Apartment Gardening: Plants, Projects, and Recipes for Growing Food in Your Urban Home PDF
Preview Apartment Gardening: Plants, Projects, and Recipes for Growing Food in Your Urban Home
Table of Contents Title Page Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1 - Before You Begin: The Basics Chapter 2 - Getting Grounded: Pots, Containers, Soil & Supplies Pots and Containers Soil Supplies Chapter 3 - What to Grow, For Real Fruits and Vegetables Herbs Flowers Honeybees Chapter 4 - Seeds, Seed Starting & Propagation Seeds Chapter 5 - Feeding & Watering Plants Nitrogen (N) Phosphorous (P) Potassium (K) Microorganisms—The Good Bacteria Home Composting Watering Schedule Chapter 6 - Recipes from the Garden To Start Sides Main Dishes Sweets Little Extras Chapter 7 - Do-It-Yourself Garden HERBAL APOTHECARY HERBAL PANTRY LOOK AND FEEL MAKE AND BUILD Chapter 8 - Garden Lite Microgreens Sprouts The Wild Garden: Foraged Food for the Urbanite Resources Index About the Author Copyright Page Acknowledgments I would like to thank my daddio, Seth Dorian Pennington, Jr., for having an insatiable verve for living off the land, so much so that in retirement he moved himself, his lady, and a herd of goats out to the countryside of Pennsylvania and nestled them all against the banks of a mountain-fed stream. Thank you to the team at Sasquatch Books who kept our garden conversation alive and well over many growing seasons—Gary Luke and Susan Roxborough. To Michelle Hope Anderson for her patience and help, and especially to Whitney Ricketts for yelling at me over a martini to “Write the damn book, already!” Super big fat thank-you to the awesome design team that put their hot little hands on this book—designer Jessika Merrill and illustrator Kate Bingaman- Burt. I owe a huge, huge thank-you to Patric Gabre-Kidan, one of my very best friends and an overall Mr. Fix-It who has been the most incredible teacher over the years. He has single-handedly taught me how to change a tire, hold a chef’s knife properly, and build my own vegetable planter box. He is my superhero. Thank you to John Chaffetz, who started out as a garden client, and grew into an extraordinary friend and collaborator. Brainstorms, laughter, and good food are never in short supply when he is around. Big thanks and some serious neighborly love to my fellow apartment dwellers: Katie Okumura, who always offers to water my plants when I’m gone, and Frank Martin, who always lets me squeeze a few extra things into his fridge when mine is (more often than not) overflowing with food. And thanks to Jacci and Ann-Marie with whom I trade flowers and food with often. Viva La Tara! Farm thanks to Luke Woodward and Sarah Cassidy, who run Oxbow Farm. They taught me, early on, how to sow seed and time my plantings. They are brilliant, and I love them. I have so much gratitude for Lucio and Marta Dalla Gasparina, who had the excellent idea that I should grow their Nonna’s Italian tomatoes in their yard for them. They didn’t know they were creating a monster and lighting a spark in my life, and for that I am eternally grateful. Double special thanks to Lynda Oosterhuis for always sharing her cooking secrets. She is one of the most amazing cooks I know. As always, thank you to my family: Mom, Stacy, Seth, Gram, and the gaggle of nieces and nephews who crack me up daily. Love and thanks to my BK family: David, Carol, Dan, and Lil. And finally, thank you to anyone reading these thank-yous! Your interest in and support of all things urban farm and garden are utterly inspiring. Keep growing! Introduction I am an urban gardener. Some may think of me as an urban farmer, depending on how you differentiate between a farm and a garden. I grow food for people in their city backyards, front yards, side yards, you name it: any patch of land in which I can persuade food to grow. And by food, I mean greens, roots, fruits, herbs, flowers, and more. My hope is to inspire people to eat a broader range of food and flavors than they are used to. I also want to evoke a sort of small-scale self-sufficiency in the daily lives of urbanites. People are sometimes inspired by what I do, but I’m not especially gifted in any way. I’ve killed damn near every houseplant I’ve ever owned, so I wouldn’t say I was born with a green thumb. And I don’t have a lengthy résumé in agriculture or horticulture. I am no expert at identifying plants, and I certainly don’t ever remember the Latin names. Really, I just like food. A lot. So I want to have a steady supply of fresh and delicious produce as often as possible. I am motivated by my hunger, and so I grow food. The ironic thing about my story is that, at present, I do not actually have a garden of my own. I live in a small apartment in Seattle with no access to a backyard, a lawn, or even green space. And though I often dream of tearing up my assigned parking spot and building a raised vegetable bed in its place, I don’t think my landlord would appreciate the effort. So like most city people in search of greener pastures, I make do with what I have: in my case, an east-facing deck that gets the first rays of morning sun. Over time, I have overcrowded this tiny 75-square-foot space with pots, containers, hanging baskets, window boxes, and more. (I also use my dining room table as a greenhouse in the winter, which means inviting plants to further encroach on what little personal space I have.) I originally started with flowers and killed a good number of them. I now know that I wasn’t watering efficiently, or the pots were too small, but at the time I just chalked it up to a big experiment. My relationship with plants changed when I was asked to build and plant an organic vegetable garden for a food-loving Seattle couple. They hoped to grow the same tomatoes their Nonna grew in Italy. While I had little firsthand knowledge on how best to do this, I thought it sounded like an awesome challenge, so I dug in. Putting my hands in the dirt for the first time and sowing seeds was immediately very natural for me. I remember looking up at my friend
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