WARNING!
It’s addictive 
No, I’m not talking about illegal substances here.It’s amazing how easily you can get ‘hooked’ on gardening, especially if you get to eat the results. Even the brownest thumb can turn green with the information you’ll gather here and once that happens, you’ll be marveled at how much time you’ll want to spend growing your own food.
Buckets become barrels. Barrels turn into rows of barrels. 4×4 raised bed plots become multiple 4×4 beds. It’s almost as if the containers and plant beds mature and multiply just like the plants that are in them. I’m amazed at how many of the growers I meet at Farmer’s Markets tell me they started off with a small vegetable garden and chose to move to a place with acreage so they could become farmers and home school their children.
What we hope to do here is provide you with information that is pertinent to growing food plants in Texas. That’s a mighty big job, considering that this is a mighty big State. We have at least three growing zones, temperature wise, and a greater variety of soil types than anywhere else in the country.
That means your input is essential. Whether you’re a Master Gardener or a beginner, we need to hear from you about your experiences, both good and bad. So no matter the size of your, “family farm,” be it a window box or an acre, please sign up and become part of the “Texas Victory Garden” family.
While I really enjoy a good old fashioned tent revival, seeing the revival in Victory Gardening does my heart good too. Please enjoy this short video on a subject which is obviously dear to my heart.
Victory Garden Revival Part 1&2 from Taunya Miller on Vimeo.
Activism takes many forms and shapes and doesn’t necessarily have to be confrontational to be effective. I consider myself to be an activist and I’m sure that’s why Guerrilla Gardeners have my heart.
Victory Gardens have their roots (no pun intended) in the WW I and WW II eras. Guerrilla Gardening began during another war, the one in Viet Nam, and as you could probably guess if you’re old enough to remember those years, it started on the campus of UC Berkeley.
In the late 60′s, the University of California used eminent domain to acquire land proximate to the Berkeley campus. They demolished the houses there, but didn’t have funds allocated to develop the property. Eventually people began to convert the unused land into a park. That led to confrontations that included university police and eventually the national guard and before it was over one person had been killed and hundreds seriously wounded. Known today as People’s Park, it has been destroyed and rebuilt several times and is now a permenant part of the city.
Another early effort of note was “Adam’s Purple Garden of Eden” in the Lower East Side of Manhatten. The short film, “Adam Purple and the Garden of Eden,” tells the story of his starting with a yin-yang shaped circular garden in an abandoned lot in the mid 70′s and developing it into 15,000 square feet of garden space before it was bull dozed by the City of New York in 1986.
Even earlier (mid 1800′s) than these activist examples were the workers on Northern Utah’s canal system that would bury the apple cores from their lunches, as well as other seeds, in the freshly dug soil along the banks. As a result, today there are numerous apple trees, asparagus, and other veggies growing all along the canal system.
More recently Guerrilla Gardening has become almost cult like, in a manner similar to the”Rose Rustlers” who prowl old abandoned grave sites for antique roses. There’s GuerrillaGardening.org based in London, a blog by Richard Reynolds, that has grown to include guerrilla gardeners world-wide, and books on the subject.
Mr. Reynolds and associates have also been instrumental in making people aware of “International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day,” which is today, May 1st – at least in the temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Sunflower seeds are distributed to be sown on this date in neglected public places.
On the techy end of things is, “Greenaid,” and although Willie’s birthday was yesterday, there’s no connection to “Farmaid.” Daniel Phillips and Kim Karlsrud of Common Studio convert vintage gum ball machines to dispense seed balls. They put a mixture of region-specific seeds in a blend of clay and compost. The balls are then scattered or planted in any area (called seed bombing) where they will do the most good.
While I would NEVER advocate doing anything illegal, I hope I’ve given you a few ideas. If you come up with some good ones of your own, please let me know.
Yeah, I know I’m pushing it. I studied the new USDA temp zone chart and it looks like across most of Texas we’ll be moving the date of our average last frost up by five days. Here in San Antonio that means March 10 instead of March 15. That’s still over a month away as far as putting out transplants. BUT . . . I’ve got seeds germinating and greens coming up!
