Frogsong Studio Blog

Okay, I’ve told you all about my Lasagna gardens which are doing well by the way. Now let me tell you about my upside down garden.

You’ve probably all heard about the “Topsy Turvy”. That over-priced little thing that you grow a tomato plant in upside down? Well, I did some googling and found that people are growing a variety of vegetables upside down in 5 gallon buckets.

So, not only do I happen to have some 5 gallon buckets, I also had some buckets that cat litter comes in. So I thought, why not recycle and create a hanging garden at the same time? Now, I can get away with this because I live in the foothills and my neighbors don’t have to look at it.

Because we have so many gophers, moles, deer, wild pigs and other critters that wreak havoc on in ground vegetable gardens, I was desparate to protect my garden this year. So we took 4 panels from our corral and made a little upside down garden corral.

This is what it looked like when we completed it.

Upside Down Garden

 It’s been about 2 1/2 weeks since we planted it and I’m happy to say that they are all growing great. We are even starting to see our first little summer squash.

 I would encourage anyone who would love to grow their own food but  doesn’t have the room for an in-ground garden to give this a try.

I also made good use of the tops of the buckets by planting herbs and other things.

 
Here is a list of what I planted upside down. 

Cucumbers
Squash
Tomatoes
Peppers
Green Beans
Egg Plant
Canteloupe
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In the tops of the buckets I planted:

Basil
Cilantro
Oregano
Green onions
Chives
Arugula
Pickling cucumbers
English Salad Cucumbers
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Everything is growing extremely well so far and I’m excited about that. I even bought a canner, so I’m ready to preserve all the goodies we get.

Okay so here’s an update on the lasagna gardening. As I explained earlier, Lasagna Gardening is using layers of anything that can be composted in a raised bed to create the planting medium. 

We made the first one together. Hence, I was there to supervise. Then Ken made two more, however, I didn’t supervise the job which was a mistake. So what did he do? Well, in the first one he threw a bunch of trash consisting of paper, cardboard, etc on the bottom, threw a huge thick layer of chicken poop in on top of it, then covered it all up with store bought soil. Ummmm, NOT!

On the second one, he layed a layer of trash and cardboard in the bottom, then  dug up some dirt in a spot where we plan to build another koi pond and threw that in there with a few shovels full of bagged compost, spotty at best, mixed in, no! There’s a reason we don’t plant in the ground we have. When it’s wet, it’s mud and when it dries it’s like cement. Nothing grows well in it but weeds.

So what did I do? Well I planted in it because I didn’t know what he did. In the first one, everything I planted in it died and that’s how I found about about the huge layer of chicken poop he put in it in an effort to fill it up.

In the second one, the top dried so hard that it cracked and when I watered it the water just ran off the sides.  So I had the lovely job of having to “unplant” everything and redo the beds. That’s what I’ve been doing this week and I have one finished and everything replanted in it, and another about halfway finished.

He said he just didn’t want to have to buy more dirt. I’ve been telling him from the beginning that we didn’t need to buy ANY dirt.  I’ve tried to explain to him the purpose of all the trash we’re putting in the garden and how it works to no avail. I told him, we could grow our garden in nothing BUT paper and trash if we wanted to. He shook his head like I was crazy and didn’t have a clue what I was talking about,  so now I have to make a special one with nothing but trash and paper just to prove him wrong. Ha!

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Or at least make sure you’re there to supervise and give them plenty of reason to say all you do is bitch.

No, I’m not growing Lasagna…haha!

Lasagna gardening is a way of gardening using, well, trash, among other things. Here’s what we did.

First we laid out some old railroad ties in a square. Then we started filling it up with all our compostible trash. Paper, cardboard, and whatever else we had that could go into the compost pile. Over that we threw horse poop, goat poop, chicken poop, old straw, wood shaving, and dirt. Then we started all over again and layered everything just like you would if you were making lasagna. Hence, the name Lasagna Gardening.

So, in our first one we planted two varieties of radishes, mustard greens, and lettuce. Today, I picked 2 bags full of mustard greens which I will have to blanch and freeze. And I picked three bags full of radishes which I plan to make into radish relish and preserve.

We also planted some new things today. We planted two varieties of Okra, some red onion, some red potatoes and some sugar snaps peas. Yum! Needless to say. I’m plum beat.

Tomorrow I will try to get some pictures of the harvest. I’m soooooo glad we are finally starting to warm up a bit.