Apartment gardening

It's spring in Vancouver and with the longer, warmer days, everything is getting lush and starting to bloom. It's this time of year that makes me miss having a plot of land - it's been too long since I last had a yard where I could get my hands good and dirty and spend summer days tending the garden. I began to look for opportunities to participate in the community gardens in our neighbourhood very soon after we moved into our new apartment - unfortunately, to no avail. Most of the community plots have very long waiting lists and the guerilla garden right behind our building is being redeveloped this summer.

Regardless, I was determined, especially with our year of less project, that we would have a garden and try to grow some of our own food. Very quickly, we discovered that there would be two challenges to this undertaking: 1. purchasing some necessary gardening supplies definitely goes against our rule of avoiding non-consumable purchases and 2. we live in a North facing apartment with a shady balcony.

While we had a few plants and pots on our deck, the first thing that we needed were containers. Brian had the brilliant idea to recycle wood from shipping pallets to make planters. He located and brought home some pallets; I was hoping that my contribution would be disassembling them, but after spending an hour trying to pry it apart with not much success, I was happy to turn the deconstruction and construction back over to him! A couple of hours down in the workshop and Brian returned with two fantastic planter boxes. Not only is he good looking and smart, he's handy too.

As for the dirt, we figured we would be able to get around purchasing a bag between the composted soil from our worms and some "local sources". I'm sure the two of us were quite the sight - Brian coming home covered in mud with a big bag of dirt after a trail run and me nonchalantly chatting up neighbours as they passed by the empty lot where I was scooping some dirt into plastic containers....

As for the North facing balcony, some library and internet research yielded that the 3-4 hours of sunlight we get would be enough to accommodate leafy greens and various herbs. Our existing basil, parsley, oregano, and cilantro are loving their new home and one week after planting some seeds, our mesclun and kale are sprouting. This mix should be good to supplement us throughout the summer; we will keep you posted as our little apartment garden grows!