The Green Room
Today is my first official day of the six-month high-raw mostly-vegan adventure! And I’m especially excited because soon I will have home-grown greens to incorporate on a regular basis to my raw vegan diet.
I’ve talked about the urban organic indoor community garden that I’m a part of here and here, so I’m happy to give you all an update of where we’re at.
We had some troubles with the landlord and also with the watering schedule at our previous location, so I hadn’t been able to go to our garden in a couple months. It was saddening. However, the good news is that we were able to move the garden! We moved it just a couple blocks so it’s still right around the corner from my condo. The garden’s new home is actually in the home of one of the gardener’s, K, so it’s awesome having a nice, friendly landlord 🙂
We had to start the garden over from scratch because of the move. But that’s okay, because we have the fantastic Urban Eatin’ Gardeners’ Co-Op to help us out. The move happened a few weeks ago, and we had to section off a small area of K’s home especially for the garden.
We try to envision what this space will look like with a garden in it.
Empty trays... but soon they'll be filled!
I convinced Westwood to come and see the new garden. She wound up doing most of the work while I took photos. Tehe. Sorry, Westwood. I'll repay you in home-grown greens!
Then, a week after we set the garden up, it was time to plant! We planted all kinds of things: an 11×11 tray of cilantro, 11×11 tray of arugula, 11×22 tray of greens mix, 14 cells of sweet basil, 14 cells of purple basil, 4 cells of peas, 14 cells of tat soi, 7 cells of kale, 14 cells of butterhead and 14 cells of red lollos of lettuce. The latter two are to experiment with growing whole heads of lettuce, but our main focus is more on the baby greens. I’m not keen on cilantro, myself, but the rest of it is all tasty goodness as far as I’m concerned.
All of our trays with dirt and seeds. Naturally we labelled everything so that we can tell it all apart as it starts to grow.
Only one week after we planted, this is what the trays look like:
Look at all that GREEN! After only one week!!
It’s all so exciting! I’m looking forward to our first harvest. It’s great to see everything growing so well so far. We’re meeting once a week at this point to check up on the garden and to make plans for its future. Our gardening group has really dwindled from where it began: now it’s just me, K, KT, and M (and M’s from Urban Eatin’). But in some ways that’s actually easier, because we can all get in touch and make faster decisions when the group is smaller and when we’re all dedicated.
K came up with our garden’s name: the Green Room. I love it. It’s perfect for our little garden.
Do you garden? How do you combine your enjoyment of gardening (or of local greens) with living in a city? Do you grow much in your home?
The winner of the Tropical Traditions moisturizing lotion is… Sarah! Congratulations! Email me your mailing address and I’ll make sure you get your winnings.
I think this is wonderful!!! I am so NOT green thumb! I can kill a cactus so I just enjoy others being able to do this!
Hehe! I have one plant at home, a bamboo, and the boyfriend looks after it. I don’t touch it. So I find it kind of funny that I’m now involved in a garden project, since my bamboo was in a dire situation before the boyfriend came along.
Love your Green Room, and wish you much success with your gardening efforts.
Perhaps you’d like to take some time this spring to come and help me plant MY garden…. 🙂
Okay! Hehe. One day, Bag Lady, I will arrive on your doorstep 😀
This reminds me that I’ve been thinking of growing herbs at our place, but the thought itself is kind of daunting. And add the fact that I don’t really possess a green thumb makes it more terrifying. But hopefully, I’ll get around to it, especially since it will be more cost efficient to grow our own herbs.
For sure! Growing herbs isn’t too difficult even if you don’t have a green thumb. I’m looking forward to when our herbs are big enough to cook with.
OMG OMG I’m famous!
p.s. I definitely want some home-grown greens in exchange for me offloading extra tomatoes, peas, beans, etc. in your direction this summer.
Done and done!
And yes, famous indeed 😉