As I've mentioned before, I'm certainly no gardening expert. My history speaks more to a brown than a green thumb, and this blog is to chronicle my journey in an gardening attempt more than gardening per se. So, I was really happy to have been invited to attend my local garden club's montly meeting by a friend.
The speaker was Beth Botts. Ms. Botts is a gardening writer and consultant. She's written for the Chicago Tribune on staff and freelance, and for various gardening publications. She also has her own blog which you can find here.
Ms. Botts spoke about urban and suburban patio gardening. She began the program discussing the recent change in gardening, a boom in vegetable gardens and smaller gardens. More people with less space are gardening and these people are growing more food than decorative plants because they want control over their own food. There are also people who have had larger in-ground gardens, but have downsized from homes with a lot of land to smaller homes, townshouses or condominiums, and want to keep gardening.
Then, she described her own setup on her balcony in a 4-story apartment in a suburb similar to my own. She talked about choosing the right containers and other equipment. As I learned last year the hard way, she advised the group to never attempt to grow a tomato plant in smaller than a 5 gallon container and do not use wimpy tomato cages. Mine's wimpy, so I had better go out and get another one I suppose.
She also talked about choosing the right plants. She described the difference between determinate and indeterminate tomato plants. Indeterminate plants are the species that will grow large and sprall, what we generally think of when we think of tomato plants. Determinates are species of tomatoes that remain similar to a bush in that they don't sprall too far from the pot. The variety I planted in my 5 gallon container is the patio tomato, a determinate. They've always seemed a bit boring to me, less able to develop the sugars that can make tomatoes so tastey and without the interesting shapes and colors, so I was happy to hear that smaller versions of heirlooms are on the way.
One idea that I particularly liked was to grow "microgreens". Choose "greens" seedlings meaning plants that you would eat the greens of such as lettuce, spinach or broccholi to grow only to seedlings. You harvest the leaves of the seedlings when they are young and use them in salads and as herbs. You get the flavor, but you don't have to grow the entire plant. You have to be careful not to choose plants the greens of which are inedible such as tomatoes
She had more terrific ideas including how to make your own earthbox. The earthbox, and there are other brands as well, is sometimes called a self-watering planter, but Ms. Botts reminded that this doesn't mean no watering. It's simply a system to provide an available reservoir of water, an overflow drainage valve and a means to bring water from the reservoir to the plant (a sort-of wick). Ms. Botts uses a large planter, a plastic milk bottle cut in half the long way, mesh to sit between the reservoir and the soil, and an old stocking (for the wick), and some PVC pipe.
I'll write more about the garden club in the next few days. I learned a lot from Ms. Betts and others I spoke to after her discussion. It was a great event, and even if you are just growing microgreens or sprouts on a window sill, it's worth attending your local garden club meetings.
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