the city garden

the plant nobody cared about

2011-08-23T09:22:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago, my mom came to visit. At the time, I was struggling with the planters on my front steps - 10 hours of direct sunlight up against a brick/cement wall spells sad, dead flowers. Upon arrival, my mom presented me with a fairly ugly sedum plant. This is what sedum typically looks like:

Photo: National Gardening Association

But the sedum that was now in my house was not a typical sedum. It was leggy and sad looking with very few flowers. My mother claimed that sedum is wildly hearty, drought-tolerant, and has good color, so it would be perfect for out front. However, she added, she also picked this beauty up from the Oregon Dairy for some unreasonably small amount of money. Perhaps that explains its visual unfortunateness. I was told I could do with it what I wished.

Later that afternoon, Mom and I went to Greensgrow to pick up some prettier succulents for my front stoop.

Since the visit three weeks ago, the sedum has sat inside my front door, neglected by everyone, including the cats. This morning, I had a bright idea: plant the sedum in the back yard. The benefits of doing so are many, but include:

If the sedum withers and dies after being planted, I can get a rough gauge on the toxicity of my soil. Or at the very least, the soil's viability (both issues have concerned me since I started working the yard).
In digging a hole for the sedum, I can figure out how deep the soil goes, and how far down the trash has contaminated the soil. Answers: deeper than the hole I dug for both criteria. Gross. And no sign of life for at least 12 inches. That might be bad news.

I planted the sedum where the raised beds will eventually go. If everyone's faith in the plant's heartiness is valid, it can survive another transplant when I finally have the beds installed.

And without further ado, the first, but ugliest addition to our new back yard:

Cute in a way only a mother could love.

PS: Hi, Mom!

ivy poison

2011-08-20T21:39:00.000-04:00

Here is a photograph-heavy post about ivy.

When I put an offer on my house, it came with a lovely crumbling brick wall in the lovely back yard. The wall separates my property from that of the house next door, which happens to be vacant. In the selling contract, we asked the sellers of my home to fix the brick wall. When they couldn't do that, their solution was to put up a white aluminum fence on my side of the property, keeping the bricks from continuing to disintegrate into my yard. Well, ok. Not optimal or pretty, but it'll do.

Since I moved in, the pretty, non-threatening ivy that lined the top of the crumbling wall (and most of my next door neighbor's back yard) has turned into a monster. It crept along the wall, covering everything in sight, including my other neighbor's house directly behind my own.

Photo taken June 27th, 2011

Same house, photo taken August 16th, 2011

When it started creeping up my house walls, it was on. I Round-Upped that shiz like nobody's business. Now, Round-Up is created by/owned by Monsanto. If you know me or my foodie housemate, or you read Michael Pollan, or know anything about modern industrialized agriculture, you probably don't need to tell you why Monsanto is highly controversial. But if you need a 37-minute refresher, try here. Or, here for Pollan's long, but informative read from the NYT. Or something a little more sensationalized here. (Grumble grumble, fist shake!)

I would like to say that I took more time to think about friendly ways to kill the ivy. After all, I agonized over my decision to carpet bomb my aphids last year. This year, though, I'm a homeowner. A homeowner with certifiably "permeable" stucco on the back of my house. There would be no messing around. My ethical and personal problems with Monsanto will have to wait for another time.

Let's take a look.

Here is where the brick wall touches my house, the gray stucco. Note the sharp contrast between the dead ivy remains on the left and the living portion on the right. The area that I agent-oranged has been continuously clear for almost two months without retreatment. That's both awesome and deeply disturbing.

Now let's zoom in to see what is really going on:

See those little nubs that look like (dead) holly berries? Those are actually (dead) ivy legs - apparently the technical term is holdfasts. Those little buggers will bore into anything they can, including solid brick, stone, and especially stucco.

Ivy is prolific, fast-growing, destructive, and nearly impossible to kill. When we started tearing up the back yard, I encountered an ivy root that was the diameter of a half-dollar. Silly me for thinking that a nice slice-through with the reciprocating saw might kill the whole beast. Instead, within a week or two, each end of the cut had essentially scabbed over and then sent out 6-8 small runners in its place.

I have watched the ivy consume my neighbor's back wall all summer. A part of me likes the look of it - lush evergreen is much prettier than a beige stucco wall. But the longer this goes on, the more I realize how much it sucks for the owner - whom I have never met - and the fact that I will have to continue dealing with the plant's tendrils as it tries to take over my yard from multiple angles. It would take many many gallons of Round-Up to contain the whole system - most of which is not on my property. Furthermore, without knowing where the roots are to dig up, it will continue to grow back year after year. The best I can do right now is maintain a perimeter just beyond my own walls and garden, and try to appreciate a little more green in my life.

P.S. Ivy is also pretty rough on ecosystems outside of the city. But have you driven around ~~the South~~ anywhere recently? Because ivy is not nearly as big of a problem as kudzu. And yes, the video on that page is probably worth watching.

best-laid plans

2011-08-17T23:05:00.000-04:00

The post-junk-removal planning period has required a lot of thinking and not a lot of doing. Nevertheless, there has been some progress: we have chosen a loose design, worked out some construction issues, and decided on a plan of action. Last weekend, we went to the Home Depot to check out decking materials - more on that later.

Tonight, I donned an old hat and toyed around in Photoshop. You see, I was an architecture student once upon a time. Those three semesters were pretty hellish, but I emerged with a working knowledge of the Adobe Suite and a couple rendering programs. What I threw together in the last 30 minutes is a testament to how much concern for detail I have lost in the past six years - and the fact that I had a very important ~~beer~~ softball event to attend earlier tonight. In fact, it is one of the silliest planning diagrams I have ever put together. Scale? Psh. Perspective? Optional. And you know what? I don't care. My days of torturous image manipulation are over.* These days, I aim for interpretative. Oh, but magnetic lasso? Still gives me major eyelid twitch.

So, here is what my backyard looked like yesterday afternoon.

