Experiment #16: Urban Gardening
That's more than a single tomato... |
So... now! Now I live in an apartment in Seattle facing inward towards a courtyard. There is no planter or place to let my veggies reach their tentacles into the Earth, so it was up to me to figure out a way to figure out how to grow things. And I did...
The urban garden |
The joy of seeing this tomato plant grow from a little stalk to a full fledged bush was so great that I decided to expand my efforts in late June. I took two of my clear plastic moving bins, filled them with dirt, and bought two hanging baskets. In one bin, I planted another small cherry tomato plant and two soy bean plants. In the other bin, two broccolis, one pepper, and one black tomato plant. In the hanging baskets, I put strawberries.
Battle Royale for the sun (Box #2) |
Box #1: Soybeans and Ketchup 2 |
Hanging basket strawberries was a great idea :D |
I learned a great deal too. I learned to use fertilizer when Ketchup 1 had leeched all his available resources out of his tiny pot. I learned Tomatoes can be ferocious when it comes to getting their share of light. Ketchup 2 (the other cherry tomato plant) grew to about 3.5 feet high and needed multiple stakes to stay up right. The soybeans, planted behind Ketchup 2, had to grow almost parallel to the ground to get any light.
Yum Yum!! |
After multiple mini droughts (aka I took a weekend trip) and a summer of sunlight, it was time to harvest. Ketchup (#1) was the great winner of the summer - I pulled about 30 delicious tomatoes off that tiny plant. Well, my mom was about 15 of those. She definitely stripped my tomato plants on her visit :) The broccoli was too long and thin to be tasty... I did make a stir fry with it, but it wasn't fabulous (damn broccoli!). The soybeans made for the best edamame I've ever eaten. The strawberries provided a few tasty surprises over the summer. The pepper was totally pathetic and produced one seriously mishapened pepper. Ketchup 2 produced probably over 100 tomatoes, most of which didn't ripen till late September. Ketchup 3 provided a few tasty tomatoes -- they're still outside ripening now!!
The end of ketchup 1 - I put him back upright but then he blew over again and that shattered his pot :'( |
Don't let living in an apartment stop you from growing things. It's always an option if you want it to be. Next experiment: growing indoor plants during the winter.
Cheers!
Oh and because everyone wants to know what black tomatoes look like:
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