I feel like a student on the first day of class, except not in the least bit intimidated and totally committed. I’m a sponge for anything gardening 101 . You got info? Tell me about it, I want to know! Here are some more snippets of what I’ve soaked up from other knowledgeable people so far on this glorious topic:

• Keeping records is a must if you want to have hard evidence of what worked and what didn’t. Got my notebook, check.

•Every garden is a unique eco-system, so learn what has worked for others in their gardens, but be prepared for your own individual results.

• Our raised bed depth must be at least 12″; 16″-18″ for high root biomass vegetables like tomatoes. Love tomatoes, 18″ it is.

•Blackberries are an “invasive species” and will be the bain of my gardening existence. Lovely. Plan of attack: rip out the roots by hand, lay down black plastic or heavy netting, build raised beds, cross fingers. Oh, and be prepared to rip a few stubborn roots who make it through the plastic/netting.

•Clover is a favorite for planting tightly around plants once they’ve sprouted for support, to keep moisture in the soil, and build nutrients throughout the garden. And this will equate to less watering and weeding which I like the sound of. Apparently seaweed and leaves are fabulous for this job too.

•Crop rotation gardening is one great way to not only build great soil and conserve soil nutrients but also get variety out of a garden and year round harvesting. The key here though is to alternate high root biomass planting (ie broccoli, cabbage, carrots, peas and tomatoes) with those of low-root biomass (clover, beans, onions, corn, cucmber and pumpkin).

•Vertical gardening rocks my world; trellis’s, re-bar, mesh netting for vegetables to grow upwards. Doing it, doing it, doing it.

This weekend is rip out the blackberry bush roots - in full force! Wish us luck!!

The building I live in is awesome in so many ways. To start, Artech is where I live and work, so commuting is a non-issue (yay!) except of course when I have to shoot on-location, but that happens just enough to mix things up a bit. Then, our building has amazing recycling facilities downstairs which was a major plus coming from the old-school apartment we were living in last year. And now, on the heels of Mayor Robertson’s new garden, we’re building one of our own! There is this long and somewhat narrow plot of unwanted city land behind our building, right up against the concrete wall of the building actually, that a bunch of us in the building have decided to figure out how to make this work for growing our own food, and I am totally pumped about it! Divided up into individual plots, possibly as big as 10×10, in the coming weeks we’re going to research, build, plant and grow.

A huge thank you to Megan for taking the reins in getting this going, and I’m sure we’ll all have to put in alot of blood, sweat and tears (are there blood, sweat and tears in gardening?) for it to be successful but I know we can do it! I promise to photo-document the entire process, from the ridding of the blackberry bushes that currently reside there (apparently a rototiller will be needed), to the first sprout of a bean or a squash or a strawberry, to the first home grown meal we’ll have this summer. And everything we learn about gardening along the way I will of course share. First up on the list: this March snow needs to stop.