'Tis the Season

So, I have this dream.  It's a dream of my own home, with a big yard, and flowers and plants and shrubbery as far as the eye can see.  Of fragrant buds and so many homegrown veggies and herbs and fruits I would never need to visit a grocery store, much less a farmer's market, ever again.

Alas, I live in a condo in downtown Chicago.

This was not always my dream.  For a very long time I always thought I had a black thumb.  Someone would give me flowers and I would put them in a vase on my kitchen table and inevitable over- or under-water them to death. My first attempt at outdoor planting was a bit of a failure, too-- or should I say a "self-destructing overachievement". I do have a decently sized outdoor deck that faces west, so I naturally assumed that it meant my deck got partial sun and bought the appropriately corresponding plants.  What I didn't realize is that even with the western view, I get a full 6-8 hours of sun a day.  My poor "partial-sun" plants grew like mad, then fried and died. And the cycle went on over and over and over again for the 3 months of hot weather Chicago can manage to eek out of the year.

I learned my lesson and soon managed to dye the symbolic thumb green. After trying a few other plant and flower combinations I settled on petunias, which grow in my flower boxes like they are on steroids. I also branched out into herbs, and found that there is one particular corner that a basil plant rules like a dictator and produces leaves the size of the palm of my hand- no joke. Now, every year as I make the annual pilgrimage to Home Depot for my planting supplies my eyes get bigger than my stomach and I want to buy everything I see. Which I guess I could... if I never wanted to use my deck for anything else, such as grilling, or dining, or stretching out with a book. So I purchase modestly.  But last year, as the seeds (no pun intended) of an Au Naturale lifestyle began to germinate in my head, I decided that growing veggies might be a neat experiment to try.

Hold on.. back up. That's not entirely true. I have actually tried veggies before, in the way of tomatoes. I love few things more than a fresh tomato in any summer meal I make.  The problem is that tomatoes are notoriously finicky. They need a lot of sun and water, but too much of either and they're dead. I ran into that problem the first year when I successfully grew a couple of big, round tomatoes, but then the plant mysteriously began to die.  It also didn't help that my stalks attracted what I have non-affectionately called Vampire Flies: they would land on the fruits and just suck the juice out. So the tomatoes didn't rot or fall off or get chunks bitten out of them-- they just slowly shriveled up and withered away. Yes, it's as freaky looking as it sounds. Tomato failure #1.

The next year I decided to give the tomatoes another go but this time with a cherry tomato plant. No vampire flies appeared, but it produced fruit so slowly that by the time I had enough tomatoes for a very small salad, I had stripped the plant clean and had to wait weeks more for another small crop. I think I got the equivalent of a bowl of tomatoes the whole summer. Tomato failure #2.

Last year I got bold and decided to buy a Topsy Turvy. Do you know those things? It's like an "advertised on TV" type of thing. You hang it from wherever and the plant grows upside down so you don't have to stake it.  I thought, hey, this sounds easy and I save some floor space! This was failure number 3, but more due to the Topsy Turvy than anything else. After just a week after planting we had a huge wind storm and the nails holding up the decorative hanger pulled right out of the wall, causing the heavy device to land smack-dab on a railing, crushing the plant.  I refused to be defeated, though, and rehung it (using sturdier nails, of course) with another tomato seedling.  However, a second wind storm a few weeks later tossed and turned the Topsy Turvy so hard that it actually twisted the stalk of the young plant into a spiral.  Alas, it didn't survive the trauma, and the seedling was dead days later.

At that point, I decided that tomato plants were not meant to be.  Ever.

My boyfriend, however, had piqued my interest with a new-fangled device called an Earthbox. Foolproof growing, foolproof watering, and you can plant a mix of veggies and fruits and herbs in specific configurations. I decided to take a risk and try it, planting cucumbers as my first crop, another summer favorite.  The Earthbox was a smashing success and I'm sorry I don't have pictures to show you here.  My cucumber vines grew to over 6 feet tall and would have grown even taller except I ran out of staking systems that could handle the monstrous hight.  I had cucumbers coming out of my ears, which is pretty impressive for a 10 foot by 10 foot city deck.  I made some damn good salads from those cukes.

Now I'm hooked. In prep for this summer's planting, much like the Home Depot shopping trip, I stared for hours at all the possible earthbox planting combos.  I wanted to do everything!  And my dreams of a big yard with earthboxes planted with every veggie under the sun began to dance in my head anew.

But of course there was that whole space thing to consider. I smacked myself back to reality and settled on pepper plants: favorite veggie number 3. As full disclosure, I did try the peppers along with the cucumbers last year but they failed mainly because I misunderstood how the planting combinations worked and learned too late that the two didn't go together. In any case, my plants are a week in and seem to be taking well. I plan on documenting their growth throughout the summer, starting now:

Summer Produce: Week 1

back row, left-right: red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper, green bell pepper
front row, left-right: poblano pepper, 2 arugula plants

In addition to peppers, I didn't know how to fill out the rest of the box.  I wanted greens but they prefer cool weather.. however, the local plant store suggested this arugula as it might be hardier. I've had some already-- spicy and delicious! It may not last through the whole summer, though, so I may have to fully harvest it soon with a fall planting to follow.

And don't forget the herbs! I can't wait for the basil to really start popping:

left to right: basil, oregano, flat-leaf parsley

Yay for summer!