Monday, April 19, 2010

..and it begins (part 1)

First and foremost, welcome. After trying to register over a handful of urls (urbanfarmer, townfarming, city gardener and damn near every combination) I fell on this one. Not exactly what I planned, but the best things never are, right? (read: me).

Anyway, a quick rundown... When i was 4 or so I helped my dad and step mom with my first gardening project. The memories of the garden consist of me playing with snails and finding all kinds of wild stuff buried in the soil. Shoes, buckets, tiki-idols, headless barbies. The last of which was naked. I remember her well. After that initial, and quite exciting (think: 4 year old/naked barbie) gardening expeience I didn't really do any (vegetable) gardening for over 20 years..

Flashback to 2008.. ...after growing orchids and other random plants for a few years in my apartment(s) i decided it was time to try a vegetable-or fruit for that matter-on my fire escape-God forbid the building catches on fire, but that's a post for my other blog.. A tomato it was. With a decent amount of success of 5 baseball sized tomatoes I was eager to try again the following year.

Last year i upped my fire-escape vegetable garden to a six pack of onions, 2 six packs of lettuce and two tomato plants. I also figured I should grow some herbs too, so i threw a basil plant in there. Last years yield wasn't quite as fulfilling. Sure, i got 10+ tomatoes off of one of my plants, but I also only managed to harvest 2 tomatoes from my Early Girl (the same kind i had planted in 2008). I was disappointed in those tomatoes, but my onions and basil did great so I was overall fairly pleased. I also learned that lettuce wasn't a smart plant to start growing in May on the western-facing fire escape of a white building. Basically the lettuce bolted (went to seed, therefore not yielding any lettuce leaves) and i decided I'd just let it dry up and complete it's pathetic life alone, in the desert like trough it was inhabiting.

2 comments:

  1. now that I think of it, I guess you must have thought I was loco with my tomatoes and cukes at mcauley.

    ReplyDelete