Sugar Pea support line!

The Sugar Peas have grown too tall for their own good. Though some of them are leaning on the windows, some have found some more creative ways to stay up.

Tendrils getting itchy for some support.

Dental floss as a helper!

A little help from some friends.

Squash it Monday!

CAT-astophe.

Here I was, innocently snapping pictures of the sunflowers that are coming up like periscopes on submarines. Like this:

Oscar approached. He jumped on my lap. And then, somehow, I caught this all on camera.







I froze, then Chris came over to help, then I cried a little. Because... WHAT THE HELL, CAT? I know it was an accident, but he sure did look satisfied.


Who knows how this is going to work out. But Chris (with his logical brain) told me that plants in nature have to survive lots more than this. Somehow we put humpty dumpty back together again. Back to our regularly scheduled Saturday programming. Sigh.

Container Gardening... go!

When you garden in an urban area, you're often limited to "container gardening." But which containers? And where do you buy them? Luckily, it's really easy and cheap to get the containers that will house your summer garden.

I'm big with recycling, so I'm always looking for ways to re-use packaging from the stuff we buy. Since I started this garden a few weeks ago, I'm like a hawk around the recycling bin. Anything that looks remotely helpful for a garden... well, I'm all over it. Here's a bunch of stuff that I have saved up for when I need to re-pot:

Can't wait to try TP rolls for long-rooted seedlings.

Those Jiffy pots in the background are the only things on that table that I purchased. I used them in the very beginning with my seeds, although I could have used egg cartons. We don't eat enough eggs to do the whole garden like this, but I managed to save one for the Oregano:

Not sure how this would do with a larger plant, like the squash. It works great for the teeny Oregano, though.

Here are some other reusable objects that I had lying around:

Cat grass growing in an old strawberry container.

A Trader Joe's asparagus carton is perfect for one block of Jiffy pots. These are growing sunflowers.

When it comes to African violets, you have to water them from the bottom. That means they always need to be placed in a larger bowl or container so that the plant can suck up water through the holes in its pot. Here's the result of a yogurt craving and a night of take-out:



Of course, if you're planting vegetable or fruit plants, you'll want to be sure that the container you're using is the right kind of material. According to Gayla Trail in Grow Great Grub, you have to be careful not to use a plastic container that might break down under heat or time (chemicals in your food = not the goal). Turn your potential container upside-down. Does it have a 1, 2, 4 or 5? You're good to go. Other numbers (3, 6 and 7 specifically) shouldn't be used to grow food.

And that's it! Super easy and super cheap. What are you waiting for? Container-ize!

The Ladies.

This morning (upon my morning ritual of staring at the garden for a long, long time), I laughed out loud when I saw the broccoli. Like something out of Dream Girls, the broccoli seedlings seem to have grown a couple of arms clothed in bell sleeves alongside their little faces.

Ms. Diva, 18 days old.

Can't you just picture them screaming with delight as you walk in the door? "DAHLING!" they cry, "It's been AGES!"



Funnier still is to see them all together, a bunch of tall, thin broccoli fashionistas, throwing their arms to the sky in dramatic symphony.

Cilantro recognizable!

Lots of people said growing Cilantro is hard. And maybe it is. Maybe it's growing like a weed right now and will hit a wall one of these days, shrivel up and inexplicably die.

But this morning it was doing just fine and is finally starting to look like the Cilantro I know and use and love. Looking at those little leaves is making me mega-hungry for fresh salsa. Now, if only I could grow tortilla chips...

Cilantro, 17 days old.

Tight Grip.

Squash it Monday!

You know how I'm thinking about this Monday morning? SQUASH IT!

Squash, 15 days old.

P.S. Cat hair optional.

Sugar Peas, you overachieving scoundrels!

So we all know overachievers. I'm one of them. This is probably why I love sugar peas so very much.

Here is how they start:

Sugar peas, 3 days old.

Then they're five days old and start showing leaves:



Then they're standing up straight and tall after six days:



Then they're a week old and growing tendrils:



Tendrils! In a week! I think you can see where this is going. The next step after tendrils is a little something I like to call "GRAB ONTO ANYTHING IN MY PATH." Which is why you can imagine I'd be a little worried when they all grew so big and so fast that they were in each other's way.

Sugar peas, 13 days old.

