The Weekend Garden

Not fully on topic regarding net zero, its still about our house and having it produce as much as we consume (in this case, in the food sense). We both have experience with and want to grow a lot of our own vegetables. We've done it with some success in the city on 140 degree rooftops so we should be able to do it in a more accommodating circumstance. However, only averaging being there every two weeks makes it difficult to maintain. I've been doing some research and keeping my eye on some fancy Internet connected/automated garden systems thinking this was the best way to bridge our time away (all while dropping $1000 on them).

We haven't as of yet done much with the landscaping post-build. This has mostly been due to lack of time, money, and idea of exactly what we wanted. Its also been good to take some time to understand the land in all seasons and also do some experimenting with container gardening and small patch gardening. What we learned:

• Critters (presumably deer and Wendell Woodchuck) like to munch on whatever they can get their paws on so a comprehensive fence is necessary
• At the height of summer, some fruit/veg/herbs can make it two weeks without our attention but only if we use a staged watering device and even then growth seems to be stymied and they look pretty haggard when we get back up there.
• Full sun is not to be feared: In urban rooftop gardening, I had done so much to avoid all day sun mostly due to the unrelenting heat. That's much less an issue here and partial sun plants show notably less growth.

We have a patch we think is good place for the vegetable garden. It receives full sun during most days in the growing season and is viewable but not up in our face from the house. In addition, its roughly on the same plain as our main roof drain and whatever contraption I come up with to harness that huge volume of water theoretically should be able to feed it.

Just yesterday, I came across a discussion of sub-irrigation planting (SIP). Its a simple idea: use a non-porous, non-compostable material (geez where am I going to get some plastic?) to create a reservoir at the bottom of the planting area where roots can dip down which can be filled from above. Simple and sensible enough. The plants self-regulate with their roots sucking up water from below (a pretty natural solution) and there is no evaporation. It uses a tiny fraction of the typical amount of water. Most importantly for us, most systems last 2-3 weeks between waterings.

While much of my life (professionally and interest wise) is dedicated to technology, I'm a well known critic (or cynic is it?) of technology for technology's sake. The worst example is how we've forgotten all passive cooling techniques and now build badly loading up on AC which just makes the environment hotter. I love science and engineering applications which leverage and explain both nature and traditional human techniques in the environment -- the ultimate "system".

This is a good example. Its simple, cheap, and perfectly suited for our needs. The impervious underlayer will keep Wendell and friends out from below and I can leverage rainwater harvesting to fill it. I plan on implementing a small scale version in some of our planters and, once I clear the big wood pile that sits on top of our garden site, I'll implement the larger scale version (hopefully this fall).