My winter container gardening ended in December, so I started to break down the self watering containers at my Grandmother’s. Once the sun went down the cold became freezing and I had to stop. When I woke up the next morning to finish breaking down the containers, they were frozen solid. All of the soil that I had been storing in the wheelbarrow was frozen as well. Unfortunately, I can’t do much until the soil defrosts, which I don’t see happening in the next few weeks. So I’ll have to wait to break down the rest. There...
Since my backyard vegetable garden died, I needed to clean it up as the first step for getting ready for the spring season. The first step was to breakdown the self-watering containers. Here is how I did that in my Brooklyn garden: Tilted the container so that the water drained out of the drainage hole. I leaned the container up against a fence for a few minutes. Laid a sheet on the floor to capture the soil. Cut the remaining plant down at the soil line and put into the compost. Turned the container on it’s side and gently...
I’ve heard from many people that seaweed is supposed to be real good for your plants and compost. It’s said to be high in all kinds of nutrients and minerals. So I decided to head out to the beaches in Brooklyn on a fine winter day and hunt for some seaweed. No better time than the present huh? And yes Brooklyn has beaches. Before I headed to the beaches I hit up the Canarsie Pier. I hoped that I’d be able to find some that people fishing tossed away. There was none to be found though. The first beach that I went to was...
My winter container gardening has already ended on my fire escape. It’s also ended for my backyard vegetable garden in Brooklyn as well. This can be attributed to a few things. The first being my neglect. I didn’t go to my Grandmother’s for two weeks to tend to the plants. I’m sure that the snow and cold weather also contributed to the plants dying. Now that they are dead, I’ll have to look back on how the vegetable performed, what my mistakes were and how I can improve for the 2010 season. The next step...
My fire escape container garden did not make it through the first big snowfall of the season. Once the snow cleared up a little, and I was able to check things out. The small plastic greenhouse was sunken in because of the snow. When I took the cover off, the red peppers and kales were dead. Luckily I was able to get one last harvest out of the kale a few weeks back. Unfortunately, I hesitated on the cherry tomatoes and they died. The tops of the miniature greenhouses were nearly all blown off and one of the hanging soda bottle planters...
With this being my last post of the year, I wanted to share with you my favorite moments from UrbanOrganicGardener. This might seem a bit self-serving, but when I first set out and started this project my goal was to get just one salad. It’s turned into a bit more than that. I’ve been able to get that salad (and many more), but I’ve also been able to connect personally with many of you and that’s really been the best part. So I’ll close out this year with some of my faves: Like I said my goal was to get one...
The kale has been doing well on my fire escape garden. With the weather dropping into the 20s, I decided it was time to harvest and eat it because that’s what it’s there for. In harvesting my lettuce, I learned that you should pick the outer most leaves. Otherwise the plant will bolt. Personally, I don’t want it to bolt and want it to keep producing more food for me. After I picked me some kale salad for lunch, I put the small plastic greenhouse back over it. The question that I have no is will it continue to grow in...
The composting mistake that I made is pretty simple – I killed my worms. Shortly after starting my worm compost bin, I had to dry it out because it was too wet from all the coffee grinds. That didn’t work and the worms were all dead. So I properly buried their remains along with the newspaper bedding at the local community compost. That didn’t stop me from starting a new worm bin. Why would I let it? I made a mistake, learned from it and now I’m one step closer to success. I cleaned out the old bin, put a fresh...
Here we are three months after I urinated on my tomato plants. If you recall, I did this because it’s supposed to make them grow larger. Did it work? It’s hard to say, but the plant is still fruiting and blossoming. So they didn’t necessarily grow larger, but it could’ve helped to extend their lives. Can that be attributed to my magical urine? I’m not really sure because I think that started to tinkle on them too late in the season. There are a million and five factors that effect the health of the plant like...
This is the first check in of my fire escape garden since returning from my Urban Kinder-Garden Workshop in Los Angeles. The weather has dropped into the 40s here and 30s at night, but the kale plants are thriving in this cold weather. Once I removed the small plastic greenhouse from them, they still look healthy and to be growing. The container with the red peppers in it didn’t look as well. I think it might be on it’s way out. I was able to pick one small pepper from it, but the leaves were looking all kinds of wilted. Going...
