My Last Post From NYC

Please Note: There will be no posts over the next two weeks, so I can wrap things up here in NY and get settled in LA. I’ll be back to regular posting starting April 12, 2010.

Wow, it’s hard to believe that it’s been a year (and a day) since I started writing this blog. March 25, 2009 was my first post when I decided to grow a small window garden. Here I am one year and a day later writing my last post from NYC as I head out to LA in just over a week.

During this year I’ve learned a lot and have connected with some great people. For my last post from the NY, I decided to do a timeline of events of that led up to where I currently am:

March 29, 2009 Deciding to Grow a Small Window Garden: This is the post that started it all. I wanted to rebuild our broken down window garden and grow some vegetables. Little did I realize how much this would change my life.

April 5, 2009 Built My Window Garden: Invested about $60 and built the window garden to plant my vegetables on.

April 8, 2009 Built an Indoor Compost Bin: For about $20 I built my own compost bin that I kept in my kitchen.

April 11, 2009 Can’t Grow Vegetables On My Window Garden: After building the window garden and talking to some people, I realized that it gets no direct sunlight and wouldn’t work as planned.

April 14, 2009 Gardening in Containers & Upside Down: With my roommates permission to utilize his fire escape, I looked into container gardening and learned more about self-watering containers.

April 15, 2009 Expanding My Vegetable Garden to Brooklyn: My Grandmother grants me permission to set up a garden in her backyard as well.

April 25, 2009 Starting a Vegetable Garden in Staten Island: Decided to expand to another borough and grow at my parents house in Staten Island.

April 26, 2009 Recycling and Making a Cheap Vegetable Garden: I decided that I wanted to do it as economically and earth friendly as possible using items that were free and going to be sent to landfill anyway.

May 7, 2009 Composting Mistake: Too Many Greens: Made my first mistake in composting by putting too many greens into the pile. The smell was horrendous.

May 23, 2009 Set Up My Fire Escape Vegetable Garden: After all the preparation, got my first ever planting done my fire escape.

May 26, 2009 Vegetable Gardening – Brooklyn Style: This garden took me two days to get planted.

June 17, 2009 The First Vegetable Harvest from My Fire Escape: A few short weeks after planting on my fire escape, I was able to harvest my first salad.

June 24, 2009 The Woman Behind My Brooklyn Vegetable Garden: My Grandmother is introduced to everyone.

July 10, 2009 Not Guilty. I Did Not Kill My Lettuces: After harvesting my lettuce, I thought that I killed them. I learned that they’ll continue to grow.

August 3, 2009 Do Not Use Soda Bottles for Upside Down Herb Planters: After three unsuccessful attempts, I learned that growing herbs in soda bottles upside down was not a good idea.

August 14, 2009 Starting a Hanging Herb Garden Using Recycled Soda Bottles: Since the upside down soda bottles failed, decided to grow them right side up.

August 24, 2009 Cherry Tomato Does Not Mean Small Plant: One of the most important lessons that I learned – just because the fruit is small doesn’t mean the plant will be. The cherry tomato plant grew to be taller than me.

August 28, 2009 Mariann Started a Vegetable Garden How About You? Received my first email from a reader that she was inspired to start her own garden. This is what makes it all worth it.

September 9, 2009 Cinder Block Gardening: I start to get creative and plant in the cinder block in my Grandmother’s backyard.

September 23, 2009 Urinating on my Tomato Plants I heard that urinating on the soil of your tomato plants is supposed to be good for them, so I gave it a shot.

September 25 & 28, 2009 Learned two lessons – Plant celery individually in containers and Don’t combine herbs in the same container.

September 30, 2009 Testing Soil pH the Old Fashioned Way: No need for fancy equipment. I test my soil the old school way – by eating it.

October 5 & 7, 2009 Final Fall Plantings in My Backyard Vegetable Garden & On My Fire Escape Garden: I went big on my fire escape and planted 10 hanging planters using soda bottles.

