Organic City Gardening

I come from a family of gardeners and yard workers. My parents basically either know how to do everything yard related, or they figure it out. Their yard is their happy place. My Mom has always kept the most beautiful gardens, and my Dad has always kept the tidiest yard. My Mom mows the lawn, and my Dad picks up sticks. My Mom can grow anything and everything (including the cutest little pumpkin patch), and my Dad can build, fix, or take care of just about anything. They cut, they till, they weed and they grow.

But me? Well. . .it seems that the whole green thumb thing has skipped a generation. For whatever reason, I just don’t seem to have the same instincts. Years ago I went through a phase of wanting our apartment to be filled with fresh plants. But then I killed them all. (True story.) So then I went through a phase of curating surprisingly real looking fake plants. But luckily for all of us, I grew out of that phase. (No pun intended.) So here I am now. I’m in the, I kind of like the idea of farm life, but I want to stay in the city and have no interest in cleaning up chicken poop, so let’s make this gardening and plant thing work once and for all phase.

The fake plants have slowly been replaced with real ones (one of which I have accidentally killed already), and although we are technically still in Winter, I have been feeling very excited to get my patio garden going. I’ve been growing tomatoes for the past few years (with mild and unpredictable success), but this year I am feeling particularly committed. Which really just means that I am committing myself to not killing my plants through over-pruning, under-watering, over-spraying, or accidentally breaking them. (Hopefully.)

Mostly not surprising to me at all, there have already been a few minor hurdles. (Like overly dry dirt.) (I mean, who even knew that was a thing?) But we (yes, me and my plants) seem to have put those things behind us. Despite our rocky start, we’re in this together. Me, my tomatoes, my basil, and hopefully no bugs. Definitely no bugs allowed this year.