Urban Farming: Kind of a vanity post

I haven't blogged about this before, but one of the things I like to do--is garden. Well, not really. I farm. To me, "gardening" is about making flower beds and having a "landscape". I like growing stuff to eat. And my lawn often looks terrible. (I haven't the heart to "herbicide", so dandelions pop up here and there--those greens are edible. Clover actually makes a very tonifying tea. Also found in my personal patch--wild strawberries. They don't taste like much, but it's fun to find them.) So, um, I call what myself and the spouse do "farming."


We don't have what you would call a "spread", just a backyard behind a rowhouse in NE Philadelphia, but you don't really need a lot of space to farm in--if you go vertical and think "containers". We haven't ripped up the sod and turned it over to do rows of peas and corn(wow--but then I totally wouldn't have to mow--and I like peas and corn....hmmm), but rather, but we do have 6 healthy grape vines that yield something like a quantum crapload of grapes.





We also have three fig trees--two planted and one in a container. The "baby" tree in the container was actually kept inside over the winter, so it actually fruited--the figs got a little "sunburn" from a few 90+ degree days we had. We've so far got two tomato plants (this will probably be added to) and look forward to "tunamater salad" in mid-to-late summer--that's a salad of, well, tuna fish and fresh tomatoes picked off the vine--with a little basil which we also grew--in a vinaigrette. The supermarket just can't get you tomatoes that taste like home-grown.

I've also got a window-box (although not hanging in a window) with herbs--I've a little stevia plant whose leaves didn't taste quite like I expected--sweet like sugar, but with a bit of a bitter aftertaste--it might be neat to slip a leaf or two into a pot of tea, though, which should be milder. And I have some sages, basils, some bee balm (a wonderful smell like a cross between mint and oregano) and lemon balm, and, secretly, I want to plant and tend a whole 'nother window box full. I like herbs--you can take the Wicca out of a kitchen-witch, but you can't take her out of the kitchen. Or the herb-garden, as the case may be.


Anyway, I wanted to show off some pictures of our spring plants--this is such a neat season, where you can see little baby figs just budding out on the trees, see little, almost embryonic shoots of leaves, and the little, green, almost fuzzy pin-heads of the bunches of grapes yet to come. It's like baby-pictures. It's nature looking young and cute.