Getting’ dirty

The Home Depot Garden Center was one zombie short of an apocalyptic outbreak last weekend, as the suburban gardeners and wannabes who’d waited until the very last minute to plan for the summer shambled past annuals, vegetables and materials.

Yeah, I’m one of them. The kind of person that wishes I could have all the neat, raised beds and tidy, hanging herb gardens made from old rain gutters that abound in photo essays from urban-gardening websites. I know there are people out there who can turn a patio into a locavore Eden, but I’m not one of them.

Instead, I have a driveway garden—as in “There’s just enough space for two big pots on wheels next to the garbage and recycling bins, while still leaving enough room for the car to get out without dinging anything.”

But even though I’d come for just a couple of cubic feet of potted vegetable soil and some starter plants, the carnival atmosphere caught me quickly. On the Sunday of a three-day weekend, everyone thinks of home-improvement projects—especially when the weather’s on the cool side.

I coveted a neat little divided plastic tub for gardening by the square foot ($24.95), which would allow me to give that urban farmer’s holy grail a try without knowing how to hammer-and-nail together a container.

Nope. Too wide for the Honda to get around while backing out.

Then there was the momentary flirtation with the mushroom-growing kit, self-contained in a brown cardboard box ($19.95). That was a close one, but my wife put her foot down and ruled the guest-room closet off-limits to fungi.

What about some hanging planters? They’ve got Topsy Turvy planters for tomatoes, strawberries and hot peppers ($3.98 to $6.97).

“Do those things even work?” my wife asked, before pointing out that I’d need to put in heavy-duty hangers to hold them.

She was more congenial as I dithered over which plants to start with: heirloom cherry tomatoes (too fragile; I tend to be a forgetful gardener) vs. hybrid grape tomatoes, green peppers vs. hot peppers (which, she helpfully reminded me, neither of us eat).

Meanwhile, swarms of shoppers were loading carts with everything from birdbaths (wrought iron with a crane, $153) to plastic Adirondack chairs ($17.98 and stackable). The latter caught my eye, but I was quickly reminded that we don’t use the stackable outdoor chairs we have now, which are extremely dusty and marked with the paw prints of neighborhood cats.

Thanks to an alert and helpful spouse, I left with my fresh dirt, a hybrid grape tomato, a Bigger Boy tomato (because size, apparently, matters a great deal when it comes to fruits and vegetables) and a green pepper. The only impulse buy I made was a nifty convertible tomato cage ($12.95) with three possible configurations.

A half-hour of actual gardening was all it took to get things set up. Now I just have to water regularly, feed occasionally and wait for the results.

But I may need to go back for that mushroom kit. After all, what she can’t smell won’t hurt her.