Gardening

I am not a farm girl. I have never really had to work the land or grow my own food. Working outside in the sun and the dirt has never been something that appealed to me. But recently I have discovered the amazingness of watching something grow in a garden.

I'm sure you may be wondering how you grow stuff in a garden when you live in a second floor condo. Well, we received an upside-down patio garden as a wedding gift and planted a few things. We weren't really sure what to expect, but we decided we would just be thrilled if everything survived, we weren't expecting a whole lot to be produced.

We have been amazed by the output from this tiny little plastic tower. We were able to put in one banana pepper plant, one basil plant, one parsley plant, and three tomato plants. So far we have gotten a dozen tomatoes off the three plants, with at least a dozen more still on the vine yet to be ripe. We have gotten more banana peppers than we can count! There are at least a dozen in the fridge and two dozen more on the plant at this moment. The parsley is all over the place, I'll never use it all. And my basil plant has turned into a TREE! We've had to cut off at least half of it and just throw it out because it was choking out everything else. 

I had a small thyme plant but it was kind of sickly looking from the very beginning and the parsley and basil exploded so fast that it couldn't get any sun and it died. Oh well, maybe next time!

In addition to sitting back and watching everything grow, I've actually enjoyed the work of maintaining the garden. Jeff does the watering when it doesn't rain and will spray for bugs if we need it, but I go through and pick off the dead or eaten leaves. And it's actually really rewarding. 

I want to have a few more things when I have some more room. I still want some thyme (I'll just know not to put it too close to the basil or the parsley!) and I would love a rosemary bush, but that would definitely have to go in the ground and not into a pot!