Basement Farming - Part I

Living in New England provides the opportunity to experience all four seasons, each with their serious, but not extreme weather patterns compared to other parts of the world. It does mean there are seasons for farming, and part of the year where you can give up trying to grow anything outdoors.

By the summer of 2010, I had a few years of experience in urban farming. Many of the experiments that I tried were to simplify the transplanting process and grow vegetables in 6 inch by 2 foot planters from a local hardware store. The first attempts were starting plants early and transplanting them outdoors in one block. After several attempts with little or mixed results, I decided to grow them in the containers from planting through harvest, and had reasonable results. I put the containers at the edge of the garden or on boardwalk walkways and they were automatically watered with the rest of the garden. Their maintenance was less than the ground-planted vegetables, with little or no weeding.

I had done some research, and had conversations with friends about grow lamps. While new grow lamps were expensive, I found a 250 Watt grow lamp on Craig's list for $70 in a local town. I rode my motorcycle over there to pick it up, removed the bulb to put it in the luggage container, fastened the lamp to the passenger seat with a cargo net, and headed home. I later found out that a replacement bulb cost about $50.

My first experiment was using the lamp for 6 - 8 hours, to complement light that would be captured by a west-facing window. The first planting was string beans in July - I planted 4 containers and watering them by hand. They rested in a shower stall bottom, I cut a hole in the container on one edge and had the base resting on a small slant, so gravity would collect the water. I was using a hand watering can to water the containers. The can would be put under a drain hole after I finished watering, and within a few minutes the water would start a steady stream back into the can.

After two months the results were pretty poor. I was hoping to have plants that I could move outside for a late harvest, but no such luck. I was looking at the reducing sunlight and dropping temperature of Fall and Winter in the next few months. I changed my planting strategy to basic greens: Two types of lettuce, spinach and swiss chard in four planters. I also shifted to use the grow light as the primary source, doing 12-14 hours, running the light at night. Whatever light that would be captured during the day is gravy. What a difference! Within a two weeks I had healthy, but small sprouts, before the end of the month I could have an early harvest and full harvest within two months. I could pick enough when I needed for a month, until a planting I ran out.

After the success of the second planting, I also wanted to expand the garden, For the third planting I expanded the grow area to use. I bought another shower bottom and collected four more containers. The Garden had 8 containers with fresh vegetables at various stages of maturity. Now things were getting serious! With improvised planning I had a pipeline of produce. When one planting was completed, I replanted another harvest, but I had other planters ready to be eaten. This was the state of my basement garden in January and February of 2011. While New England had one of the snowiest winters in decades, I harvested enough swiss chard to serve as a side dish for a family gathering of 8 adults, and even had some left over! In the middle of winter, our salads included lettuce from our basement,

An early discovery in basement gardening is the short grow cycle. 60 - 90 days is the grow and harvest cycle. By the time one harvest is ready it doesn't last more than a month, by then the harvest has been eaten. When there is only a little left in a container, I would harvest the remaining plants from the container, and put what is left in the refrigerator. The same day I would turn-around and plant another round in the same container. Some times I even used the same dirt, chopping it with a hand tool and adding a little dirt and fertilizer to fill the container.

Overall, the basement farm had little maintenance. The Grow lamp was on a automated timer, and I even installed a fan to circulate the air around the plants. I was using a mixture of dirt from the back yard and bagged dirt from the store, this reduced weeds, and once weeds were removed they never returned, since no seeds were "blowing over" from other yards or lawn mowers. The biggest personal chore is watering. It was still time I had to spend, a daily chore, but I kept it going. I knew I needed to address the watering.

The Back Yard Garden

One of the goals of Urban Farming is to take it on with the same reckless abandon that people take on cooking.The outcome should be the same,be prepared to eat what you produce.

I started the back yard garden in the spring of 2008.  We removed an aluminum play set that our daughter out grew, and cut down an oak tree in preparation of a 3 season porch. I decided to plant a as assortment of vegetables from the local garden center, and was pleasantly surprised by the outcome of the harvest in late summer and early fall. The oak tree stump remained as the main obstacle for two years, I worked around the stump, and chopped the assortment of oak sprouts that appeared like hardened weeds around the edge.  the stump was cut to ground level, but was still about two feed across, and the roots spread out further.  At first I thought of using a treatment that poured chemicals into the stump, drenched it in kerosene, and light it on fire.  My better judgement took hold, having that much chemicals in my garden didn't make sense, so in 2010 I paid a to have the entire stump and roots grounded.

The 2010 season was the first time I had an even ground to grow a garden.  I don't have  much property to begin with, and every square foot is precious.  For the 2010 season I had 10 x 10 sq feet.  I started using a  "Boardwalk" layout with one 6 in by 8 in plant down the middle, and two other planks cut in half by 4 foot planks to break the garden into6 zones zones. This made it easy to plan, plant, and maintain.   I put a fence around the garden in an attempt to keep animals out.  The garden was a great success, though I was surprised by the lack of bees around to pollinate the plants.

This year, 2011 I started early.  Aggressively getting the garden prepared in mid-March, expanding the garden to 16 x 12 ft, and 9 zones (think tic tack toe). I  even tried planting lettuce, swiss chard, peas and argula before the end of March in four of the zones.  What a mistake!  A late winter storm on April 1st left an inch of snow on the ground.  I covered the effected zones so they were not directly effected by the snow, but the chilly, damp winter festered throughout Metrowest Massachusetts like a band cold until the end of May.

Little of what I originally planted survived.  I replanted almost everything the first  weekend in June. I found a single swiss chard plant that was no more than 4 inches high, even though it was planted over 60 days ago.  Ideally, the replanting should have been done in May, but we had one of the wettest and coldest in a long time. 

I have peas, cucumber and squash plants that are outdoors and already blooming.  I started some bean plants indoors under the grow lamp, and transplanted them outdoors- most of them were about 4-5 inches high. I planted radishes last year, but didn't like them.  It turned out the radishes went to seed and spread like weeks through the garden.  Unfortunately there is still a shortage of bees and a surplus or squirrels within the neighborhood.

Urban Farmers can be a victim of the weather, and the unpredictability of New England weather is no exception. You can only take good notes on your trials, successes and failures so that the lessons learned from one season and apply it to future years. I have some ideas on how to plant the garden better, but I need to wait for next spring to turn those ideas into action.   For now, I wait patently for this year's garden harvest to begin.