Even a cursory glance of this blog's content should let on that this is a record of the gardening activities of a married couple who suddenly have enough of a backyard to grow something on but no idea what they're doing. I've decided to write about our experiences as urban vegetable gardeners to examine whether or not people with no expertise whatsoever can pull this off at all, rather than to give a reading public sage advice. While we're pretty clever people more or less, this may be one of these "learn from our mistakes" kinds of deals.
And that's fine. My main motivation in getting this garden (and, accordingly, this garden blog) going is to become a bit more self-sufficient as a home economy. I am very, very picky about my produce -- so picky, in fact, that I used to drive across town most Sundays to the DuPont Circle Farmers' Market when we lived within walking distance of Eastern Market. This behavior is actually an improvement from the times when I used to drive to multiple grocery stores in Charlottesville, Virginia to do essentially the same thing. Now that we have a bit of space, I hope we can grow delicious things to cook more cheaply than I pay other people to do the same.
I think we're in an unusual position to pull this type of thing off. We recently bought a house in Northwest that has an unusually large yard for a DC row house - by large, I mean it takes me less than 10 minutes to mow the grass with my hand-powered push mower. So while our specific gardening experiences may not apply to your climate, the urban-ness of the space will. And if you live in DC, the particulars of the project may be especially relevant to your own efforts.
Let's just get one thing out of the way: This blog is not trying to sell you on a lifestyle involving the suffix -gan, convince you to shit in a composting toilet, or teach you how to produce your own organic Q-tips. We're still going to shop at the Target up the street and eat red meat shipped on a truck. While yours truly is a gentleman of the Left, it is decidedly of the Old School, cranky-old-man-Lower-East-Side kind. We're going the organic route with this project because organic food tastes better, and the whole point of this dealie is to grow delicious food and cook it up well. So let's see how we pull it off.
