city garden

I have always wanted to have a garden, ever since I was a little girl and would get lost among my PapPap's green beans and tomatoes. I'd pluck an onion from the ground, dip it in the pool, and crunch right into it. Same with his huge tomatoes that grew vine by lovely vine.

Living in a city provides its challenges when it comes to gardening, so I read up on "container gardening", essentially, growing the garden of my city-living dreams.

It isn't very hard. Our landlord already had the foundation started, with his herb garden containers already installed and growing chives, parsley and oregano. A little weeding was all it took to get the rest of the planter space cleaned up, soiled up and ready to go.

Usually when I dream up things it can get pretty grandiose. I don't just want a garden, I want the maze gardens of Versailles. I want to use all natural, organic soil, and have a compost bin. I don't want to cheat with Miracle Gro, or spray pesticides. Just soil, water and sun. That's all plants really need, with some organic material (compost) added in.

But this time, I decided to be realistic. I remembered back to last year, living at home, buying $30 worth of seeds, and probably $30 worth of biodegradable pots to start the seeds out in. Went away for a week; everything died. Duh. You have to be pristine, careful and delicate when growing a live plant, as I have now learned. And if you go on vacation, have someone water your plants (or take them with you)!

So, realistically thinking, I started with herbs. Jeremy and I headed over to his restaurant one day, where they have a great outdoor container garden (in which he planted everything, so proud of him!), and picked up a bag of organic soil and lots of different plants: a few tomato plants, pineapple mint, spearmint, oregano, and then headed inside to the chef's office to go through boxes of seeds. We took home some exciting bounty...early prolific straightneck summer squash seeds, corn seeds, nasturtium, chives, more squash, many varieties of lettuce, and so on...

The growing commenced! I was eager to get all of the plants into the ground so they could take off. I started with the spearmint, then some boxwood basil (2 plants, also from the restaurant), well, why don't I just show you...
Spearmint, which I've been using for mojitos :)

Boxwood basil

Thyme

Cilantro, grown from seed!


Pineapple mint

oregano with weeds...clearly I hadn't gotten to weeding this yet when photo taken

Some seedlings emerging...



Some of the basil that we are growing is actually from the back of a Triscuits box! Triscuits is supporting the home farming movement, and they offer a little seed packet in the cardboard box, which you immerse in water for a short time, then plant normally in soil. I now have more incentive to buy Triscuits. Not that I needed any.

The other basil plant is from a farm in the Shenandoah Valley, VA that I bought when we were living in College Park. The cilantro is all from seed, from the packets I bought for last summer's gardening ventures. The thyme I picked up at our local Safeway store, (from Shenandoah Farms also) and got it in the ground fast. It needed a little water to seep from the bottom into the plant first, as it was looking pretty gnarly when I bought it. Let's see, what else...oh the cherry tomatoes. I have a bunch of pots of these now. I took all these photos about a month ago, when my friend requested I write a post giving a tour of the garden...well here ya go, Kristina, a month later!


Since then the squash has been sprouting beautiful golden yellow squash blossoms. I'm super excited about these, because I first had stuffed squash blossoms at Jeremy's restaurant last summer. They were absolutely out of this world delicious, and I will have to get the recipe when my blossoms are big enough to pluck and stuff. (I actually planted all the squash just for their blossoms!)

Squash leaves; I hope these will yield crazy prolific squash, like the seed packet promises!


I'll close my little container garden tour with a few beautiful tomato plants...



Check back soon for more city garden progress!

Be Merry,
Shannon