urban gardens

animal, vegetable, miracle has changed the way i look at food in so many ways and reaffirmed my healthy/political view of food and food production in general. i have quite a few things i want to write about, but first, i want to take a trip down memory lane and recall all the urban gardens m and i have had.

our first foray into growing veggies and herbs took place in chicago on a deck overlooking the eisenhower expressway. i must admit, i was a hesitant urban gardener. m was the one all gung-ho about growing tomatoes in late summer sun and having fresh herbs and hot chile peppers at her disposal. we bought a number of small and large plastic terra cotta colored planters and some round ones with tomato stands. we bought seeds of bell peppers and chile peppers and basil. i think we also bought tomatoes from seed and started them in small pots inside. we bought and grew lettuce that quickly became covered in small bugs despite our best organic pest spray efforts. m just couldn’t stomach the thought of eating it and potentially digesting a few small bugs that didn’t die in a vinegar rinse. i can’t remember if i ate it or not…i eat just about anything.

the chile peppers were a huge success. the tomatoes were also a huge success. so simple to grow and yet so tasty. unfortunately, i don’t have any pictures as my documentation of these days was virtually zero. (i was saving up for these current days when i start any project armed with no less than 2 cameras and one videocamera.)

our first la apt didn’t have an outdoor space. correction: it had an outdoor space that was turned into an indoor space. the result is the same: couldn’t grow anything but a small pot of basil so planters went into storage and basil was successful for a few weeks but neglect eventually killed the poor herb.

san francisco was the perfect climate for growing foods outside and our 25 foot long deck accommodated our urban garden nicely. we started with a bonsai tree we ordered from overstock.com. weird, i know, but it thrived for many moons before frying on our deck in la in 2007. next, we filled all of the aforementioned planters with romaine, arugula, chard, cilantro, sugar snap peas, spinach, and a number of herbs. safer spray kept most of the bugs away. as i recall, the romaine and spinach and peas were particularly tasty. i didn’t really know how to prepare the chard, but it certainly was pretty. and the herbs were indestructible – especially the thyme. i loved growing peas because they grew up along the chopstick in the planter and literally took over the railing on the deck spewing pods all over the place. we ate every single pod and licked our fingertips afterward. lastly, we followed that up with a peach tree which is known in feng shui circles as being good for personal health. see pics of our sf urban garden below:

disclaimer: our garden flourished due to a lot of love and advice from a miss NM who still, much to our chagrin, remains in sf despite all of our pleas and attempts to get her to move to la. she helped us pick out the peach tree in sonoma and helped us plant it and prune it and keep it pest-free. she also recommended growing certain veggies together…but now, of course, i can’t remember what that sage advice was. she also gave me an aloe plant that refuses to stay restrained by the tiny studio apartment of a pot that contains it. she also gave me an orchid, my first, (for my birthday) that i kept blooming twice a year for almost 3 years. it liked la ok but it *loved* sf.