Patio Farmer

I must admit that I have serious garden envy. Living in the desert, in the middle of a City, in a townhouse, with a north-facing concrete patio no less, my opportunities for growing my own food have been pretty limited. To this point, I have been successful in growing two things: aloe vera and elephant plants. These are the only two green living things that have managed to survive (and thrive!) at my house for any length of time. Of course, I have nurtured random wildflowers in the Spring, occasional sickly lettuce and one gangly looking basil plant, but I have not been able to grow anything truly edible.

Inspired by friends’ gardens, my visit to Maine to work in Mom’s garden heaven, and my dream future as a pioneering urban salad farmer I am embarking on an experimental adventure in patio farming. Aided by the tools and knowledge of my good friend Mike, and the patience and upper body strength of my handsome husband, a raised planter bed has finally been built on my patio.

We used concrete blocks to build the planter walls, and spent a sweaty beer-fueled evening painstakingly laying and mortaring the blocks together. I made several trips back and forth to the local material supply yard trucking river rock and top soil to my house and then carrying it by the bucket-full to fill the planter. The result is about 4” of river rock for drainage, covered by a landscape filter fabric and then about 10” of top soil mixed with compost from our local organic farmer. Since it turns out that “top soil” is really more like fine silty sand, I added a bag of store-bought compost, some organic fertilizer, and coffee grounds and tiny vegetable scraps from the kitchen.

After a week of mixing, watering, amending and raking I am now ready to grow stuff. Luckily for me, the low desert has a fall planting season beginning in late August / early September. So, bright and early this morning I headed to the patio in my night gown with my cup of tea and assumed my new identity as Urban Patio Farmer. Today I planted green beans, wax beans, dill, chives, marigolds and cosmos from seed. Nina and Casey both joined me to witness the ceremonial breaking of ground, and Nina blessed the garden with an extensive roll in the soil. Now I get to wait impatiently for the first seedlings to emerge … cosmos is due in 5 to 7 days with the beans lagging behind at 7 to 14 days. I am so excited!!!