Most of the blogs on my reader these days are garden blogs. I’m pretty much obessed, but its not really easy to find the kind of gardening blog that fits my bill. I grow vegitables and will only stray into flowers if they promise to help my veggies out (okay, I’ll be getting a blackeyed susan this summer whether or not I can find a symbiotic veggie). In addition, I grow about as urban as you can get, on my 12×4 ft 3rd story south facing balcony. As you can imagine most spend too much time on soil improvement or beautiful flower combinations for me.
But not the Urban Garden Project. This project was started by two guys in Idaho (the urban part) with the aim of inspiring or collecting 100,000 urban gardens by 2020. Like so many peopl these days they call on the WWII victory garden about which I could really care less, but the values and possiblities of urban cultivating are many and I think its quite worthy to bring these folks together. Their posts are also all city garden dweller relavent from building a small chicken coop (I so wish I had more than a balcony for purely this reason) to interesting ways to make your own light containers. They have a test garden and though they just got started, I have high hopes. So check it out and if you’ve got an urban garden defined as in city limits (I know some of you do), join.
Implying a Well-behaved Narrative 
How can you “care less” about the WWII victory garden?! It is an AMAZING precedent for Americans growing their own food and living closer to home. I mean, I get not giving a shit about 1970s gas rationing, but the VICTORY GARDEN!? Common, that is a big deal.
Also, “you’re on my reader” could be the 21st Century’s pick-up line of choice.
Well, I guess I need to amend that. I do care about victory gardens historically, but I don’t think they are a reason to grow food yourself now. I say that you garden because you like it, because you really enjoy eating what you’ve grown. If that’s not the motivation than there will be a lot more dead tomato plants and wasted resources because if you don’t like gardening you just won’t do it.
Oh and you should definitely try to grow on your roof. Check out the book Square foot gardening. It shows you how to make a 4×4 ft box that can easily be put on the roof and cared for. Its also a really great book for starting a garden in numerous other ways. The sun on your roof is so much better than the window. Tell your landlord about the whitehouse lawn and assure him it will be fine because this book says so.
Oh, plus… I’m thinking of doing a small (a very, very small) garden in DC this summer. Like, window box small. I know we aren’t technically supposed to have anything hanging out our window, but I’m going to look around and see if we can make something work on the apt building’s roof or maybe, maybe a window box if we can rig it up so the screen can still stay in the window.
Frankly, this is an after-May 1st project. I’ll keep you posted.