Thursday, October 11, 2012

Urban Edible Gardening: A Great Source of Info

Urban gardening is not an easy task.  At least, it's not easy when you've decided on edible gardening.  All sorts of things can go wrong.

zombie root vegetables.  Ayeee!!!


That task is made even more difficult when you rent your home.  You never know if you'll be in that same house (or apartment, etc.) the following year.  You have to make decisions that a home owner wouldn't have to worry about.

Overwintering your strawberries, for example, needs to be done in a container, just in case you'll have to take them with you.  For that matter, with every perennial you buy, you have to decide whether or not it's worth the cost to keep it.  Can you place it in a container for next year?  Will you be in your home long enough to plant it in-ground?

What does the landlord allow?  Can you have a pot full of corn stalks on your porch?  Are you stuck with tiny herbs, only?  Even worse, will the person you're renting from allow anything to be planted outside, container or not?

Your not just dealing with your own limitations as an individual, but also with the limitations placed on you from an outside source.  There's nothing wrong with that, really.  Since you don't actually own the land, it only makes sense that you have to defer to someone else's decisions.

It can be a huge challenge, though.

Moving across the country after owning my own home meant that not only did I have to learn a new climate, I also had to learn how to be a renter while enjoying the freedom inherent in gardening.  There were a few blogs that helped me a great deal in this endeavor.

One of them was Farmtina.

Farmtina is a great source of knowledge, because she's done edible gardening in an urban environment, as a renter, for a while.  Martina has dealt with the challenges of gardening with a small area of earth to plant in, and with only a paved area.  She's 'been there, done that', as the saying goes.

Her posts dealing with seed saving were especially useful for me.  Remember my chives?  I learned about how easy it was to save those seeds through a Farmtina post.

Looking for fun facts?  Yeah, Martina has those, as well.  Without her, I wouldn't have learned about egg-laying roosters!  Ok, ok... maybe roosters don't lay eggs... unless, perhaps, you live in the city of Baden, and the year is 1774.

What?!  

That doesn't make any sense?  I guess you'd better go check out that small bit of wisdom, then, and figure out the real facts, right?  Ha ha!

There is one small problem with Martina's blog, however...

She hasn't posted since June!

Noooooooo!!!


She has an excuse, however... she was able to buy a home, instead of just renting!  Hooray for her!!!

I'm hoping she'll start posting to Farmtina, again soon, however.  I need my urban gardening guru, after all.  I want to hear all about her new edible gardening endeavors!

::cough, cough::
Martina, did you hear that? I'm dying for more posts!
::cough cough::

Must... have... more... posts... Ungh.....

See?  I'm dying...

Ok, ok... it's not quite that bad.  

I do really want to see more, but fortunately, Farmtina has a very nice sized archive just full of information, as well as fun facts and tons of personality.

It may have been a while since Martina posted, but don't let that stop you from visiting her... it hasn't stopped me!

Head over to Farmtina, go through her archives, and see what's got me so excited!

I swear it's worth it!

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