Before I left for my Urban Kinder-Garden Workshop in Los Angeles, I scrapped the small plastic greenhouses in my backyard vegetable garden. Now that I’m back, December gardening is upon us. So far the garden is holding up better than I thought it would. This proves that the self-watering containers are pretty low maintenance because I didn’t check on them in two weeks and everything didn’t die. Here’s a quick summary of how the plants are holding up. The kale plants are looking good and don’t show signs of...
[flickrset id=”72157622928169088″ thumbnail=”square” overlay=”true” size=”medium”] The second day of the Urban-Kinder Garden Workshop with Miss Avalos’ class was the real fun because I got to work with the kids on planting everything. No offense to the parents, I totally enjoyed my day with them making the containers too. We started the morning off by going over the vegetables that we were going to be planting and talking about the various parts of the plant. The class was most fascinated...
[flickrset id=”72157622911237720″ thumbnail=”square” overlay=”true” size=”medium”] For the first day of the Urban Kinder-Garden Workshop at Kester Ave Elementary School, I worked with the parents and relatives of some of the students to build the self watering containers for the garden. We also discussed the environmental impacts of gardening and building the containers. Since we’d be growing our own produce, it cuts out the travel and oil costs associated with the food. I mentioned...
I’m on the left coast this week conducting an Urban Kinder-Garden Workshop with Miss Avalos’ Kindergarten class at Kester Ave Elementary School in Sherman Oaks, CA. Miss Avalos is tying the garden into the curriculum for her students. Art The first part of the project was having her student paint the containers, which helps them to express themselves creatively. Science and Language Arts “One of the cool things is that it also teaches about seasons and weather,” said Miss Avalos. “We are getting everything...
I’ve decided to scrap the small plastic greenhouses in my Brooklyn backyard vegetable garden. The past two weeks I’ve had problems with support for them and realized that I should’ve built a larger greenhouse. It’s not that they don’t work because they work fine on my fire escape garden. The problem is that I get to my Grandmother’s only a few days a week, so the plastic stays on them for most of the week. This is causing a lot of condensation and affecting the plants. Some of the kales, lettuces and...
It’s been about a week since I started a worm compost bin in my kitchen. When I checked in on it, the newspaper was very damp and there weren’t many worms in sight. I dug some more and finally found some worms, but they weren’t very lively at all. Not to point fingers (but I will), my roommate threw in some coffee grinds in there without adding additional newspaper to dry it out. The result seems to be a worm bin that is too wet. It’s not leaking or runny and there is no smell though, which is a plus. All didn’t...
There were two of the hanging soda bottle planters that I took down from my fire escape garden. The first one that I removed was because one side of the rope snapped and it was dangling by one side. So I removed it for safety reasons. I didn’t want another soda bottle falling like one did when I did my fall planting. Safety first. The other that was removed was the bottle with the basil. It was apparent weeks ago, when I realized that basil isn’t a cold weather herb, but I was holding on to the fleeting thought that it would...
One of my cauliflower plants is finally starting to head. A few weeks ago, I gave my thoughts on growing cauliflower in containers. I received varied responses as to why they weren’t heading – the weather, not enough nutrients, too many plants in one container and more. Not sure what to do, I let the plants be and didn’t do much to mess with them. Sure enough a little over a month later, one of the plants is starting to head. I’m going to continue to keep the container as is. It wasn’t the first time that...
Last week, I realized that there was a support problem with the small plastic greenhouses in my backyard vegetable garden. The water was gathering in the plastic causing it to fall and crush the plants. This week the problems continue with them in Brooklyn. One of the plastic covers blew completely off and another slipped off a bit. I think there are a few things going wrong with them. The most obvious one is that the rope is loosening up during the week, which is allowing the plastic covering to come off. For the backyard vegetable garden,...
When do you plant cucumber plants? Not in July. I can tell you that much. Now that the cold weather has come around and it’s dropped into the 40s some nights, the cucumber plant is sad looking. I’m hoping that the two small pieces of fruit on it will grow some more, but I’ll have to wait and see. Next year, I’ll definitely get the cucumber planted much earlier in the season. Here’s what happened this year and why I planted it so late – I killed the first one and took too long to get the next one planted....
