of using drip systems and stuff. I was just looking at some. I grow in ground too. never used earth boxes mostly because they are too small for me. I was going to try wicking systems but so far have not. I thought it would be good when i was gone, but I need live people here when gone anyway as harvest starts about June 1st and continues daily till November. I grow enough items where I must harvest daily.
I think Olpea makes a good point. With grafting and interplanting, you can shift the harvest time and balance the load. Freezing and canning also help. I have about 40 trees, 40 berry bushes and innumerable leafy veg/weed plants, that mostly self seed or are perennial. When I found I was getting too many apples, I shifted to storage apples, which I am still eating of course. The goal is to spread the harvestable high quality organic fruit over the whole year. I don’t really have too much or too little of anything, but I’m always getting excited about some new flavor or variety that I need to add to my quiver/portfolio.
JOhn S
PDX OR
@Mika, do you have some of the media in contact with the water below, either through one section of the screen going to the bottom of some other mechanism? Also, does the media you use have a significant impact on its ability to wick the moisture upward (I would think a very loose or gritty 5:1:1 with larger particle sizes wouldn’t work as well)?
In a former life I was a potter and made self-watering pots with an exterior reservoir pot and a smaller pot that nested within that with a slightly higher bottom and used a piece of coarse cotton twine trailing from the top pot to the bottom. These were great for small plants, particularly things like African Violets that don’t like water on their leaves.
Sorry, I realize I’m pushing this all further off topic.
When I started growing my veggies this way, I used ‘potting mix’— e.g. a store’s blend of perlite, vermiculite, and peat. After apprenticing on a farm, I decided to make my own mix and substitute the peat with compost and a bit of topsoil. The containers were slightly heavier. The media is packed in pretty tightly (you wet/soak it a bit before putting it in the container) into the container. My own mix didn’t pack in as well because I wanted to omit the peat moss. There is some media that might fall into the reservoir but, on the whole, the jest is that the media and water are separate. When I changed out the media, I would see some media in the reservoir, though not what I’d call much at all.
I have only grown herbaceous, solanums (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants) with this method. I’ve seen many herbs grown in what looks like almost soil less pots with direct delivery of certain nutrients and minerals to the roots in other hydroponic systems. When you use the system I’m talking about, there is usually a covering on top of the container—so the plant is not getting any water from overhead—only water via the reservoir.
Whenever I see potted plants or raised beds now, I instinctively think that they’d be better with some sort of reservoir in the base. I prefer this to, say, a drip irrigation system if one only has a few pots or so and is watering them…though there are dripline systems on the market now for pots and hanging baskets. I’d like to try the wicking method with different plants, like citrus in pots. I haven’t tried different types of media to have a good idea how it affects the wicking. Years ago, when I grew potted citrus, per a tip from someone in the citrus gardenweb forums, I ordered lots of coir from Georgia to mix with potting soil. I had to rinse and rerinse the coconut material to get all the salt out before using it. So, it would be nice to experiment with different media and woody plants too.
I’ve seen one company selling an elevated bed that had some kind of reservoir. You can find plans online where folks make these out of rubbermaid type containers. These wicking containers really came in handy for me when I was on a small, urban lot, short on time but obsessed with veggie growing. My recommendation for these would likely make sense for urban gardeners who know the time and water involved in growing tomatoes. I liked to try and share different kinds, so I’d have at least 40 different types.
Here is a page on wicking beds and a video—in the video they used different media than what I’ve used:
Obsessed? I thought I was getting a little obsessed, but then a guy at one of the CRFG meetings told me sagely, “Any sunlight that hits the ground is wasted!”
I was thinking something like that yesterday afternoon when looking at the 10x30’ strip in front of the kids playground: “Hmm…lots of light being wasted here…I could put up a nice long grape trellis…”
The same applies to my roof. Now that all the tall trees are out, it gets almost complete sun, so we’ve added solar panels. Plants are just another type of solar energy collector.
Mika- I work for a City Government and a few years ago our police department served a warrant on an indoor grow. You would have been impressed I think! These were not your uneducated, redneck pot farmers. They had a whole room full of tall, bushy plants and NOT A SPECK OF DIRT ANYWHERE! I mean not even in the pots! They had all kinds of chemicals/fertilizes/nutrients/etc being fed through a hose system. Each plant was in a pot filled with some kind of medium that they called wool (you may know what I’m talking about-I was lost). They had a separate hose system that actually pumped CO2 gas into the liquid that the pots were sitting in. Of course they had lots of big lights and reflective materials, all of which were on timers. I am in no advocating drug use or paying homage to such people, but I must say that deep down I was pretty impressed at their level of expertise and the professional design of their little operation! If they’d applied such a system and knowledge to something like tomatoes, I bet it would have been amazing! (Though less profitable…then again, we wouldn’t have sized all their money and their property so “profit” is relative! ha)
The pot growers are very sophisticated. You can make $100,000 per month on such a house. That’s a lot of incentive!! And they’ve been doing this and sharing info for decades. Makes my operation look like childs play. But then no one else is sharing info with me and I sell fruit at a huge loss.
