With me on vacation, my better half at work and the little one at school, it was a good time to get things rolling at Plot 18. I grabbed some garden tools from the farm and headed over to the community garden.
A bit of a setback to get started...
I headed back to the farm - fortunately very close by - to grab my fork to loosen the soil and haul the dandelions out.
After toiling (and a few swears) in the 28β & humid temperatures for a couple of hours, progress was being made...
While I was working away, I was trying to envision the layout of the plot; aiming to be functional and abundant, aesthetically pleasing, and as accessible as possible within the constraints of the two spaces measuring roughly 4m x 3m (12' x 10') in total.
I had brought some wooden stakes and survey string from the farm, but opted for using discarded bamboo stakes I found discarded in a nearby pile at the community garden. The last bundle of wooden stakes I had purchased for the farm cost nearly $70 so I felt fortunate to find the bamboo, snapping them in half to extend the supply.
Here's a photo-dump of how the rest of the day and the plot layout unfolded.
Herbs planted in this session were:
Stay tuned for more updates, including growing & harvest info, links and recipes for the various herbs planted at Plot 18.
SK0
Footnotes:
^1^ these herb starters were purchased at local garden centres, as the plants at our herb farm were far too gnarly to transplant, and our growing season far too short to attempt to root cuttings at this stage in the game. So I'm out roughly $80 on the first day of this project....but I saved money by using discarded bamboo stakes for laying out the pathways at least... π΅βπ«
^2^ as per the original plan, these herbs were transplanted from the herb farm. The Lemon Balm was started via seed in 2018 from (now defunct) Cottage Gardener Seeds, and the French Tarragon purchased as live plants^4^ in the same year from Richter's Herbs.
^3^ I have close to a kilogram of freakin' cilantro seeds as I had delusions of being the fresh cilantro kingpin. So I sowed five bunches on this day, and will sow more as the season progresses. Stay tuned for cilantro growing pro tips I learned back in the day, which will blow your mind π
^4^ French Tarragon doesn't produce seeds. Cuttings are pretty much the only way to grow it. If it's labeled tarragon seeds, it's most likely Russian Tarragon, and it's not as tasty. Don't get fooled by grifters.
So many interesting things going on, hope you share your progress as things move along
whoa, thanks a bunch, I think this might be the way forward....plus one can't underestimate the cool factor of having slrpnk.net/c/whatever I figure out to call it as a web address that a bunch of oldies are scanning/clicking on :D (semi /s implied - I might be able to breadpill a few)
Really appreciate your input β
Edit: behold, the initial beginnings: https://slrpnk.net/c/plot18 (I'm not overly creative when it comes to naming stuff)
Hello there, fellow knight. I shared a list in a comment above, cheers
Back from the asparagus patch!
(drops into Atlantic Canadian accent)
"Turn yer head for a minute and those fuckin' asparagus will be three foot tall and not worth a fiddler's fuck!"
Anyway, I digress....
Some of my go-to podcasts | relevant episodes, are below:
Poor Prole's Almanac | Skillshare episode on Arduino
It Could Happen Here | Meshtastic/LoRa episode | recent episode on off-shelf solar solutions
That LoRa episode led me to the guest's website for more information on his pretty cool shit: Hydroponic Trash/AnarchoSolarPunk
He was also featured on Live Like The World Is Dying, which I had been listening to for a while anyway | S1E49 β Andre on Solar Power, DIY Internet, Mesh Networks, and Solar Punk
Less radical podcasts I listen to are some of the maker-type folks like Simple Electronics and the (now discontinued?) Make: Magazine podcast.
That just about covers it, other than some of the solarpunk podcasts I listen to, but I kinda feel they - while informative and entertaining - aren't as...hands on (?)... as some of the links I shared above.
Cheers gang
SK0
This is one of those situations where I wish you were local so I could give you produce and pickles & jams in exchange to pick your brain on this :)
On first glance: So I could hypothetically make a community here, eg. 'the community herb plot,' and direct people to posts on French Tarragon et. al. via links/QR codes in that community (instance? Is that the right term?)...? If people wanted to post a question they'd have to sign up, though, I imagine...?
I don't think I need to have a long form blog on this; there's probably 74 different herb societies that would have a page for French Tarragon that I could possibly link to, but it'd be nice for folks to be able to ask questions, share additional information, etc in the post containing that link.
Feel free to poke holes in this...or tell me to bugger off...or say "yes, but..." or whatever π
Just heading out to check the asparagus patch, I'll make a list with links later today!
That's interesting, thanks for sharing that platform. I'm in the process of setting up a plot of herbs for folks at the local community garden and I'd like to have a simple website for people to go to get information on each of the herbs for harvest/storage/recipes/etc, and am hitting a wall on what platform to use for this.
I started messing about with Linux/Raspberry Pi, Arduino, LoRa/Meshtastic in the past couple of months due to being (further) breadpilled with podcasts about open source, greenhouse automation, autonomous text-based communication and such.
I'm not a tech person so I'm literally doing kid-level electronics tutorials on the Arduino ("Congratulations! You've made your first circuit!") and still get a kick out of running sudo apt-get update/upgrade and seeing the lines of text scrolling by.
But I really like the concept of appropriate tech in conjunction with open source "stuff" and, since I'm in a position of being able to listen to ~6.5 hours of podcasts during my workday, I might as well learn something. I hope to get comfortable with electronics for DIY solar eventually, too
I have three boards on order just to play with, see if I can get coverage in our town for family and friends. It's an interesting rabbit hole that I've been reading up on for a few months, and I'm the least techy person you've ever met (literally called my family into the room to watch a LED blink slower & faster with my Arduino beginner kit last week - and I'm in my late 40s).
First heard of it on It Could Happen Here podcast with a guest named Andre aka hydroponic trash, and he has a decent comprehensive write-up about it (I dunno how to put links in here, sorry) and been watching youtube, etc about it since. It's the reason I have the above-mentioned Arduino beginner's kit, tbh :)
Funny side-note: it's apparently popular in the UK, where youtubers have shared lots of tips plus stories about meeting like-minded folks, having informal meetups at local pubs with people on the mesh, etc. Contrast that with US-based youtubers posting about it: "When the guv'ment shuts down the networks & civil war starts yer gonna need this to stay off the grid and communicate with yer team!" Like, c'mon...
This is our backyard setup as of last month, in sketch form, before the leaves came out :)