It’s still warm and balmy outside, but we can tell summer is coming to an end. Our mornings (once sticky and warm) are (almost) brisk. The breezes we’ve missed all summer are suddenly here. The fireflies seem to have disappeared (where do they go in the winter?). And, of course, there’s dusk – which seems to arrive suddenly and (in my opinion) inconveniently ahead of schedule.
With Autumn tapping at our shoulders and asking if she can “cut in and have this dance” – I realize it’s time to say good-bye to our tiny, lovely garden.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, gardening has never been a strong suit of mine. So “planning a garden” is something I do with (a bit of) dread and (a fair amount of) pessimism. However, I wanted the girls to have a place to water & weed, gather & nibble during the long, hot days of summer, so I decided to give my not-so-green thumb another try. My decision to try square foot gardening (SFG) was pretty simple. First of all, it sounded easy. Second of all, our back patio is solid concrete and I didn’t have any other (sunny-enough) options. If we wanted a garden, we would need to find some sun, build the beds and bring in our own dirt…which is, essentially, the recipe for SFG.
As a little tribute to our hard-working raised bed, I thought I’d take you on a tour of our ever-so humble “garden.”
All in all, we were able to plant carrots, squash, (lots of) tomatoes, snow peas, (lots of) beans, beets, swiss chard, (lots of) lettuce and broccoli. Not bad for an 8’ x 2’ garden. Perhaps now that you’re living a big-city, European-style, apartment-bound life, you might want to give SFG a try next spring?
{On a similar note, I just picked up Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I’ve been meaning to read it for a while now. I hope it might inspire and challenge me to examine the way we eat “out of season.”}
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