How to get started 🌱

Is the ground thawing in your part of the world?

Spring 2015, we started plants in an apartment window. Little cups on an improvised shelf, as the foundation for the coming season and what would eventually grow into our relationship. (Side note: turns out plastic-coated paper cups don’t work great for plants, but the spirit to try and retry when things didn’t work is what kept us going.)

Those windowsill sprouts eventually got planted at Carver Community Garden. More about our time in Carver: TL;DR Don’t Pick a Single Use Wedding Outfit.

You don’t need a bunch of fancy stuff to grow your own food, contrary to what the industry of agriculture and home gardening suggests. Most casual gardeners and professional farmers we know buy unnecessary products like plastic seed starter trays, plastic grow bags, and small plastic pots, when the solo cup and empty vinegar bottle in the trash will do. We reuse what we come in contact with, instead of buying new, in an effort to discourage new plastic production. As there is plenty of plastic already in existence, with the potential of plenty more uses before being buried in the land or dumped in the ocean.

Digital drawing by Alex Matzke. Covid protocols mean we can’t always use a reusable coffee mug, so these cups have become planters instead of immediately ending up in the landfill. Surrounding the starters are plastic milk jugs cut in half, a broken cracker container, a stack of cups, and a salad container minus the lid.

The hyper abundance of plastic is a manufactured “problem” that was created to flood a consumer market that had been shrunk by war and scarcity.¹ The concept of single-use plastic required a lot of advertising, policy change, and misinformation for it to catch on, and as a result it has become easier to buy new than to reuse. However, we know the results of these industries and we know that we must slow down the production, use, and disposal in every way possible.

All of this to say, absolutely nothing is perfect and that is no reason to avoid starting.

We have/had a lot of questions, and the internet only has so many answers. The best advice we can give to anyone wanting to start is to find elders within your community, they hold the knowledge the internet lacks. We don’t always take our neighbor-elder’s advice, but we always ask and we always listen.

We’ve grown indoors in a number of settings, some of them practical, most of them not. Before moving to Puerto Rico we lived in Richmond, and bounced between different rental properties with very little or no outdoor space. First, we started with little cups on a windowsill that eventually were planted outdoors at the community garden. Then we made a plastic hoop house to start plants outside before spring, allowing us to grow herbs in the snow. We eventually moved to windowsill micro greens grown in reused salad containers and tiny potatoes grown in hardware store buckets. But we’ve also seen people grow in kiddy pools and broken refrigerators turned to raised beds, folks getting entire pepper businesses out of 5 gallon buckets.

The most important need is sufficient sunlight. If a windowsill is the only option, a silver reflector or the addition of grow lights will boost the plants growth.

What questions do you have about getting started or going plants in general? Leave a comment  and we’ll puzzle it out with you.

(2015) Cups in an apartment window.

(2015) Backyard hoop house to start plants before spring.

(2020) Window mirco greens and bucket potatoes.

Excerpted below is part of our journey in getting started. Read the entirety of Steven’s writing about our first two years, trying to start the farm and find our footing:

Start here: Context is everything

1. Pollution Is Colonialism, By Max Liboiron (Link to purchase: https://www.shopbishopandwilde.com/book/9781478014133)