You think it looks messy now, but consider yourself lucky that I didn't think to take a photograph from this angle before the junk men came. Somehow, we are still using the grill(s) and my housemate and some friends even managed to dine out there a few nights ago. At least I know the space will be used when all this is said and done.

And, here is what the plan is (click to enlarge - my layout won't allow anything bigger):

The green will be 12" raised beds, built with (hopefully cedar) 2"x4"s and topped with something wide enough to serve as a bench for entertaining and/or weeding. The brown will be decking, elevated 6-8" above the level of the existing dirt.

Originally, I had wanted to install raised beds in a U-shape covering three sides of the yard space. However, the yard is just under 14'x14', and I think that might be too much usable space gone. Dropping the beds from the left side of the photo will improve the movement flow, give us a little extra space, and allow for better flexibility in terms of where everything goes. At the moment, we will have a big grill, a big-ass rain barrel, a cafe table or two, chairs, and a number of potted plants to deal with.

As the construction gets going, I am sure there will be adjustments to this setup. Much of what we construct over the next few weeks will be determined by how usable the existing structural grid proves to be.

Anyway, coming up in the next post: ivy! Wha-at is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

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*At least until the next time I decide to write an image-based research paper and try to format it in Microsoft Word. Shoot me.

a few thoughts on junk removal

2011-07-27T17:27:00.001-04:00

I learned some things about junk removal over the past few days. A cursory internet search was less than helpful*, so here is my rundown. Should you ever need to remove junk that the fine people of Craigslist don't even want, read on (if you don't, this may be a pretty dry post):
Read more »

of junk and hauling

2011-07-26T17:32:00.000-04:00

At long last, some progress!

I can't believe it has taken four months to rip everything up in the back yard. Admittedly, I haven't been working on it every weekend. More like an hour or two here and there. A nasty summer cold, the heat, and general laziness have also slowed down the process.

A few weeks ago, I came to the realization that I was spending the majority of my time moving trash, planters, and deck furniture around to be able to access whatever it was I needed to work on, rather than doing the actual construction work itself. It was time to haul some junk.

Disposal of said junk, however, is more complicated than it would seem. After sorting through the plastic bags, junk food wrappers, bottles, cans, the occasional piece of flatware, and glass, and sending it on its way in the normal trash and recycling, I was left with a lot of construction debris: chunks of plywood, broken-up bricks, and a host of random metal scraps, mortar, and rocks that we found under the original deck.

Like many cities, Philadelphia does not allow residents to throw away construction debris in regular trash pickup. For good reason, too. Construction materials are bulky, heavy, and sometimes more dangerous than normal household trash. And I can only imagine what trash day would look like in this city if we were all allowed to toss our rebar, drywall, and mortar chunks onto the street.

My options for dealing with the rest of the junk were as follows:

Build over the trash. I mean, that's what the last guys did (ugh). Cost: free, a guilty conscience, and some pretty questionable stuff in the soil below my raised beds.
Take the debris to the dump myself. Cost: $80-$100 for up to one ton of debris drop-off, $50 pickup truck rental for a half day, manpower + sweat.
Pay someone to take the trash. Cost: $350, peace of mind that the junk gets taken to the proper facilities (and not tossed in the Schuylkill), a few glasses of water/lemonade/tea for the crew.

After a couple of weeks of dragging my feet, Option 3 was looking better and better. $350 is a lot of money, especially given my budget of about $2000 for this whole project. But I've only given myself until Labor Day to finish the project, and that deadline is rapidly approaching. Today I bit the bullet and hired Junk-Be-Gone (full review to follow).

It was a very good decision.

It took less than an hour for two guys to clear everything out, and they did a great job. I didn't have to lift a finger in the 90+ degree heat, either. And, of course, the best part: the yard is finally clean enough that I can move on to the building phase.

Stay tuned for posts about raised flower beds, decking materials, rain collection barrels, and much more!

Welp.

2011-05-03T22:33:00.000-04:00

Update:

The backyard project got sidelined while I finish out the semester. In the meantime, please enjoy this photograph of delicious-looking sun-brewed iced tea.

Love, Sarah

Starting Fresh

2011-03-13T20:13:00.001-04:00

Well, friends, it seems as though I failed at keeping this blog going last summer. Typically, I neglect/abandon a blog for a whole host of reasons, but this time I have a good excuse. You see, at some point last summer I decided to buy a house. After a grueling real estate process, by August I ended up with some pretty sweet digs on Federal Street in South Philadelphia. Amid the chaos of moving, I lost sight of the gardening project and this blog. Sure, (most of) the containers made it to the new house, but the end-of-summer harvest never really happened.

The new house is a great find. It's a big, rehabbed row home on a great block of a so-so neighborhood. We purchased it from a developer who gutted the place and started from scratch. The end result is gorgeous, although the longer we live here, the more we notice how many corners were cut in the renovation process. The most glaringly half-assed job? The back yard.

Yuck.

Here you see a deck in typical post-winter mess mode. At this point, you may be wondering, "what is that surface?" Well, it's three inches of weather-treated plywood. I kid you not. It isn't level, it isn't permeable, and it sure is ugly. See the standing water there? That's Lake Federal, breeder of mosquitoes, collector of scum, and general bane of my existence.

Moving into the house, I knew the back yard had huge potential. It's about 14' x 14' and it gets decent light. What I could not have predicted was how much water would collect, and how unpleasant it would be to use the space. Never mind the fly infestation and the neighborhood cats who used the planters as litter boxes. Something had to be done, but the project got shelved until the springtime.

Until today, I had no idea what was underneath the plywood. Dead bodies, trash, pirate's booty?Sometime last fall, in a fit of frustration, I drilled some holes to help with the drainage. They plugged up with sawdust. All I knew was that it was a pretty thick layer of wood.

