Where to start?

Let me tell you a secret.  First, I got the idea of starting a garden and only few weeks later I got another idea of starting a blog about it.  Conclusion - I already have the very basics covered and some plants showing green leaves.  But beginning the whole adventure was real fun, so I'm going to time travel a bit and go through it again, even if only virtually. 

So, how do you start?

The first (and probably the most important!) step is to actually decide to go ahead and do it.  Do I sound ridiculously obvious here?  Weeeell... 
Possibly, there are some illustrious people out there, who simply wake up one day with an idea in their heads, get up and make it a reality.  Could be.  Me, I'm not one of them.  I've been secretly dreaming of a garden for months.  But come on, a garden in a flat, in the middle of a city?  So I kept reading those gardening blogs, salivating at the sight of onions, tomatoes etc, and hating all those lucky people having backyards or enough balls to commit themselves to a garden. 

Took me good half a year or so to say 'what the hell' and start DOING something to actually have a garden, instead of only dreaming about it. 

Admittedly, arrival of spring in just the convenient moment helped, too. 

What I'm trying to say here is simple - if you dream of growing your own food, stop dreaming.  Get up and do it.  Whatever your circumstances are, it's much easier that it seems and it's much better than dreaming. 

I'm not saying that I'll have my own veg stall in the market at the end of this growing season, or that now I can safely forget where my greengrocer is.  Miracles are not covered by this blog.  It will probably be months before I taste any decent fruit of my gardening activities and even that is not guaranteed.  My crop is in constant risk of failing due to multiple hazards, not the least of which are my complete lack of experience or shaky sense of responsibility and commitment.  I bet I'm not the only one out there with such an attitude.

So why bother?

- for the pure fun of mucking around in soil and getting your hands dirty
- to satisfy your sense of curiosity - ever wondered why this blog has 'experimental' in the title?  All of my gardening works on 'Let's do that and see what happens' basis.  So refreshing.
- to learn.  Well, maybe my parsley won't grow once, twice, whatever, but it will eventually, right?  And even if it won't - at least I will know what kills it!
- to enjoy this wonderful feeling of creating something out of almost nothing.  My garden is built on 'minimum expenditure' rule.  Unbelievable how much of your garbage can begin new life as a planting pot.
- for the wide-eyed fascination when something you've planted actually grows, develops, thrives because of your care.  I don't want to get too cheesy or too sentimental here, so someone shut me up please.  But watching a seed grow is a powerful reminder of how miraculous life is. 

I could probably think of more, but this post has already grown into quite a lengthy story, so let me stop here.

Enough of ideology anyway, time to jump to the equipment you will need.
Which will be covered in tomorrow's post.
Promise.