My Fire Escape Garden 2013

[sdavie]

So many of you know that my fiance and I live in a tiny 450 sq. ft. apartment and have only a fire escape as outdoor space. Our plan is to grow a number of vegetables in our limited amount of space using mainly planters, however keeping them off the fire-escape floor is key! We designed a box that would fit over the kitchen roof of our downstairs neighbour which will be a small green house/poly-tunnel and plan on growing other plants in pots in the remaining space. My tomatoes and peppers will be in the green house planter (in the summer it will have avian netting instead of plastic covering it) and down below our fire escape we plan to put our lettuces and spinach.

To get us started, here are some photos!

This is the space we are working with..

Some of my Lettuce sprouts, I can't even remember for the life of me what variety they are..

My fiance's design for our planter box, we strayed a bit from the original design but I think we made a good improvement..

Today we made the main frame for the planter bed, tomorrow we are putting the plywood base in it and attaching our poly tunnel..

As you can see, it just slots over the top of the roofline.

 

[sdavie]

and just for fun, playful pug baby

 

[MontyJ]

You grow girl! I hope it works well for you! Any garden is better than no garden.

 

[so lucky]

Cute little pug! Are you sure you will be able to reach all the bed from your fire escape? For weeding and such?

 

[Smiles Jr.]

Wow! Your creativity is wonderful. I wish you good luck with your new garden. Please keep us up to date with pics - lots of pics - we love pics.

 

[sdavie]

Cute little pug! Are you sure you will be able to reach all the bed from your fire escape? For weeding and such?

It's going to house potted plants, but yes. I'm 6'0"

 

[ninnymary]

sdavie, welcome to TEG if I haven't said it yet. How big is that box? What will you plant in it? Does it get morning or afternoon sun? It's so great that you will have a small garden. It will be so easy to maintain and give you the experience for a larger one in the future.

I think a mix of pretty colorful lettuce would look great in it!

Mary

 

[sdavie]

ninnymary, it's 2ft by 3ft and in the summer gets sun all day. I love to garden, but haven't had a chance to in the last few years due to living either in student residence (well, I lived in a student boarding house off rez but wasn't in school) or living here, with not a lot of outdoor space.

so today we put the bottom platform in the box and constructed the tubing for the poly-tunnel roof! in a moment we're going to get some 6 mil poly and some other odds and ends, hit the gym and then come home and finish it up but in the meantime, here are some photos of it right now.

 

[897tgigvib]

Awesome! Just make sure plenty of drain holes in the bottom of it.

Oh, and

RULE 1: NO FALLING


Your pug looks a lot like my baby sister's pug. She and some of her friends practically have a Pug following on facebook. ummm, latest about it is her Pug and her cat recently came to a compromise about getting her lap.

 

[sdavie]

Yup, there are drainage holes. You can't see them well but theres tons of them. Pippa (the pug) isn't exactly a lap dog, she's too excitable right now at almost 7 months old.