Roommate Nate, a fellow gardener whom you will meet soon, and I have been brainstorming off and on all winter about plans, but the unknown under-layer kept us from thinking too much about it. Ideally, we would like some combination of raised beds and containers, with enough surface to accommodate two gas grills and some seating. It would also be great if we could disguise the wall surfaces surrounding the area (dirty stucco, white aluminum fencing, random vertical plywood and a cinderblock wall).

So I asked for power tools for Christmas. My specific needs included a reciprocating saw, which is the scariest, most awesome power tool I've ever used. Anything that takes a variety of blades called "demolition" is pretty rad, I think. So I demolitioned.

Safety first!

With Hank hanging out in the event I needed a trip to the emergency room, I picked a random spot and started to saw. Turns out there is a 4x4 bracing system under the plywood, and I picked the exact wrong spot to start sawing. I didn't take any pictures, but the Sawsall got three-quarters of the way through the beam, explaining why it took so much work to cut that first chunk out.

Surprise of all surprises, the plywood surface was covering up a lot of trash. Plastic bags, broken up brick, water bottles, glass chunks, centipedes, ceramics (do I look like an archeologist?). I might have to start a collection of the weird odds and ends I find, but that's a project for another time.

The work is slow-going. The saw is powerful, but it still takes a good amount of strength and patience to cut through this stuff. I spent another hour or so tearing up some big pieces, and then called it a day. Tomorrow will likely bring the first sore back out of many, many to come. But, as Hank put it, whenever I'm frustrated with grad school, I can always go out back and tear some crap up.

End of Day 1
I'm the best at making mess.

Today I only managed a 6-foot hole. However, the best news is this: there's dirt! Lots of dirt! Maybe 10" or so of dirt! This bodes very well for raised beds, assuming the dirt extends from wall to wall. Dirt also means that drainage may not be as big of a problem. Fingers crossed on that one.

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So, my dear readers. This blog is about to take a change of direction. In the interest of keeping this project down to a timeline of only one season, I am forfeiting actual gardening for this year. However, hopefully the end result yields a really beautiful, productive garden for years to come. And no more Lake Federal.

In the mean time, check in for updates on the process. Once the actual demolition is done, I am looking forward to getting back to my undergrad roots and using an excessive number of illustrations, plans, and elevations to do this thing right. Good gardening comes from good design.

Welcome to the next chapter of The City Garden.

worm tea

2010-06-27T13:58:00.000-04:00

There's a lot going on in the garden these days. I've got flowers and fruits and a whole bunch of containers that are loving this heat wave!

But first, an update on the insecticidification. So far, I have been pleased with Safer's insecticide spray. It smells a little funky; I imagine that's the anti-fungal sulfur doing its thing. All in all, I think it really took care of the aphid problem. I still see some leafhoppers here and there, but I'm not sure I can really prevent that, seeing as their modus operandi is hopping from leaf to leaf (and away from the poison). The only negative I've found with Safer's is that it sometimes leaves a film of dusty whiteness on the leaves. Such a thing is usually indicative of some kind of plant disease, mold, mildew, etc., but I don't see any other indication of sickness, and the spray should be doing something to prevent at least a few of those things. In any event, I have seen no decline in overall plant health.

In other news, the vegetables are coming along nicely, although I have yet to harvest any actual food. The zucchini plants have been blossoming at an incredible rate, and I have been experimenting with blossom fritters (delicious!), but that's all the food we have gotten from the deck as of yet. However, this is about to change. The pepper plant has peppers (they just haven't turned orange yet), the bush beans have baby beans that will be big enough to eat soon, the zucchini is at least trying to get fruit started, and best of all, my tomatoes are coming in! See that photo up there? That, my friend, is a cherry tomato, and I am thrilled!

Given that just about everything is at least blossoming, it's high time I re-fertilized. Fortunately, a friend of mine was looking to get rid of a hefty load of worm tea from her house's worm bin. Worm tea, for the uninitiated, is basically the liquid runoff found at the bottom of a multi-tiered worm bin. Water, steeped in all the delicious nutrients found in vermicompost substrate, makes its way down to the bottom of the bin, where a tap is typically used to dispense it for use. It yields a murky liquid that smells, for lack of a better term, earthy. Worm tea is a great natural fertilizer that basically takes all the nutrients found in worm castings (a.k.a. plant food) and condenses it into a liquid form.

You may be wondering why I needed to get my tea from a friend. Very simply, my worm bin does not have a standing layer of sludge or liquid. Perhaps because it is still in the establishing phases, I don't have very much substrate. Furthermore, my bin is a one-level set up, meaning that there is no extra reservoir for liquid, or a good way to harvest it even if there were.

This afternoon, I used about 250ml (~1 cup) of tea, diluted in about 2L of water. The Interwebs (here, here, and here) seem to be in some disagreement about how diluted the tea should be, but at a 1:8 ratio, I figured I was in the ballpark. After giving each of my veggie and herb plants a shot of diluted tea, I followed it up with a normal watering, just to make sure that a) the tea wasn't too concentrated, which would result in sadness for the plants, and b) that the nutrients made it deep down into the soil.

My hope is that by fertilizing, I will be giving the garden a boost to keep it going through its producing stage. I still have 3-4 more applications of tea left, but I think I will wait a week or so and see how the plants are doing before applying again. For the rest of the summer, it will be a good idea to continue fertilizing at regular intervals, at least until the plants cease to bear fruit.

aphids!

2010-06-12T14:53:00.000-04:00

One of the many benefits of container gardening is that your precious plants are less subject to the pests and diseases that often plague ground gardeners. Soil-born diseases are nil, as most potting soils are sterilized. Likewise, being up off the ground has its advantages: whatever insects are creeping around in your yard dirt probably have a hard time climbing up into your pots. There are, however, exceptions, and one of the most common and most obnoxious is the aphid.

Turns out I have been harboring these monsters. Aphids basically suck leaves and stems dry, and they reproduce very quickly, leaving you with an infestation in no time. I hadn't been looking for bugs, but when my eggplant plants continued to look sad and stunted, I realized I needed to be checking for pests. Sure enough, the underside of the leaves revealed these little buggers, and I promptly took action.

