City Gardening
I live in an apartment, but I still want to have fresh produce during the summer. I love a fresh garden tomato on my sandwich, so much better than those things that look like tomatoes you get at the grocery store. Right?
Growing up we usually had something growing in the back behind the garage. Corn was a family favorite. But I was young then and I didn’t really pay much attention to any of it. When my family moved when I was a sophomore in high school we created a spot in our back yard for a garden, and it gets better every year.
I still don’t think I appreciated the idea of a garden until I moved to Moscow, Russia. There really isn’t much space for a garden when all you have is a 900 square foot apartment. So when I moved back to Utah and bought my first house, I made sure there was garden space. I got some great tomatoes out of that garden. I sold the house a couple of years later and now I live in an apartment and still want that fresh garden produce. What to do.
There are the community gardens of course, if you can get a spot in one. The tomato garden on 800 South and 600 East maintained by Wasatch Community Gardens, has a five year waiting list.
Farmers markets are always good options also. But, say you can’t always make it to the farmers market. What options do you have?
Well, you can try container gardening. My mother-in-law gave us a large pot last year to use, and we have made use of it the best we can. Last year we had a zucchini plant that took over. Luckily we were able to get quite a few heirloom pear tomatoes also. This year we have a couple of pepper plants and a tomato plant, with a couple of tomatoes growing already.
We don’t have a huge garden, and we don’t always make it to the farmers market, but we do have plants that will provide us with that fresh garden tomato I so crave.
What will you do to get that tomato?
still early, but at least we'll have tomatoes
you could try a square foot garden. http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1265/743727404_3863a637a9.jpg
Aimee and I were going to do that this year. We live on the canal and have a big space behind our fence that we can use for a garden, but it’s hard with me being at work and Aimee is so busy with her 3 kids so this year we decided not to do a big garden. We ended up working on our flower bed out front this year instead of a garden. We have lots of wonderful neighbors and Matt’s parents that give us lots of fresh veggies. But I think the square foot gardens are great. You can grow several different veggies, including corn! yum! in a small space.
That is kind of what we are doing with the container garden. Each plant has a quarter of the space available. Last year the tomato and zucchini plants spread out so much that nothing else was able to grow in there. This year we planted a little different to open up a little space for our peppers, and no zucchini to take over.