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Introduction

My interest in this book was originally due to the fact that my own wooden raised beds are rotting away. So I was thinking about using concrete tiles as building blocks instead. Then I saw this eBook and liked the idea of using cinder blocks instead. I did some research and found out that cinders blocks are used around here too for construction. They’re called foundation blocks.
The 224-page eBook is written by Lynn Mentgen-Gillespie, who has 13 years of experience in gardening, with her father Glen Mentgen as co-author. Lynn lives in the Colorado Rockies with her family. The price was $19.95 and you can buy it here.

What is the principle of Cinder Block Gardens?

The method described in the book for growing your own food actually looks pretty general, and it’s not exclusively for cinder block gardens. If you know a little about gardening you can probably recognize these steps:

1. Decide a location for your garden (south, east, north, west)
2. Order materials and build your garden. This is special compared to row-gardening
3. Produce your own soil. This is highly recommended for Cinder block gardens, but could be applied to wooden raised beds too.
4. Sow or plant
5. Water and remove weed throughout the growing season
6. Mulch
7. Harvest
8. Feed the soil
9. Evaluate and go back to 4) or 1)

What I like about Cinder Block Gardens

First of all, it was nice that I was able to see the whole table of content before buying, but that’s not really related to the eBook itself.

• It’s a practical book. There’s a certain method to be followed throughout the book, towards growing your own food. It’s what I would call a good down to earth explanation of the gardening principle
• Lynn and I share the same values that drives us to do this kind of work. Things like the quality of what we eat, respect for other living creatures and respect for the environment.
• There’s a sense of purpose in doing gardening the way she describes. It’s not just about doing the mechanical work, but it’s also about improving our health and the the health of our children.
• She writes from 13 years of experience and includes personal stories
• The location of your garden is discussed. I haven’t given this much thought myself but I think I have underestimated that.
• She explains ways to add trellis to a Cinder Block garden. That was a positive surprise I hadn’t contemplated.
• The important role of aisles between raised beds is discussed
• Pictures and illustrations are used throughout the contents. I really like that I can see what she’s talking about. I guess I’m a highly visual person.
• The Magic Soil Mix: This is a big one. There’s a lot of experience packed into that one. The whole idea of designing your own soil is new to me, and I think this is something I need to embrace in the future, if I want to take my gardening to a new level.
• Seeds, planting and transplanting are described very well and thoroughly.
• I’m not a mulcher myself, but again I think this is something I’ll be looking into in the future. Her description of mulching is an eye opener and I feel inspired to give it a try.
• I like the informative part on low water gardening
• The chapter about pest control acts as a good reference. I was pleasantly surprised to find advice on cats

What I DON’T like about Cinder Block Gardens

• I’m not sure what her father is doing in this book. I think Lynn would do just fine without the few pages that relates to him. It’s a bit confusing.
• Much energy is used on how to save money. Maybe this energy could be converted into creating more and better food. For instance a chapter or small eBook on how to make money from selling food.
• There’s a big overlap between growing food in wooden raised beds and cinder block gardens, for instance the chapter on the weed free garden. I expected this book to be more cinder block specific. I’ve already written about the advantages of growing food in wooden raised beds. I think there are quite a few chapters, that I really didn’t expect in a book about cinder blocks gardens, because they’re more general gardening advice:
  - Soil
  - Fertilizer and compost
  - Seeds, planting and transplanting
  - Season extenders
  If these were the areas I wanted information about I don’t think my first choice would have been the Cinder Block Gardens eBook.
• I didn’t find the chapter about the different sizes of cinder block beds particularly useful. It’s fine to describe the first standard unit but from there I prefer to just do the calculations to match the particular space requirements. It’s not like it’s a tough calculation or anything.
• I find the chapter about planting in the holes unnecessary. I imagine I would just go by feel and explore the possibilities myself.
• I don’t think I will ever use the vegetable reference guide, since it depends on what kinds of seeds I’ll be inspired to get each season. Usually there’s a good description on the paper envelopes. I’ll just do the math on the fly if I’ll do any at all.
• Anything to do with chemicals I would prefer was kept out of a book about gardening

Who should buy this book

I think this is a very good beginners book on vegetable gardening in general. It takes you all the way from scratch and up to a fully functional food producing garden. There’s a clear method to be followed all the way from start to finish, where you have your vegetables in your hand. Also, you shouldn’t be afraid of doing things in a new way, and answer questions from curious visitors or neighbours.