With aphids, you can usually start by blasting them off the leaves and stems of plants with a strong spray from your garden hose. Unfortunately, my watering can can't quite muster the water pressure, and it certainly cannot wash the undersides of leaves thoroughly. On to Option B.

I started by looking up some homemade insecticide sprays online. Aphids are soft-bodied, so they are pretty weak against oils, soaps, spiciness, and a whole litany of other things. The trick, however, is to avoid killing your plants in the process of killing your pests. You can find recipes all over the interwebs (here and here and here), and a former neighbor and gardener extraordinaire passed on her recipe as well. I hodgepodged together a mix of garlic, onion, hot and red pepper, chili powder, and ginger, boiled it down, strained it, cooled it, added a tiny bit of dish soap, and then loaded it up into a generic spray bottle. A healthy initial dose on the eggplants seemed to kill and/or wash away the visible aphids, and left my garden smelling like a wacky chili.

But then the aphids were back two days later. And I noticed that they had also taken up residence on my zucchinis. (Later I realized that the ants that had been crawling all over the zucchinis were actually attracted to sticky sweet aphid byproduct, and I should have seen it as a warning sign...) I sprayed with the spicy mixture again, this time all over the garden. But then the aphids came back. Obviously, this meant war.

After a little bit of internet research and consulting with the friendly employees at the neighborhood organic home-goods store and a gardening shop, the next step up are insecticidal soap sprays. Made of fatty acids, essential oils, and sometimes anti-fungal agents like sulfur, insecticidal soaps are still organic, and theoretically safe to use around children and animals, but definitely more harsh than anything you can make on your stove top.

Today I picked up Safer Brand 3-in-1 Garden Spray at my local hardware store. It includes treatment for mites and fungus as well as insects. The hardware store also carried Garden Safe brand, which was only for insects, but the Safer was a little cheaper, and I figured I could stand to prevent a mite or fungus infestation while I'm at it.

The directions instruct you not to use the spray in bright sunlight or high heat (both of which we have today), so I will wait until this evening to spray.

This is serious war. Hopefully I'll have good news in a few days.

veggie washes

2010-05-26T14:51:00.000-04:00

One difference between CSA produce and grocery produce is that you can tell it came out of the ground. This is by no means a bad thing. In fact, I would rather see dirt on my produce and be reminded to wash it well, than to have creepy hidden bugs in my grocery broccoli that I can't see until I've cooked it (true story, totally traumatizing). Especially with lettuce, I have been pretty careful to wash it thoroughly (and judging by the amount of lettuce I've eaten in the past two weeks, I need a salad spinner like nobody's business).

But the question is: do I need to do more than just rinse? I have seen vegetable washes and sprays on the market, at places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. I imagine they are pretty safe, or at least they are marketed to combat the unsafe ills of non-organic produce. My CSA is organic, so I shouldn't have to worry too much about the nastier chemicals, but what things other than soil should I look out for? And are the spray washes the answer?

more lettucing than a girl can handle

2010-05-20T13:42:00.001-04:00

School's out, I survived, I have settled into summer, and I am loving it. Not only have I had more time to spend in the garden, I've had more time to be a foodie, as well. So, today's blog is going to be about food for a change.

First off, my CSA started last week. I forgot to take a photo of everything that came last Thursday, but it was a monster half-share. An entire grocery shopping bag full of leaf lettuce, as well as a head of romaine, a bunch of green onions, watercress, mushrooms, and probably some other stuff I am forgetting. This week's haul was equally impressive: lots of green onions, some sort of cress, turnips, kale, a head of red lettuce, and my purple broccoli! Oh, and a loaf of bread from Metropolitan, who so graciously serve as the CSA pick-up point.

My container of lettuce alone is making more than I normally eat in salads, so needless to say, I have an overabundance of lettuce in my life right now. I've been trying to make more frequent, bigger salads. It's kind of exhausting, but delicious nevertheless. When the new CSA delivery came today, the worms got a feast of last week's leftovers.

In any event, I am excited to see some new items this week. I have never really cooked with turnips, so that should be an adventure. The purple broccolis look adorable and delicious, too. I don't know that I've ever knowingly eaten cress, and it is a delightful flavor addition to salads. I can't quite pinpoint the taste. Peppery, maybe a little lemony? Whatever. I figure, the less dressing I have to put on a salad, the better, and cress certainly spices things up.

In other news, I think I maybe don't like chard.

I know, I know. It's been so exciting to grow in the garden, but I am struggling with what to do with it in the kitchen. Hank hasn't eaten any since the first time I made him try it (steamed, a little lemon), and I keep wanting to like it, but I don't. The best attempt was to steam it with a load of butter and salt (what isn't improved by that method?), but that was passing at best. Any advice out there? It's so pretty that I don't mind having it as a decorative plant in the garden, but it sure would be nice to avoid letting those pretty colors and vitamins go to waste...

a lesson learned and herbiporn

2010-05-05T18:00:00.000-04:00

Could it be? Two posts in two days? Incredible!

Today's post is short on words and long on photoz. I finished my second final paper this afternoon and rewarded myself with some gardening.

As you know, I'm running this garden on the cheap. As such, I cut corners wherever I can. So today, when I went to the local hardware store, I chose the cheap potting soil (we will call it Brand X) instead of Miracle Grow, which I usually get. I hauled 3 bags (60 lbs.0 of it home in my folding shopping cart and brought the bags, one by one, upstairs. Long story short, don't skimp on the potting soil.

Brand X (left) and Miracle Grow (right), after thorough waterings

Brand X essentially turned to sandy mud that wouldn't drain even when saturated. The deck is a muddy mess and I have resorted to leaving the soaked pot in the sun so it will (hopefully) dry out. Seriously, fork over the extra bucks for the good stuff. Because now I have 60 lbs. (400 when wet) of the bad stuff...

