Garden Wars — Horticulture Industries Show 2018

Edited excerpts from this talk. Follow the recording links to watch the full presentation.

Trying to do things more efficiently

In the recording: 2:46–3:08 · 3:11.24–3:15.68 · 3:58.68–4:17.98 · 4:48–5:04.

We started with Square Foot Gardening. I really liked it because I'm a software engineer by trade and it kind of matched my thinking.

We grew a couple of each thing, kind of just trying different things, learning as we went.

These are peas interplanted with carrots in a checkered pattern. I didn't know how to grow peas. I just threw them in there and then trellising this was a nightmare. These were a lot of mistakes I made the first year. The second year was really geared towards fixing those mistakes and trying to do things more efficiently.

We started covering our entire backyard with cardboard and wood chips. Every week I would go get one or two loads a week, and that was my exercise, just unloading woodchips and dumping them on the ground. I actually enjoy doing this. I look forward to doing this.

I wanted to grow in the winter

In the recording: 11:30.00–11:59.66 · 12:04.86–12:13.92 · 12:14–12:44.

I wanted to grow in the winter. Up until then we had only really eaten in the spring and fall and summer. But in the winter we didn't have as much food. Spinach and kale will do fine here if you cover it. It's basically just a 2x4 frame with PVC pipe.

This is on hinges. In order to harvest before I had to undo clips and all this stuff, and now it's as simple as just raising that lid and harvesting.

We'll plant spinach and kale in January instead of waiting till February. I think I can extend my seasons of both directions and I can have food year round essentially.

Software can make this easier

In the recording: 16:03–16:32 · 18:20–18:45.

As I'm hauling books out to the garden and trying to remember things, I'm thinking software can make this easier. We actually started building it in July.

The idea behind this was just taking all the stuff that we learned through building the gardens. This isn't all of the stuff that we came up with. I leaned on books and other sources heavily. I pulled from about 20 different books, from a gardening channel on YouTube, the Master Gardener program. I pulled from all the different places that I've learned from.