I can remember as a little kid when my mom first told me it was actually ok to go dig up the backyard (like most young males I had a tendency to destroy, dig, and build...anywhere I could, often against the wishes of my parents). I grabbed a shovel, and began attacking the earth with a fervor close to a woodpecker hitting it's head against a tree at 4am in the morning to get that elusive grub. This was amazing! I was tearing up the ground all with the approval of my parents. After a few hours, a couple of ice tea / cheese & cracker breaks later, I was done. I had carved off ~ 10' x 10' section of the sod, leaving the rich, dark, brown dirt exposed. Despite my best pleas, my father wouldn't allow me to use the tiller (insert visions of a 6 yr old getting thrown around by that powerful machine). But that was ok, because as soon as the soil had been churned and turned and pounded into submission, the planting began. Tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, squash, lettuce, basil, onions, etc, all went into the earth as seedlings or young plants. I can remember my enthusiasm of finally finishing, and watering every day watching the plants grow and take shape. Which, looking back, I now find strikingly ironic seeing how I DESPISED most vegetables as a kid. Here I was, painstakingly taking care of these plants, the fruit of which I complained about when they arrived on my plate. Perhaps it was the wonder of investing time and energy into something and seeing it literally grow and blossom in front of you. Perhaps it's a younger sibling thing. Perhaps, it was good training for gardening now.
Living in an urban environment can make it difficult to grow a lot of produce. Or at least I used to think so. Sometimes you might be lucky enough to find an open spot in a community garden. But, while there might not be a ton of flat, or even usable earth around you in which to plant (or, in some cases, like us living on the top floor of our apartment building, any), there is often a lot of horizontal space, and in our case, a back fire escape with wide landings providing just enough room to put some planters and hanging baskets. Over the past few years we along with our neighbor on the top floor have turned that fire escape into a jungle oasis of flowers and plants. Sadly, that neighbor moved away from the building into a house (I say sadly as this guy had the greenest thumb I've ever seen and could plant a mean flower arrangement in pots). Thus, with an entire landing of a fire escape at our disposal (thanks to the new neighbors gladly offering their side to utilize), we decided to try our hands at utilizing the space to garden.
Using our long over-the-railing baskets troughs (we have 5 of them), we planted a few flowers (we're suckers for color), and then threw some spinach, swiss chard, mixed greens, and sugar snap peas into them. Converting a milk crate into an onion bed was relatively easy (black trash bag + rocks + soil), and tucks away nicely into the corner of the fire escape. To grow tomatoes (something we REALLY wanted), but lacking the ground space to plant, we turned to the upside down growing method. It's really, quite easy actually (there are lots of sites such as oldfashionedliving.com that have instructions on how to DYI). Basically, grab an old paint bucket (15 gallon will do. I spray painted ours black to cover up the unsightly orange and to maximize heat absorption from the sun. I don't have any scientific proof of this, but I'm going with it). Drill out a hole in the bottom (to feed the plant through), pack with dirt, and go hang from somewhere. For us, that somewhere (well, two somewhere's) included a wall hook/rod (with the permission of the building owner of course), and a shepherds hook fastened to one of the pillars on the edge of the fire-escape. What's great about these planters too is that you can grow other herbs/etc on the top (we have squash in one of ours), maximizing your space and crop yield per unit area.
So while we don't have a lot of space, we've worked with what we do have utilizing hanging planters (to grow from both the bottom and top), over the railing troughs, and in the corners a few pots of herbs, onions, and some other greens. I'm lucky to have Kate to keep me level headed though. If it wasn't for her, I'd probably already have hauled 100's of lbs of topsoil up a ladder to the roof of the apartment to start a garden above our dining room thinking "look at all that wasted space up there that we could be using for growing!!" Instead, before I could embark on such a doomed mission, she kindly reminded me that 1) our landlord probably wouldn't approve of having a farm on the roof of his building and 2) how would I water all the plants. Crisis averted, and the excitement of watching the plants again bloom to life in front of me is just as wonderful as it was when I was a kid.
now if only i could find a long enough hose...... ;)
now if only i could find a long enough hose...... ;)
