Last Ditch

For the last ten years, I have been growing what food I can in containers on my back patio and around my apartment building. As my dream of one day owning a little Gulf Island plot of land died during the housing price spike of the pandemic, I have steadily maximized every square inch around my apartment building. I now grow food on roughly 180 square feet (roughly 17 sq. meters). As fun as it has been, there’s a lot of pitfalls and limitations when growing in containers. Watering in the height of growing season is an every day affair and consists of many trips back and forth with a watering can.

Recently I decided that I would put some feelers out and ask around for folks who live within a 20 minute radius of me if anyone knew of a garden space or land not being used that I might be able to grow some things on. Before I could even post my well-prepared social media post, I happened to mention this new idea to a neighbor friend while out on a walk. Their back garden has been managed by their roommate over the past years but they will not be in town for the summer. I offered to look after what was there and my friend went back to talk to their roommate.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and I’m planting row after row of seed in an already prepared but nearly totally empty garden space to use this summer. Here’s a few things I learned from this experience:

1. Don’t let your dream garden stand in the way of opportunity. Staying focused on one day owning land or being able to manage a large plot of land obscured more readily available options.
2. Ask around and talk to your neighbors. It’s really easy to only see scarcity in the world, especially when you live in a city and space is always at a premium. But putting the feelers out, getting to know your neighbors, and simply asking around can expose you to options you may not even have considered.
3. See the value for others. I think any time it comes to land use (or anything, really), it’s worth asking who we are doing the thing for. It’s okay to want to do something for ourselves but if space is limited, finding ways to demonstrate the value to others can go a long way to finding solutions.
4. Offer some of your yield. There’s so many different options for how to pitch an idea to neighbors and friends but an obvious one is to offer a portion of your harvests to the person owning/renting the land. You’ll have to agree of course on what is fair but especially if turning a profit is not your main goal, someone might be more amendable to allowing you to take over their garden if they know they’re going to get fresh lettuce or tomatoes all summer.
   
   Good luck! It’s a jungle out there.