Skill Set: How Does Your Garden Grow? Part 1 - Welcome to My Indoor Edible Paradise!

 


. . .with silver bells, and cockle shells. . .And pretty maids all in a row.






In Building Blocks of Intent (Pt. 1), we looked at the importance of developing or refining different skills in leading a life of intent. I refer to them as “life skills”— those directly related to meeting basic human needs, such as

• food and nourishment
• shelter
• clothing
• maintenance of basic health and well-being

With that in mind, one of my goals this year was to do just that. So, this past January I enrolled in an introductory gardening class through the New York Botanical Garden’s adult education program. I had always wanted to try my hand at gardening, but just never got around to doing it until now.

You’re probably wondering “January! Why would anyone take a gardening class then?? What kind of gardening could you possibly do in the dead of winter especially with all that snow we got…???” You are not alone! Everyone I told about the class asked these same questions. However, there’s quite a bit that goes into achieving the beautiful (or edible) end result that most people associate with gardening, and we spent the time covering fundamental theories and concepts such as

• the basic parts of a plant how they function
• soil health & structure
• organic gardening techniques
• pest control
• basic garden tools
• plant selection and care
• propagation and pruning
• general site considerations when planning your garden

all done from a nice, warm and cozy classroom!

Also, you may not realize it, but there's a life cycle to gardening, so there's always something to be done year round.  In fact, our final course assignment was to take what we learned and create a simple plan covering a year of maintenance and planning for the garden of our choice (you can see my final report here). The tail end of winter is a key time for indoor seed starting, so your plants will be ready to go into the ground come spring. Then of course, there’s the main growing season from spring, through the summer, and depending on what you’re growing, even into the fall. In the late fall it’s time to begin preparing your garden for winter…clearing out dead growth, sprucing up the beds and so on. Something else you may not know is that there are things you can plant in the late fall at the end of the season, also known as “cover crops” or “green manure” (e.g. ryegrass, winter rye, clovers, oats, buckwheat, etc), which help protect and prepare the soil for spring when the cycle begins anew! This provides ground cover that helps prevent soil erosion, replaces nutrients depleted during the growing season (e.g. nitrogen), and helps with weed suppression as well as pest control.

Unlike most of my classmates, I don’t currently have access to any outdoor gardening space (not even a terrace!), so I will be adapting what I learned for an indoor garden. Another challenge for me is that I live in a small apartment with limited space.

But, be those things as they may, I am starting with the picture on the left and intend to move towards the picture on the right!

And, after listening to a podcast by Erika Harris of Empathic Writer, during which she talked about her grandfather and his talent for turning his back yard into paradise (go to Episode 001: Say the Things You Want to Hear in the World and jump to the 00:03:09 to 00:03:30 mark), I was further inspired to create my own Indoor Edible Garden Paradise.

As described in my garden maintenance plan, my goals are modest. I plan to get started with some herbs and other edibles (cilantro, scallions and rainbow chard) suited to my particular site constraints.  I have some seeds I purchased from the Hudson Valley Seed Library. I originally bought them because the outer packets were so beautiful, never thinking to actually plant them, but now I figure “Why not!”

However, I also have a Plan B, just in case! I purchased a Burpee “Culinary Herb Garden All-in-One Kit”.  According to the package it includes “everything you need to grow 5 delicious herbs”

     > 5 seed packets – parsley, cilantro, chives, basil and oregano
     > 3 containers and a watering tray
     > growing pellets
     > instructions
     > recipes!

So, we’ll see how it goes and which approach works for me. I hope you’ll join me on this journey, and be inspired to try it yourself! If I can do it, I’m sure you can too!
 

Changing Your Intent

Get Skilled: What You Can Do Now!

1. Pick a new life skill that you would like to learn whether it’s gardening, sewing, cooking, first aid, fishing, or whatever tickles your fancy. Your local weekly paper is an excellent resource for discovering workshops and classes that might be going on in your community.


2. Tell us about what you've decided here or start a discussion on the With Intent Facebook or Google+ page.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

Maybe that title should read “Make it go! Make it go! Make it go!”

