Taking Responsibility For Food

Is there anything that inspires more hope for the future than a sprouting seed?

The simplicity of soil, seeds, water and sunlight that result in flowers, fruit and vegetables are truly an artistic expression.

This past summer my patio railing was home to some excellent successes, a couple failures, and also gained me the go-ahead from the apartment complex managers to take over the small planting bed in front of my patio.

This will allow me to solve the cause of a couple of the failures. My apartment faces north, and the direct sun is only on a portion of the patio for a couple hours in the morning. The small bed in front of the patio gets much longer direct sun, which will allow me to have more space and get enough sun for the tomatoes.

If there is a greater taste treat than that of a fully-ripe, sun-warmed tomato you grew yourself, I don't know what it would be.

I won't have anything to do with GMOs as I do not believe that the agribusinesses creating them have any more idea of the whole picture than the blind man describing an elephant after only touching the trunk. Tales of such blind arrogance creating disaster go back to the dawn of recorded history.

I currently use two seed catalogs. Neither Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds or Pinetree Garden Seeds sell or have any connection to companies that sell GMO varieties.

Baker Creek also is now publishing a 364 page behemoth of a seed catalog. Somewhat reminiscent of the Whole Earth Catalog , it offers up articles covering the history of some of the seeds they offer and dozens of recipes. The images are incredible, and make me long to grow many more varieties than I can possibly handle.

Pinetree's catalog is much more modest, and to be truthful, their prices are also far more modest. I do purchase most of my seeds from them. I have to admit that Baker Creek has many varieties they don't, so Baker Creek will get a good share of my business this year also.

Last year I had good results with herbs, beans, some flowers, and a few pepper plants. With the bed in front of the patio, I hope to get a couple good size tomato plants going, far more spinach and radishes, and some summer and winter squash.

 This picture shows the beans, flowers and upright peppers. These were described as an ornamental pepper, and though they look like they'd be incendiary, they were actually quite sweet. I've saved seed, and we'll see how they grow out.

Looking down the front of the patio, you can see the petunia with the ginger plant in the same pot. I particularly enjoyed this combination, and will likely have some fun with it again.

You can also see a number of the white plastic containers that I reused after I used up the cat litter.

 The tomatoes barely survived, but there just wasn't enough light on the patio for them to produce. Getting them in front of the bushes will handle that.


Since I'll be planning on moving in October, I want to have much of the garden movable as well. I've been making a practice of reusing the white plastic containers that the cat litter comes in.









The package with the resistance bands arrived today from MP Pro-Products. My next post will cover how I plan to proceed with them.