The Tiny Garden

I spent Wednesday morning helping my Dad put in a garden in my yard. We always had some kind of vegetable when I was growing up, and I like to think that my biology degree makes me an okay gardener in theory.

I don't know what kind of flower this is, but it's in all of our window boxes.

There is still time to plant some stuff of your own (there is always time to plant stuff!) so I’m going to try to convince you of that today.

"I don't own have enough space."

As you can see, we don’t have much space, and there are still at least 6 different types of plants growing in there. Also, take it from me: one row of green beans will still be more than you know what to do with. If you don’t have a yard or physical ground space, you can grow a lot of things in windowsill pots. Beyond your usual herbs, tomatoes work really well indoors and I’ve had windowsill kale in the past.

The postage stamp.

“I don’t know where to start.”

Neither did Neolithic man, but they seemed to figure it out. The great thing is that the seed packets you can pick up from your local Walmart or garden store or hardware store all have directions on the back of when to plant them (although if you’re doing it indoors this is less strict), as well as how deep and far apart to put the seeds. A lot of gardening is waiting and hoping, and it’s like that if you’ve done it for five minutes or fifty years. Tomatoes again are really easy to grow, as are beans. If you want to try herbs, rosemary is pretty hardy. Also mint. Mint will colonize your whole yard if you let it.

Some more pretty but unidentified flowers.

“I bet it costs a lot.”

The packs of seeds will run you a dollar or two, but then you’ll have more produce than you can handle. I spend a dollar or two per week minimum on tomatoes, but in a few weeks I’ll have a bunch ready to come inside. Like anything, you can spend as much as you want. For the bare minimums, you’ll need a shovel and a willingness to get dirty. You don’t need pesticides or other chemicals.

New tomatoes!

“I don’t have time.”

Again, it will take as much as you want to give. The big drain on time is the few hours you’ll spend putting it in. After that, if you can weed it sometimes, that’s great, but we often forget and don’t. Remember to water it though if you live somewhere dry. It doesn’t take much. You could spend as much time as you wanted pulling weeds and coddling each tiny plant, or you could spend less time and still get some perfectly adequate results.

The best food I’ve ever eaten came from the yard. It tastes better and you know where it came from. So no excuses. Go give it a try.