Toil in the Soil

Ironically enough, I hated gardening for many, many years.  As a child, it was my least favorite summer chore.  I spent hours in early spring weeding and preparing the garden.  I was ALWAYS expected to stay home the entire planting weekend.  I spent countless hours sweating my butt off while my friends hung out, all summer long, at the local pool.  It was my chore, every night after dinner, to take the compost out and burry it in the garden.  Not to mention the long hot days in the middle of August/September when it was time to start canning everything!  It seemed my parents hobby wasn't much of a hobby but a full scale operation with indentured child labor included.  Needless to say, I despised the garden.  It was horrible!  

Twenty years after that little plot of hell in my father's backyard, I find myself researching home gardening techniques.  Again, I had little interest in revisiting those horrors of my past.  By that logic, I wanted NOTHING to do with gardening.  However, life threw a curveball at me as it often does.  After eight years of a steady paycheck and few financial concerns, I found myself at the bottom of the 'financial totem poll' again.  Stressed about where my family's next meal was coming from, I knew I had to do something!  


I rediscovered the notion of growing our own vegetables.  I could provide healthier food choices to my family, while saving money and reducing my carbon footprint.  The downside was that we rented and had no yard to speak of.  Additionally, I live in a colder climate with a shorter outdoor growing season and didn't think to start this garden project until half way through the summer season!  

Doktora Gnome Rajetoys 

I began researching indoor gardening and came across a lot of exciting information.  I discovered that technology and knowledge were much more available than I had expected.  There was an entire community of at-home-garden-experimentalists.  

Indoor gardening provided additional benefits other than resolving the real-estate issue.  Indoor gardening would also reduce problems with pests and disease as well as give me more refined, precise control over my garden's environment.  Indoor gardening would also be the fastest and cheapest garden system to automate; since I still wanted to avoid those pointless days wasted in the garden.   

There were several issues that needed resolved when gardening indoors; water and soil transportation, light, convince, potential mess and pets just to name a few.  I decided some experimentation was needed so I set to work with what I had learned.  Now, after a few failed experiments and a book from mom, my third rendition of the Indoor Garden is a success!  

I look forward to sharing my projects here, with all of you and I hope you will share your ideas and gardening experiences in return!  I hope, with some assistance from the Internet, to return home gardening to the exciting, community experience it deserves to be.  Please join me in sharing our knowledge with others while making a greener tomorrow!  

Sincerely,
Your favorite Garden Gnome
-g