But! On to happier, more photogenic topics than mud:

By popular demand, may I introduce my trash pot:

This is where I throw organic matter trash while I'm on the deck (and sometimes I store my trowel in it). You know, old potting soil, thinned seedlings, husks from grilled corn on the cob, etc. A while back, one of my discarded lettuce thinnings took root. I didn't yank it because I figured if it was hearty enough to survive thinning and live in a trash pot, more power to it. It's thriving, there on the left.

In other news, my savage lettuce/chard container is about to explode

The flat lettuce planter has also been doing well since Sprocket has stopped trying to eat the baby lettuces

And now, my pride and joy, the zucchinis!

The shot on the left was taken at 11:38AM today, the shot on the right at 5:19PM. You may have to look at the larger versions (iPhone shots, apologies), but holy cow! All that in 5.5 hours?

It's gonna be a gooooood summer, y'all.

sum sum summertime

2010-05-04T11:47:00.002-04:00

It would appear as though summer has arrived in Philadelphia. Without a lot of warning if you ask me...

On the personal front, the last few weeks have been kind of insane. Besides being neck-deep in finals at the moment, I dislocate my left index finger in a bike crash a few weeks ago. Not a big deal in the scheme of things, but it has delayed some of my gardening projects because I'm currently not able to lug a flat of potting soil up to the deck. In any event, I am healing and the papers are (gimp-ily) getting written, so I thought I would take a break from my magnificent tome about 1950s religion to bring you up to date in el jardín.

The second round of eggplant and tomato seedlings are doing much better in their temporary pots. You may recall some poor judgment on my part last month when I tried to plant round one too early. The temporary pots go outside for (usually) the afternoon and come in at night. However, I imagine that the 80-degree weather we have been having will start to keep the nights warm enough for me to plant them soon.

A few days ago, I planted zucchini seeds. I am expecting great things from these little dudes, considering my abundant success with cucumbers last summer (cucumbers, zucchini, same thing. Psh). Hank and I eat a ton of zucchini, so I cannot wait to cook up some of my own pride and joy!

One issue I am beginning to realize may be a problem this summer: wind. Although the deck is protected on two sides by 10' walls, it nevertheless gets very windy. I want to look into making a trellis wind-screen with some sort of aggressive vine. Any recommendations? Flowering is nice, but not necessary, and it has to be container-friendly. Had I realized this earlier, I would have purchased pole beans, which would have fit the bill perfectly, but alas, I bought bush beans or their smaller stature. Anyway, this project is in its infancy, so any suggestions would be muchly appreciated!

That's all on the garden front. I'll be mostly done with school next week, and hopefully by then I will have more exciting things happening on the deck.

Until then, join me in my excitement over the return of good produce to my grocery store! And my CSA starts next week!

Om. Om nom nom.

Update: Upon inspection a few minutes ago, the zucchini have started to sprout! That was superfast. I guess they like torrential rain and hot weather...

tomatoes smell like tomatoes

2010-04-17T18:36:00.000-04:00

As everyone else probably expected, breaking the rules didn't go over so well, mostly because we have been having some chilly nights followed by only mildly warm days. The eggplants, heat-lovers they are, are not doing so well. They don't seem dead, they just don't seem very alive either. I have had to keep them under their milk cartons almost every night and they just look sad. I imagine I will have to replace them soon with my indoor eggplant reserve, which should probably be transplanted ASAP or they'll run out of root room. One of the tomatoes* I planted seems to be doing fine (the other was left unattended at the hands of a ruthless killer kitten mere days after I planted it...), although it isn't growing quite as fast as I'd like. Hopefully as the weather gets warmer, this will all straighten itself out.

*With the help of my dear father I figured out it is indeed a tomato plant. The conversation went a little like this:
Me: Dad, how do I know what I planted is a tomato plant and not purple coneflower?
Dad: Well, tomato plants have a very distinctive smell. Crush a leaf between your fingers and see how it smells.
Me: What do tomato leaves smell like?
Dad: [pause] Well, I guess they smell like tomato plants.
This hunch was later confirmed via an emailed photograph of the plant in question. But just in case you ever mix up your seedlings, the tomato plant is the one that smells like a tomato plant.

The lettuces are doing splendidly (they like cool, wet weather), so well that they are getting pretty crowded in their bucket. So I decided to make a second lettuce planter.

What's that you're saying? What an unconventional planter? Why yes, yes it is! Here's what I did:
Hat tip to Ms. Jess for helping me realize that the extra under-the-bed storage drawer that has had no place in my apartment for at least two moves now would make an excellent shallow planter! Worried that its translucent plastic would cook the roots of whatever I planted, I lined it with black garbage bag (cut one down the side seams and it fits perfectly) and pinned it with clothespins. Inside the garbage bag, I lined the bottom with about 1.5" of styrofoam peanuts. This helps with 1) drainage, or in this case, giving extra water a place to sit that won't water log the roots and 2) keeping the weight of the planter manageable. As an afterthought, I decided to drill a few holes in the very bottom corners of the bin and managed to catch the garbage bag on the drill bit with almost every hole. So, the garbage bags have some holes, but now so does the bin. Breathe, dirt. Breathe! It's not the prettiest solution, but it is doing its job. I planted mesclun mix leaf lettuce around its perimeter and they are sprouting already.

Warning: when using a shallow container, be sure that you are raising plants that are shallow-rooted. 6" is not a lot of dirt! These drawers would make a decent seedling bed that you could transfer plants out of later.

Lastly, I did a little deck clean-up and reorganization today. When we moved into this apartment, we inherited, among other things, a weird wood table/shelving thing that has been sitting on our front balcony doing absolutely nothing. Today I moved it out back to hopefully change up the planter levels (prior to this everything was sitting on the ground looking rather un-landscaped).

