Becoming an “urban gardener”

 With more cocozelle coming out of my garden than I can eat, my first eggplant and bellpepper harvested, and impending tomatoes…I am starting to feel like an urban gardener. Seriously, though, what was I thinking all these years, going without a garden? Too much trouble, too much work, not enough time, and not enough knowledge. Vegetables have always been things that other people grew. The whole process seemed mysterious, arcane, and not just a little bit boring.

But if a complete novice like me can do this, anyone can. The wealth of information that’s out there is amazing. One of my tomato plants has leaf curl (no, not the roma!!! nooooo!). I googled “tomato leaf curl” and found encyclopedic information that allowed me to assess and diagnose the problem in under 15 minutes.

I stumbled across a great website the other day (while trying to figure out when to harvest my eggplant)…check it out:  

http://www.sacgardens.org/index.html

My garden started off in a little 8×8 plot, but I’ve had to pull up the fencing and let the garden spread out.  I’m okay with this–my lawn sucks anyway and I’d like to get rid of all of it.

Not to be all melodramatic here, but this experience is incredible. It’s such a simple act, growing vegetables. And I didn’t do it as a political statement, but in fact it is, and I’m starting to realize how much I have missed out on by not simply sticking a couple of seeds in a little bit of dirt.

It’s mediation, exercise, self-sufficiency, cost savings, and a sense of accomplishment that doesn’t suck–all rolled into one.