Life got the best of me…
Yeah so things don’t always go as planned. Shortly after my last post, my mom was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer. The summer was spent taking care of her, going on unexpected ER trips, and hoping for the best. We spent almost every weekend out in the ‘burbs maintaining the house I grew up in and taking care of mom. We’re still optimistic about the future, but I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about things I really thought I wouldn’t need to think about for 20-30 years from now. Mom always seems so invincible.
Anyway, since I spent so much time out at her place this summer, my urban gardens were left basically untended. Thankfully, my fellow community gardeners are VERY understanding. I visited my plot for the first time in nearly two months last weekend and it had turned into a 6 by 10 jungle of morning glories, tomatoes who never saw the sun, renegade self-seeding sunflowers and a whole slew of weeds.
But, I do enjoy the “clean out” type of gardening. There’s something so fullfilling about ripping out a jungle and making it tidy again. Seems pretty counterproductive, or at least disprespectful of plant-life, but there it is. It’s out there. I’m a plant killer. And I like it. (Not enough to spay chemicals on my lawn or something… if I had a lawn.. I mean… I wouldn’t, if I did..) But I do enjoy ripping out bloody morning glories. Especially when I have a lot on my mind.
The roof garden wasn’t so successful this year either. I didn’t buy the GrowBox fertilizer add-ons mainly because using aqua fertilizer is off-putting for this organic gardener. Yes, my plants were bigger last year, but everyone had more luck last year. We actually had too much rain… I also tried a few new heirloom varieties that simply didn’t seem to dig the roof/container environment. Which is fine, each to his own. I’m going to save my Tamina seeds again this year and see if I have more luck next year. Also – what’s up with commercial potting soils using mulch as filler? It’s gross. I bought two differnt brands, each of which contained shredded mulch. Yuck. Some of my problems could have been due to that.
Any one out there know how to keep soil happy in containers? I don’t want to trash the soil each year for a bunch of different reasons. First, my hubby wouldn’t be so happy with more requests to help me lug bags of soil up 3 flights of stairs. Second, really – how wasteful can we be? Third, isn’t gardening about connecting to the soil? How can I connect if it’s new every year? It makes me feel like I can’t commit. Like someone who knew what they were doing would know how to nurse container soil back to health after a season of wind, (relentless) rain and non-stop sunshine (when it wasn’t raining)…
