adventures in urban agriculture, daejeon style vol. 1

As mentioned previously, the winding back streets of Daejeon provide a large magnitude of examples of people growing food crops right in the center of a dense urban metropolis. From small remnant farm plots not yet converted into officetel buildings, to squash snaking around in front of apartment buildings, to the ubiquitous potted pepper plants, people cultivate culinary products in nearly every available location, no matter how limited. Me being a fanatic of the garden, especially of the city variety, I decided to take the leap and get into the action this year.

From the outset of this project, there were known logistical hurdles to overcome, the first of these being the location of the necessary supplies and inhabitants for what would become my first Korean garden. This was fairly easily accomplished with a trip to the downtown street market in early April, where I secured seeds of several vegetables, seed trays, etc. and then luckily stumbled upon a bonanza of large discarded planter pots on the way home from the market. The next and more intractable problem was where the garden would reside, being as we live in a small 8th story apartment with limited to negligable access to the surrounding grounds due to language barriers. Our apartment is, luckily, equipped with a relatively large, enclosed, southern facing balcony where the laundry is washed and hung to dry. Now clean clothes and dirty pots are not an obvious combo, but I devised a way to the divide the space, and Taylor was amazingly happy to go along with the plan. There is also a kind of planter hanger protruding from our balcony railing that is slightly insecure, but overall suspectedly reliable.

So it was with this space in mind that I set about to planting my seeds and warming up for the summer crop. My mom even sent me some basil seeds (not readily found in Jungangno market), and with the one drawback of completely defective eggplant seeds, the garden was off to promising start. This is what it looked like:



Having overcome the anticipated difficulties, it was time for the unexpected to kick in. When relations between us and our boss quickly and severely deteriorated in the end of April, we made the painful decision to seek a new employer. As our employer provides our housing, this also meant moving to a new apartment. Not everyone is familiar with, or sympathetic to the concept that I would really enjoy a (preferably southern facing) balcony where my crops could prosper, but some of our new housing options seemed promising. The main problem was the element of uncertainty; with plants that needed to be put in ground (or, small pieces of ground enclosed by cylindrical plastic containers), I didn't want to make a move until I was sure those plants would have a place to go. Also, of course, small plants and empty pots are also much easier to move than large, bulky pots full of dirt.

After pondering long and hard over potential alternate outdoor locations for the garden, I finally realized that there is a large unused brick area at the skatepark I visit almost daily. There is full sunlight, plenty of space, a relatively nearby water source, and I had some semblance of a justification for using the space, given that I am a frequent inhabitant of the park. I asked a couple of the guys at the park about it, hoping that they could check with the guard man to make sure everything was cool. Their resounding response, was "just put the plants there, we don't need to ask the guy". Taking this as a green light for "Saemmori Garden", I went to Jeju for a week with grand ideas bouncing through my head of building large beds from scrap street wood, having fresh veggies for the skate barbeques, and maybe even getting some of the local skaterats interested in gardening. I even bought an orange tree.

When I returned home, my first errand was back to Jungangno market, where I picked up a bunch of surprisingly cheap starts (having much more room to work with, I vastly expanded my vision for the garden), and two gigantic bags of potting soil. I loaded up a very bulky load on the handcart, gathered bags of plants, and slowly rolled my way over to the park, about a kilometer and a half away. When I arrived, there were no skaters there, only a guard previously unknown to me, regarding me first with puzzlement, followed by skepticism, and finally culminating in disapproval. With one to five word sentences, hand gestures, plenty of smiling, and lots of thumbs up, I tried to convince this guy that "Saemmori Garden" was a go. He politely disagreed, but was kind enough to put in a call to his superior, confirming the negative response. Discouraged and tired, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was wrestle this awkward load of junk all the way back home, but after a short rest, that's exactly what I did.

The orange tree was basically a ball of roots in a black plastic bag, and most of the starts I purchased were dangerously rootbound. For these plants to live, they needed to be in pots. I didn't see any point in wasting perfectly good plants and soil I just bought, so they went into the pots on our balcony this morning. This is a little inconvenient, as I now have six large potted plants to move into an apartment we don't even have yet, or know if there is a place for them at, but it still makes me feel good to look out and know they're there. This is how the situation stands right now:


I will certainly follow up with updates on where the garden ends up.