Tag: Garden

I love plants. I love looking at them, I love smelling them, I love touching them, I love watching bugs crawl and land on their leaves. Proof: see my Instagram #yourdailytree.

I’ve never actually grown an edible garden. I have lots of succulents (because my cat won’t eat them), I’ve grown a herb or two, a tomato bush magically appeared in our yard one day (my husband said it was from cat poop?), but I’ve never purposefully grown a veggie garden.

Now that I live in the biggest metropolitan area in the world and have very little outdoor space to call my own, I want a garden more than ever. And because food labeling here is both difficult for me to read and truthfully, a bit sketchy, I want to grow my own veggies and make my own food with it. I should also mention that I’m vegan so growing edible plants seems like something I should know how to do.

As you can see, my balcony is taken up by a little table because I really wanted somewhere to sit in the morning and the evenings. If you have a little imagination and few hours to spare to scroll through Instagram or Pinterest, then you can see that it has potential as a plant growing happy place.

It seems simple enough to grow veggies and fruit. Buy some seeds, stick em the dirt, give them some water and sunlight, and boom, instant-carrot. Not so much. The type of soil you are using is important – ingredients, PH, not too mention whether or not it has any chemicals in it. Then there’s the zone you are living in that’s appropriate for certain plants to grow. And the direction in which your garden lays in relation to the sun matters because some plants need full sun, partial, sun, lots of shade etc. Oh, and some plants don’t do well living together. Not to mention having a really small space makes everything that much more complicated…cucumbers, beans, tomatoes can be grown vertically but take up lots of space. Oh, and you need to fertilize and you can do that with your own homegrown compost, but there are lots of ways to compost (I’m thinking Banana Peel Tea because we eat a million bananas per day) and there is something called humus not to be confused with hummus…

Phew!

After reading about permaculture and watching lots of videos on balcony gardens I decided to take a step back and ask myself the first most important question: what do I want to grow that I will actually eat! I thought about what fruits and veggies we buy at the grocery store and farmers market and made a list:

Avocados
Apples
Bananas
Basil
Broccoli
Carrots
Cauliflower
Chives
Cucumber
Edamame
Ginger
Green Onion
Mushrooms
Onion
Oranges
Peppers
Tomato

And here’s the list of things that would be cool to grow because I’m in Japan:
Rice
Tea

Now that I have my list, I need to research the following:
1. Will they grow in containers
2. How many hours of full sun does my balcony get each day
3. Which of these plants will grow in zone 10a
4. What type of soil do they need
5. When do the seeds need to be planted
6. What do I do about bugs

You may think, gosh, I’m sure there’s an app for that! I have tried many many apps and they all suck. I think I’m going to stick with a simple spreadsheet to go along with my simple list of veggies. If you can recommend an easy to use app then by all means, please share!

The other thing I’m thinking about is whether I want to grow from seeds I buy in a nice little package or grow from scraps! This sounds ripe for an A/B experiment!

My son and I started growing avocados. Unfortunately, all of the literature I read said it’s very unlikely we will ever see an actual fruit. 🙁 That’s OK because I think tomatoes will be a snap.

Last but not least, I bought some adorable kits here in Tokyo but they are pretty expensive so it doesn’t seem like the best way to grow a garden. I do love my little kitty strawberry grower though!

Stay tuned for part 2 where I’ll cover all the stuff I’ve learned and my progress.