If you live in the Seattle area, and you’ve been interested in utilizing your yard, front or back, for rearing a bumper crop of cucumbers or such, but your green thumb is browner than humanure, you’re in luck: The Seattle Urban Farm Company will come and garden for you.
If you’re a more hands-on sort but need direction on what to plant, and when, SUFCo’s owner, Colin McCrate offers instruction and welcomes your involvement in your little victory garden. If you’re too busy, or too lazy, that’s fine too: They’ll handle everything for you, including building your garden beds, planting the seeds, and maintaining your plants as they bubble up out of the soil. SUFCo promises to provide your household with fresh seasonal vegetables and herbs every week.
One of the SUFCo’s strongest selling features beyond being able to produce fresh vegetables on your own property is that they have an extremely stringent organic policy; while they do have a USDA organic certification, they are confident that their confident that practices are superior to those of the Organic and environmental stipulations necessary for the accreditation.
My guess is that apartment dwellers are SOL on this score; you’d have to be able to have one hell of a window box to make it worthwhile. Otherwise, you’re on your own. Fortunately for you, there are still plenty of great farmer’s markets in the Seattle area where you can score good organic produce.
Out with the lawn, in with edibles [seattlepi.nwsource.com]
Seattle Urban Farm Company [seattleurbanfarmco.com]
Just wanted to say that you can raise a remarkable amount of veggies in a window box. We have three 3′x1′ window boxes. They’ve been planted with lettuce cilantro, chives, scallions, parsley (both curly and Italian), lettuce, spinach, and sweet peas (the flowers, not the edible kind) We’ve pulled two or three salads a week out of them, plus idle grazing on the parsley. We’re about to put in a second batch of lettuces. About the only thing I’d have done differently would be to plant the lettuce and spinach more in succession, but then I’d have had to have started them from seed.
Herbs are also good in pots. Even though we have lots of ground, we keep our herbs in largish (2 gallon) pots. That way they’re just outside the kitchen, so I can grab a handful when I need them. My recommendation for herbs in pots include: Thyme, Oregano, Parsley, Cilantro, Marjoram, Basil and Mint. You could also try chives, sage, chervil and savory. Just be sure to give them largish pots (at least 1 gallon, two gallons would be even better!) Rosemary will work, but needs at least a five gallon pot.
Tomatoes and peppers will do nicely in a five gallon pot. Just be sure to use fresh soil in the pots to prevent disease build-up.