It’s winter time here in NYC and this year it came with a vengeance! Freezing cold, snow, snow and MORE SNOW! Even a few of the southern states, that don’t normally get snow, got it this year. And, like those ubiquitous, white, icy flakes, the question on the tip of everyone’s tongue was “When will it end!?” and “What to do with it all until then???” In an urban setting like New York, the snow can slow everything down to a crawl, or even a complete stop. People quickly grow tired of the daily traipse through the slippery, slushy and increasingly dirty mess, or of digging their cars out from under it. And, of course there’s the scrutiny on public officials as to how well they handle clearing it away and keeping things moving.

However, even as I too lamented all of these things, it also got me thinking about whether the snow, typically thought of as an inconvenience or hazard, might instead be viewed as a potential "opportunity" in disguise! Hmmm. . .a problem containing its own solution. . . ! This seeming dichotomy is a key principle in permaculture. In “Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture” author Toby Hemenway states

". . .Constraints can inspire creative design, and most problems usually carry not just the seeds of their own solution within them, but also the inspiration for simultaneously solving other problems." Put another way, "We are confronted by insurmountable opportunity" (attributed to Pogo, the eponymous character from the long-running comic strip created by Walt Kelly), p.7.

So, rather than an annoying, even dangerous obstacle, perhaps all those mounds of snow and ice potentially represent just such an "insurmountable opportunity" to be taken advantage of!

With that in mind, I set out to find examples of projects that deliberately captured "unwanted" snow and somehow “put it to work". Please note that my Internet "research" was by no means scientific. Here are some of the examples I found.  They all describe plans to store snow in the winter and use it later on, to help with cooling in the summer:

1. Snow Becomes a Splendid Cooler – Exciting Challenge in the Town of Funagata (M. Kobiyama) – this article appeared in the scholarly journal “Snow Engineering”. It described an experiment conducted in Funagata, Yamagata Prefecture (Japan) back in 1997 to investigate the feasibility of using snow for cooling. A system was developed and installed in the Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery Practices Building there, and was found to work quite well.


2. Snow Cooling in Sundsvall – a hospital in Sweden has utilized a snow cooling system since 2000.


3. Snow To Be Used to Replace 30% of Japanese Airport's Cooling Energy Needs – in 2008, Japan’s transportation ministry began making plans to collect snow in the winter to assist with summer cooling needs at New Chitose Airport, located on the island of Sapporo, in Hokkaido, Japan. Apparently they can get 20-30 feet of snow each year, so finding something useful to do with it is an excellent example of turning a problem into a solution!


4. Ottawa To Investigate Snow-Powered Air Conditioning's Potential – also in 2008, the Ottowa council (Canada) in conjunction with Hydro Ottowa (a power utility), announced plans to study the feasibility of collecting snow from city streets to later cool institutional buildings. I wasn’t able to find any subsequent references to this project, so don’t know if they ever ended up implementing it.


5. Lawson To Be First Convenience Store To Save Winter Snow…For Summer Air Conditioning?! – a little more recently (2013), a Japanese convenience store chain announced that they would install and test a snow cooling system at one of their locations in Akita Prefecture (Japan).

Again, my research methodology was in no way rigorous or comprehensive, but just considering the question led me to the following insights:

1. as you cans see, the references I found for productive snow reuse, were for projects being considered or undertaken overseas-- Japan, Europe and Canada-- so, it appears that at least for the moment, the notion of large scale snow reuse is kind of under the radar here in the United States. These references were also infrequent and spanned across time (1997 to 2000, then 2008 and most recently 2013), so it is not exactly a regular or ongoing topic of discussion, either.


2. that living in a modern and increasingly urbanized society, may tend to color how we perceive and treat resources. All too often, we may be completely unaware of them until they occur in excess (or abundance!), and disrupt our routines during or after a storm event. Then, they become or are perceived as a nuisance or hazard to be removed or discarded as quickly as possible, rather than the potentially valuable assets they actually are. In the case of snow, it is something we hope will melt down a drain or simply disappear into thin air, after a day or two.

However, extreme weather events are not limited to winter, and will likely only grow in frequency, occurring year round. Therefore, eventually it will become necessary for us to shift our attitudes and perspectives about what those natural events bring, and figure out how to take advantage of those “gifts”!

Changing Your Intent

Catch and Store Energy: What You Can Do Now!

• Read about a project making use of snow as an environmental service? Or, maybe you have your own idea for doing that? Share it here or start a discussion on the With Intent Facebook or Google+ page.