Urban Agriculture I

Finally Using All The Dirt In My Apartment

While Raleigh is far from being a metropolis, the part I live in is definitely more urban then suburban. There is plenty of unpaved land around, but not much close to me which is usable as a garden. So what do I do when I want to grow my own veg? 

Luckily my apartment faces North-east (ish) and has a decent sized balcony that I don't use often. But I pay for the space, so I decided to make the most of it. With a friend of mine, we decided to grow our own vegetables off both of our porches. 

The down side of my balcony, is that is is very enclosed and only the front gets any significant light. So planning and utilizing this space will be very important for growing food. The first step in my garden is growing spices. The spices don't require a large amount of space and multiple plants, I'm hoping, can share the same container. At the local hardware store I bought a 2' rectangular planter, some soil, and seeds. 

I decided to plant 3 herbs that I'd prefer to use fresh over dried. I chose Cilantro, Dill, and Parsley. I planted 6 cilantro plants in the same planter, spaced a few inches apart from each other. Being the quickest growers of the plants I chose, they were also the first to sprout. And what a relief it was. After over a week after planting, I still hadn't seen any sine of life in my planter, and I feared they would never grow. Not so. 

Dill requires slightly more space then the other plants, so I only planted two. Each plant was spaced a few inches more apart then the cilantro was. Dill was the second one to sprout and has been growing fairly well. Of the two seed I've planted, only one has sprouted. It's been about a week since the first dill broke through the soil so I think the second seed was a bad one. I'll probably give it a few more days, and then give up and try another seed. 

Parsley is the slowest grower of the 3 herbs I planted. A week after the first plants sprouted, I finally saw my first 2 parsley sprouts. I planted a total of six parsley plants, so we'll have a few days to see if the rest of them decide to come to life. 

So for the herb garden it's been good. I've grown plants inside my apartment before, and the biggest difference between inside and outside is how fast the soil dries out in the sun. I'm finding myself needing to watch over the plants much more when they are outside. This will play a big role in my agriculture project  for the next week. Tomatoes are the next plant I want to grow on the balcony and they are sensitive to dry soil. More about that in a later post.