#container farming

Day 2 of Solarpunk Action Week!

Construction of The Hotel Crawley Fauna is well under way.

Three luxurious floors catering for all your insect needs.

The bottom floor will be filled with only the best twigs and pine cones that child labour laws allow me to make my nieces find.

This will be our economy/hostel option. And to those guests with particular dietary requirements, the buffet area.

The second floor will house our hive suites. Cosy accommodation that gives you a little personal space while allowing you to feel part of a community.

Great for both short and long term stays.

The upper floor will be for our penthouse suites. Nine suites of absolute decadence built into the finest scrap wood.

The entire floor is positioned so as to offer maximum shelter from the elements. With outstanding views that will include potted plants and herbs.

When complete the entire structure will be doused in moss water so that the hotel blends in with its surroundings.

One of our investors has already visited the site and is looking forward to eating greeting as many guests as possible.

Everlane is Using Black Friday Sales To Bring Farm-Fresh Food to Garment Workers

THE VEG FORT IS ON LOCKDOWN! Trespassers will be composted and anyone who looks at my shallots for too long will be prodded with a bamboo stick (conveniently 2m long to respect social distancing). This is now the law!

What a crazy time we find ourselves in. How is everyone holding up?

It's been a busy time in the Veg Fort, we've finally had a few days of sunny weather. My shallots, battle-hardened by all the recent rain are very slowly starting to perk up.

Next to them I planted six Summer Spinach seeds in the vain hope that they would grow, then we had about two weeks of constant rain and I assumed that had scuppered their chances has it had done with a few others crops I'd seeded directly outside. BUT BEHOLD! LIFE! A single solitary spinach plant has risen. 

My potatoes, slumbering beneath the soil like startchy little Cthulhus, have started to emerge! Soon all will fear them!

My tomato plants have also come along in leaps and bounds. I've had to transfer them to a propagation container which I've then put inside the cold frame. I'm hoping that they'll get enough heat to continue their phenomenal growth. Also, I wasn't expecting all twelve to grow so I'm thinking I'll keep three and deploy the rest amongst my allies in the rebellion. 

Growing equally fast has been my beans. I'm very excited about these as they were grown from seeds taken from last years crop. So they're 2nd generation soldiers! They went from seed to about three inches tall in four days. 

While it was sunny I also managed to get a lot of seeding done.

Inside I have two heated propagation trays. I'm thinking that by the end of April I'll have a reasonable amount of veg to transfer outside. And then the fun really begins. 

It's amazing to think how much it's changed in just under a year.

As soon as the lockdown eases I'm hoping to move my beautiful homemade bench over from my dad's. Then I'll make a start on the corner bed where the fruit tree is going to go.

So yeah, the Veg Fort is waking up. And the world it's waking up to is going to be different than expected. A perk of all this isolation is that we can all take the time to think about the differences we want to see when this passes and how we can each work towards making it happen.

That said, don't forget to breathe, stay hydrated and help each other. And when you feel up to it: read, write, draw, make music, watch movies, learn a skill; reach out to old friends, new friends and plan for tomorrow. 

Shwmae!

The Veg Fort is awake and the first harvest has been collected!

Radishes, the backbone of the Veg Fort have marched forth to wreak tasty war upon the forces of Big Salad!

A replacement squad has already been seeded.

I was talking to an ally in the rebellion recently about how as much fun as tending to the plants is, the really fun bit of gardening is the infrastructure stuff, like building the beds, etc. I thinks it's because if you do that stuff right then it shows in produce. It's always a rush when you gather food you've grown.

My potatoes are truly mighty and if they weren't confined to a tub would probably have taken over the world by now.

So this week was busy in the Veg Fort. Pretty much everything that was in seed trays is now out in the fort.

I relocated the spinach plants that were next to the shallots and in their place put four of the corn stalks. I've also had to put one of my leeks in the middle of them because I had no room anywhere else.

The remaining three stalks are in a tub and these will probably be the ones I let got to seed.

The spinach had a minor mutiny after being relocated but this picture from the next day and they've got their act together and are ready to take the fight to the industrial salad complex.

The leeks are in. Only had room for six of the eleven and that probably being a bit snug. Had to distribute the others anywhere there was space. Although I seem to have lost one. I know I planted all of them. But can only account for four of the redistributed leeks. So either it's gone AWOL or gone rogue! Not sure what's scarier.

The carrots continue to do well. I never really do well with them but I'm hoping this year will be different.

In the Hugelkultur bed I've planted the Red Iceberg Lettuce and Red Leafed Kale. And at the end I've squeezed in two leeks... actually looking at that photo I may have found the missing leek. Lemme go check...

*Goes out side and does a head count*

Yep. Mystery solved. The missing leek has been rediscovered!

The beans are doing well. I've had to extend the poles so there got a bit more height to grow and flowers have already started to appear.

So yeah, it's all go at the Veg Fort. There's more I want to show but Tumblr has its stoopid ten image limit, so I'll save those for the next update.

I'm concerned by how infamous the Veg Fort has become within my neighbourhood. Everyone stops to have a nose and when I'm working out there everyone always stops to talk and tell me how the Fort is a regular topic of conversation between them and their friends. Security precautions mean I have to assume they're all spies for big salad so I reveal no useful information. But it's nice that people take an interest. There was even a partially sighted guy who commented on the silhouettes of the Fort always looking amazing, which is kind of fascinating to think of now I know that's how someone sees it.