Urban Vegetable Gardening

Last year was my first attempt at growing vegetables since moving to our house just outside Chicago. Growing up my family was not big into gardening, with the exception of a few tomatoes so I never considered myself a green thumb. However as my kids have gotten older I’ve had a stronger desire to help them get a better relationship with the food they eat even though we live in an urban area.

As for many things the Internet proved to be an invaluable source. In particular I found the Chicago Green Roof Growers (http://greenroofgrowers.blogspot.com/) blog particularly helpful. Reading through their posts I was introduced to Sub Irrigation Planters that you can make on your own. Some further investigation into the concept uncovered some folks in Australia who are using it in raised bed gardens which seemed like a perfect fit for the small strips of land I have on the north and south sides of my garage

After spending two weekends with some trips to the Home Depot and bonding with power tools I had two raised beds both two feet wide and one ten feet long while the other was twelve. They gave me a total growing area of 32 square feet. I used pond liner to make them both water tight and some landscaping drainage tubes to build the sub irrigation components.

Overall I was impressed with how well the growing season went given it was really my first. I learned some valuable lessons on which beds grow a few vegetables best. I came away a big fan of the sub irrigation approach. It helped keep the watering maintenance down and the plants (especially tomatoes) really seemed to thrive in it.

So this year I’m looking forward to improving on what I learned last season.