Hey guys,
Just a quick note to say, the new planting season is upon us. I’ll begin posting again and sharing my brand new garden apartment with you.
SPOILER ALERT: we are in a drastically different climate now.
New Year
Written by Julia on February 4th, 2011At Last, Existential Clarity
Written by Julia on July 14th, 2010Hi blog. I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you. I don’t really have a good excuse, except that life happened.
But you’ll be happy to hear that while I haven’t been reporting on my gardening, I’ve still been doing a lot of it. The nice thing about gardens is that once they’re started, they basically take care of themselves. So my “gardening” has been more watchful and supportive than active or determinate.
It’s been wonderful to watch these young lives thrive and stretch in just a few weeks. Plants really have an amazing single-focus existence: eat nutrients, absorb sunlight, grow taller. They’re totally focused and (seemingly) completely fulfilled.
Hah. Good for them.
I feel bad about falling down on my blogging, you guys. And it seems like I could be doing a lot more with my life in general. What the hell am I doing with a full-time job that keeps me busy 40-50 hours a week and never fulfills any of MY real goals? Where am I going in this crazy ship called life, anyway? I don’t want to settle ever, let alone when I’m under 30!
*sigh* Let’s look at happy pictures of cats.
See? Adorable.
Seems like I fulfilled somebody’s expectations at least.
Clearly designed for the discerning feline.
…
Ohhhhhhhhhhh I see. It all makes sense now.
I do have a purpose after all, and it seems my life has fulfilled its ultimate goal: eco-friendly cat toys.
Look for more success stories in coming weeks.
Yellowing leaves, fruitless flowers? You’ve got nutrient woes!
Written by Julia on May 22nd, 2010You never feel more helpless than when watching your lush vibrant foliage wither and decline.
Plants operate on a totally different spectrum than we mammals do, and their subtle needs can seem totally incomprehensible at times. You just want to shake them and wail, “Tell me what you need! TELL ME WHAT TO DOOOO.”
Lucky for us, clever scientists met with these same problems. And they figured out that plants need nutrients just like humans do… and their sickly appearances can tell you exactly what they’re craving.
Plants need an abundance of each of the following “macronutrients.” If they’re running low, you’ll see these telltale signs:
- Nitrogen: older leaves get yellow and droopy, and quickly wither and die. New growth may be slower than usual, and light green.
- Sulfur: The older leaves stay green, but new growth is wimpy and yellow. Overall growth is slower and smaller than usual.
- Potassium: Older leaves wilt and may look scorched on the edges. Newer leaves can show yellowing between the veins.
- Calcium: New growth is weirdly shaped, often hooklike. Sometimes the growing tip will shrivel and die.
- Phosphorus: Older leaves darken almost to black; new leaves may be reddish-purple. Your fruit production will suffer too.
- Magnesium: Slow, pale yellow new growth, sometimes with dark spots. It’s like your plants are born old!
To fix these common problems, adjust your soil nutrients quickly–but be careful, don’t add too much! The opposite problem, burning your plants with too much nutrition, is just as bad or worse.
Once you’ve determined which your plants are craving, hike on down to your local garden supply store. Ask them what organic or commercial fertilizers they suggest, and add it GRADUALLY to your plants.
Happy harvesting!
Are your tomato blossoms in DANGER?
Written by Julia on May 12th, 2010So my miniature tomato plants are just starting to set blossoms, and I’m getting a little nervous. You see, they don’t like stress. When they get stressed, just like a pregnant anorexic, their bodies can’t handle the gestation period. They’ll spontaneously abort their babies.
And this past week has stressed them beyond anything the poor guys could imagine.
1) Cold weather. In the last week, we’ve had three cold nights and two chilly days. I’m talking less than 60 degree highs. This isn’t lethal for tomatoes, but it is stressful… and it can prevent blossoms from turning into fruit.
2) Cat attack. My remedy for the cold nights turned out to be almost as deadly. I pulled my big tomato tub into the living room, but it was so heavy I didn’t want to lift it onto the counter. ‘And besides, the cat hangs out on the balcony all the time now, and she never digs in the pots anymore. She’s desensitized.’ So my thoughts ran, before I tucked my tired butt into bed. So I left it on the living room floor.
*cue suspense music*
The next morning, the white carpet was covered in a layer of fluffy black soil. And on top of that were the shredded leaves and stems of four perfect Tom Thumb tomatoes plants.
In one early-morning slasher attack, the cat butchered HALF of my thriving crop.
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Okay, it turned out to be not so bad. Amazingly, after I replanted and watered, one plant perked back up immediately. Now you can’t even tell that it had an accident, except that one side is bald.
And the other three? They’re still alive too, although they’ll never be as lush as they were.
Here is a sad, shredded plant, next to an unadulterated twin. Breaks your heart, doesn’t it.
I guess posting this online serves as a catharsis for my guilt. I do feel better now, after sharing my story with you, shadowy online audience. I know you can’t mend my broken plants… but you make me feel just a little less negligent.
Fresh salad dressing
Written by Julia on May 6th, 2010Suddenly, I am eyeballs-deep in salad. Chard, lettuce, mesclun mix. It’s exploding out of the containers!
I didn’t think so many of the seeds would sprout, so I’m afraid I planted them RATHER liberally. =_=
My latest endeavor to stem the flow: make-your-own salad dressing. I make it fresh in the morning (because it’s more fun in small batches? Or because I lack foresight? Your choice!) I don’t pick the greens every day though, more like every 3-4 days. But a quick zing of this dressing perks up even fridge-flavored leaves.
