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Before I moved to my current home, I hadn't lived in a place with immediate access to private outdoor space--you know, a yard, or at least a balcony--since I was a child. It's a thing I've longed for my whole adult life. So when my partner and I moved our family of four from our condo in a small college town to a condo in Chicago, the very first thing on my list of must-haves was outdoor space. I wanted even a tiny Juliette-style balcony on which to hang a window box of pansies and maybe even a small pot of cherry tomatoes.
But one day, browsing the books about small gardening at the local bookstore, I came across a volume or two that informed me that I didn't have to settle for pansies and cherry tomatoes. Urbanites in high rises are growing their own food, these books informed me. It's called edible container gardening, and I was instantly hooked.
I began to browse online and found listservs for edible container gardeners, small businesses specializing in the seeds of small varieties of all your favorite garden vegetables, information on how to grow potatoes in a plastic garbage can, how to grow tomatoes upside down in reused pop bottles, how to make a small composter of plastic tubs and a earthworms that fits under your kitchen sink.
I was off and running. Long before we knew where we would be living, I knew what I'd be growing there. I lucked out and the best place we did find--the one we fell in love with at first sight--had three outdoor exposures, two generous balconies and a back porch big enough for tricycle riding. The first summer we lived here--last summer--I managed to harvest a bumper crop of not only Roma tomatoes, but yellow squash, tricolor peppers, Lima beans, carrots, broccolini, chard, several varieties of lettuce plus herbs of all descriptions--best of all some basil with leaves larger than the palm of my hand.
As lovely as it was to grow these things--to have a garden, if in pots and window boxes, for the first time in my life--the best part was a surprise discovery. My children have reached the picky years and won't eat a green leaf if it is sitting on their plate, presented in the most beautiful way possible. But as it turns out, if they pick that leaf--the very same leaf, mind you--they gobble it down with delight and beg for more. Thus I had my two and four-year old grazing the window boxes for fresh chard, mint and basil all summer. They picked little salads every afternoon, eating as they went. They pulled up carrots and would barely let me rinse off the dirt before devouring them happily--green tops and all--and asking if any more were ready to be pulled. They greedily slurped up cold "green soup" which I made by blending the not-quite ripe-enough-to-be-stolen-by-squirrels tomatoes and peppers and Lima beans in a grand puree of gardeny goodness.
Last year was my first, and thus, my garden wasn't perfect. I lost all my cucumbers to the squirrels who ate the plants before they even blossomed. All my bok choy went to seed almost as soon as it sprouted. The sugar snap peas didn't bear enough for a single salad. The rest of the family vetoed earthworms under the sink. But the things that grew, grew with gusto. And if my kids are what they eat, they were healthier last summer than they'd been in months prior. I am not only tilling my flower pots again this year, I'm finding more ways to involve the kids in the process.
How about you? Do you garden with kids? What are the surprises it has yielded?
"All that you have is your soul." Tracy Chapman