October 10, 2009 Conflicting Info About Growing Cauliflower in Containers: One of the reasons that I enjoy experimenting and not reading too much on gardening is because of a post like this. My cauliflower wasn’t growing well in the containers. In the comments, many people commented with different reasons why. All of the information is great, but it just goes to show that there is no one right way.

October 14, 2009 What to do When Cucumber Plants Yellow: Much like the cauliflower post above, the same thing happened here. There were many different ways suggested to help remedy my yellow cucumber leaves.

October 16, 2009 Used Phone Books In For My Container Gardens: Finally came up with a use for all the phone books that get tossed into the landfill. They were put under the containers to keep from off of the cold ground.

October 19 & 21, 2009 Made Miniature Greenhouses for the Hanging Soda Bottle Planters and Small Plastic Greenhouses: I attempted to build greenhouses that were cheap and functional for my gardens.

October 30, 2009 Don’t Forget About Feeding Your Plants: Plants aren’t a set it and forget type thing. They need to be fed and nourished as well.

November 4, 2009 What To Do After Harvesting Your Vegetables: After harvesting some celery, I planted lettuce in the same container thinking that the celery was done. It wasn’t and continued to grow because that’s what plants do.

November 9, 2009 Started a Worm Composting Bin: Made my first venture into the world of worm composting.

November 23, 2009 Scrapping the Small Plastic Greenhouses: Realized that the small plastic greenhouses were a bad idea and scrapped them.

December 2 & 4 Urban Kinder-Garden Workshop Day 1 & Day 2: Conducted a two urban gardening workshop with the parents and students of a kindergarten class of Kester Ave Elementary School in Sherman Oaks, CA.

December 14, 2009 Killing My First Set of Worms: This would start the trend of worm killing for me.

January 4 & 6, 2010 Ending My First Gardening Season on my Fire Escape and in my backyard vegetable garden: The freezing winter temps finally knocked out both of my gardens.

January 8, 2010 Finding Seaweed for my Compost: I wanted to compost my gardens since my gardens had died off. I spent the day scouring Brooklyn in the search of some seaweed.

January 13, 2010 Container Garden Froze: The weather dropped too quick and froze up the containers. This made it impossible to break them down.

January 20, 2010 More Worm Composting Problems: I kill a second set of worms.

February 8, 2010 Swear Off Worm Composting: After killing a third pound of worms, I decide to chill with the worm composting for a bit.

February 12, 2010 Ordering Vegetable Seeds for the First Time: I place my first order for vegetable seeds for the 2010 season.

February 26, 2010 Making Compost Containers of All Sizes: I start to use a plastic tub, cat litter bucket and coffee containers to compost in my kitchen.

March 8, 2010 Receiving the Worm Factory 360: After hearing about my worm failures, Natures Footprint Inc, sends me one of their Worm Factory 360s to help me (and the worms) out.

March 12, 2010 Moving My Garden and Life Out to LA: I decide to pack up my garden and things to head to the left coast for LA. It’ll make for a much better growing season.

March 15, 2010 What’s the Best Way to Ship Worms? The worms have been thriving in the Worm Factory 360, but I needed to figure out how they were going to make the cross country trip with me.

March 17, 2010 Finishing Breaking Down the Brooklyn Garden: The garden finally defrosted and was able to be broken down.

March 24, 2010 My Grandmother on my Move to LA: Never one to hold back her thoughts my Grandmother shares her thoughts on me moving to LA.

This brings me to today just over one year after I started this blog with my last entry from New York. It’s kind of a metaphoric ending of the first chapter. When I land in LA and start up again it will be the beginning of a new one.

Thank you to everyone who has read and shared their experiences with me. Over the past year I’ve been able to connect with some really great people because of this blog.

Aight, I’m outtie and the next time you see me gardening, I’ll be on the left coast. Biggie is still better than Tupac.