Matthew Coolidge
Photo from flickr by snowmentality
Today Inhabitat has an article called A Starter Guide to Urban Gardening. One of the things they discuss is the beauty of container gardening, and the variety of things you can grow in portable containers or window boxes.
I can actually attest to the idea of growing vegetables and herbs in window boxes. I lined my screened porch with a few window boxes actually inside the screen. This proved great for growing herbs. In fact, this year, I hope to add more boxes. I even grew peppers and cucumbers this way. The cucumbers actually grew a vine UP my screen as opposed to along the container. This actually looked quite beautiful as the vine produced pretty flowers that ran up the screen.
The downside to having the boxes inside the screened porch is that it confused the heck out of the bees, and any plants that require pollination to produce fruit, well… get your Q-tips out.
What tips do you have for urban gardening? What’s worked for you, and what lessons have you learned?
Greater City Providence
I have always grown food in the city, either in my back yard or in one of the great community gardens scattered around Providence. Some Providence neighborhoods have incredibly rich soil.
Urban dwellers can do much of what rural people can do–grow flowers and veggies and fruit and have bees and chickens, just on a smaller scale.
Slightly related, Gardeners Supply Warehouse is trying to count a million food producing gardens in the US this year. To register your garden:
http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-Gardeners-Site/default/Service-GrowWhatYouEat?SC=MNA7015B&utm_campaign=grow&utm_source=direct&utm_content=solo&utm_medium=email
What a timely post! Not quite two weeks ago, I spent a whole Saturday building my first ever city garden here on Broadway. Unfortunately it involved ripping out dead tree roots 8 inches around, and lots and lots of garbage fragments too, with a dinky hatchet and shovel. It seems like it was worth it though, at least right now. I have Broccoli and Peas in the ground, we’ll see how things actually grow.