Worried about what's in your food or how it was grown? If you want the job done right, then do it yourself! The move to urban gardening and locally grown sustainable foods is growing fast. Even in urban areas.
My friend Karen just started her own garden was watering it during our recent visit. "Everything just tastes better when it comes from your own garden. And you know whats in it." Karen started her garden with herbs like oregano and thyme, peppers, and tomatoes. She is lucky enough to have an acre of land to plant away.
What about those of us with "normal" Southern California homes (very small back yards) or even our tiny back patio at our condo. There is hope!
My husband used Mel Bartholomew's "All New Square Foot Gardening," as his guide when he created our own little veggie patch. He used Mel's method to install a garden in a 5 foot by 2 foot area, and our garden is already providing some beautiful bounty!
Urban soils are notorious for legacy contaminants from previous activities as well as air deposition of lead from brake pads and other pollution. Add in some really gnarly soils types (clay, rocks, weeds ready to germinate) and you have a depressing urban garden picture.
But gardening in containers or raised beds "lift you above all these concerns." You have a clean slate to start your garden out on the right foot. Give it the best foundation you can.
Another benefit is planting each small area (square foot) at a different time (vary by a week or two) so your fruits and veggies don't ripen all at the same time. Because the square foot areas are big enough for a plant that produces plenty for that time frame, but they are small enough that you can plant several different items or similar items with different timings. There are also several different configurations for square foot gardens. We saw some at the fair that make good use of vertical space as well as horitzontal.
Of course our garden includes biosolids (aka treated sewage sludge) compost in that initial mix. Biosolids comes from all of us, so it contains lots of nitrogen and phosphorus to feed the plants and a complete mix of macro and micro nutrients and even beneficial microbes that do great things in the soil to help the plants. Biosolids have been treated to remove pathogens but have all the other good stuff that is natural to recycle back to the soil and sustainable. Biosolids are local (from your treatment plant), comes from you, is a wonderful alternative to synthetic fertilizer, and is a renewable (which is critical when we are facing running out of all mined sources of phosphorus in 100 years).
Some worry about other unwanted things in biosolids. Modern industrial programs and permits have reduced metals exponentially. One pharmaceutical study found that it would take 50,000 gallons of biosolids to equal one dose of Viagra. Add these factors to the amazing protective properties of biosolids (biosolids has rich organic and inorganic factions that create complex binding) keep unwanted constituents permanently bound and not available to plant uptake. (see other related articles here).
The plants do uptake the nitrogen, phosphorus, and lots of nutrients not available in such a complete form with synthetic or chemical fertilizers.
Then let the Beautiful Bounty Begin!
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