From left to right, top: oregano, catnip, chives, pretty flowers; bottom: more flowers, sad eggplants, lonely tomato, big bucket of dirt, lettuces

It looks much nicer now, really. And it will look even better when things warm up more.

breaking the rules

2010-04-07T18:57:00.013-04:00

We've had some anomalous weather for the past few days. Today it reached 90 degrees (according to weatherunderground, at least). Yes, that's right. April 7th. 90 degrees. Bizarro. It is supposed to cool down over the weekend, but for now, it is boiling in my apartment, and I got it into my head earlier that things needed to be done in the garden!

My eggplant and purple coneflowers have gotten very big, and if the roots poking out of their peat pods are any indication, it is time to plant them. So the weather is warm, my seedlings are ready, I put soil in more containers over the weekend... sounds like a perfect planting afternoon! WRONG.

According to McGee and Stuckey (and yes, I have a total gardener crush on them), and just about every other seedling instruction resource out there, you have to "harden off" your seedlings. This basically means that you are supposed to take the seedlings outside for a few more hours each day, building up until the seedlings won't get shocked by the temperature change. This can take up to a week.

Psh.

Like I have the patience for that.

M&S, I love you guys, but I don't want to wait a whole week. Besides, I have time to do this now. I'm sure they will be fine.

By way of insurance, I planted two of each and will keep the other seedlings in their trays indoors, and see how things go out on the deck.

Despite the heat, it was very windy today in Philadelphia, so I also made some protective covers for protection. After realizing I planted the eggplants too close together to fit under one half of a milk jug, I exercised some extreme resourcefulness. Gladware! So as long as it doesn't frost sometime in the next few days, they should survive. If not, I always have extras!

--------------------

In other news, the weed-flowers are thriving. They seem to really enjoy the heat, and both are flowering. The pansies, on the other hand, aren't huge fans of lots of sun and this much heat, so they are not doing so well. Ah, well. I knew I'd have to replace them eventually.

Finally, the lettuces are doing very well. So well, in fact, that I have had to do some aggressive thinning. In light of my reluctance to let any seedlings go to waste, I am going to eat the thinnings. Thus, I present to you my very first salad:

Yes, that is a real fork. Yes, eating this is going to be more work than it's worth (in fact, washing the stupid things was already more work than it is worth, but...). Just think of it as a micro-micro greens salad.

trimmings

2010-03-31T12:46:00.003-04:00

Today I had to do one of the things I hate most about raising plants from seeds: thinning.

Once your seedlings get going, it is important to thin them to make sure the little dudes have enough room to grow strong enough to handle the transplant outside. This is especially important if you, like me, planted 2-3 more seeds per peat disc than is recommended or necessary. I think that this behavior stems (badum-bum) from my irrational fear that I won't be able to nurture a plant from seed to fruit. In all honesty, raising seedlings isn't that hard, but I remain shocked every time I manage to make it happen. Yet every time I try to hedge my bets by planting a few (read: many) extra seeds here and there.

However, by planting more seeds, I invariably produce more seedlings than I can handle/raise, necessitating the thinning (which, as I mentioned, I hate). It's a vicious cycle, really, and it breaks my heart to kill any of the plants...

That others might live...

My eggplants have been moving right along. Many of the seedlings are just starting to get their first true leaves, which are the second set of leaves that appear. In reality, the first leaves you see on a seedling aren't leaves at all. They're actually called cotyledons, or seed coats, which essentially come from the seed's original casing. I read somewhere (I can't remember where; bad historian!) that cotyledons are actually food storage for the plant until it starts photosynthesizing. But I digress. A few of my eggplants now have their first "true leaves," which means that they're almost ready to be transplanted.

So thin them, I did. I picked the strongest/most developed seedling in each of my discs to let grow, and chopped the rest. McGee and Stuckey recommend using manicure scissors to cut the discarded seedlings off at the base, as trying to rip the seedlings out may damage the root structure of the seedlings you are saving. As I had no manicure scissors, I used my pruning shears, which was a lot like cutting butter with a machete. Whatever.

We are supposed to have some very nice weather this weekend, and I am tempted to transplant some eggplants outside, but I should really wait until our frost date. This springish weather is deceiving...

Week 1

2010-03-25T14:43:00.006-04:00

I am calling this "Week 1" mostly because it is the first week I have had things planted outside.

Just a few quick updates in seedling land.

First off, things are starting to look less dead outside. I planted some pansies alongside the (probable) weeds and in a hanging basket trio I got from Ikea and never used last season:

The lettuces are coming along nicely, as well:

In case you missed it, look! Little lettuces!

Lastly, I am uber-impressed with the indoor seeds I planted last weekend. To be honest, I can't remember which half of the tray is tomatoes and which is purple coneflower, but somebody is on the move!

I suspect that it is the coneflower, but who knows? I am excited to see things growing in that tray already!

Last night, Hank and I took a trip to Lowes to get project supplies and garden stuffs. I am going to put up a clothesline outside and needed to get hardware for that, and I needed soil and a new pair of gardening gloves (winter ate one of my old pair). In addition, I bought another 17" plastic pot and a packet of bush bean seeds. I didn't set out to purchase more seeds, I just couldn't resist! Those won't get planted for another month or so.

Finally, we got our worm box! More details to come, I swear! Hank promised to write a guest blog about it, we just need to gather the rest of the supplies.

more planting

2010-03-20T15:24:00.004-04:00

Well. Spring has definitely sprung in Philly. It has been a glorious 70 degrees here for the past few days, serving as a reminder to get my act in gear with the garden.

I'm running a week or so late on my original schedule. It's somewhat intentional, as I wanted to make sure that I wasn't pushing the frost date too much, but lately time has been getting away from me, too. The end of the semester is fast approaching, and this coming week will be especially hellish. So, because I had an extra few hours today, I got cracking on the next few steps.

Today I started my cherry tomatoes and echinacea in my 2nd greenhouse (no photos for now. Trust me, they look exactly the same as the others did when I got them started), and planted my lettuces, chard, and chives outside.

