Last week, before I knew I would have a spot in a community garden, I decided that plot or no plot I was growing large vining veggies this summer. Since my north facing balcony is not really suitable for such plants I planned to guerrilla garden cantaloupe, butternut squash, pumpkins and cucumbers all over the city. As seedlings I would sneak them into neglected spaces here and there. It would take a month or 2 for them to become big enough to be noticeable and by then they would be recognizable as vegetables. I imagined people coming across my plants and saying things like “Wow, that must be a wild squash. It looks like the kind you get at the supermarket but I wonder if it’s safe to eat…”
So I went nuts and planted tons of veggie seeds in newspaper pots. Newspaper pots are great for guerrilla gardening since you can plant the seedlings in the pot – it saves time and also means you don’t have to carry a bunch of empty pots home. They’re also great for plants like cucumbers and squash that, I’ve read, do not like to be repotted. By planting them in their little paper pots, I hope to avoid bothering the roots too much. Now that I have a real garden, some of the seedlings I started will get planted in the garden, so I’m starting some more for the guerilla gardening experiment. I planted all the seeds in a mixture of vermicompost and peat moss to make sure they have some good soil no matter where they get planted. I put the newspaper pots in little yogurt containers for now to make it easier to water them.
