The best part of my urban garden

There are many reasons I love to grow a garden in the summer. There are the obvious benefits of eating what you grow and lowering your grocery bill. There are also the satisfaction in watching things grow and knowing that your attention and skill is what is going to make the garden flourish. There is also the connection I feel to my grandpa and mom who love(d) to garden.

But the best part of my urban garden is watching my 5 year old Alayna get involved and educated through the garden. As a teacher I know how important an education is and I also know that the school part of the education is a very small part of a total education. The majority of it happens in the world. Because of the garden everyday is science class for Alayna. She is able to watch seeds sprout and become plants. She watches as bees climb into the flowers on our tomatoes. She sees what happens to plants when they don't get enough water or when aphids eat their leaves. We talk about fertilizer (or poison as she calls it) and how some insects are good for gardens and some are not. She even has some of her own pots that she takes care of.

Having a garden (Alayna calls it Dad and Alayna's garden) is a great way to engage your kids in science and the world. You will most likely find it to be a great bonding experience also.

Death, Taxes... and Aphids

This year I first noticed them on June 19. That is earlier than I usually see them but if you grow peppers you know that eventually you will see them-- aphids. This year I noticed small holes in some of my pepper leaves and then I noticed ants crawling up and down my pepper plants. Ants are a sure sign of aphids because they like to eat sweet residue that aphids leave. So after examination I found a few of the light green little pests.

Years ago I worked in a greenhouse and we would put on our haz mat suits and spray poison. The last couple years I have been able to keep them under control by washing them off and applying soapy water, but this year I am going to call in the big guns--ladybugs. I just ordered 1500 ladybugs from Amazon.com. (It is truly amazing what you can order on the Internet.) Here is the link:



I will keep you updated in the next week to let you know how this works. Will they be alive? Will they all fly away in a week? Will I need to buy something else in two weeks to eat the ladybugs? (I seem to remember a great Simpsons episode about that--I think that at some point they released lions to eat something they had released earlier.)

Any tips for me?

Mini Bell Peppers

I love to grow peppers and my family will eat sweet peppers as quick as I can pick them. However bell pepper plants need a good amount of space and do not thrive in a lot of the pots that I have acquired. They need more space. So I have took to growing both mini bell peppers and sweet cherry peppers. These do great in medium sized pots and one plant can easily produce 50 small bell peppers. These are awesome for stuffing for appetizers and for slicing to put on top of salads. I still grow some large bell peppers in the ground this is just a small adaptation I have made to growing veggies in the containers and increasing my yield. What tricks have you learned to increase your yields while urban gardening?

Garden 2011

Hopefully this blog creates conversation and through that conversation my knowledge about gardening grows.

I live in downtown Grand Rapids, MI. The size of my backyard is slightly smaller than most peoples backyard deck. However, I really enjoy growing vegetables and so every year I am trying to find new ways to grow veggies without having an acre lot. I am a middle school teacher so this is kind of my summer hobby. As you will see my passion is growing peppers, partly because they can be slightly challenging in the colder growing season of zone 5b and because I love eating them.