A Hello with a Side of Goodbye

As winter’s freezing temperatures finally descended upon the city last month, I experienced the final harvests in my beloved back patio garden in the E Passyunk neighborhood in South Philadelphia. In somewhat bittersweet news, my offer on an apartment building located 20 minutes north was accepted, and I should experience this upcoming Spring in a new location. My back patio garden, and the worm-casting-enriched soil I’ve cultivated in a small cinder block planter on the south end, is my parting gift to the next residents of the home.

Goodbye to the Patio Garden

The irony of starting a website dedicated to urban gardening in Philadelphia the same exact year/season I’m saying goodbye to my very first gardening space in the city is not lost on me.

This space has been my classroom, kitchen pantry, and go-to medicine cabinet for the last six years. I moved in after having spent less than six months total living in the Mid-Atlantic region – I’d come from the Bay Area in California to attend graduate school; and even before then, I was born and raised in South Florida. While I was exposed to gardening and farming from a young age (my father hails from cattle & vegetable farmers, and my mother from Jamaicans who grew most of their diet before they immigrated to the US), growing food & flowers in temperate regions was all I’d ever known.

How does someone start plants from seed, grow my favorite fruits and vegetables, or even maintain their soil in a place where it freezes for several months out of the year? What’s a garden in snow like? How does someone grow anything on a concrete patio that gets 4 – 6 hours of sunlight maximum? Can I even make compost? Is any of that going to be possible as a renter?

Hello to a New Side of Philly

I’ve been wanting to live in a home I own in Philadelphia for years. Even more so, I’ve been eager to start my real estate investing journey right here in the city. And I’m blessed to have found a property where I can do both of those things. In the coming posts, I hope to also document all that I’ve learned and continue to understand about growing my abundance in the city.

In the meantime, I’m so grateful that I was able to use this beautiful, challenging waiting room as my classroom. I’ve killed more plants (and probably other organisms!) than I could count while trying out all kinds of growing techniques and advice. On this modest 15 ft x 12 ft pad of concrete, I’ve honed my skills in making my own compost from food scraps, developed my potting mix recipe (an all-organic, self-fertilizing & drought-resistant blend), discovered a way to start seeds outdoors with snow on the ground, played with the limits of deep mulching in containers & composting-in-place in an exposed raised bed, and fought back against (and even at times developed adversarial alliances with) the squirrels, raccoons, cats and bugs that loved to prey on my plants, supplies, soil and general peace of mind.

Growing in All Directions

This move north is far from a complete end to my urban gardening in South Philly. I’ll dedicate a future post to describing all my growing spaces; but for now know I’m still committed to my plots at the French Quarter & Hoops community gardens*, as well as my involvement in stewarding the urban farmstead on 15^th Street. You can learn a little bit more about why I started this site and my background as a grower too on my About Me page.

Feel free to talk to me about your first garden if you’ve been able to start one – was it humble or overwhelming? Ideal or a diamond in the rough? Would you do it all over again, and in the same way, if you could?

Stay growing,
Key

*yes, those are my made-up nicknames for the very real community green spaces in my neighborhood.