In order to save myself from Zipcar-ing to the (unbearably crowded) Home Depot today, I decided to re-use my potting soil from last year. I have no idea if that is totally kosher in container-gardening world, but oh well. Thembi thinks it's cool, McGee and Stuckey don't expressly forbid it, and I really hate Home Depot on Saturdays. So, I dumped all the soil out, sifted through for the bigger roots, re-fertilized, watered, and back into the containers it went.

I hate to say it, but I am hoping that it cools down a bit in the next few days. Chard and lettuce are supposed to germinate in slightly cooler weather, and it's, uh, 73 degrees right now. In any event, I have the planted containers in the shade to keep them cooler for now.

In other news, I found this while cleaning up the old/dead plants last week:

Green growth! That somehow survived three feet of snow! Anyone know what they are? The one in the back looks like it may be a plain old thistle or something, but the one in the middle is odd. It has soft furry leaves and no smell. Both might very well be weeds, but I am so excited to have green in the garden, that I'm going to just leave them there for now.

sprouts!

2010-03-15T20:51:00.003-04:00

I have sprouts!

I returned from California to find a tiny little eggplant plant started, proof that Hank did his job while I was away. Now there are three plants started, and I am having a good time checking on their progress.

I will be starting the echinacea and the tomatoes in a week or two, and a few of my outdoor-starting plants can go out toward the end of this month. That means I need to start preparing the containers and soil, something I haven't yet put much thought into. A project for this weekend, perhaps.

Not much else to report here, other than that the drifts of snow have turned to buckets of rain. Hopefully we will get some nice weather soon!

it begins!

2010-03-05T22:03:00.012-05:00

It's early March. You know what that means! I finally get to plant things!

I decided to back everything up one week toward the safe side of the frost-date spectrum. We have been having some wacky weather lately, and I don't want to risk frost-bitten seedlings in April. Therefore, I got the eggplants started this afternoon.
It went a little something like this:

First, I assembled my supplies:

1 12-pack Jiffy greenhouse (because I'm only planting eggplants on this go-round, I reserved four peat pellets for later use)
1 3/4 c. warm water
1 pack seeds of your choice (mine are Black Beauty heirloom eggplants)

The directions that come with the greenhouse are super-simple. Those little discs are dehydrated peat moss surrounded by a very thin netting.

1. Add water. When you add water to the tray, they blow up kind of like grow sponge pills (please tell me I wasn't the only one who had those).
2. After three or four minutes, the discs are about 1.5 in. tall and ready to be planted.
3. Rip the netting back from the top of the disc, and muss up the peat a little bit.
4. Place your seeds (3-4 per disc). Don't worry too much about where they fall. The peat is uber-fertile and you'll find that seedlings will sprout up every which direction.
5. Cover the seeds back up with peat, and voilà! You are done.

The whole process takes less than 10 minutes. I usually save my extra seeds in a ziplock as insurance, but that's just me being a little crazy. I have had very good success rates with the Jiffy discs, so don't worry about saving every seed

The seeds in their cozy new home:

I also set up Kitten Defense: Version 1.0. It's low-tech, but I have to start somewhere.

As eager as I am to start watching these suckers grow, I am leaving Hank in charge of the seeds while I go home to California for my spring break. He has promised to keep an eye on them, and I have charged him with the responsibility of taking daily photographs if they start sprouting. As I recall, the eggplant seeds took a long time to sprout last year, so fingers crossed, I won't miss anything.

Hooray, spring!

(Apologies for the ridiculous formatting and general lack of excitement in this post. I'm working off an unwelcome head cold, and it's also way past my bedtime, which happens to be 11PM on Fridays. I'll be back in a week, and maybe I'll be able to get Hank to do a guest blog on WORM BOXES! Oooh, aaah)

CSAs

2010-02-26T20:53:00.002-05:00

As Philadelphia emerges from yet another snowstorm, I once again (constantly?) find myself looking forward to springtime. Had there not been snow on the ground or five pairs of slushy shoes by the front door, the three hours of bright sunlight we had this afternoon would have fooled me into walking outside without a jacket. Or in sandals. Or with sunscreen on. Instead, the windchill was still 25 degrees, so I took a nap.

In any event, this afternoon I remembered to do some research on Philadelphia-area community-supported agriculture (CSA). A CSA is basically a crop share organization in which people who aren't farmers (unfortunately, me), pay a seasonal or yearly fee to help support small, independent, local farms. In return, you receive a box of fresh, in-season fruits and veggies every week, available for pickup at a local distribution point.

Back in Boston, I envied my avid CSA-er friends and their fully-stocked refrigerators, but my living situation (one person probably has a hard time eating, say, 3 heads of lettuce in a week) and transient college lifestyle kept me from joining up. I also investigated joining one in DC, but I could never reconcile the cost with the inconvenience of the pickup points (hello? People live in NE, too!).

However, things are looking up in Philadelphia this year. Philly has an impressive number of CSA farms; some of the better-looking ones I found here. I live in much closer proximity to (multiple) pickup points. Best of all, I live with Hank (read: another mouth to feed), who is generally supportive of my cooking experiments. Furthermore, we could both use more produce in our lives.

So I did some research this afternoon and settled on this one: Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative is an organization of small-scale farmers in Lancaster County, many of whom are Amish or Mennonite. I am going to go for the half-share, which at most places feeds 2-3 people, along with a fruit share. I was hoping to find one that combined fruits and veggies into one share, but oh well. The best part, I mean, other than getting a great selection of produce for less than $20 a week, is that my local pickup point is at Metropolitan Bakery, one of my favorite local foodplaces. (Mmm, bread. Mmm, cheese).

You may be asking, "why, with all of the wonderful vegetables you plan to grow on your own, do you want to buy even more??" Well, let's be honest here. Container gardens don't grow all that much. And when they do, you have 3,000 cucumbers in the span of two weeks. Furthermore, because many CSAs come from multiple farms (I think LFFC has over 50), the variety of produce is incredible. I'm crossing my fingers for some watermelon this year! Om nom nom.

