(Food) Self-sufficiency on a balcony (Sydney Morning Herald)

[jpak]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/selfsufficiency-on-a-balcony/2007/04/23/1177180569548.html

The salad you ate for lunch yesterday may have used more fossil fuel than you used all week. Your snow peas were probably flown from Zimbabwe; your vacuum-packed greens were probably brought from China, which was where the garlic came from, too. Your salad's "energy miles" also included the fuel needed to grow it, as well as to make and transport the fertilisers, fungicides, herbicides and pesticides. That salad probably used more water than you did, as well. (Only about 3 per cent of water use is domestic.) What's the use of turning off lights and cutting back on travel kilometres if your cherries come from California?

So how do you minimise your "tucker footprint"? By buying local, and organic. But the greenest solution - in every sense - is growing your own.

Aha, I hear you chorus, impossible! I've only got a balcony and 10 spare minutes a week …

Impossible? Of course not.

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[Laughing Mirror]

1. How's the drought in Australia?

Has there been any rain?

[wakeme2008]

2. Very good article and (plus nom)

it shows how a little garden can help anybody.

[Trillo]

3. Thanks.

I wish I'd learned more about gardening and being self-sufficient (independent) in school. It seems that should be one of those basic lessons that's passed from generation to generation, but "industrialization" seemed to abort that intergenerational and cultural process.

[displacedtexan]

4. So, what should I plant in Washington DC?

It's as hot as a Southern Summer and as cold as a
Northern Winter here.

[jpak]

5. Lots to choose from

Summer pots: cherry tomatoes, peppers (sweet and hot), basil, garlic/chives/green onions, and herbs (sage, marjoram etc. that can be dried in for winter use).

Indoor/outdoor (winter/summer) pots: dwarf citrus, pear, peach and apple trees.

Outdoor pots: Nanking (dwarf) cherries, blueberries, strawberries.

Cold frame greens: a 3 x 6 foot cold frame can provide spinach, lettuce, Claytonia (AKA miner's lettuce), radicchio and carrots all year long.

My brother in Maine has fresh greens from Easter to New Year's out of his cold frame. He lets the snow bury and insulate it during subzero weather in January and February. In mid-March, he digs it out and lets the sun have at it.

[displacedtexan]

6. Thanks!

I'm ready to get started!

[IDemo]

7. One other option for gardeners from the frozen north (like me)

Hydroponics . Although the lighting requirements are obviously not as 'free-energy' as sunshine, you can have at least some fresh produce growing year round with not a lot of effort. These systems are somewhat comparable to aquariums; they need a close watch on the chemistry, use a small pump to keep fluids cycling through the growth media, and can take radically different forms (and costs!) from a single five gallon bucket to an entire spare roomful of equipment.