In the middle of the picture you can see the moisture meter board from hobby-boards.com and on the right the Watermark soil moisture sensor. When the moisture sensor gets wet its electrical resistance goes down, and when it dries up the resistance goes up. The sensor is connected as a part of the moisture meter circuit, which has a 1-wire interface to the rest of the system.

The board needs a separate 9 to 24 volt DC power supply. I have placed the power supply indoors and the power supply current is running in the Ethernet cable as well as the 1-wire data signal, but only to the moisture meter board and not further into the 1-wire network.

As the other sensors in my 1-wire network this board is also accessed through owfs software (one wire file system) and I’m using the Current Register of the onboard DS2760 1-wire monitor IC to read out data. The moisture sensor is connected to an onboard timer IC and when the resistance changes so does the oscillating frequency of the IC and its power consumption. This is measured by the DS2760 and the value is stored in the Current Register.

When the moisture sensor is completely wet the value in the Current Register is -1.400 and when completely dry the value is -0.2386. This goes for this particular system.

I’ve dug a hole about 30 cm (12 inch) deep and put the sensor at the bottom. The soil that I dug up has been mixed with water and poured into the hole to fill it up again. It’s important with a close fit between sensor and soil.

As usual I have a Linux script running on the NSLU2 that takes care of reading the sensor along with temperature sensors in the 1-wire network, and making historical graphs of the readings:
update.sh

It assumes that you’ve made a valid database for the readings, for example with this script:
make_database.sh

The schedule is handled by Linux crontab with these entries:
# m h  dom mon dow   command
*/5 * * * * /home/thomas/happyfarming/update.sh &> /dev/null
*/5 * * * * /home/thomas/happyfarming/upload.sh

Graphs are uploaded to happyfarming.com using this updated script:
upload.sh

This is an example of one of the graphs:

My About page will be updated with the newest graphs.

If you have any questions or comments please leave a comment or use the contact form.

Here’s an overview of the garden temperature logging system as it is at the moment:

Here are links to blog posts with more information on the different blocks:

NSLU2:

Small Computer As Garden Control Center

Soil Temperature Logging

How To Automatically Update Your Temperature Graphs

Soil temperature sensor:

Soil Temperature Sensor

Air temperature sensor:

Garden Air Temperature

Ah, this is what you want, more than 80% of the floor is visible. The energy flows and it’s way easier to get something done when you have space to operate. At the moment I need space to build and prepare projects for the next year in the garden.

But why is it so hard to clean up? I mean, just do it, right?

I always had a problem earlier, where I would go into the garage, or any other room for that matter, full of energy and ready to kick some garbage. I would look at thing and go yes, this I definitely need to keep. And then on to the next thing, also a keeper. And this one needs to go into the garbage… garbage… keep. And hey, what is this? Ah, I forgot I still kept this one. Ah, what memories. And this one, sweet memories.

I could go on like this for half an hour, maybe even move stuff around. Around this time my eyes would return to the very first thing I looked at, when I started “cleaning up” the garage or room, and realize, that I didn’t actually clean anything up, not even in my mind. And it was all in the mind. Then it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed and discouraged and just quietly close the door and go back to watching TV hoping that the mess will go away by itself. But it doesn’t.

I found another way that works every time. Of course it’s best to have a habit of keeping the floor or room free from too much stuff or mess, but sometimes it gets out of hand. Free space has some kind of magnetic attraction on things, whether it’s useful stuff or just garbage. In these cases this method can be useful:

1. Allocate some free floor area in another room or outside, at least as big as the room you will be cleaning up. Yes, this is often hard to find.

2. Divide this free area into four new areas:

• Keep
• Sell
• Charity
• Trash

3. Start emptying the messy room one thing at a time. The rule is that once you have picked up a thing you’re only allowed to put it down in one of the four areas. No cheating, make the decision and move on to the next thing, and empty the whole room.

4. Clean the empty room

5. Put the things from the “Keep” area back and organize them just the way you like it. Now there’s room to do it properly.

6. Rid yourself from the rest of the stuff, i.e. sell, charity or trash.

7. Start a new project that needs a lot of floor space. Or go watch TV. You deserve it