Gardens, like relationships, must be meticulously attended to or “dis-ease” will ultimately occur. Not all plants have the same needs. Some plants require more patience and understanding. Some need more space to sprawl and soak up the sunshine. And some are fine and dandy with fleeting moments of light, living in small containers in the kitchen window or on the back porch. Our second garden was something of this latter variety.
In contrast to our back aching, down-in-the-dirt Maine garden (see Dream Garden Pt. 1), our Summerhouse garden was an easy peasy, plant-heads-in-the-sky sort of experience. Gardening on the balcony of our second-story apartment, we traded shovel for potting spade, garden hose for watering can, and the natural scent of rich soil for plastic bags of potting mix.
Our balcony was about 15 feet long by 5 feet wide and was shaded most of the day by several large trees. Until our last year there, when a large ornamental pear was removed from the neighboring property, we maybe got 3 hours of direct sunlight. Nonetheless, and taking a cue from our relationship, we were excited by all the possibilities. What could we grow!? How could we grow it!?
After some reading about container gardening, we decided that we’d try to grow in non-plastic containers (better for the plants and the people). We scoured home improvement stores, hardware stores, and even thrift stores (our favorite was Pick of the Litter Thrift in Santa Rosa) for beautiful and sometimes inventive, container solutions. One of the more memorable containers was a large and rather deep wire basket. We sewed a fabric liner for the basket, complete with Velcro™ straps, to keep the soil from falling through the bottom. In all, we had about thirty containers.
We grew celery, kale, chard, fennel, dill, strawberries, lavender, rosemary, lemon balm, cilantro, basil, mums, green onion, nasturtium, arugula, and the list goes on. We know, we were shocked too! However, we couldn’t grow a tomato to save our lives. But who needs a tomato when you have chard!? We can’t imagine. The point is that even in a small space, with a little bit of sunlight and a lot of love, lots of healthy and tasty stuff can grow.
In Kindness,
~JnK