. I think they harvest the grain (meal) off the stalks, then havest the stalks as hay. So he is probably doing this. Same with other grains. Maybe not? i have no clue! OK, just thinking hay has seed heads, straw does not. I’m a total city boy
Below is what I found on garden IQ. Alfalfa has a very tiny seed . It is very expensive to buy to replant your fields so it looks like the meal is made from fermented plants.
Description
Alfalfa Meal 3-1-2
Alfalfa Meal is an all natural fertilizer made from fermented alfalfa plants. It’s great at replenishing worn out soils when used as a soil amendment. It can also be used as an accelerant in compost piles.
@thecityman That wool would be rock wool. It serves a couple of purposes. It anchors the roots and keeps some moisture around them while allowing proper aeration. I have a 6.5’ tall hydroponic grow tent, with an 8’x4’ footprint, and banks of not inexpensive grow lights sitting right here in my living room. Ceiling, floor and walls of the interior are entirely covered in mylar. Lots of ways to vent it, or run hoses at different levels, and tall and wide opening doors. I would like a couple more as time goes by so that I can grow more things that prefer different day lengths and/or temperatures to thrive. The tent keeps my house from emitting a magenta glow throughout the neighborhood during the winter.
My citrus and bananas lived in there for the winter. Eventually, they were joined by the young potted figs, brugmansia, and plumeria. I put 4’ long heat mats in there to start my vegetable and flower seeds quickly. The intense lighting keeps them from getting too leggy. As a bonus, when the plants go outdoors in the spring, they don’t need the same kind of hardening off that. The veggies go outside into a different type of translucent, light diffusing tent with adjustable ventilation to await planting.
I had emptied it out for the season, and was thinking of using it for some of my strawberries this summer, when that late freeze rode through here this past weekend. Instead, I wound up having my tender plants, along with major amounts of tomatoes, peppers, and even some young blackberries, tiered in layers so that the only visible ground space was just enough room for me to get a foot in to balance myself while I turned the switches on. I really do need to get a timer.
When it’s not too crowded in there, my 3 year old grand-daughter likes to wear the protective glasses and use it to do her wild dancing under the colored LED lights.
I’m one of those people who enjoy a grow room, but wouldn’t ever use it for illicit purposes.
@fruitnut Hydroponics is probably not the way to go to up fruit tree production. Some of the concepts might be helpful, but possibly cost prohibitive. You are a fountain of knowledge on growing fruit creatively. You’ve probably already investigated this and came to that conclusion.
My neighbor grows pot, and the place reeks. He needs a better filter system. I never seen the plants, but you can smell them. I used to smoke, but can’t stand the smell. Real skunk weed. I know they make first class air filters, and well he has nothing like that. It is a legal operation. We allow growers here now. We have a local store, and I have bought some T-5 bulbs and some really nice course perlite from the place.
Derby OK, looking at it, it looks fermented! Thanks for the info!
I’ve got a packed postage stamp yard myself and besides the year I got 4+ 5gal buckets of hardy kiwis I’ve never had an over abundance of fruit. (Ok, maybe goumis)
I do get to try a few of each type a season, ripened in a way you’d never find in a store.
That’s really interesting, Muddy. You might have bid on all their growing equipment and supplies…we ended up selling it at auction and it didn’t bring a fraction of what it would cost new. We’re pretty sure it was another marijuana grower that bought it, which is kinda funny…who goes to a police auction (wearing a grateful dead shirt no less!) and bids on equipment made for growing something illegal and gives their name and address (required)? Needless to say, our PD has made a few drive buys since then. Personally, I’m a live and let live kind of guy and say to each his own-especially with that particular substance. But its illegal and cops are cops so I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t get to run that equipment through another auction one of these days! ha
Haha, @RobThomas , I’m just the same, but I didn’t know anyone else agreed. I don’t smoke anything, but I like the smell of both pot smoke and tobacco smoke. Heck, it’s just burning leaves, what’s to complain about?
Now that it’s spring, I don’t have time for computer type stuff as much…but, I have to say, I love this board! My cherries have blossomed and my nectarine is about to blossom any day.