Mission summary for this blog

Let me start by saying vegetable gardening is not a passion for me. I am more at home with discussing video games, programming, my work, or electronics. My overall goal with this gardening project is to reduce my family's overall food bill by growing a portion of our vegetables. I have to face the facts, food prices are increasing. Just like inflation, the price of food has increased in my life time. I remember going into the store and getting ears of corn for 20 for $1 in season. Now, corn costs 4 for a $1. If this is the example, eventually, fresh food will be available only to those that can afford to grow it or the extreme wealthy. As a result of all this, I am endeavoring to try new things and try to grow fresh food in my backyard.

This blog will cover our backyard vegetable garden production using the styles that work for our backyard. It will detail success, failure, and hopefully provide measurable production compared to final costs. Some of these costs will be infrastructure costs and production costs.

To understand the styles you will need to know the backyard and its conditions for plant growth.

The Site.
Our backyard is an area that is surrounded by trees. This means we only have 5 hours of measurable daylight. All other light is scattered or shaded. When we moved into the house, we immediately thought the trees were great! They sheltered the house from direct sunlight and shielded the noise from the busy streets, but they do have their downsides. Those downsides are a reduced growing area for vegetable plants, limited sunlight, and raking tree leaves.

Limited sunlight obviously means plants don't grow as much as could be possible. Also limited sunlight means limited evaporation. When heavy rains occur, the backyard can stay moist longer which encourages mold growth. Less evaporation means plants remain water logged longer causing root rot or lanky growth.

Leaf cover reduces opportunity for the plants to grow naturally which means constant removal. Seeds from trees drop often in the same area so weeding is again constant.

For backyard growing, I measured the available growing area with at least 5 hrs of light at roughly 20x30 ft. Its more than some people can get but it is definitely limited.

Overall, all of these factors affect plant production.

The Growing Methods
The growing methods used will be a combination of Earthbox planters, earth mounds using stack-able tires, and hydroponics using Zipgrow towers. Each of these methods have merits for growing that fit within our backyard and its design. These merits will be discussed in later posts as well as the decision process and evolution/history that warranted these decisions.

The Resources
Water from rain barrels and water hose/attachments and pump.
Electricity (for the hydroponics).
Plastic and small grow house.
5 ft fencing.
Old tires.
Leftover wood strips.
Earthbox planters and watering system.
Zipgrow towers, water reservoir, pump, and piping.