Grow little garden grow

This past March my boyfriend suffered a serious head injury doing what he loves best: surfing. Thankfully he had amazing doctors and his recovery has been more than excellent. I seriously thank my lucky stars everyday that he is still here with me.

While his beloved sport is now crossed off his list of what he can do (at least for a year anyway), he has had more than enough time on his hands to find some new hobbies. One of the first ones he decided on was gardening. We only have a small cement patio in the back of our townhouse, so I was interested in how he was going to build our garden. Jon quickly bought a couple "how-to" books and got to work building a compost bin and planter boxes for an "urban" garden. An urban garden is basically a garden grown without use of grass or land. On our patio we have several large buckets, planter boxes and pots. Together with our worm compost bin we were able to start an organic garden in an urban setting.

The beginning of the garden (June)

It has been a few months since the garden was started and there has definitely been rough patches along the way. San Diego had the coldest summer this year since 1933, so that definitely did not help our strawberries, cucumbers or tomatoes. Also, since the garden is organic, no toxic pesticides are used which leaves room for all the little garden creatures (aka caterpillars) to snack on whatever they please. Let me tell you, Jon wanted to go to war with these little guys until he finally found an organic solution to remedy them. I'm happy to report we used our first batch of romaine lettuce last night to make dinner, and it was a great feeling to know where the food we were eating came from.

While the garden hasn't produced everything we hoped it would, it has been nice to see my boyfriend so happy and full of life. I have really learned a lot about gardening just from listening to his everyday observations and trials with it. The garden has definitely been therapeutic in Jon's recovery and I'm glad he has found joy in something once again.There is always next spring/summer for our little garden and we will definitely hope for warmer weather. In the meantime we'll be testing out what we can grow in winter. Wish us luck!

Tomatoes

Spinach plant

The garden now (September)

"How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence."  ~Benjamin Disraeli

"No two gardens are the same.  No two days are the same in one garden."  ~Hugh Johnson