So you love eating vegetables, fruits and
berries but you don’t own a garden in which you could plant them? Yet you still
want to know where your food comes from?
In this case, urban gardening is the answer to
your problems! Grow and raise your own food with your friends, in a community,
or by yourself. You can just sow seeds in containers on your rooftop, your
balcony, in a little lot, or in community gardens. (I know for a fact, that
there are several community gardening spots in Graz - here’s an example http://gardenlab-graz.over-blog.com/).
Here are some tips for those of you who want to become urban gardeners:
1. The size of the container is important! If
you want to plant e.g. carrots, you should use a container that is deep enough
for their roots to fully form.
2. Use fresh potting soil. That way you don’t
have to worry about any weeds and diseases.
3. You should sow the seeds twice as deep as
they are wide.
4. Water the soil before you actually start
planting the seeds. The seeds should be kept moist through the time it takes to
germinate.
5. Leave some space around each seedling
because they need enough space to grow!
6. If you want to plant cucumbers, tomatoes,
sweet pepper, or melons, you should start sowing them now indoors!
7. Keep in mind that not all plants grow well
together. Use this chart – it shows you which plants are good/bad companions:
Here’s a picture of what my balcony looked like
last year – it might seem chaotic, but it was real fun planting all of those
vegetables, fruits and flowers! I hope that I was able to encourage you to plant your own
flowers and vegetables!
3 comments:
Michael Koller said...
Hello J,
thanks for the tips. Some of them are quite useful I assume. Still, I feel the urgent need to express my view about Urban Gardening. Generally, the problem about this alternative gardening conception is that there'll never be enough space for your plants, herbs, trees or whatever if you regularly keep them in small boxes. You yourself may sooner or later find out that after some time your hobby feels quite unreal, sometimes even frustrating. On top of that, your plants won't be happy either: They usually celebrate a great start but far too soon turn their strong light-green leaves into something weak, brown and useless. Usually that's because first, they can't spread their roots anymore (insufficient space) and second, after the earth is "soaked-out" it can't replenish. In a spacious, real environment you wouldn't face such troubles. The actual problem is that people don't get enough real space for their hobby gardening; and urban gardening as showcased is definitely not the solution. No space, no fun at all, that's the problem with Urban Gardening.
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