On my inability to garden

There's nothing more frustrating to a New York vegetable lover than the city's near-complete vacuum of personal ground space.

Some talented city green thumbs get around this conundrum with unusual indoor solutions or extreme diligence. I, however, am further handicapped by a crippling ineptitude with plants. I mean, I couldn't grow mold on bread. Unless someone wanted to present me with a fertile tract of Prospect Park for my personal use, complete with pre-sprouted seeds, I've got zero chance at growing my own fresh food.

That's not to say I haven't tried. Over spring and summer 2009 my then-partner and I lavished love on four shrimpy pepper plants and a tomato sapling that yielded some of the tastiest fruit I've had. But keeping them safe from the baking blacktop of our East Village rooftop was torture, and our diligence relaxed during the next season. In 2010 our cauliflower plant never sprouted, our flower seeds were stolen by birds, and the next generation of tomatoes yielded only one pathetic fruit. By August, the product of our affections looked like this:









To add insult to injury, that same summer my younger brother had tossed a couple of tomato seeds into the ground at our parents' suburban backyard, and voilà! Bushels of gorgeous fruit of several varieties, completely unattended:

















I think this goes to show that plants, much like people, were not designed to endure the grimy environs of urban life. We need air! Green space! Rich soil and shade! Like me, my tomatoes couldn't be coaxed into happiness - that is something that only comes from the roots.