I asked my Grandmother what her thoughts on me moving out to LA were. She is not one to hold back what’s on her mind.

Before answering the question, she wanted to make sure that she was camera ready and asked if her hair was combed and looked decent.

Then she chimed in with, “I don’t like to see you go, but if you think you are going to be happy there, I will be glad for that.”

She then got distracted by some “shmutz” that was on the floor that had to be picked up at that exact moment. After she remembered what she was saying, Gram continued, “I hope you find what you are looking for. What it is, I don’t know, but time will tell.”

I’ve attempted to explain blogging, SEO and social media to her before, but it’s not so easy to explain to a 91-year old who can barely understand a cordless phone.

A request was put in for her to address some of her “fans” on the internet, but she couldn’t grasp the concept of what I was talking about. She thought I was going to bring the internet into her house. Some attempts were made to explain who and what I was talking about, but that went round and round in circles.

When asked to say “goodbye” to everyone, she couldn’t get what I was talking about. So I told her to say goodbye to the garden. She said that she’ll still have hers, but we all know that my backyard vegetable garden is way superior.

That’s it from my Grandmother’s and her house. Closing out another chapter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsKiqQI39eg

My Grandmother On My Move to LA from Urban Organic Gardener

I learned another lesson when making an outdoor compost bin – don’t start it in the middle of the winter.

Yea that seems to be pretty obvious and common sense now, but it wasn’t two months ago when I started. Due to the freezing weather, I haven’t been able to turn the compost at all because, well, it’s been frozen. That makes it kind of hard to turn.

Now that I’m moving out to LA, I’ll need to get rid of this compost. I’ll likely just dump it on the garden beds like I did the rest of the soil.

Looking back on the gardening mistakes that I’ve made, they all seem to be common sense. It’s good that I’ve made them though as it’s part of the learning process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZraDGYdXyd8

Don’t Start An Outdoor Compost Bin Mid-Winter from Urban Organic Gardener

Now that the weather has warmed up a bit and the containers aren’t frozen, I was able to finish breaking down the self watering containers in Brooklyn.

Since I’m moving out to LA, there is no need for me to put the remaining soil and plants into the outdoor compost bin.

The soil was just tossed into the gardening beds that I had planned on using. My guess is that it’s likely the most healthy and nutrient dense thing that’s been put in those beds in years.

My Grandmother’s gardener is supposed to be coming in the next week to turn her soil. Hopefully, this soil will help somewhat.

I’ll need to continue to wrap things up as I wind down my time here in NYC and head out to Cali.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LSBkjE3BFk

Finishing Breaking Down The Brooklyn Garden from Urban Organic Gardener

Since I’m still new to this gardening thing, I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my first year. I’ve also had many successes as well, with the most memorable being my first lettuce harvest.

For this post, I’d like to share the Top Five Gardening Mistakes that I’ve Made. Life ain’t perfect and neither are my gardens. I know hard to believe.

I’ve made these mistakes, learned from them and have become better at gardening (and life) because of it.

1. Putting too many food scraps in the compost bin. This was one of my first mistakes and happened before I even planted my garden. Luckily, it wasn’t a tell-tale sign of things to come and easily rectified. Though the smell in my apartment was absolutely horrendous for a few days.
2. Upside down herb gardening. When I first started this, it seemed like a great idea and looked cool as hell too. The first time around, they all died in less than a month. So I tried again with the same results – dead herbs. Then I realized I should turn grow the herbs out of the top, not the bottom…duh.
3. Planting cherry tomatoes on my fire escape. It was great that I was able to get fresh, ripe tomatoes from my fire escape, but the plant grew to be way too large for my fire escape. I definitely won’t grow it again in such a small space.
4. Plant fewer or single plants in each container. The celery plant that grew alone in a container was more than double the size of the ones that were packed together. Also I had combined herbs into containers, which stunted the growth of some of them. It was just a case of me being greedy and trying to plant as much as I could.
5. Worm composting. I went through not one, not two, but three sets of worms that I killed. What can I say? I’m a worm serial killer. They were literally dying to get away from me. It was a major fail.

These are only five of the mistakes that I’ve made while gardening this first time around. There were plenty more and there will be plenty more to come. None of which will stop me from continuing to garden.

What are some gardening mistakes that you’ve made?

