Learning to grow food in small spaces

It's usually super hot outside my kitchen window, it's so hot that an egg can be fried on the sidewalk. A church friend of my mother's visited today and made her way through the clothesline to see my two small plastic planters. Instead of laughing as I had expected, she leaned her head to the side and said, you're going to be able to get ten squash out of that garden you want to make.

I always thought I needed to have an enormous plot of land in order to grow anything but she showed me how to plant the seeds and told me that squash doesn't care about having lots of space as long as it has something to climb on and can spread out well.

She also mentioned using chicken bones buried deep down for growing tomatoes because the calcium helps them grow stronger. That was very thought provoking to me, because it's about using everything, recycling and turning waste into something that helps grow plants.

She stated that potatoes use copious amounts of water but return so much to the earth to, she said to just take a small potato and bury it to regrow another whole potato.

Thankfully right now my basil on the windowsill is flourishing. There is a tremendous motivation that comes from proving to someone that they can grow their own food, even in a little patch of concrete. I see this as a much better war of teaching someone than giving them a sermon, and it also has the potential of having a greater impact. I'm grateful for this lesson she gave me.

I haven't even bought the seedlings yet, but I can easily see myself holding my first heavy squash.

_{Posted using SteemX}