Brain Hatchery is a place to explore used and new ideas in gardening. It will be a culmination of what gardeners are doing on a worldwide basis while adhering to organic cultural practices. Additionally, if you’d like to share an idea of your own on The Garden Dreamer, you are welcome to send it to me for consideration. Of course, if your Brain Hatch is added to this blog, we will certainly include your name, business name, etc.
The first idea (#1 Brain Hatch) explores vertical gardening with repurposed wood pallets. This idea is great because anyone can do it and space is not an issue. By the way, when I get up from my cup of coffee, I plan to repurpose a pallet to start a vertical herb garden or perhaps a strawberry patch (click on patch).
#2 Brain Hatch: This idea relates to increasing vegetable production efficiency on a micro-local basis. It departs from a single grower producing everything under the sun to a small network of growers each with the responsibility to raise a handful of select veggies. In theory, if an individual is focusing on growing lettuce, spinach and carrots it is conceivable to assume that this person will have greater production success than if they are tasked with cultivating 10 to 12 crops.
So, let’s say that in a relatively close-knit community there are 6 growers (g’s) who raise vegetables on slightly different soils, have different levels of expertise as gardeners and have restrictions on land use. Thus, it is reasonable to believe that overall production could be enhanced by planting certain veggies (lettuce, turnips, onions) with g’s 1 and 2. To continue, g’s 3 and 4 might be tasked with tomatoes, sweet corn and zucchini while g’s 5 and 6 culture cantaloupe, peppers and eggplant. Why two growers are tasked with growing the same crops is a matter of risk management.
Let’s also assume that crop rotations at each location could take place at each garden location so that each g will eventually work with all of the crops elected for production by their particular group.
Anyway, this is simply an idea which has perhaps been done many times before. However, I don’t hear folks talking about it. I’m hoping that this blog will draw many comments as I’m certain that variations on the theme exist. All ideas, suggestions and critiques are welcome.
The Garden Dreamer 