Why I Gave Up Urban Gardening

How EcoYogini gave up on being an Urban Gardener...

I have always wanted to have a garden. Growing my own vegetables? It's like the EPITOME of being green. I am not only controlling the chemical burden of my food from the soil and compost to the seeds purchased, but it is local and self-sufficient to the extreme.

 Unfortunately we live in an apartment, which makes gardening a little trickier. However, initially I did not think this would be impossible. Until last summer.

My journey as an urban garden goes something like this:

  (Our peas pre-wasp nest)

(our first balcony garden, while everything was still alive and sans bugs)

Our first apartment had a balcony. I was determined to grow easy vegetables and berries in containers. We bought compostable containers, organic local soil, organic earth worm castings (poo) for fertilizer and organic seeds from a PEI company.

We started them inside, I ouu'd and ahh'd over our little seedlings and almost peed my pants every single time I could pick one miniature carrot, lettuce leaves or tiny strawberry.

Mid-way through the summer it was obvious that my garden was cursed. We had wasps take up nesting in the peas, the carrots decided they were going to stay smurf sized and the lettuce became the home to hundreds of weird little transparent bugs.

(The parking lot from our living room window)

The following summer we moved to our current apartment. That doesn't have a balcony. It was a concession because I loved the place so much. It does have a tiny green space in front of the living room window, but it leads directly to the parking lot. I don't especially want to eat food that has had layers of car exhaust. So that option was out.

(I feel nauseous just looking at this picture)

Last summer we decided we would have a rooftop garden. Our fire escape leads directly to a flat roof, so we bought a locally milled from forest stewardship certified wood planter box. We bought some pretty flowers and peppers. I was pumped- the perfect location!

(Our rooftop garden when we first planted it.)

Except it quickly became obvious that walking up and down the fire escape past our neighbours bedrooms would be awkward. The girl who used to live on the top floor walked around her apartment naked. And she hadn't bought curtains yet. Also, technically we weren't really ALLOWED up on the roof and our landlord's husband liked to sit out and pretend to be the parking lot police. AND who knew that carrying a watering can up three flights of precariously thin and rickety stairs when you're afraid of heights isn't fun?

The result? They all died and in October Andrew had to bring the whole thing down- I was too much of a chicken to do it.

(The light in our apartment at 2pm today- it's full sun and 36 degrees celsius outside, but it still looks like a dark cave in here)

I then decided perhaps we could at least grow herbs in our apartment. Unfortunately, as you can see from this picture- although we have huge windows our apartment is kinda like a cave when it comes to light. We barely get any. Atreyu and Asteya, our hungry cats, love snacking on leaves- so most of our plants are barely holding on.

Since the waitlist for city urban gardening plots are months (to a year) long, that was also out of the question.

So. I have had to accept that my amazing gardening skills will have to wait until we have our own house with a small cute plot. Then I will be an amazing uber gardener.