My experimental porch gardening and one look at mortgage costs was all I needed to make the decision of having a real garden next year.

My bucket plants helped me to know if I had a black thumb or a green one, and as it turns out, it’s not too black afterall! Everything is alive and well, we’ve already ate our first harvest of spinach and planted a second, and the Swiss chard is beautifully out of control. And as for my previous thought, about not putting a lot of work into the weed lot because we would not be here for long, has changed too. I had a depressing moment about a week ago when I looked at how much a mortgage would cost us each month- not a little more than our rent now, but a LOT more. So after I moped awhile and had a few days to get my head level again (I realized just how much I’m always jumping ahead of myself) I came to accept the fact that we have a great place here and will be here a while longer than I first thought. This then triggered me to start making some more permanent changes around here, including the decision of next year’s garden.

I have also been realizing how much more I would like to produce in order to reduce my dependence on other sources of food. Growing a moderate portion of my own food would have so many positive impacts, it would be silly not to. Sure I will have to put a lot of work into it, but not only would I be reducing my cost of food, I’d be putting better tasting and more nutritious food on the table, and be making a huge environmental impact by reducing my carbon footprint- just think of all the transportation involved in produce from the hugely monoculture, pesticide covered fields to the supermarket. And of course, the educational and spiritual aspects of it all will be personally rewarding. I’m always looking for a new way to help ground myself.

So from now through late winter, I’ll be spending my time reading a lot about food and gardening- personal experiences and technical aspects. This will help me to figure out between now and then how much of the weed plot I’ll have to overcome, what to plant, how and when, and all the other ins and outs of the topic. So if any of you have any recommendations on books or sources of some kind, feel free to comment to let me know!