Pictures of the first set of plants to start the garden are later on below, but I wanted to start with a little commentary first ...
With my own growing awareness over how horribly wrong our whole industrialized, subsidized, petro-chemically based agricultural system has gone over the past century, I wanted to try my own hand at growing edibles at home. The idea may seem like a lot of work or something which requires a special affinity for plants or a super green thumb, but most people don't realize that during the world wars it was encouraged that families across America grow their own "victory gardens" to save canned food for the soldiers. Surprisingly (or perhaps, not so surprisingly), over 60% of a family's food came from their own garden during the peak of the victory garden use.
Interestingly enough, despite our own seemingly endless military involvement abroad (which I won't get into), victory gardens are hard to come by nowadays. There is, however, a growing enthusiasm for a return, at least to a small extent, to using one's land to grow edibles even in the middle of a city. My situation is a rather challenging one, but I'd like to demonstrate how with a tiny bit of planning, anybody can enjoy beautiful plants as well as healthy, tasty vegetables and fruit that is actually sweet (imagine that!) right from one's own doorstep. I will be working on our 1 meter x 2 meter balcony on the north-facing (least amount of sunlight) side of our apartment. We do not get as much direct sunshine as a lot of other places, but I will try to show how thinking just a little bit about adapting plants to your climate can yield big rewards.
Okay, enough lecturing ... time for some pictures. I took these a couple days ago after I had the chance to get some bigger planters to transplant the tomato plants into.
The starting lineup: Golden husky tomato plant, Red bush tomato plant, chives, garlic chives, mesclun mixed salad greens, oregano, and a siberian iris for now. The tomato plants I got from the farmer's market (jones creek farms) where they were $5 each. Even if I only get 4 tomatoes from each plant, this will have already payed back the cost of the plant - but I expect many more than just 4 tomatoes since tomato plants grow anywhere. The seeds for the chives and garlic chives were planted on June 23rd, a week ago. I can't wait to use them in my cooking and see the beautiful chive blossoms. Oregano was also bought from the farmer's market and I clipped the tops off to use for cooking, but more importantly, to prevent them from growing too tall and lanky. Clipping herbs (such as basil) helps the plants to grow bushier and thicker rather than tall and spindly.
You can see that I have to be very space-intensive/space-conscious with this garden since there's not much room.
Red tomato (left) and Golden tomato (right)
Salad greens (front) and Oregano (back)
Siberian iris decided to grow two flowers from the same stem
Chives sprouting after a week
Tomato plant is already flowering ... tomatoes to come soon, hopefully!
Some more herbs for a full kitchen herb garden are in the plans for the future, as well as some marigolds to keep bad bugs away and attract good bugs. If you haven't figured out, this garden will be completely pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, and petro-chemical fertilizer free. Only beneficial bugs, proper use of compost, water, and sunlight will be used. You would never drink those chemicals from a bottle ... why would you eat them in your food? I use seeds and plants sourced locally and raised organically - this ensures not only a great quality plant (and one that is safe to eat), but also that I will be getting varieties that grow well in this climate and provide a much more successful crop. I also encourage growing heirloom varieties which not only look unique and beautiful, but also help to perpetuate strains of different plants (biodiversity) that are becoming more and more rare due to commercialization of agriculture.
Lets hope for some warm sunny days for a good start to this garden, but the rain here in Seattle is also too beautiful to wish away ...
That's it for now!
No comments:
Post a Comment