I’ve never really thought that I had much of a green thumb. We did have gardens for a large part of my childhood, and I managed to water the indoor plants as part of my Saturday morning chores without serious incident… but since growing up I’ve frankly been thrilled that I haven’t killed the 2 (arguably low maintenance) plants that are currently in my care.
It was Paddy who decided that our lovely Toronto deck was just begging for a vegetable garden. The idea of growing some of our food seemed like a wonderful idea, just a little unexpected. As a long-time apartment dweller, it was something that never even occurred to me – growing gardens was for people had yards. But, why not us? Our deck has more than enough room for a few planters, and I would just love to see the lattice crawling with vines. Vines that provided us with veggies would just be a bonus. All around, it seemed like a fun adventure, so we headed up to Walmart and loaded our cart full of seeds, plant food and soil.
For our first attempt at being gardeners, we grabbed just a few of our favourites. We have peas, beans, cherry tomatoes, honey tomatoes, strawberries and a healthy selection of herbs. I really can’t wait to eat peas fresh off the vine, and I’m secretly hoping that the crop of beans will be so massive that I can expand my domestic goddess skills to canning (spicy pickled beans are an addiction of mine.) I don’t need to tell you how excited I am that we might actually get some strawberries too! Until the weather is nice enough to allow green things to grow outside, we have all our seedlings nestled comfortably on top of our fridge, where they are nice and close to a florescent light.
In addition to growing vegetables and practical things, I (of course) wanted something a little more fun too. I’ve been ogling the lovely glass terrariums that Indigo is selling this season, but since I can’t afford their prices (even with my staff discount), I came up with a DIY version that should work just as nicely – empty pop bottles! In these I planted some sweet pea seeds. Hopefully I’ll have a window full of vines come summertime – the first sprouts are encouraging!
Missing 7 uncaptioned photos