• MsStar39 said on Mar 25, 2009....

  It is good to grow somethings because of the high price of food.
  i wrote a blog recently about growing potatoes in a garbage bag or old tires.
  
  

• D6fer said on Mar 25, 2009....

  that's a neat idea trinov.....I have been wanting to start a garden for some time....we only grow flowers and trees in our yard....we have a lot of extra land at work and I was told I could plant one there.....maybe I will.

• Trinov said on Mar 26, 2009....

  Hi, MsStar39, how do you grow pototoes in a garbage bag? I've seen lots of things grown in tires, and the garbage bag idea intrigues me.
  
  Hi D6fer--you can try also fruit trees, if I remember correctly there are firms which sell dwarf fruit trees. Growing our own food may be what will give us the edge of survival when things get really bad. Being the pioneer in a neighborhood in this could mean that you save many lives -- I believe that governments are no longer at all for the people, if they have ever been, and it's the personal, family and community level that will eventually bring on a new morality and a new civilization. Also we can save seeds from vegetables that we are eating-and use what the Creator gave us to use without seed companies.

• MsStar39 said on Mar 27, 2009....

  If you go to the do it yourself website you will find the instructions and pictures on planting in the garbage bag.
  
  http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/gr_fruits_vegetables/article/0,2029,DIY_13846_4463475,00.html
  
  if you have problems finding it i will send you the instructions.
  

• RollingC said on Mar 29, 2009....

  Because of the rising price of food ( vegetables, etc.) I'm thinking of doing the same with some things.   Thanks for the links MsStar39....I'll check them out later.
  Rc

• MsStar39 said on Mar 30, 2009....

  You are welcome RC.

• Trinov said on Apr 01, 2009....

  To MsStar39--thank you for the link. I haven't the time now but I will g try ot pursue it later.
  
  Last year there was a contest in China : building an apartment house with a usuable garden terrace for growing food. I saw this for an Israeli firm won the prize. The building looked liked any other building but the terrace was enclosed. It seemed to me that any building could have such a terrace built on. The problem might be sun exposure and I've been wondering if anyone anywhere has ever used mirrors to direct sunlight to plants?
  
  My father designed a movable, turnable stand for growing plants in a limited garden, but it is not so practicle unless the whole thing would be built into the ground for stability and for apartment dwellers it is not relevant-we need something more.
  
  Maybe a whole building also should convert the apartment roof to (1) sun and wind collecting for electricity (2) water collection (3) growing vegetables in plastic greenhouses and growing very dwarf fruit trees (some firm in the south of the US was an expert in this ).
  
  My feeling is that the world is on the brink of very major changes, since the piramid of power model is not working. This drip down prosperity model is a piss down model, and now all the 'little people' who are not millionaires, not celebrities, not bankers and experts, should try to take back as much knowledge, activity and power over their lives as possible--for us little people have been taken down the road of destruction by those whom we were taught to trust.
  
  For example, I read a few years ago that the most successful investors on the stock markets was a group of little old Irish ladies in the midwest of the US who studied a stock everyday for 6 months before investing. Recently I read that the 'experts' usually only follow a stock once a week and that turns out not to be enough to determine what it was likely to do, and the everyday model of following was much more helpful! But will the experts learn from this, or is their golf game more important? And the jargon used by every field does not mean they know more--the jargon is just a short cut for a concept, and those concepts may be really wrong and totally stupid.
  
  Up until a 100 years ago the grandma of the family was the major healer. Few went to doctors. Not that modern medicine has not done great things in the area of surgery, but in other areas their breakthroughs have broken down. Herbs and certain foods, like garlic, have long proved themselves to be helpful for colds and flus etc. Herbs and garlic can be grown at home and they seem to still be useful. In Israel several books have come out with 'grandma's recipies' for lots of common illnesses. One of the books comes with stupid cartoons, but still has lots of folk tested advice for headaches, colds, etc. Every family may have some secret remedy to share with others, for everyone on earth goes back generations and generations of people who knew how to survive.

• Trinov said on Apr 09, 2009....

  Me again: here is an article on this subject--growing vegetables on your front lawn:
  
  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/09/eveningnews/main4932649.shtml?tag=topHome;topStories
  
  

• MsStar39 said on Apr 09, 2009....

  Trinov thanks for sharing this link on seeds of change, it's very inspiring.

• Trinov said on Apr 13, 2009....

  Hi MsStar39--I thought so too. It's actually being done--that is great for it is not theory but practice.

• Trinov said on Apr 30, 2009....

