Mushrooms and pea recipes

Something magical happened yesterday in the garden. Maybe it was the 88 degree weather or maybe it was the presence of the new Gardenia or maybe it was the rain from a couple of passing thunderstorms, but this morning presented me with some weird stuff in the garden.

Most notably, these mushrooms in the tomato plant pot:




Weird, right? I swear they were not there yesterday when I watered.

The pea plants are presenting me with a new challenge: how can you use a handful of pea pods on a regular basis? Today I added them to my leftover spaghetti for lunch:



More pea cooking solutions to come, I hope. In fact, that would be a great blog: "Things to do with 6 pea pods." Someone create that and I'll be your biggest fan.

Around the garden this morning...

I just ate a bunch of pea pods in a stir fry this weekend and these guys are already big enough to eat.

More and more leaves growing on the squash, which had a rough transition outdoors.

With the purchase of my Gardenia, I had a new container to fill. A couple of random cucumber plants now call it home.

The Gardenia loving its first morning at home.

Images from the garden

Chris' dad and step-mom arrive today to visit us for the weekend and as I watered the garden this morning, I thought about how far the deck has come in terms of decoration and becoming guest-ready. Last night at dusk I lay out on one of the lounge chairs, the air finally cool enough to breathe, and had the familiar feeling of loving where we live. The moon was full and Oscar was happy to lay under the chair, swishing his tail.

It was a nice night.

Expansion

So remember that little garden that I started in two old litterboxes? Let me refresh your memory of the old days.

Well, things have changed. My little garden has taken over the place!

The last frost date can't come soon enough... we need these guys out on the deck before they take over the apartment. Or before someone else (who has been keeping his distance lately) gets some destructive ideas...

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!