Friday, July 04, 2014

Flower Power

To most, this single nasturtium blossom would be considered pretty, but hardly anything to get too excited about. After all, nasturtium is considered easy to grow. But to me, this is like a prize winning tomato. See, it's the first flower to bloom from my little guerrila gardening experiment. And what an experiment it's been!

On one hand, the whole thing has been pretty effortless and extremely rewarding. The Fava beans I planted seemed to sprout within hours (OK, more like a few days) and they've produced a whole heap of plants. I've yet to harvest any beans, though I've used the leaves on a few different sandwiches. I can't tell you how mind bending it is to eat something that you grew yourself (outside it's a plant, inside it's food. How'd that happen?) Other successes in include a handful of nasturtium plants, some borage plants which have yet to bloom and a 3 to 4 foot tall sunflower plant which is growing like a weed.

On the other hand, it's amazing how little it takes to wipe out whole plants. Sure, that one sun flower plant is doing well, but at one point, I had probably half a dozen seedlings started around the yard. Now most of them are distant memory. I've lost plants to the Weed Wacker (d'oh!), intense rainfall, lack of watering and what seems to be a trampling by our resident bunny population. The nasturtiums that grow so effortlessly in one part of the yard, all died in another. Was it lack of sun? Too little water? Animals? Or just bad timing on my part? It's truly humbling how quickly you can go from the miracle of watching life appear to compost.

Man, what an education gardening can offer. And all it took was a handful of seeds, a trowel, and time. (Oh yeah, watering the plants helps, too.)

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