  Just me again--our 6 story residential building has a big 'porch' on the front half of the third floor (its built on a hill) and we are successfully growing some cherry tomatoes there as the beginning of an experiment.
  
  The drought here may curtail our efforts for an on-ground garden this year, but we may experiment with other container gardening. Also we have a huge amount of slugs on the ground for some reason. Yuuchh.
  
  Here we have an all year round growth climate, although it gets into the high nineties for at least two weeks (sometimes 6 weeks) midsummer.
  
  I read recently that the US grew 1/3 of its vegetables in 'victory gardens' in WWII. So there is no reason why that can't be repeated with a higher precentage if needed. I'm wondering about personal gardens in Europe. I believe that Eastern Europe has that type of culture in some areas, like Rumania, where people grow their own urban food in the summer and store it for the winter. Anybody know more about this?
  
  

• MsStar39 said on Apr 30, 2009....

  I had a friend that even though he had the ground space he preferred container gardening I was amazed at all of the things he was growing in containers.
  
   I heard that beer was good for eliminating slugs.
  
  Glad that you are having success with your cherry tomatoes.
  

• Trinov said on May 14, 2009....

  To MsStar39--thank you for the hint against slugs. There is a patch of land that is slug heaven and we don't know what to do.
  
  I think that this year we have to use container gardening because we are in an official drought. Water runs off into the seas, floods communities, but at the same time we have a drought! That is because politicians and planning don't go together. (My father's friend 'Buda' had solutions 40 years ago. The only ones actualized are those about water parks. Everyone laughed at this then and now water parks are a very big industry here. I wish that Buda's other ideas about water capture and use were also part of the picture.)
  
  Also the government here wants to put VAT on vegetables and fruit: VAT--value added tax. That is another attack on the poor and the large families--but there is a fight going on. An intelligent politician is an oxymoran or is that how it is spelled? I mean a contradiction in terms.
  
  

• Trinov said on May 31, 2009....

  Hello, tomatoes don't like north light --but they grow quite well in 3/4 shade and a few hours of sun on the apartment building's porch.
  
  And I've got a few elderly women growing tomatoes on their window sills and starting potatoes. I am the 'plant nursery' at the moment. One of the son's of the elderly women is now also growing tomatoes. Little by little we do have some hopes to change this world into something a bit better. Small acts by individuals can eventually bring other individuals to also act.
  
  The Utupe may be the best way in our civilization to make changes--for it is visual. But some people like me, don't like to be exposed to the public. I prefer to write, while I learn best myself from seeing how things are actually done. May be some day we 'd make a video using old Japanese or other masks!
  
  Anybody have good harvests from homegrown beans and cucumbers?

• Trinov said on Jun 17, 2009....

  Just me again with another article--about urban gardens from the Herald Tribune and or the New York Times on line. I believe that the future will do this way, that more and more urban and sub-urban people will be growing their own food and that the family farms will come back with more sophistication about self-marketing, organics, time and water efficiency etc.
  
  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/dining/17roof.html?hpw
  
  

• UnicornForm said on Jul 24, 2009....

  Haystacks work well to! and cut open milk jugs for hanging tomatoes :)

• Trinov said on Aug 04, 2009....

  Hi to UnicornForm: Do you know how much light is needed to keep tomato plants happy? They don't grow flowers in our window sill, and the half sun they got on the buildings outside porch was scorching the leaves (plenty of little tomatoes though).
  
  Do you put holes in the milk jugs for drainage or not? This is question that is important for I am trying to find ways to grow things with as little water as possible--for here we have drought problems.
  
  Cauliflowers--didn't grow either for me, but brocolli likes my window. Any answers?
  
  

• UnicornForm said on Aug 04, 2009....

  Well my aunt grows them under a tree, so a cycle of light and none i think would be fine.
   
  No holes!They (my aunt) lives in the peidmont, asnd its normally super dry there.
   
  Iunno bout the cauliflower, i cant even cook them right, LOL

• Trinov said on Aug 20, 2009....

  To UnicornForm--thank you for you advice. We hopefully will be trying out those ideas this winter --winter is a growing season here, whereas in summer in Tiberias, it is near 100 at noon each day.

• Trinov said on Aug 27, 2009....

  Me again: an article about how NASA can grow vegetables and fruit in Space and how maybe we can do it at home:
  
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1208801/The-new-device-enables-grow-fruit-veg-using-soil.html
  
  

• Trinov said on Oct 17, 2009....

  In the future, beside green roofs and vegetable producing lawns, there may be vegetable and fish producing kitchens!
  
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1219701/The-DIY-fish-supper-Future-kitchen-grows-vegetables-seafood.html
  
  
  

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