Last but not least, here is my obligatory spiel on buying local. Although locavorism (it's a real term, I promise) has its benefits, it is not without controversy. This article sums it up pretty well: no commercial food production enterprise, no matter how small or how local, is ecologically or nutritionally perfect. However, there are certainly steps one can take toward the elusive goal of carbon neutrality. For me, however, the idea of buying local appeals more to my desire to support small farmers. Perhaps I've read too much Michael Pollan, but the idea of big business agriculture troubles me enormously. In short, I believe that maintaining diversity in agriculture is crucial for a healthy economy, a healthy environment, and a healthy populace. So, I will do what I can do. And eat yummy foods while I'm at it.

waiting

2010-02-15T13:03:00.002-05:00

Hello, world.

Not much is new in the way of the gardening project, but the end of February is rapidly approaching. I think I'll wait until after March 1 to get the little guys going, just to be on the safe side of the frost, considering my 'hood has been looking like this lately:

Truth be told, I haven't actually seen any of my deck, the various planters, and remnants of last summer's projects in quite a while. I'm assuming they're still there. Just buried under three feet of snow.

In lieu of anything exciting going on garden-wise, I have been keeping busy experimenting in the kitchen. I'm working on incorporating more produce into the meals I make (rather than just the veritable whole-fruit basket I bring with me to campus for lunch). Last night I made a decent mushroom-based stew, and carrots have recently made a reappearance in my life. Obvious, I know, but I'm the kind of person who will pair broccoli with just about any meal just to get some greenery in there. But veggie variety is good!

That's all for now. Check back in a few weeks for the seedling start play-by-play.

updates

2010-02-02T18:21:00.006-05:00

Predictably, graduate school took over my life already. Fortunately, there haven't been any huge developments on the garden front. However, in the spirit of, well, having something to write about while I'm waiting for Hank to finish dinner, here is what is new:

1. I finally received my mini-greenhouse trays. Ultimately, I settled on two smaller trays rather than the behemoth tray mostly because only a few of my plants will start indoors.

2. I recently received a care package from my parents that included (among other things) a few more books (Park's Success With Seeds, Park's Success With Herbs, and Secrets of Plant Propagation). Until I get a chance to read about something other than 20th-century urban history, I won't have a lot to say about them. However, upon a quick flip-through, they all seem like informative resources, despite the fact that the links to the two Park books are likely the least informative links I will ever post on this blog. Thanks for the books, Dad. Mom, thanks for the warm winter socks.

3. I also received catalogs from both Burpee and Territorial last week. So now I can not only gawk at their prices, but also drool over things I'm not actually going to grow this year. So there's that.

And now, back to grading undergraduate reflection on globalization. Is it summer yet?

decisions

2010-01-24T21:19:00.006-05:00

Now that I have my seeds, the next step is getting seedling supplies. This brings me to a couple of things I need to figure out.
To risk the frost, or not risk the frost?
Frost dates are calculated by an area's last average frost. I am tempted to push all of these dates a week or so earlier in the hopes that it will warm up early this year. Last year, I know I started my seeds indoors ahead of schedule, and likewise planted them outside ahead of schedule, I just don't remember how early. As far as I remember, that worked out just fine.
The obvious con to this plan is tempting fate a little too much with fragile seedlings. Seedlings need light and their roots need warmth when they go outside, and nighttime low temperatures can really sting in the early spring. The pros to this are a longer growing season and a (slight) remedy for my winter restlessness.

One nice thing about containers is their movability. Theoretically, I would know about a cold snap with enough warning to bring the containers inside for a few days. However, the movability of containers is tempered by how much a container full of watered soil weighs. Furthermore, keeping the plants indoors also assumes I can keep the cats away from them, which will be interesting.
Something to think about; advice is totally welcome.

Moving right along to decision #2:

How many mini-greenhouses do I want to buy?For the uninitiated, mini-greenhouses are essentially plastic trays with lids that house disks of peat growing material. This is the easiest way to raise seedlings (in my highly tested comparison of peat disks to, say, dixie cups with potting soil), and in my opinion, it is totally worth the extra cost to buy the materials. Further, you can purchase additional disks and the trays are reusable, though I wish they were sturdier. Anyway, these greenhouses, usually made by a company called Jiffy, come in all shapes and sizes. My growing shelf will accommodate a big hummer that holds 72 disks that I can get for $12.99 with shipping from amazon.com. However, I'm not sure I need so much space. For the same price, I can get two 12-disk trays. I think I am leaning toward the 72-disk tray, not because I need all that space, but because it may give me some flexibility in positioning the disks in the interest of their lamp.

The other issue is cost: I may be able to find either/both of these items for cheaper at the Home Despot. However, when I made a trip over there a few weeks ago, their garden center was still in winter mode. When I called today, I got hung up on twice being transferred from department to department, so I don't know if they have greenhouses in stock or how much they cost. Anyone have an idea on the price of these bad boys outside of Internetland?

seeds ii

2010-01-24T18:48:00.003-05:00

My seeds finally came in the mail! The crisp paper packets are tidy and promising, and when laid out on my desk, I am tempted to take our flirting-with-50-degree weather and run with it. However, in the interest of avoiding a seedling massacre, I will continue to plan rather than do.

So far, I have set up a tentative planting schedule. Many of the things I am growing this season can be direct-sowed (sown?) outside when it warms up, rather than starting everything indoors (like last year). Philadelphia's approximate last frost date is mid- to late-April, which I am going to call April 17, because it's a Saturday, and I know I have time to work on the deck on Saturdays.

The indoors-starts:
Eggplant - late February/early March
Tomatoes - early March
Echinacea - early March

The indoor- or outdoor- starts:
Chives - early March indoors, late March outdoors
Mint - early March indoors, after frost date outdoors

The outdoor-starts:
Lettuce - mid-March
Mesclun lettuce - mid-March
Chard - late March
Bee Balm - early April
Delphinium - after frost date
Basil - late April
Squash - Early May

As I look at this, I realize all these dates are a long, painful way off...