Hi Caroline, your business sounds great - very inspiring. I’m learning to grow and cook my own food down here in New Zealand, so I look forward to reading your future posts!

What a beautiful planter! Are you willing to share the plans with us Culinate readers? :-)

Planting season is coming fast here in GA. - I look forward to your future posts for tips!

So what is the advantage of having the tiered planter? I agree it’s lovely looking!

What is really stopping you from growing vegetables just as intensely right in the ground or in a single-level raised bed?

Also, looking at the photo, I find it hard to believe you’re growing basil (and eggplant?) right now. What’s in your planters today?

Caleb--

The tiered planter is primarily decorative, but it does have some other advantages. Its extra height allows us to grow some cascading herbs and flowers, such as Wave petunias and trailing rosemary. And it works well for folks with limited mobility who don’t want to have to do too much bending.

Raised beds have numerous advantages over conventional row gardens, primarily that the soil warms much more quickly (important in our short growing season) and the organic soil mix we create is much more friable and rich than any “normal” garden soil, even when amended with compost.

Of course we’re not growing eggplants and basil now (you have sharp eyes!). That photo was from last summer when we first started planting that particular container. Right now we’re growing garlic and shallots; we’re also harvesting overwintering crops such as kale, mustard, and spinach.

Don’t suppose you need a guinea pig for a video or TV show?

Hey, thanks for the offer!

I am about halfway through “In Defense of Food” and it is very thought provoking. Good luck with your business and in everyone’s efforts to each local produce!

Looking forward to your blogging. Just a note however: I realize your company is making $ from selling these small garden containers but I wish you would give props to Mel Bartholomew (Square Foot Gardening, http://www.squarefootgardening.com/) who has spearheaded the small container garden idea for decades now (I didn’t see mention of SFG here or on the Verdura site). Buy or do-it-yourself, city or country, everyone with an itch to grow should check out square foot gardening...

I tend to agree with the previous commenter that your box design looks an awful lot like Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening boxes. If not his boxes (that I think he does sell on his website), then definitely his gridwork concept. Even the depth of your lumber looks like Square Foot Gardening. You should really credit him for the idea. I doubt you’d lose any potential business by saying, “Hey, our primary service is to build these great boxes and get you started in the garden, and some of our ideas were influenced by Square Foot Gardening.” Reality is, if someone wants to hire you to start a garden, then they’re not likely the kind of people who are going to try gardening on their own. So I don’t think you’ll really lose business by giving credit where credit is due. But when you completely fail to credit a well known author or even mention Mel’s book as a good resource, you truthfully look like you’re trying to claim credit for something you haven’t exactly “invented.” Intesnive gardening has been around for generations, and Mel’s update (raised beds, shallow soil, a 1 foot grid system) has been around for decades now. Good luck with your business and your blog. But you’ve lost some credibility in my eyes.

Until this discussion I had never heard of Mel Bartholomew, but I have definitely seen gridded and tiered garden boxes. Perhaps it’s testament to Mel’s success at advocating this idea (if he should indeed get the credit), that the concept might be mentioned without giving credit?

We don’t, after all, always have to say “and here is my Toyota, which is built on principles that derived from the Model T Ford”, nor “and this is a soufflé, a word that comes from the French”.

I’m not necessarily defending, but simply wondering…some concepts are so natural, or so generic, that they rapidly pass into a common idiom. This, to me, seems like it might be one of them?

Yes, there are aspects of gardening that seem like part of the common knowledge, like raised beds. And I’m not saying she didn’t just wake up one day and say, “hey, I’m going to try it this way.”

But I will admit that when I saw her specifically describing a “highly productive,” 4-foot square raised bed, that has “friable” soil (one of his hallmark words), it read almost directly from one of Mel’s books. The picture is what sealed it for me... since most intensive growing requires 12-18 inches of soil or more. Mel’s whole contribution in the last few years has been that you can grow productively in 6 inches of depth. Her boxes look like they’re built with 2x6’s or 2x8s.

My point was just that if someone is going to blog poetically about the evolution of their gardening awareness and credit Pollan and Kingsolver, then if they also learned some very critical principles from a gardening guru then it might be in the interest of fairness to credit them too. But maybe because Pollan and Kingsolver are literary sources and Mel’s much more in the how-to category, he doesn’t merit the same recognition?

