(from last weekend, while the internet was out)
I've spent most of this weekend at home, theoretically studying for my final exam in honors chemistry. E has been out with friends most of the time, and I sent our internet router with him--so I would have no distractions.
But there have been books! And people to call, and vegetables to plant.
I bought big containers at Goodwill, partly because we are still kind of poor and therefore cheap, but also partly because I am afraid of all the stuff piling up in the world when people always buy everything new. I also bought a zucchini plant and eight baby lettuce seedlings from a local nursery, not even the garden section of a grocery or hardware store. At the nursery, I asked about fertilizers, and they sold me a box of something organic with fishmeal and bird parts.
I believe in planting your own vegetables because it seems like a waste to ship tomatoes hundreds of miles when they're easy enough to grow on your patio--but I'm also beginning to believe more in the economies of scale.
First of all, is it really worth it to ship soil in small batches, wrapped up in bright plastic? How much energy does it take to get the potting soil mixture to me, so I can feel good about not shipping my tomatoes from California? And the fertilizers--isn't it more efficient to let someone else use some highly soluble superphosphate fertilizer in the right amounts, than for Dr. Earth to package and market their feel-good mix of nutrients?
Second, I got a lovely book at the library called Crops in Pots, about how to grow food in containers. It believes strongly in well-drained soil, which means making sure your pots have holes in the bottom and some big pieces of material under the dirt to keep things flowing smoothly. To do this, you need either rocks, or broken-up terracotta pots, or polystyrene.
I'm not sure why all these gardening books tend to assume you have such extra things around the house; I live in an apartment, and have no old terra cotta pots to break! I looked around and considered breaking some dishes. I also considered casing the neighborhood for rocks; the decorative ones businesses sometimes use for mulch would have been perfect! But I haven't stooped so low, yet, as to steal rocks.
So instead I walked to the grocery store and bought some styrofoam cups. It was a dollar for 45 cups, which was about three times as many as I needed, but what else could I do? In Seattle, styrofoam is practically banned as an evil, evil substance; I wanted to defend myself to everyone I passed walking back, explaining that I was not going to send these cups to a landfill, but use them for draining material in my patio garden! Besides (I rationalized in my head) it takes less energy to produce and ship styrofoam than to produce and ship decorative rocks, right? Rocks being so heavy and all?
I got back to my patio and noticed that it had an irregularly shaped coating of white fuzz. For weeks now, Seattle has been lightly blanketed by white floating seeds--like someone blew on hundreds of giant dandelions--, so it might have been residue from those; it also could have been mold. I decided to be cautious and treat it like mold; I sprayed the area with bleach, cleaned it with paper towels, and threw them away.
Finally I smashed the cups and put them in the bottoms of my recycled containers, covered it with a mixture of potting soil and organic fertilizer, and planted my zucchini and lettuce. I can't wait for the zucchini to start sending out vines, or for the lettuce to grow enough for me to snip off a few leaves. But no matter how much I enjoy it, so far this rooftop gardening deal is not a win, energetically and environmentally speaking.
Goodwill, though--that I can get behind!
But there have been books! And people to call, and vegetables to plant.
I bought big containers at Goodwill, partly because we are still kind of poor and therefore cheap, but also partly because I am afraid of all the stuff piling up in the world when people always buy everything new. I also bought a zucchini plant and eight baby lettuce seedlings from a local nursery, not even the garden section of a grocery or hardware store. At the nursery, I asked about fertilizers, and they sold me a box of something organic with fishmeal and bird parts.
I believe in planting your own vegetables because it seems like a waste to ship tomatoes hundreds of miles when they're easy enough to grow on your patio--but I'm also beginning to believe more in the economies of scale.
First of all, is it really worth it to ship soil in small batches, wrapped up in bright plastic? How much energy does it take to get the potting soil mixture to me, so I can feel good about not shipping my tomatoes from California? And the fertilizers--isn't it more efficient to let someone else use some highly soluble superphosphate fertilizer in the right amounts, than for Dr. Earth to package and market their feel-good mix of nutrients?
Second, I got a lovely book at the library called Crops in Pots, about how to grow food in containers. It believes strongly in well-drained soil, which means making sure your pots have holes in the bottom and some big pieces of material under the dirt to keep things flowing smoothly. To do this, you need either rocks, or broken-up terracotta pots, or polystyrene.
I'm not sure why all these gardening books tend to assume you have such extra things around the house; I live in an apartment, and have no old terra cotta pots to break! I looked around and considered breaking some dishes. I also considered casing the neighborhood for rocks; the decorative ones businesses sometimes use for mulch would have been perfect! But I haven't stooped so low, yet, as to steal rocks.
So instead I walked to the grocery store and bought some styrofoam cups. It was a dollar for 45 cups, which was about three times as many as I needed, but what else could I do? In Seattle, styrofoam is practically banned as an evil, evil substance; I wanted to defend myself to everyone I passed walking back, explaining that I was not going to send these cups to a landfill, but use them for draining material in my patio garden! Besides (I rationalized in my head) it takes less energy to produce and ship styrofoam than to produce and ship decorative rocks, right? Rocks being so heavy and all?
I got back to my patio and noticed that it had an irregularly shaped coating of white fuzz. For weeks now, Seattle has been lightly blanketed by white floating seeds--like someone blew on hundreds of giant dandelions--, so it might have been residue from those; it also could have been mold. I decided to be cautious and treat it like mold; I sprayed the area with bleach, cleaned it with paper towels, and threw them away.
Finally I smashed the cups and put them in the bottoms of my recycled containers, covered it with a mixture of potting soil and organic fertilizer, and planted my zucchini and lettuce. I can't wait for the zucchini to start sending out vines, or for the lettuce to grow enough for me to snip off a few leaves. But no matter how much I enjoy it, so far this rooftop gardening deal is not a win, energetically and environmentally speaking.
Goodwill, though--that I can get behind!