I have a black thumb and Guthrie has two regular thumbs, though neither of us really know much about gardening. My first experience was with a community garden in which I mostly learned that I know zero about gardening. The following year, Guthrie's and my first together, we cut out a little patch in the shared backyard of his apartment. Since we knew we would be leaving for Atlanta mid-summer, we were limited on what we could grow. We planned better and were able to harvest many salads with our lettuce and beautiful edible flowers. In Atlanta, with so much moving and so little green space, we tried once at a potted tomato plant only to have it come down with
blight.
This summer, sadly, we are have missed the first couple months already due to the move. Honestly, it's a blessing in disguise because it has helped to stop me from getting too excited about gardening -- my problem before. I wanted to try and plant everything, anywhere I could. This summer, we will start with some pots on the balcony, a small raised bed, and a couple of house plants. If we can handle that, we will be ready to expand next year.
First of all, my gardening bible has been a book some friends gave us as a wedding gift:
Garden Anywhere by Alys Fowler. It's amazing! It has topics about indoor plants, dumpster diving, grocery store gardening (like growing an avocado from seed after making guacamole -- this is our baby), you name it! She is a master urban garden with a very sustainable and DIY mentality.
With garden, we started off with planting some herbs for our cute, sunny balcony. It's windy up there, but it's right off of the kitchen, making it a great spot for getting fresh ingredients while cooking. I hate buying fresh herbs at the store: 1. they are super expensive and 2. they are always packaged in so much plastic that you can't recycle. We have now fixed that problem. We bought them from the
Gardens of Eagan at the Midtown Farmers Market. For the herbs, we planted cilantro, chives, basil, thyme, rosemary, and pineapple mint. Guthrie picked out the last one :)
Second, I wanted to start small backyard garden, which is hard to do when renting. The solution -- raised bed. They can be removed when you leave, though maybe the next tenants may want it to stay! The wood was recycled wood, old pieces from sister's deck, actually. I found eight pieces (2x6) that were roughly the same size and four that we about the same size as well for the posts. It honestly was my first real experience with a drill. It wasn't anything fancy, and there are many DIY blog posts and YouTube videos that show you how to make nicer ones. I just wanted to wing it, and I think I did a fine job. To fill it, I mixed good organic topsoil with manure 50/50. We planted two tomato plants from the farmers market (determinant -- good for the small garden) and some organic bush beans which we sowed from seeds. I'll post updates as the garden grows.
Hopefully something will grow! Happy gardening! Peace!