Five Gardening Mistakes I’ve Made from Urban Organic Gardener

Now that I’ve gotten some advice on planning for the garden beds in my Grandmother’s backyard, I made a call to obtain some horse manure.

I definitely want to add things to the soil to mineralize and amend it. One reason that I want to do this is because Brooklyn soil is known for being flat out nasty and on the border of toxic. The other reason that I want to is because I’ve seen the crap that my Grandmother has put in her soil and I wouldn’t want it anywhere near my stuff. The 60+ years of what’s been put in there ain’t for me.

The first, and only, spot that popped into my mind was the Jamaica Bay Riding Academy in Brooklyn off of the Belt Parkway. Yes, there is a horse riding academy in Brooklyn.

My hope was to call and ask if I could take some of their excess horse manure off their hands. The reality was that they don’t just give it away. They sell it. A 50lb bag costs $5 or I could fill up the bed of a pick-up truck for $25.

Shawna Coronado put over 5,000 lbs of buffalo manure into her garden. My garden area isn’t nearly as big as hers. She did refer to me this link which says 250-300lbs per 1,000 square feet.

Knowing that I’m still not sure as to how much I would need to fill in the garden beds. They are 4′x2′, 4′x6′, 4′x4′ and 4′x4′.

How much horse manure do you think I should buy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOm0NxUsnVE

How Much Horse Manure To Order For The Soil? from Urban Organic Gardener

This spring season, I plan to use some of the garden beds in the backyard vegetable garden at my Grandmother’s.

I got her approval and documented in the video below, but I’m sure that she’ll still have some complaints about it.

There are four beds that measure approximately 4×2, 4×6 (which has a little bit of moss growing on it), 4×4 and 4×4. I’ve seen some of the stuff that my Grandmother has put in her soil, so I’d definitely like to mineralize and amend it.

The plan that I had was to till it and add compost, seaweed and horse manure once the weather warmed up.

The questions that I currently have are:

• Is there anything else that I should do to mineralize the soil?
• Should I be worried about the moss? If so, what should I do
• Is there anything else that I can do now or should be aware of?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PErx1227H8Y

Help and Advice for Planning Garden Beds from Urban Organic Gardener

The kind people at Botanical Interests have contacted me and offered to help me out with some seed packets to get my 2010 garden started.

I’ve never started from seed before and I like experimentation (with growing vegetables that is). My plan is to continue the fire escape gardening, backyard vegetable gardening and potentially expand that to the garden beds.

I’m leaning towards their organic heirloom seed collection. What would you recommend me getting or would like to see me experiment with?

Help Buying Vegetable Seeds For The First Time from Urban Organic Gardener

I decided to make an undercover outdoor compost bin at my grandmother’s for my backyard vegetable garden in Brooklyn.

Why is it undercover? It is because my Grandmother would flip out if she knew I was composting in her backyard? Why would she flip out? I dunno. She’s 90 and does that kind of thing. We are talking about the woman who freaked out when I brought my first harvest into her house.

Making this outdoor compost bin was very similar to the aerobic compost bin in my kitchen.

This bin also had no cost in putting together as well. All of the tools and materials I already had.

Tools and Materials:
• Garbage can: It was laying around her backyard and not being used.
• Leaves: There’s an abundance in her backyard that she usually bags up and throws away. So these were saved from the landfill.
• Soil and old plants: I saved when I was breaking down the containers.
• Seaweed: I was able to harvest from the Brooklyn beaches and from my friend’s dock.

Here’s how the construction went down:
• Drilled 1/4″ holes in the bottom of the can.
• 1/4″ holes were then drilled vertically along the sides of the can about 2″ apart. Horizontally they were about 4″ apart.
• Collected leaves from the backyard and filled it about half full, then pressed them down until it was about a quarter of the way full.
• Some of the plants and soil from the containers that I broke down were put on top of the pile.
• Topped that with some of the Jamaica Bay Sticky Icky (seaweed).
• Put one last pile of leaves on top.
• More holes were drilled along the sides to allow for more aeration.

This was a two-day operation. By the time the second day rolled around much of the soil was frozen and couldn’t be used. Luckily, the seaweed didn’t freeze up.

When completed, the compost was put back way in the corner of the backyard where my Grandmother doesn’t go anymore.

Unfortunately, in this weather the compost has froze up. You think it’ll last? How long until I should have some good usable compost?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbpMD-_Dv4c

Making An Outdoor Compost Bin from Urban Organic Gardener