Urban Gardening

This is the first of what I hope to be a recurring series on urban gardening. I love the idea of growing my own vegetables, but as you might expect of a house that is only 990 square feet, we don’t really have much of a yard. But we do have a back slab, which we’re trying to get the most of.

The challenge of growing on our slab has always been the rats. Yes it’s gross to talk about, but part of the reality of life in the city is rats. Although our rat population seems to be way down recently thanks to some helpful alley cats, we still need to keep things off the ground in case they show up again. So how do we grow? Well it’s been an exercise in experimenting with hanging planters and planters off the ground, mostly with mixed results.

Last year, we did a little bit of herb growing in pots, and we experimented with a hybrid tomato plant in a big hanging basked. This year we decided to be a little bit more adventuresome, mainly due to Noel’s desire to have home grown “real” tomatoes and peppers.

So more on this year. We of course decided to replant our herbs that hadn’t made it through the winter (the rosemary and the oregano made it outside all winter!) Here’s a look at our hanging herb basket on the specially made hanger pole (which was the best thing about wine in the woods last year–finding the pot hanger).

Noel decided to experiment with growing peppers and tomatoes in an old weber kettle grill that we weren’t using anymore. I was skeptical at first, but it looks like the plants are doing okay so far!

And here’s the most exciting part! Yesterday when we were outside watering, I noticed the little flowers had started to turn into vegetables! I was nearly squealing with delight.