I have gardened, on and off, pretty much my entire life…

First, it was weeding the beets and picking currants in my mother’s garden, back in Russia. Like many, I hated it at that point and was dreaming of a time when I would be garden-free. Little did I know, that as an adolescent, I would find myself craving plant interaction! At that point I satisfied this craving by accumulating a collection of cacti and other succulents. There is something mystifying about the way these plants manage to survive in extreme conditions of the desert.

This 6-foot-tall cactus decided to bloom last winter.
That first collection is long gone (I had to leave it behind when I moved to United States), but wherever I am, I always end up with a few of these feisty plants plants (today I have about 13 of them spread between home and work).

I came back to work from maternity leave two years ago to discover that my aloe plant was in full bloom.
For the last ten years or so, I have been living in apartments and had zero outdoor gardening space. Instead, I was trying to grow things indoors, from kitchen herbs to mushrooms (not very successfully). I experimented with grow lights and planting techniques and flooded the place with aphids more times that I’d like to admit.
Finally, last spring I became a proud tenant in a local community garden (West Philly PlotLand), and I was finally able to garden outdoors again!
This year, in addition to improving my plot (fixing an old raised bed and building a new one in place of a flat-earth plot), I decided to take on a new challenge. Our new apartment has a a fire escape balcony that is not exactly good looking, but offers a new gardening spot. Balcony gardening has many challenges, but also countless benefits (access to fresh produce, improved air quality and temperature control, to name a few). I started this blog to share my ups and downs, get some feedback from like-minded urban gardeners, and to simply learn the ways of the blogging world.