Anyway, Mel’s an old retired engineer guy who has been gardening for almost 40 years. He now teaches his SFG gardening technique across the world as some sort of goodwill ambassador. He seems quite happy when people use his techniques for their homes and their businesses. I highly doubt that he’d feel slighted in any way if the principles he describes in his books aren’t credited, assuming she actually even did see his work at some point in the whole process of learning how to garden.

And FWIW, I’m not connected to Mel in any way. I actually tried his intensive gardening with his signature “friable” shallow soil last year with several raised beds, and I was generally unimpressed by the results. So I don’t necessarily think Mel’s the be all end all solution.

Anyway, I turn to Culinate for all the latest on good organic cooking, and even links about living green and organically. The picture of Caroline’s raised beds looked so much like a SFG that I actually linked to the article assuming it was about Square Foot Gardening, rather than a plug for a new blogger with a gardening business.

Anyhoo, I don’t know what bee flew in my bonnet today, and I apologize if I implied she was somehow taking someone else’s ideas. Not the case at all.

I think it’s great what she’s doing... and people in New York and LA and here in SF are changing careers and starting these wonderful types of home-gardening services that help clients set up organic veggie gardens. I will look forward to her blog, and I hope her business does well. I should have just left it at that.

Great! Now we can move on. Who is planning their garden and how do you start? I am clueless. Where are my grandparents when I need them? I recall they grew in beds and in boxes but I don’t know what to grow or how to start the seeds. I remember they grew peas, beans, lettuce, onions, potatoes and rubarb but I don’t recall how they got to the vegetables that I ate. So much to learn and so little time...

Dianne--A lot of seed companies have great information on their websites about growing specific types of vegetables. One of our favorites is territorialseed.com. They are a wonderful company in southern OR. Their seeds and plant starts are great, and their website is well done. You’ll find a lot of good general information on growing, for example, lettuce, in addition to the specific varietals’ descriptions and growing information.

Dianne, you could start with Mel’s book. ;-) It’s a good garden starter book, covers all aspects of starting a garden, including square foot techniques:

http://www.amazon.com/Square-Foot-Gardening-Mel-Bartholomew/dp/0878573410

then you could buy one of Caroline’s frames, add your soil/mix, and grow.

I’m so excited about this blog. I love to cook and I love the idea of raising my own vegetables -- but I’m not much of a gardener. Despite my great effort and lofty intentions, I only manage to harvest a few tomatoes and a few peppers -- never enough to sustain us. But maybe THIS YEAR will be different!

Hi Caroline - Great post! I can completely relate with you in terms of taking the leap to switch gears career wise. Best of luck with your new business and I look forward to reading more from you.

im glad anon has finished. Friable soil is hardly new mate

Here’s a quick start for new gardener energy...what’s already seeded in my garden this March day is chard. I’d recommend it for anyone just starting. It’s what we did our first year and what a great and easy reward for little effort. Seeds are so cheap and chard grows great everywhere (in a raised bed, side yard or just in a container). Use it like spinach - quickly sauteed and added to soups, rice, scrambled eggs; or raw and sliced into narrow strips like a fine cabbage. You should have chard leaves to cut (cut at the base, about 2-3 leaves from each plant) in May if you plant now. Then keep planting chard each month and you will have a year-round crop except in heavy snow (though mine have already come back from December’s NW snow storms).

Hi CindiCC, I’m a REAL beginner. Did you plant the seed in your prepared garden already in the Portland area? Your comment above does give me hope and vision of chard growing in my soon to be garden!

Yes, but your garden doesn’t need to be that prepared for chard. Just find a sunny spot with about a foot in space and plant three seeds - that way you are guaranteed to get one plant up. If all three pop up, let them grow about a week or two and see which looks healthiest. Pinch the other two off (so hard to do but very necessary). Plant another three seeds some other sunny place about two weeks after the first planting and do the same routine. From now until about mid-June they shouldn’t need watering unless we get some amazing long days of sun (unlikely). This simple planting will give you confidence. If the first seeds don’t sprout, just keep trying. Good luck.

I am all over this idea! Thank you! This will give me some impetus to work the garden area too. Any other thoughts that come to mind I am happy to hear them. Thank you CindiCC.

What kind of wood is that? I live in Mississippi and work full time as a Clinical Nutrition Manager in a hospital and love to cook fresh vegetables with herbs, but don’t really know how to garden. I have Rosemary,oregano,lavender,lemon balm (which I don’t know what to do with) and mint growing in pots that I bring in and out of my carport all winter. Your box looks great, but just how do I do it? And where do I get the soil.And where do I get the plants put in it. Wish you were closer.

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