Two weeks ago I was having coffee over on Sunset Rd and stopped in at Bob Webster’s “Shades of Green” nursery – nice day, nice place, nice plants, nice people. How could I resist? And I couldn’t walk out empty handed now could I? You ladies familiar with things like “Retail Therapy” are more apt to understand that compulsion.
So when I spotted the seed rack from “Botanical Interests” and it was full of organic veggie seeds that I’d planned to get anyway, I loaded up. It was good timing. Most of the greens, beets, and crucifers that have been a staple of my diet for the last few months had been devoured or were getting pretty worn out. As an example, you can cut Swiss Chard back only so many times before the leaves get smaller than your hand.
And since I usually reseed most of those things around 1 February, I felt like doing it on the 27th of January was just fine. So while the hail last week played havoc with what was left of the cauliflower and spinach, it didn’t hurt the newly planted seeds at all. They started popping up over the weekend.
Now, as I fight the urge to go plant something else, I have to wonder how such an impatient man such as I ever developed a love for gardening, and especially for vegetable gardening, where a growling stomach seems to make the days to maturity incredibly long.
Thank God for Farmer’s Markets, and organic growers and produce vendors to help us make it through!
An Answer for Some Areas
It is unfortunate that in many of the areas where community gardens are most needed, vandalism and theft is a huge problem. One answer I see as feasible is combining the idea of a community garden with co-op food programs.
If several people in a neighborhood were to join together in a co-op effort and each have a continual rotation of one or two plant varieties, as opposed to each person trying to grow an assortment of six to ten things, you’d get better overall production levels as well as creating better bonding in the neighborhood. Gardening and hunger are two subjects that quickly blur any lines of race, religion, ethnicity and social class.
As a for instance, suppose you have a back yard that is too shaded to grow tomatoes or okra or some other plant that requires full sun. In that case you can be the neighborhood source for Swiss Chard or one or two other leafy greens that do well in partial sun. Or suppose you have a long fence line in partial sun; ideal for trellising. You can provide your neighbors with peas or beans and let one of them that has a large yard and few trees provide you and the other co-op members with the tomatoes.
Speaking of trees, let’s not forget fruit trees. Few people have room in their urban landscape for an orchard of fruit bearing trees. But many might have room for one or two or a few and would rather contribute fresh peaches, pears, or apples instead of vegetables.
Ideally, you would have at least a dozen members in the co-op so that there is both duplication and variety.
Over the next few months this is just one of several ideas that we’ll be promoting here at Texas Victory Garden so that you can grow your own groceries! If you have any thoughts on this or any other gardening subject
It’s as simple as that. Of course it has to have adequate drainage and be large enough to establish a root system, but other than that, let creativity run its course. Sure, it’s nice to have large 4×4 or 4×8 raised beds, but what we’re all about here is growing your own groceries, not getting your veggie garden in a slick publication.
An old toilet in the corner of my back yard has carrots growing in the tank and radishes in the bowl area. A friend had one of those super large ice chests sitting empty in the back of his truck with the lid unlatched. At 60 mph the wind opened the lid and then picked up the ice chest, which came as a real shock to the woman behind him busy talking on her cell phone. Lucky for her there wasn’t any damage to her car, and other then needing clean underwear, she didn’t suffer from the incident. But the ice chest, now completely devoid of a lid, didn’t fair as well.
However by drilling several drain holes in the bottom and then adding an inch of small, loose rocks and gravel, and then filling it with potting soil, it was the perfect container for my continual supply of Swiss Chard. I grow five plants, about 6 inches apart on one end, and about the time they reach a size I can begin to snatch a leaf or two, I start two or three more from seed.
Five gallon paint buckets, properly cleaned out of course, offer a great way to grow intense groups of small plants or individual larger plants. Plus they have the added advantage, especially if the handle is still attached, of being easily transported to the garage or washroom, or if you’re really lucky, back to the greenhouse when that pesky late or early frost comes calling.
Thank you for coming to the Texas Victory Garden website. Obviously, this site is under construction and it will be after Memorial Day Weekend before I’m able to get back to it. So please check back often for information you can use to build and maintain a productive Victory Garden, even if you live in an apartment!
