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My Favorite UrbanOrganicGardener Moments of 2009

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 salad, so when I harvested veggies from my fire escape for the first time is up there for me.

Not only harvesting the salad, but eating the salad ranks high up there as well. The fact that I was able to trace my produce from fire escape to bowl was a bit overwhelming for me. Just check out the video in the post.

A few months into the blog, I started to receive emails from readers about starting their own gardens after seeing what I did.

Mariann in Arizona was the first to send me a note. She was hesitant at first and had lots of questions. The best part about her garden was that it was a way for her and her teenage son to bond.

A few months later her garden was doing well. She was able to harvest lots of basil and her cucumber and tomatoes were starting to fruit and blossom.

Annie also hit me up to tell me that she started her own urban garden in Washington, DC. She used some soda bottles, planted and hung them in her backyard.

Earlier in the month, I was on the left coast and did an urban gardening workshop with a kindergarten class in Sherman Oaks, CA.

I got to work with the kids and parents to get the class set up with their very own Urban-Kinder Garden. The first day was spent with the parents setting up the self-watering containers and talking to them about the importance of growing your own food.

On the second day, I worked with the parents and the students to set the garden up and start their own worm composting bin. This event was definitely one of the highlights for me of the whole experience – getting to work with the kids. Mad fun.

Without all of you none of this would have been possible. I sincerely thank all of you and look forward to learning more and keeping this journey going in 2010.

What were your favorite UrbanOrganicGardener moments of 2009?

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Harvesting Kale From My Fire Escape

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 this 20 degree temperature?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OJImG8RZ_M

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Making a Composting Mistake

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 bedding of newspaper and another pound of worms. This time I put the bedding in, dropped in the worms and let them get situated for about 10-15 minutes, sprinkled some food scraps on the top and closed the lid.

I’ll leave them alone for a week or so and periodically check in.

Any tips or advice for my second go around?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svy9RKHv19s

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Did Urinating On My Tomatoes Help Them?

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 remembering to feed them, planting them at the right time and keeping certain ones out of the cold. It makes it difficult to isolate a specific incident.

With that being said, I’ll start to relieve myself on my tomato plant earlier in the season next year. I’ll also be bottling up my urine for those of you who would like to purchase it.

The more pressing issue at the time is the fruit that’s on the tomato vines. Some are light red and some are green. I’d like for them to vine ripen, but the weather is supposed to drop into the 20s. What do you think I should do? Pick them? Or leave them?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiiANuKpwq4

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Kale is Thriving in the Cold Weather

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 to leave it up to see how much longer it’ll last though.

A few weeks ago, I did some housecleaning on my fire escape by removing some of the hanging soda bottle planters.

This week I removed about four more – a kale, mint and two lettuces because they were on their way out.

The good thing is that the kale is doing well in the cold weather. I’m not sure if it’s because of the greenhouse or if it naturally does well in the cold or a combination of both.

What do you think? Whatever the answer is, it’s December and I gots some kale on my fire escape.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MojwRNZEYyM

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December Gardening Is Upon Us

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 slowing down.

I already know that I should’ve left the celery plant alone after I harvested it.

The red pepper plants have fruit, but the leaves are wilting, so I’m guessing that it’s on it’s way out.

Both of the spinach plants are showing signs of dying. Not sure if it’s because of the weather or because of lack of nutrition. The green malabar stem snapped due to the wind. I likely should’ve had better support for it.

The cucumber plant is definitely dead and has no chance at revival. At least I know to plant my cucumber earlier in the season.

The chives and nasturtium both seem to have been infested by slugs. I say that because of the way they look and because I saw some slugs in those containers before I left.

Much like everything else in this experience, it’s a first for me. The weather hasn’t dropped too low yet (40s at night), but it’s expected to over drop into the 30s over the next week.

Due to my bad planning in the backyard with the greenhouses, I’m going to start taking down the containers that are totally dead. Then I’ll look back and do more thorough evaluations on what went right and wrong.

What are your December gardening plans?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV-I48Y8HbY

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Urban Kinder-Garden Workshop Day 2

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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 with the roots.

I then showed them the worms that we were going to use for the compost bin, which got the biggest response.

I demonstrated how to fill the container with the soil and fill it with water.

The parents and kids were then divided up into groups to plant. Each group was assigned two containers with two plants per container. The kids dove into the soil hands first and started to fill the containers.

After everything was planted, I set up the worm compost bin for the class. I explained how the worms take the newspaper and food to make the soil and how it keeps those items from the landfill.

The kids screamed and cheered when I finally dumped the worms into the bedding. The food scraps were then divided amongst the kids to put into the bin.

At the end of the day there were about 15 self-watering containers filled and six hanging soda bottle planters.

All said and done we planted red leaf lettuce, mesculin mix, swiss chard, peas, green onions, red peppers, basil, parsley, stevia, dill and chocolate mint.

I’ll definitely be keeping in touch with Miss Avalos’ class and expecting updates as their garden continues to grow.

My favorite comment of the day was from Zackery who said, “You’re a good gardener.”

Who am I to argue with him?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm-3eD3KBpU

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Urban Kinder-Garden Workshop Day 1

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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 to them that on average food travels from farm to table about 1,500 to 2,000 miles. For someone like me, who lives in New York City, most of my food is coming from California (if I’m lucky).

By the time it’s picked, packaged, shipped, unpacked and put on the shelf at a store…is it really fresh at that point? When you grow your own, you can trace the life of the vegetable.

Additionally, the containers are made from pre-existing materials. That brings down the cost to make them. Not only is it low cost, but it helps to keep the materials from landfills as well.

The one fact that I thought resonated with the parents (besides the low cost) was a soda bottle will sit in a landfill for 700 years before decomposing (GreenYour.) So imagine how long the big plastic containers would sit for?

After we spoke for a bit, we got to working on the containers. The tasks to build them were divided up and everyone got to work.

All said and done, we built about 15 containers for the kids to plant in. Some of the parents expressed interest in building some of their own self-watering containers at home.

When we were finished, the kids returned to the classroom and asked me a few questions about gardening such as, “Plants need worms” and “What’s an herb?”

The next day I’ll be planting the veggies with the kids and setting up a worm bin.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRZmtDO6JxA