Suburban garden - mine

Skills and abilities are something you take with you everywhere; no tools are needed to retain knowledge and learning a new skill is fun. This is where my little garden comes into play. My particular skill set, “Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.” extra points if you know what movie the quote is from, does not make me a farmer or even a gardener. Which is one of the reasons I have tried my hand at gardening or as the joke goes around here ‘working the farm’!

I have to admit it is not easy to grow things but is exciting when you see things grow and really exciting when you dig in the ground and find food you have grown!!! If you have never tended a garden or even tried to grow something in the windowsill I would strongly suggest you give it a try!!!
For some of us there is very limited room, we live in the city, in an apartment or our cookie cutter houses seem to close together. Almost all of us can find a window or strip of dirt we can transform into our own private farm!!! Start with just some herbs in the windowsill and work your way up from there. Using whatever space you can find.

I started in the windowsill with herbs, moved on to pots along the side of the house and now have my ‘farm’ along a strip of dirt which had an ornamental bush taking up space. For me starting small got me in the habit of watering something. Trust me the death toll was high when I first tried to grow anything!!! I’ve been trying to turn all of the plants in the backyard into food producers while not interfering with the back yard still being a backyard. Meaning I have not dug up the whole yard and put in rows of crops, the yard still functions as a place the kids can play and we can hang out in.

"The Farm"

As in learning any skill I spent a lot of time researching how to grow things and really just learning what I did wrong the last time. I also had to learn to can what I was growing but that is a post for another day! This week I decided to harvest my bounty off the farm!! Some of the plants were wilting and the bugs had found them. I also couldn’t wait any more to see how I had done!!! Drum roll……..

We managed to grow about five pounds of potatoes, some onions (still not sure how to grow them), a bunch of sage for cooking and even some blackberries!!!

We still have to see how the peppers are going to do and the strawberry plant I thought was dead was just hiding under the potato leaves!!! Tomato plant is growing, the grape vine has several bundles of grapes, we have to wait to see what the apricot tree and apple tree are going to do this year. I'm reading up on how to start another grape vine from scratch, trying to figure out what else to plant and today I will be drying some of the booty from the farm for storage!!! I also have to rework the rain collection system. I put it together in a hurry awhile back and have been using the water to water the plants, we are still in a drought here in California.

As you can probably figure out I have fun learning how to grow food, store food and it is exciting to get out my 'element' to learn new skills!!! If you have skill in the garden step out your comfort zone and learn something new, if you have no skill in the garden step out of your comfort zone and try your hand at something new! As an added bonus get the kids involved as much as they are able to. Nothing beats the look in a child's eye when they dig in the dirt and find a potato!!!

As Always,

Stay Safe!!!