Photos courtesy of Bruce, Art and Heidi in Chicago
Did you know that there is an Edible Container Gardens Group? There are now over 1,500 members, which is evidence of the ever-increasing interest in personal food production.
More than that, it’s a demonstration of individual initiative on the part of Pat Meadows of Pennsylvania. Pat is an advocate of “self-watering” (sub-irrigation) vegetable planters, which she calls SWC’s. She, along with people like Bruce, Art and Heidi are doing what our gardening and horticultural organizations are not doing.
Yesterday, I had a first hand demonstration at the NYC Grows Garden Festival, sponsored in part by the National Gardening Association (NGA). I listened to five speakers talk about various forms of container gardening. Not one of them mentioned the option of "self-watering" (sub-irrigation) planters.
All I heard was the same old "make sure your planter has a drain hole" mantra. That gets rather boring when you know there's a better way.
Rather than the government or national gardening organizations, unpaid individuals do more to help educate consumers about modern methods of personal food production.
Pat for example is very involved in answering day-to-day questions on her Yahoo Group. Monitoring a group like this and participating daily by answering questions is a time consuming job. She also publishes a blog, which is not specifically on vegetable gardening, but she posted some very detailed information in a post titled Growing Vegetables in Self-Watering Containers.
Pat and others participating in the Edible Container Gardens group have a wealth of knowledge about vegetable gardening. I am a member of the group but have not found time yet to participate. Check it out.
Comments