Where do we start?

It's what we asked ourselves, for days and days. We scrutinized urban gardening books, which proved to be useless, scoured the web, and searched for classes or workshops in the area, but still, we had no idea what to do. If only we had a teacher to help guide us...and then, we remembered we already knew someone! Our friend Pat, rugged outdoorsman and gardening aficionado agreed to be our mentor.  

And so, we began constructing a plan...

1) First, we decided on raised beds ie: no planting directly into the already existant dirt, rather, fresh, newly-bought dirt would need to be hauled in. The reason? This is New York City and we don't want rat poo in our veggies! Plus, we want this to be an organic garden, so all soil needs to be preservative and toxin-free.

2) Next we picked our favorite veggies (well...our favorite veggies that also happen to be "easy to grow" according to Cornell Cooperative Extension)

• romano beans
• beets
• carrots
• cucumbers
• kale
• mesclun
• shell peas
• sugar snap peas
• heirloom tomatoes
• cherry tomatoes
• summer squash
• butternut squash
• delicata squash

3) Then we had to plot out which parts of our backyard we wanted to use. We decided on two approximately 4'x6' sections as well as a few free standing pots. Pat our mentor told us that our beds needed to be at least 6"-12" deep. So then came the most challenging part of the process thus far- math. Based on all those measurements, we needed to come up with cubic feet, then figure out how many pounds per cubic feet, so we could know for sure how much soil to purchase. I'm still not sure if we did our calculations correctly but we ended up with 24 cubic feet and around 30 40-pound bags of soil.

4) Finally, on a crisp Sunday afternoon, we journeyed to Crown Heights to a gardening store (we chose it just because it was the only gardening store that happened to be open at that time) in hopes of buying some soil. After deliberating with the owner of the store, who appeared to be competent in the art of gardening, (more to come on that later) we walked away with $350 of soil/supplies to our name:

• 1 roll of landscaping fabric (this goes at the bottom, for drainage)
• 6 bags of rocks (these go on top of the fabric, also for drainage)
• 30 bags of soil (mix between potting soil and compost)
• 1 bag of peat moss (to keep the soil light)

It would be delivered the following week. We left the store that day feeling accomplished with our progress, slightly intimidated by the task ahead and also extremely discouraged after having spent $350 on dirt.