Guerilla gardening

I like to stay true to my live-off the land roots - minus manual labor of hauling 5 gallon drinking water jugs to the house before we had plumbing and the winter activity of pulling sleds full of frozen clothes, washed in town and brought home to dry.  But my other "roots" are in worlds lush with green growing things, like the tomatoes that self-seeded in our compost pile on Saipan, or the huge arcs of peas I could walk under in my parent's garden in Alaska.  In Portland, I try to mantain as small a carbon-footprint as possible by gardening, recycling, and reusing as much  and here I try to do the same.  Here are some of my projects:   My simple 5 gallon-bucket compost system --->

                                          My tomatoes, grown from seed, produced a good amount of salad-fixings.   These cosmos and other flowers, which I grew from seeds I brought from the US, brighten up the patio. Next to them are spinach and lettuce.   

Here are some of my other urban garden techniques:                                           Compost central: 5 gallon buckets hold our food scraps

I've been intrigued by compost-tea for awhile, so this year I decided to make my own. 

     The plastic bag holds compost, and the water I pour into the top filters through the compost out the hole in the bottom, where I collect it to use on the plants.  

    I've just wrested a small section of ground from the grass and planted radishes and more lettuce - we only have 90 more days here, so I think this will be the last crop I can sow from seed.  Then it's back to Portland, just in time to work on prepping for a winter garden.