Sugar peas, reaching tendrils at 13 days old.

So yesterday I went on down to Dig and asked what I could do for my little buddies. The plan is to eventually have them wind their way around our railing, but there's another 27 days til the last frost. By then, they will have grown four times around the apartment and laced us to our cat. Luckily, the answer was easy: repot and give them something to aim for.

This is how I found myself repotting sugar peas at 10pm on a Saturday night. When I picked up their Jiffy pots to carry it over to the counter where the surgery would take place, I noticed something that I had never captured in a photo: ROOTS.



Clearly these guys needed some more space. So I moved them (Jiffy pot and all) into larger Jiffy pots, with the knowledge that they are going to expand in the pot, but the goal for the next four weeks is to keep their tendrils otherwise occupied. The guy at Dig suggested wooden dowels, but I found these pieces of wire in some old pots on our deck and figured they might work out ok.







Excited to see if they start wrapping themselves around the wire, but knowing sugar peas, I'll need to find another solution by this evening. Sugar peas, you scoundrels! *shakes fist at sky*

Gardening in 2010

Last summer, I kept a little garden on my fire escape in Greenpoint. I had enough room for basil, catnip, sugar peas, green beans and lettuce; in the end, only the basil got used. It was a mega-pain to climb out the window to weed the window boxes of lettuce and I only produced enough peas and beans for one meal.

But this year, I'm a little smarter. I'm also in a bit of a different situation in terms of where I live. We have an 600 sq foot deck attached to our place, which means that my garden dreams can handle a ton more energy. Having some friends that are into gardening helps too.

I read through Grow Great Grub yesterday and discovered some tips for the summer. Part of the reason I only ended up with a few peas and beans last summer is... (wait for it...) that I NEVER HARVESTED THEM. I let the same beans and peas on the vines all summer, until I finally picked them in August, when they were dry and inedible. GGG taught me that I have to harvest all summer long so that the plants keep growing food. Genius! (Or really, really obvious).

So how do you grow a garden in Brooklyn? We don't have a yard, so I'll be container gardening like I did last year. Container gardening feels a little restrictive, but I'm hoping to find a way to combine the boxes with the space. One of the coolest plans is to have the sugar peas wrap around the railing that goes all the way around our deck. Decorative peas! Here's a look at what we inherited from the previous tenants:


This year I decided to get things started with seeds instead of small plants. I was itching for spring to start and knew that I could start seeds inside sooner than sowing directly outside. I asked our local garden store for some advice two weeks ago and they told that the last frost of the year is scheduled for mid-April (according to some Farmers). I had about 6 weeks to get the seeds going. And holy crap, are they going!

Sunflowers and sugar peas, plus the watering spoon.

Squash, cilantro, basil and sugar peas.

Sugar peas, broccoli, tomatoes, cucumbers and oregano.

Here's what I have planned for this summer:
* sugar peas
* broccoli
* squash
* tomatoes
* cucumbers
* watermelon
* basil
* cilantro
* oregano
* sunflowers
* maybe if I'm really brave, a blueberry bush

One of the shortcomings I found on the Internet with regard to growing plants from seeds is a lack of images that show what plants look like after a week, 2 weeks, etc. How do you know you're on track?

I'm hoping to use this space as a seed image archive, a site that new growers can consult to see how their seeds are sprouting. I'm also going to report back about the challenges of container growing and the problems and successes with urban gardens. Planting seeds in boxes on my cement deck sure doesn't feel as earthy as it did when I spent four summers working at a farm during college, but it's a compromise (and creative challenge!) for now.

Birdless in Brooklyn

My brother got us this bird feeder for Christmas and we finally put it up last weekend. For a whole week, this giant tube of sunflower seeds has been hanging on our deck. While hanging it, I wondered how often we would have to fill it. Daily? Bi-weekly? Where do we buy replacement birdseed when this one ran out?


Turns out, we don't. Cause up here, on the 8th floor of an apartment complex in downtown Brooklyn, we haven't had one bird visitor. If you grew up anywhere greener than a parking garage, you are probably as mystified as I am. Where. Are. The. Birds?!

This blog is a space for me to track what it's like trying to grow a garden and bring a little greenery to my life in Brooklyn. It's about urban gardening, urban wildlife and the parks of New York. Away we go!