Project: Townhouse Garden

I’ve recently become a gardener. I know very little about gardening, only what I have experienced BUT nonetheless I love it. As I mentioned in Operation Urban Garden, I’ve been wanting to find a way to continue our gardening in the city.Thanks to Pinterest I’ve been able to create a few creative, colourful planters to our dingy back yard – see Project Planters. But the real issue has been the coveted vegetable garden! My barely-there yard does not have the capactity to hold a traditional vegetable garden. People have been living in apartments with balconies, or condos with non-existant yards and still managed to find some way to grow their own veggies. So I figured, if they can do it so can I! I’ve had to summon my creative energy and do a little old fashioned shovelling but it has paid off!

With permission from the property manager, I was able to dig up some ground behind my designated, so-called, yard. It isn’t much space but it is something.

There has never been a garden here before. From my minimal knowledge and after a quick browse online here is how our Townhouse Garden has come to be:

Step 1 – Make Space

This step was probably the most physically strenuous and there are ways that others, if unable or unwilling to put in the sweat, can still get it done. A lot of places rent rotor-tillers fairly cheap however I like getting my hands (and feet!) dirty. So it was just me and my shovel for the evening.

Step 2: Soil Prep
Again, I’m not expert at this stuff, but I do know that the ground needs to be fertile. A quick trip to Home Depot (only because I have a gift card thanks to boyfriend) and I had a large bag of soil that said it was ideal for vegetable gardens. So I did a little mixing between my dirt and the bagged dirt and that was that – easy peasy.

That’s my Sophie checking things out!

Step 3: Plant!
Now picking your vegetables is an entire post of it’s own. It depends on your preference, space, soil type, sun, temperature, etc, etc. To be honest, I have never looked into the details, I plant what I want and it generally works out. I do understand the basics, living in Southwestern Ontario I know I won’t be able to grow an orange tree but peppers don’t do too bad. As we have a limited amount of space I couldn’t plant what I would have liked to but I’m happy with what we’ve got. 3 peppers, 3 tomatoes, and one broccoli. And a few little flowers that my brother swears will keep the bugs away from my broccoli!

This is what it looked like the first night we planted

And this is our little pepper plant we are attempting to rescue. He was “accidentally” ripped from the planter by my son. We have named him Pepe and have given him his very own spray painted coffee can home. Our fingers are crossed for him!

We had quite a hot & dry spell right after we planted our little garden and our veggies were looking glum. But recently things have been a little wetter and the veggies are thriving! Because this little garden patch is not technically in our yard and is right out in the open along a walkway between blocks of townhouses, I was concerned about what neighbours and radom passers by might do to our little garden -some people can be cruel- but so far so good! Now we sit and wait -and pick weeds and water- The hardest part is over & all in all it really wasn’t that much work. As I like to say:
if I can do it you can too 🙂

Whatever becomes of our little veggie plot, whatever the harvest brings us, I am proud to be able to say that we did it!

1 row of pepper, 1 row of toms, 1 broccoli, 2 coffee tins with plants, 1 coffee tin with daisy’s.
Fencing came for $1.25/piece from the neighbourhood Dollarama