It's hot out and I'm already thinking of how I'm going to cool off the
greenhouse. Crazy! And we may put some drip hoses on the garden
beds because of a lack of rain. But everything is growing fast. I have flowers
I didn't have until June last year. Of course nothing is lasting long
because of the heat. But here are some photos of the garden. We are
planting strawberries, flowers and lettuce around the outside of the raised
beds. Some of the seeds we planted in the green house last week are
already up. My biggest challenge is keeping everything watered. I
may need to water 2 times a day. I'm use to watering 2 times a week in
April but the heat is drying everything out fast.
BTW our garden beds are built with shipping pallets. Jürgen and Nicole built these for my birthday last year. They have either 4 pallets to make a square bed, or 8 pallets to make long beds. I used up my compost piles on the bottom of the beds, then top soil, then the very top of the beds has good compost. They are at an easy height to work in. You can stand up and garden without hurting your back. We get very few weeds and no slugs. If you want to try this, use stainless steel brackets and screws that don’t rust. Make sure your shipping pallets are heat treated not chemically treated pallets. You can use old pallets, but be sure they haven’t been used to carry anything toxic. Because I’m growing vegetables in my raised beds, Jürgen bought me new pallets. They only cost about 5 Euro each. I’m sure I will not have anything bad leeching into the soil and vegetables. I would like to build 3 more long beds in my garden. Shipping pallets are built to transport stuff over the sea. I think they will last a good long time. This is my experiment with using sustainable Martials to grow food. You could grow a pallet garden on a roof top or in a parking lot. You don’t need much space to grow vegetables. You also don’t need to spend years building up good soil. You can have very good soil from day one. This is a practical thing if you live in a city (like half the world does). I would love to see mission’s teams that build these pallet gardens in church parking lots and in poor neighborhoods all over the world. There are many hungry people in this world. We could empower people to help grow some of their own food. I’m trying this out in my own yard, but I want to see the idea used.
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