Category: Brooklyn

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 shook out the remaining soil.

Broke up all the roots and clumps of soil.

These steps might seem easy, but it resulted in a mess. I’m likely going to change the way that I made them to make the breakdown easier.

If you were just going to dump everything or making them for one time usage, it wouldn’t be a problem. I am composting the contents and reusing the soil, so that made it much more difficult and messy.

The water and wet soil was getting everywhere and made for an unpleasant cold and windy day.

Do you think there would’ve been an easier way for me to break these down?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXTNH4jx-U4

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 Manhattan Beach. Of course the beach was closed, but I was still able to get onto the sand and walk along the shore. There was not a trace of seaweed to be found. It was just me freezing my ass off.

Then I ventured over to Brighton Beach. I found much of the same here – a lot of wind and nothing.

At that point, I decided to call it quits and head back to my Grandmother’s. There was some traffic along the Belt Parkway (surprise), so I decided to pull over and check out Plumb Beach.

I was able to find some seaweed there. When I was walking along the beach I saw the Marine Park Bridge and a light bulb went off in my head – Mike.

Who is this Mike? He is my boy who lives in Mill Basin and has a house on the water with a dock. I hit him up and asked him if I could swing by for some seaweed. He gladly obliged.

After seeing that low tide was later that evening, we decided to get some seaweed that night. We headed down to the water and started to scrape some off the rocks.

It wasn’t until we used the nets in the water that we started to really rake in the seaweed (Jamaica Bay Sticky Icky). It also wasn’t until 20 minutes into the collection of the seaweed that he asked me what I was going to use it for. He thought I was going to eat it.

For the first time I collected a good amount to start my compost, but definitely know where I’ll be going the next time I need some more of that Sticky Icky.

The real lesson that I learned is not to go looking for seaweed on beaches in the dead of winter.

What’s been your experience with using seaweed in your garden?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwFrBJK1ezQ

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 is to empty out the containers and started a top-secret composting operation at my Grandmother’s.

I have big plans for her backyard in 2010. Anything that you think I should do or would like me to experiment with?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvKb4XHMnPY

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 especially the sorrels were starting to die because of the conditions. So I took of the plastic greenhouses before I left for a 10 day trip out to Los Angeles.

It’ll be interesting to see how the plants are affected during this time. The weather hasn’t been too cold here in NYC. It’s been about 50s during the day and 40s at night.

When I get back it’s still not out of the question to build something, but we shall see when I return.

My thoughts are just letting the uncovered containers go for as long as possible. Take note of all the lessons, I learned (and will share) and start from scratch (and seeds) next season.

What do you think?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYg4hFvvxts

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 I received a boatload of different answers to help with some my problems. The responses from everyone are much appreciated.

This is why I keep saying that you should just start your own garden. What happens in my garden may or may not happen in your garden. We each experience things differently.

What’s stop you from starting your own garden and getting that first hand experience?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmTAnWxrCk0

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, I definitely should’ve built something larger like possibly this hoop house that Andrew Odom built out of nearly all recycled materials.

This project was just another result of me being lazy and rushing through things. I definitely should’ve taken the time and built something more sturdy and well…better. Plus I’m only at my Grandmother’s 2-3 times a week, so I can’t check on it daily.

With that being said, the small plastic greenhouse on my fire escape is great. That one I’m able to tend to everyday and have a more secure rope around it.

One thing is for certain, I’m going to stop being lazy when it comes to this stuff. I hope all of you to start holding me accountable.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKijP_aGAD8

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. No excuse except laziness.

The second one was growing nicely. It got to be so big that I had to move it across the backyard closer to allow it to climb up the fence.

A week or so later I was able to harvest my first cucumbers.

The downfall of the plant could’ve been a month ago when the leaves started to yellow. At the time I wasn’t concerned because they were still bearing fruit and blossoming, but that’s recently changed with the weather.

There are still small pieces of fruit on the tree that I’m hoping will grow to be larger, but the important lesson is to get the damned cucumber planted earlier in the season.

When do you usually get yours planted? When do you start your seeds?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSG8KrvOoXE

Never at a loss for words, I decided to ask my Grandmother about her thoughts on my small plastic greenhouse design. She’s been asking me for a while about what I should do and has been telling me to buy this and buy that.

I kept telling her that I didn’t want to buy anything and wanted to use as many existing items as I possibly could. Earlier in the week, I had set them up on my fire escape garden and was spending the day at her place getting them ready in the backyard garden.

So while she rested from going to her early morning exercise classes, I got to work. The first thing I had to do was to wrap up all of the phone books to get them under the containers and off of the cold ground.

Then I started to put the greenhouses together. Since the weather has suddenly warmed up again, 60s during the day and 50s at night, I just wanted to get them set up, but not put them on.

By the time I was done, she was well rested from her nap and had to get “camera ready” (a direct quote). So I broke down the design and explained to her how it should work. Her response was a, “It sounds possible. I don’t know, we’ll have to see. It’ll be interesting if nothing else.”

I was expecting a bit more out of her, but it was definitely reassuring that she didn’t totally shoot it down.

Pretty sure that I’ll finish them off this weekend. Will it work? We’ll have to wait and see.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H6qBCiQ38I

After planting the kale and lettuce the other day, I still had some plants left over to get in the dirt.

I built two more self-watering containers, which was enough for two of the kale plants.

Still had dandelions and lettuces left and was running out of space. Since the cinder block garden was working out so well, I turned over some more cinder blocks and planted the dandelion in there.

That left me with the lettuces. My grandmother had some traditional pots leftover, so I reluctantly put some of the lettuces in them (because we all know they are inferior to my self watering containers).

That still left me with about 4-5 cells of lettuce. I’ll need to find a spot for them on my fire escape garden.

It’s the beginning of October, and I have my final fall planting complete in the backyard vegetable garden. The weather is getting colder. I’d like to prolong this as far into the cold season as I can.

How long do you think I’ll be able to keep growing?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS1ePS8Se9w

Since I harvested all of my celery last week, I had two containers that were empty. I wound up planting kale and lettuce in those containers.

Having the gardening itch and fall already upon us, I had to plant something.

In the one container I had a few celery plants. Some of the roots were still in the soil. When planting the kale, I did my best to plant around the roots.

The other container that had the celery had a single plant in it, but the root was pretty large. The lettuces were planted around the large root.

Not sure if the roots are going to get in the way of the kales and lettuces growing, but worth the shot. What’s the worst that’s going to happen?

Your thoughts on this are welcomed.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIoDKOvBh98

At the advice of Trina from Silver Height Farm where I buy my plants from, she recommended the Pablo Head Lettuce.

I bought a 6-cell pack and got them all in there. Each cell contained a few plants that I separated out. They were planted about 3-4 inches apart.

When planting these I noticed that the soil was pretty shallow, maybe 2-3 inches at some points. This could be a reason why the onions didn’t get to be very large. At other spots the soil was about 4-6 inches.

Either way, it should be good for the lettuce. I’m hoping to be able to harvest these for a few weeks.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0H-6z9uYmM