Neighborhood Grow Ops

Did anyone see that piece last week in the Galveston County Daily News about the residential marijuana farm in San Leon that caught fire?  The occupants kept trying to chase the Fire Department away so they would not discover the smouldering stash!  Yo, dudes - when your neighbors told you that you needed to keep your landscape vegetation healthy, that wasn't the type of grass that they meant!!
:-)

On the subject of horticulture, I mentioned in the Welcome post that this blog is open to purely-social topics such as gardening, and I thought I'd expound upon that by providing an example of one unusual neighborhood gardening project.

Centerpointe, being a newer subdivision, has a large ratio of developed to undeveloped space.  What that means is that we each tend to have a big house and not much land - that's the price-point trade-off that is popular with buyers right now. 

Kinda crammed in there, ain't we?? 
Snip from an August 2010 aerial photo,
0.5-m resolution in the original.

This is very different from the market situation that existed thirty or forty years ago when the trend was to build postage-stamp ranchers on nice deep lots. 

Because of our relatively small yards, many people assume that they simply lack sufficient space to do any gardening whatsoever.  Even if they would enjoy a garden, they don't think that they could have one.

Furthermore, return on investment must be considered: can people really squeeze gardens onto small lots and not look like complete hillbillies??  Wouldn't it lower a property's value to have a garden consume what little back yard is available?

There is an option that addresses those concerns.  Unconventional large-scale containers provide a small-space alternative to typical in-ground row gardens  They are compact, they elevate and isolate the plants from the limited lawn surfaces that are often needed as play areas for children and pets, and they don't cost that much if you roll up your sleeves and install them yourselves. 

This is a six-foot diameter livestock tank planted with broccoli, Swiss chard, lettuce, cabbage, ornamental flowers in the middle, and Texas 1015 onion starters in the back (not visible).  It's the dead of winter so neighborhood lawns look like yuck, but this winter garden is growing like mad.  All of the materials shown here were purchased within about three miles of Centerpointe.  With the soil chemistry and drainage controllable in a tight space, this type of set-up can be made super-fertile, resulting in a surprisingly productive garden for its size.  Having it elevated also helps keep nasty bugs out and guess what - no more hands-and-knees work!!

Close-up of one of the broccolis before harvest, green thumb for scale.  The seedling was planted in mid-November and the crown was harvested in late December.  Organic growing methods were used.

Some of the harvested lettuce after having been made into a salad with peppers, feta cheese, artichokes, and other goodies.

If vegetables are not your thing, you could build the same idea to grow herbs or ornamentals.  This four-foot livestock tank includes rosemary, basil, two varieties of oregano, sage, mint, an Asian herb that has no known English name, and an ornamental Mona Lavender in the middle.  Containers like this would also be great  for growing roses.
Dogs and children love to chase each other
playing "tag" around these things.   
Most importantly, when raised containers are used, pets will relieve themselves on the lawn, not in the vegetables and herbs!!

Like all brand new ideas, large-scale suburban container gardening elicits different reactions from folks depending on their individual tastes.  Some think that they are a contemporary, hip, attractive addition to the landscaping, while others think they look industrial and ugly.  They may not be your thing, but they can be an incredibly productive option for some folks.  Just don't plant the kind of stuff that those guys in San Leon did.
;-)

Close-up of the lavender.