Like me, you may have often heard mention of kitchen gardens. But it wasn't until we began our community garden last year that I began to ponder the convenience of being able to take one step out the door to clip veggies for my salads.
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Last year one member of the community garden
added this five-tiered plastic container for salad greens. |
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| This year she put a raised bed right next to her patio. |
She inspired me to give the one step kitchen garden a shot. Not wanting to encourage sales of plastic, I figured out how to use pots I already had to make a three-tiered veggie garden one step out my patio door.
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| Two weeks ago it was looking promising. |
However, when I tried to share starts of the most prominent veggie, I discovered that what I had assumed was Russian Kale was really a prolific weed. After two community garden members told me "I don't think that's Russian Kale," I finally did my own research and learned that they were right. This embarrassing episode woke me to how disinformation can spread from a false assumption; in this case, my own.
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| Another community garden member's version of a patio veggie garden. |
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Spice garden outside the front door of a community
garden member whose patio is in the shade. |
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| Three-tiered garden today. |
While the three-tiered garden looks a bit sad, there is real Sow Easy Kale growing in the right front corner, real cilantro, and seeds germinating for three kinds of Kale. And not all my experiments disclose my gardening ignorance.
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| So far, my patio tomato plant seems to be doing okay. |
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Second year for patio Lemon Tree.
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Last year I started Basil and a Lemon Tree on my patio. The Basil shriveled up and died but by late summer the Lemon Tree had five blossoms. One blossom fell off, but by fall there were four teeny baby lemons. When it started getting cold, I brought the tree inside and the lemons continued to grow. I harvested four lemons in the last two weeks just before returning the tree to the patio. Now that lends some authenticity to my fledgling One Step Kitchen Garden.
