If I had to quantify my reasons for my balcony garden they would probably be:
1. I'm lazy. I like to wake up and step outside for fresh tomatos.
2. Freshly picked tastes better.
3. I'm a vegetarian. I eat a lot of vegetables. My corner of Germany is very seasonally oriented, and it's difficult to find out of season or non-locally grown produce. This way, I can prolong my ability to have strawberries.
4. Building on #3, if one does find, say strawberries from Spain perhaps, they are hella expensive. (Which I guess makes sense when you figure in transport costs from Spain to Germany.) So I'm cheap.
5. It's an expectation in this building that something belongs on the balcony. Flowers are a money pit and hardly pull their own weight, expect for a few petals in a salad. If I'm going to provide water, dirt, a pot, and loving attention, I expect you to pay your own way here. The only flower that gets real estate here, are sun flowers.
6. Eating organic. Perhaps I've been here too long, but I'm always slightly nervous when I see green beans from Egypt or Morocco and am curious as to what kind of chemicals they may use. Since they're outside of the EU I have an inherent distrust.
7. Food miles/kilometers, an interesting concept, although I see it more as a taste issue. An apple picked not far away which spent limited time boucing along in the back of a truck tastes better than one all the way from Japan or New Zealand.
Current roll call:
Lettuce (from seed):
Tomato corner. So far I've had approx 14 cherry tomatos, with lots of flowers and tiny green ones in progress due to the great weather. I'm keeping a rough tally of tomatos eaten as I'm generally curious as to how many I can grow.
The overall view. The left corner is the tomatos above, and is what my neighbors like to ask me about as it overlooks the front walkway into the building and one can see the bright red tomatos easily from below.
More about victory gardens:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/crops_02.html
http://www.revivevictorygarden.org/
3 comments:
Wow, way to go on the balcony garden! That looks great. Unfortunately countries outside the EU aren't the only ones to use masses of pesticides on their fruit and veg. Those expensive Spanish strawberries tend to be chock full of all kinds of nasty stuff and they usually warn people to wait for the German ones to come out. We pick our own from a nearby strawberry farm and cross our fingers that they haven't sprayed them too much. :-)
And yes, the trend towards getting back to eating seasonal, locally grown produce instead of buying organic stuff imported from, let's say Chile or other far away places, is really big in Germany right now. Better taste and less carbon footprint being only some of the reasons.
Enjoy those tomatoes!
Ah ha! As I planted my own balcony garden a few weeks back, the term 'victory garden' popped into my head, but I had no idea where the term came from. Now I know!
christina: yeah, the more i hear, the worse it gets...scary stuff. if only i can get enough sun to grow enough.
jul: enjoy! will be interested to see what you grow.
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