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.

My Last Post From NYC from Urban Organic Gardener

The weather is starting to finally brighten up in NYC, enough for me to start my seeds, but I won’t be doing any fire escape gardening this year because I am moving across the country to Los Angeles.

By no means does this mean that I am going to stop gardening. It just means that I won’t be gardening on a fire escape. I’ll be trading it in for a balcony.

I’ve proven it possible to grow your own organic produce on a fire escape in NYC. Now I’ll show that you can do the same on a balcony in Los Angeles.

Growing my own food has become part of who I am and what I do. No matter where I am, I’ll find a way to grow. Whether that location is NYC, LA or wherever I may wind up next. Growing your own food is possible anywhere.

The weather in LA will enable me to grow more and do it year round. It’ll be a whole new learning experience and challenge, but one that I’ll embrace. I’ll take the knowledge and memories that I gained from the fire escape, including the gardening mistakes that I made, and continue to expand my knowledge.

Fire escape or not, I’ll be growing my own food and hopefully continue to inspire people to do the same. It’s possible no matter where you are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vuB2Q_glGk

Moving My Garden and Life Out to LA 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

Not sure if it’s me or the crowd that I keep, but it seems like a food revolution has started. People are starting to take food back from corporations.

This is one of the reasons that I started to garden. I wanted to get back in touch with my food. I feel that America has lost its connection with food for business and corporate reasons.

The fact that gardening on my fire escape allows me to harvest my meals so that I can trace my produce from fire escape to table still amazes me.

There are no words that can explain the joy that goes into growing, harvesting and eating your own produce. Food is the fuel that energizes and nourishes our bodies. Somehow we’ve given that responsibility to someone else.

By starting to garden, I’m taking that responsibility on myself. Being in an urban environment hasn’t stopped me and it hasn’t seemed to stop others as well. Urban gardens and farms are in the news more and more lately.

Stacey Murphy founded BK Farmyards as a decentralized urban farming network in Brooklyn.

BK Farmyards puts the farmers in consumers back in touch, cutting out the middle man. They help to transform people’s backyards into farms. The residents pay for the farmers to tend to the land and make it bountiful and get to keep some of the produce. Those without land to farm on can pay for the produce that is harvested in their neighbors yards.

New York isn’t the only urban area that is getting into the gardening and farming. In South Florida there are lots of gardens and farms starting to pop-up.

The reason that they are starting is the same – people are looking for more locally grown produce that they grew on their own.

Mid-westerners factor urban farming and gardening into their plans for revitalization. Parts of western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio have already started to move forward.

Grow Pittsburgh has the vision of, “Grow Pittsburgh envisions the day when growing and eating healthy, local food is commonplace. ”

Similar programs have started in Youngstown and Cleveland, Ohio with Akron not too far behind in the urban farming and gardening space.

The food revolution has begun. Are you on board?

Taking Back Our Food From Corporations from Urban Organic Gardener

I’m sure that most of you think that having a fire escape garden is easy. Well it aint’s.

You already know that my fire escape garden is out of my roommate’s room.

There is a radiator that is in front of the window that the fire escape is out of. On the radiator is a bunch of stuff that I need to take off each time I want to go out. Then I have to open the gate and the window, which doesn’t freely open.

Once the window is open, I can get out onto the fire escape. Not that simple though. The radiator is mad shaky, which makes it difficult to use as a stepping stool. There is also about a foot or so of window ledge that I need to clear as well.

On the way out of the fire escape, it’s just as difficult again because of the shaky radiator.

Contrary to popular belief, fire escape gardening is much more dangerous than you think it would be and that’s just getting to and from the garden.

Check out this video to see what I’m talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xrbAHDAwo0

Getting Into and Out of My Fire Escape Garden from Urban Organic Gardener

When I asked for help buying vegetable seeds, I got all kinds of advice and suggestions, which are much appreciated.

Spinach, chard and all sorts of greens were the most recommended. I don’t really eat that many starchy veggies like carrots and beets, so didn’t want to get those for my fire escape garden.

Since I only have three containers for veggies and the hanging soda bottle planters, I really wanted to maximize the space for productivity.

I decided to do all greens and lettuces in the containers and ordered some herbs for the hanging planters. I decided against growing cucumbers and tomatoes because they just get too large for the fire escape and there isn’t enough sunlight for the peppers.

This first round of seeds that I’m getting are courtesy of Botanical Interests. Here is what I ordered:

• Lettuce leaf salad bowl blend
• Lettuce mesculun gourmet baby greens
• Lettuce romaine parris island
• Red kale winter
• Basil Genovese
• Cilantro
• Dill Bouquet
• Parsley – Italian dark

I’m also going to have to order some seeds for my backyard vegetable garden.

What do you think of the selection for my fire escape?

Ordering Vegetable Seeds For The First Time from Urban Organic Gardener

The complaint that I often hear about my fire escape garden is that it is a fire hazard and that I’m putting lives at risk.

I do respect the fact that it is a fire escape and a means for people to evacuate the building in case of an emergency. This is something that I take seriously because on January 29, 2003, my apartment burned down.

This is just one reason why I make sure that there is a clear foot path for people to walk and that the hand rails are available to use.

Technically, my garden violates the fire code because I am storing items on it. I also break the law daily when I j-walk. I’m not trying to be a smart ass, but it’s one of those laws that’s not always enforced.

The landing space of the fire escape is about 2′x3′ with the containers taking up about 8″. That leaves 16″ of foot space, which is plenty of room for someone to safely walk.

The one potential hazard was the cherry tomato plant, which wasn’t a small plant. I won’t be growing that on the fire escape in the future.

With all of that being said, I do maintain the integrity of the fire escape while using the available space to grow fresh organic vegetables.

What do you think about my fire escape garden?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K43IGt8Qi4

My Fire Escape Garden and the Fire Code from Urban Organic Gardener

One misconception about my fire escape garden is that it is outside of the window in my room. Well, it’s not.

The fire escape is actually outside of my roommate’s window. So I have to go through his room to get to it.

One of the windows in my room is where I initially planned to garden. I even built a window garden, but it gets absolutely no sunlight.

Having the fire escape outside of his window puts me at his mercy for taking care of the garden. If he sleeps in late or goes to bed early, I can’t tend to it. I also have to be extra cautious when bringing things to and from the garden, especially compost.

Having the garden out of his window is also one of the reasons that during the winter months, I couldn’t take the containers in and out during the night.

This is what I go through for my fire escape garden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtbIF80duZM

My Fire Escape Garden Isn’t Outside Of My Room from Urban Organic Gardener