Image description: close-up of a calendula blossom in a basket hanging from a rail.
Image description: a cluster of potted plants on a balcony.
Image description: potted plants along a staircase.
Image description: a large nasturtium bush outside a building with other bushes around it.
These nasturtiums were my first guerrilla gardening project. I bought a four-pack at the nursery and planted these two seedlings in a bare spot outside my apartment building. I thought for sure that the owner would tear them up the moment he saw them, but instead they were left to grow.
Image description: small strawberries growing in a pot.
Image description: a jasmine vine with new growth.
Image description: French lavender in the foreground with other potted plants behind it.
Image description: potted nasturtiums in bloom.
Image description: a green strawberry in a basket hanging from a rail.
Image description: four ripe strawberries in someone's hand.
For awhile, things were going okay. But then:
Image description: a close-up of calendula leaves, the undersides of which are covered in aphids.
Image description: runner bean leaves turning yellow and wilting.
My aphid problem is out of control. They’ve killed almost everything in my windowsill and my outdoor window box, and there’s not a ladybug for miles. It’s so hard to do something good in a climate that’s bent on doing harm – an urban climate that’s inhospitable to ladybugs and butterflies but allows aphids and roaches to flourish, a passive consumer climate that offers zero support for people trying to produce their own food. The local community garden organization isn’t returning my phone calls, despite its supposed need for volunteers, and whenever I respond to people’s messages on the guerrilla gardening forum, it seems they either lose interest or cease to exist.
When I complain about the lack of organizations and like-minded people around me, the response is always, “Start something!” How many of you have had this dismissal cheerfully thrown in your face? Want something to happen? Just start it! Just snap your fingers and the volunteers will arrive, the space will be found, the raised beds built, the topsoil and compost and mulch installed, and the seeds tended to. Just snap your fingers and all the other jobs and projects you’re busy with will fall away! Just start something! Just do it! We’re not going to help, of course – but good luck with it, you crazy activist you!
I suppose people believe they’re being encouraging when they tell someone to “start something.” But “I’ll help you start something” would be far more encouraging.
Because newsflash: healing cannot happen without support. I’m not going to berate the people around me for not being gardeners, but it’s profoundly lonely to be the only one around with a particular interest. Where are all the other gardeners? Is it really so bizarre to feel this excitement at watching things grow, this fear when I bite into an apple grown a thousand miles away? My garden wouldn’t be dying if there were people who could help me with it. If it was other people’s garden, too. It wouldn’t be so impossible to find a community garden plot if community gardens were supported by cities. It wouldn’t be so hard to keep my plants alive if my neighborhood had been built with the health of plants in mind.
Healing cannot happen without support. My doctor ordered an MRI for my back, but I can’t afford an MRI. Now what? I don’t know. Again, I find myself working around a system designed to encourage harm and discourage healing. I want beautiful, healthy things to happen:
Image description: a double rainbow arcs over a Southern California urban landscape.
But they can’t happen without larger systems to nurture them.
(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot.)
Have you tried the You Grow Girl forums? I have similar complaints with gardening and knitting – there seem to be plenty of hipster gardeners and knitters in the area thanks to the U, but no one ever wants to you know, meet and exchange knowledge. WTF.
Hey Julie
I can’t help with the gardening, but I wanted to acknowledge what you said. Particularly about the MRI. I’ve found health issues hard enough to deal with and I live in a world with a public health service. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for people in America.
Julie – first, I am going through a case of serious garden-envy. It’s been a long winter and I am still at least another weekend away from being able to start digging in dirt. I am so ready to plant that at this point, I might even welcome aphids – if only because that would mean I have plants.
I’m not sure where you are but my local garden supply store sells ladybugs. And I think they do it most of the year. But I think only true garden supply stores sell them (as opposed to Home Depot, Lowe’s etc.) I’ve also seen them sold in garden catalogs, especially the ones that focus on organic or holistic gardening.
I’ve had some success in the past with spraying the plants with a mixture of about 10 parts water to one or two parts of dish washing soap. You have to spray under the leaves.
Don’t know if these suggestions help, but they might. Good luck!
Whit and Lulu – thanks for the suggestions, but trust me, I’ve spent the last few months up to my ears in research. :) Spraying helps somewhat, but doesn’t really tackle the root of the problem (Root! Get it? Root?). I’m reluctant to buy ladybugs because if my garden isn’t an attractive habitat, I’m afraid they’ll leave and the problem will start all over again. Plus, that doesn’t help the plants indoors, although in my more desperate moments, I have harbored a wild fantasy of unleashing ladybugs in my living room.
Lulu – one of the few things I love about Southern California is the fact that I can garden year-round! (Although I made a tactical error when I put out some bean seedlings a couple weeks too early and they were hammered by a rainstorm in the middle of the night. D’oh.)
Ladybugs will stay whilst they have FOOD! plentiful FOOD!, which you seem to be able to provide. I’m speaking strictly from an ecology/entomology standpoint, and once the aphid population cannot support the ladybug population, they will leave. At which point, spraying may be helpful. Also, if you have any more local entomology geeks handy, try asking where you could get a lacewing or lacewing subadult. They are merciless hunters of other bugs, sort of the wolverine of the bug world, but much more graceful.