Creating a Garden

 It's the age of a pandemic and everyone seems to want to bake bread and garden. I find this to be MARVELOUS. Honestly, I love seeing the community find its roots again - literally. Even though I own no land to speak of, I too have joined in this craze. 

My apartment vegetable and herb garden

As you know, in the past year I made the giant decision to leave my job in San Francisco and transplant myself to Miami to be with my fiancé. We have a beautiful apartment in the financial center of Brickell, which overlooks Brickell Bay. None of this is because of my financial input - I am currently unemployed (but unintentionally secretly self-employed as an Artist - see my artwork in the "Megan's Art Portfolio" tab in the upper left-hand corner). Anyway, we have this huge balcony that soaks up all the sun and sea water. I don't know if you know this, but Southern Florida has its own climate, completely different than the rest of the United States, and similar to the Caribbean. Our seasons are backwards. While the rest of the country is harvesting now, I am beginning to plant. 

The time on my hands plus my nurturing spirit led me down this gardening path. Being raised in the suburbs of Michigan meant having a garden to tend to. My grandpa always had the most impressive garden with veggies as big as your head. It was probably all that fertilizer. And his food tasted SO GOOD because he used his homegrown preserves. I remember walking into my grandparents' basement and a single yellow light lit up the dingy room, revealing a library full of preserves. There were tomatoes, berries, hot mix, peppers, and many other mysterious jars, all sitting on shelves, looking ancient and delicious. I admire my grandfather very much. He's also a skilled hunter and used to trap animals for money. His parents weren't around and he had to raise himself. He survived by hunting his own meat and growing his own vegetables before he was hired at GM proving grounds. He raised a huge family and hunted and cooked to feed them all. To this day he shares with me his recipes and we talk about our love for gardening. 

I decided to start my balcony garden with tomatoes because they are fast-growing and resilient. What I did to begin was buy grocery store tomatoes...although my grandpa suggested buying seeds from better-tasting tomatoes...sigh, I just need to see if this will work at all. I cut up the tomato and ate it with salad, but I took out some seeds first. The seeds have a gelatinous layer surrounding them - keep that, don't try to dry them. I put them on a wet napkin and put that in a plastic bag. I taped the plastic bag to the window of my balcony so the seeds could get sunlight. 

The seeds started to sprout after a few days and then they formed two little green leaves. This was a sign to move them to soil! Otherwise they will start getting moldy. 

I wasn't fancy with this procedure at all. I did buy some potting soil. I collected rocks from outside my apartment building while I was on a walk with Miro, my cat. I had styrofoam containers from a shipped wine purchase (thank you Malissa for the engagement present). I cut holes in the bottom, placed some rocks at the bottom, and then filled with potting soil. I created finger sized divets in the soil and placed the seeds in them. I planted one or two per well. The leaves were left outside the soil to soak up the sunlight. Cute little babes. 

After a short while, the tomatoes grew bigger. They gained wonderful leaves. I had to make sure the styrofoam wasn't falling over during every tropical storm. I'd take them inside during the storms, but quickly move them back outside once the wind died down. I wanted these tomatoes to get maximum sunlight and heat. 

Now that my little ones were graduating and about as tall as the containers they were in, I had to transplant them. I went to Home Depot, bought a poop-ton of potting soil, and two giant paint buckets (5 gallons each, ~$4 each). I can only put one plant per bucket because tomatoes need a lot of soil and they need a deep place to grow. My mom told me two get 2 ft tall buckets....but I couldn't find any. I got home, transplanted two plants, transplanted one to a smaller container I purchased, and went to change my cat's litter. I emptied the cat litter bucket and thought, dang, I have to throw this giant bucket away somewhere, which means I have to go downstairs to the lobby, go to the garbage area, and.....WAIT, this is about the size of the buckets I just PURCHASED. Granted, the Tidy Cats bucket is bright-ass yellow and ugly as all getout, but it works. I filled that bucket with my last remaining soil and transplanted another tomato plant. I am pretty dang happy. I should also say I drilled holes in the bottoms of these buckets to allow for drainage. Additionally, I added Organic fertilizer soil to the tops. Gotta follow in my grand-daddy's footsteps. 

So far, they are doing well on the Miami balcony...one might even say "thriving". I also planted green onion I previously purchased and ate. You have to cut the base with the roots off and then stick those roots in a jar of water for a week or so until they sprout green again. Then plant them in a pot with soil. I placed some of those outside and inside, but they seemed to like the inside temperature better, so I moved all of those to indoors. I have a basil plant (thank you Nicole for giving me part of yours) that also does very well indoors. 

Green onion sprouts

Fun things, not for eating

My big ol' basil plant/tree

Update on the tomatoes: THEY GREW

I know, I can't believe it either, but here they are:

 I did a little experimenting. I left some inside the apartment which sits at a cozy 75 degrees Fahrenheit, right by the glass balcony door that gets a lot of sun. I left the other plants outside on the balcony. The ones outside did so much worse, being blown over by heavy winds and going through temperature shifts. None of these produced fruit. The ones featured above were grown inside. The stems were super lanky, and I had to use our wire shoe rack to let it climb up. The plants grown inside all produced fruit, albeit small fruit, but food nonetheless. We gave one a taste test, and I'm not gonna lie....subpar in flavor. That's probably because I grew the seeds from subpar flavored roma tomatoes. Grandpa didn't lie. I would recommend trying this out with seeds bought from the store, but it was rather fun to make food from food!

So it seems I may have a green thumb up on the 36th floor after all. 

Happy Gardening y'all!