Happiness is an Urban Vegetable Garden

In college, my mother, a magician with all vegetation, would occasionally send me back to campus with an african violet or some other houseplant, and by the end of the semester, the pretty pot it came in would be filled with paper clips and gum.

But a few years ago, I finally realized why I had never longed to grow stuff. I was thinking about the wrong stuff. The answer for me was vegetables. Veggies are both useful and delicious and I have realized that I have a deep yearning to see something change from a tiny seed to a steaming plate of food that I can eat.

So now I'm growing my garden for the same reason I want to learn to fish. I fantasize about sustaining myself on what I can grow (or in the case of fishing what you catch - here's hoping fish pens work). Since my apartment has a private rooftop patio, I've been testing my veggie abilities -- so far to mixed results. My first year yielded a few wrinkly melancholy tomatoes. My second year was better, I grew several batches of green beans and chives, and plenty of tiny carrots that were tasteless but cute.

But here's hoping this spring will be different: I started off with Burpee's seed starting greenhouse kit. It was like headstart for seeds. 

Actually that's not true, in my first attempt, I overwatered the soil, which led to having to remove all the dead seeds and drain the soil by transferring it to plastic cups and squeezing out the water. But my following attempt using a spray bottle of water instead of a cup soil was spot on.

Cukes and Peppers: I'm growing Burpee's Picklebush cucumbers at the top and California Wonder sweet peppers at the bottom. I made a bamboo trellis using twine and dead sticks from my landlord's bamboo plants. The cukes keep wanting to grow to the right however - not sure why, it's not like there's sun to there. So I am working on training them to grow on the trellis.

The peppers are only seedlings at this point. Not sure what I'll do when they are big enough to need support. Do sweet peppers need support?

Peas: If plants were children, these would be the overachieving kids that you can't even hate because they're so adorable. I'm growing two kinds mixed together: sugar snap peas and regular "super snappy" peas from Burpee. They grew quickly in the little greenhouse and as soon as I planted them they took very well to the soil and are starting to climb the arch trellis I made from four stakes and chicken wire.

Close up of the peas. I once had an unforgettable Chinese dish of stir-fried garlicly pea shoots at a local Chinese restaurant. They were like crack. One day, I hope to make dish that from these plants.

Beans: These are also great hearty plants. I'm growing Goldrush and Roma II garden beans from Burpee. These grew the fastest in the greenhouse and are taking to the planter very well. The string trellis took me forever to figure out. I tried to make one big square arch with several rows but the twine and bamboo kept falling apart. Finally I just made three separate square arches and tied several rows of strings on each one. 

The peas are really really taking to the string, but I'm also battling an unknown bug that keeps eating away at the leaves.

Garden Pots: (Clockwise) Mint, Roma tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, chives, Roma tomatoes, cilantro, corn (for fun).

Potatoes: I shouldn't play favorites but these are seriously my most beloved veggies. They're organic fingerling seed potatoes that I got at Lowes. And I did a lot of research on growing potatoes - including watching this heartbreakingly funny video. I have them in a great potato growing bag from Ferry Morse. I folded the bag halfway, and as the plants get taller, I'm supposed to keep topping it off with soil and then unfold the bag bit by bit. When the plants are dead, that's when you can harvest the tubers. So exciting!

Bamboo: Not a veggie, though you can eat the shoots. I have several of these in my planters that I'm looking after for my landlord. I just took this picture to show how tall one shoot is, and it grew that high in only one day.

Beets: These are a not the strongest plants in the group. And it's also the second batch that I've planted - the first group vanished overnight. I'm not sure if it's bad soil or it's just not getting enough sunlight.

I've only got three really strong beet seedlings going. Oh little beets, I hope you grow up strong!

Carrots: Like the beets, this is the second batch of carrots I've grown in this planter - the first batch was also a victim of the plant rapture.

Lettuce/Spinach graveyard: What's a vegetable garden without some failures? My lettuce and spinach seedlings just would not take, even after two tries. I was at least glad they went quickly. This may be a problematic planter as it's half as deep as othe other ones.

To come: I've got small watermelons and pumpkins growing in my greenhouse, and once they're big enough I've got to figure out how they will live in this soon-to-be delicious garden. Tips from anyone are welcome!