As I grew up and moved out onto my own, my dream was to plant rows of tomatoes, like my grandpa’s, but I never had the time for a garden, or the space, or rights to the land, or the choice to not chemically treat the lawn, or starting a garden seemed too overwhelming for one, or two, person household. As a renter, I felt like I always had an excuse to not grow my own food until I started reading more and more about food security issues and experiencing firsthand the rising costs of buying good food. Several years ago I started container gardening.

 

At first I failed.  I didn’t have any green in either thumb. In fact, I didn’t have an ounce of green in me; I was green—to gardening. I over-watered, under-watered, didn’t consider the sun’s direction, overlooked places with a balance of shade and direct sunlight etc. etc. Yet failure always makes me more determined. I read more and stuck with it, and now I successfully grow, in containers, tomatoes, chili peppers, and herbs.  (For great tips on container-friendly herbs and fantastic recipes utilizing herbs, definitely check out Jekka McVicar’s Jekka’s Herb Cookbook. I’ve been addicted to it this season!)

 

I’m proud of my container garden. Watching a starter tomato plant grow tall and strong with plump Roma tomatoes brings me joy. As many gardeners know, growing our own food gets us outside in the sun and gives a moment of quiet to observe nature and appreciate how the life cycle works. We know where our food comes from, how it was grown, and we get to watch it grow naturally over time.

 

Caring for herbs and vegetables has led me to be more careful in my cooking too. I find a way to use everything that I grow rather than wasting it, and when I cook with it, I simply care more about the dish because I tended to that plant. Many chefs who work in garden-to-table restaurants attest that they feel more connected to the dishes they prepare and their kitchen staff does as well when they cook with fruits and vegetables that have harvested from their own gardens. Feeling like we’re part of a process slows us down and lets us reflect on our values and life choices in ways that buying a tomato from the grocery store just can’t do.

 

When my friend, neighbor and colleague Abs posted on Facebook that she was going to try burlap gardening, I immediately responded. Imagine growing lettuce, carrots, and tomatoes in a burlap sack. No land needed. An idea with crazy written all over it. Of course, I was on board.

 

Landless gardens are especially popular in urban areas where fresh food is needed, but there isn’t enough land to actually plant gardens in the earth. After Abs showed me The Wisconsin Gardener video I figured if anyone could plant a few goodies in an old sack, it was Abs and I.

 

I’m proud to report that our carrots are sprouting, our beans are climbing up the trellis (an old bed frame), and our strawberries are totally cute. Now like all gardeners, we’re working on pest control. It seems even the squirrels prefer homegrown strawberries. I certainly don’t blame them.

 

Abigail Cloud teaches fulltime at Bowling Green State University and holds an MFA in Poetry.  She grew up on a lake with a big backyard, and collects hobbies, most recently birdwatching.

 

Grapes.  Raspberries.  Carrots.  Apples.  Tomatoes.  Beans.  Rhubarb.  Cherries.  At eight years old, it was possible for me to break my play outside for no more than a minute at a time.  If the spy chase or tree house discussion was intense, a meal could be gleaned from the yard’s gardens, washed under the icy pump water, and nibbled out in the grass, or under the giant cottonwood.

 

In my childhood memory, that is what a garden should be—a place with borders barely differentiated from the greater ecosystem of the yard.  It must be able to be incorporated into the day’s play, perhaps imagined as a scarcely tamed plot of an unknown jungle people, or my own straggling cultivation on a deserted island.  Not for me the bland, exacting rectangles and perfect rows.

 

As an adult, I’ve never had a garden in the ground.  As an “unsettled” person, I have resorted to containers.  Still, I like to keep things just a little bit wild.  My burlap bag gardens are positioned in different spots in the yard, and their loose, homemade construction appeals to the imagination in me.  So, too, did the release of a thousand ladybugs into the plants, troops arrayed against the slavering thrips.

 

Every little carrot top that springs toward the sky, every strawberry that lives long enough to redden, every bean vine that succeeds in grasping its old bedframe pole is a win.  It’s not a win for humanity, nor for cultivation, but for the hunt, and for my own ability to become a part of “outside.”  That, too, is what a garden should always be.