Try it! It literally takes about 45 seconds.
Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar (or whatever vinegar you love)
a couple cranks of the pepper grinder
a few shakes of the sea-salt shaker
1/4 tsp minced garlic (if you’re lazy like me, this comes from the jar)
a couple crushed herb leaves, like dill, thyme, chive or rosemary
Put all this into a little bowl. Blend. Now pour over your salad, preferably already in your lunchtime Tupperware container. Shake to cover.
And poof, you’ve got a healthy homemade lunch ready to go. You may pat yourself on the head now.
Container gardening
Written by Julia on May 4th, 2010Well, it’s the first week of May now, and I’m well on my way to a full-fledged, thriving aboveground garden. I guess now is as good a time as any to reflect on the differences I’ve noticed between it and previous gardens, those traditional in-the-dirt ones.
- No weeds. Bang, number one benefit right here. I’m working entirely from bagged potting soil, so it’s sterilized and pre-enriched. Not very DIY, I know, and it’s kind of expensive. But it is FANTASTIC to grow only the plants that I intend to, with no interlopers getting a free ride.
- Literally RIGHT THERE. I’ve never had a garden that was literally ten steps from my sofa. Even window boxes haven’t had that same sense of locality.
- Dries out quickly. Unfortunately, this is the main drawback of container planting for me. Those suckers dry out real fast when it’s hot and sunny. I often spend about 15 minutes before work, just running back and forth to the faucet so they won’t shrivel up during the day.
- Portable. This is another awesome part of container gardening, because it means that I can plant them earlier in the season. If it gets too cold, I just haul ‘em inside!
All in all, I’m very happy to report that my container gardening has been a big success. My plants are thriving, my lettuce is out of CONTROL, and I’ve already been using my herbs for sexy dinner preparations. I’m looking forward to summertime grill parties out on the balcony, with music and strings of lights in the warm balmy air. We’re entering the long hot season at this point, and my veggies and I are ready for prime time!
Hardiness Musings
Written by Julia on April 27th, 2010Remember that spate of unseasonably hot weather a month ago? Well, it’s come and friggin’ gone. It has been seriously chilly here for the past week, and on Sunday night we had HAIL.
HAIL, for God’s sake!
It’s almost May, the month of warm, sumptuous spring growth. And yet my tomatoes are still shrinking like terrified seedlings because the highs are in the 60s all week.
I can’t really work up a righteous rage though, because it IS still spring, after all. It’s supposed to be inconstant: hot, cold, windy, rainy, blazingly sunny. At least it’s living up to its own reputation.
All this temperature fluctuation makes me wonder about those USDA hardiness zone delegation, though. As this entry points out, your zone only takes into account the cold factor… not the heat. And let me tell you, a Zone 7 plant might be tolerant down to 0 Fahrenheit, but it will NOT reliably handle temperatures up to 90+. You’ll have to gauge each plant individually.
I’ve heard about other systems of measurement too, like the Sunset system or something. But I don’t know much about it, and the Zone system seems to have a vice-like grip upon gardening literature. What do you guys think–are the Zones reliable, or is there another method you prefer?
Methods in the Madness
Written by Julia on April 11th, 2010No photos today, just a little more detail on what I’m doing here and how I’m doing it.
Well, I’m writing a city gardening blog. I really missed gardening last year (stupid north-facing apartment), so I made sure to get a south-facing one with a big sunny balcony this time.
And boy, has it ever delivered!
I found this great container-seeds specialty website, and ordered almost all my seeds way back in February. I started the first (peas) in early March, and I’ve been ferrying seedlings indoors and outdoors ever since. They can’t just sit next to the window, because my cat will dig them up. And they can’t just stay outside, because many evenings are still chilly. Thus the ever-constant hauling.
How I’m doing it: I have a bunch of ugly-ass containers (cheap storage tupperware and a few donated, found or liberated odds and ends) that I’ve drilled with drainage holes. These are much cheaper than the terra cotta pots you can find at gardening stores, and I’m way more interested in what’s IN them than how they look. It’s the inside that counts.
Why am I doing this? Well, I really love fresh veggies and herbs. I’m stoked to be able to run outside, snatch a handful of thyme out of the window box, dash back in and throw it into the pan before the carrots know what hit ‘em. I’m looking forward to garden parties once summer is well and truly here, and we can grill zucchini that were harvested ten minutes ago. But perhaps even more than that, I am completely in love with watching seedlings sprout into vigorous and strong plants. It’s an amazing thing to see.
That’s all from me right now. Why do YOU garden? What do you want to know about mine? What is that funny smell?
Growth spurt!
Written by Julia on April 6th, 2010Wow, the hot weather really slammed us this week. March ended with unseasonably warm days in the upper 60s and lower 70s, then April showed up and WHAM! We hit 93 the first week.
This past week has definitely been beneficial for my sun-lovers, let me tell you. We went from this delicate-veined zucchini unfolding…
…to this brawny, raucous crew in just seven days.
*tear* They grow up so fast!
But seriously though, it has been a whirlwind. Even the sugar snap peas, a cool-weather crop if ever there was one, has benefited from the influx of hot, sunny weather. They’ve been doing some serious chorophylling.
This is the biggest, already at eight inches tall.
Is there ANYTHING more adorably curly and optimistic than pea tendrils?
Two-week-old peas!
Written by Julia on March 24th, 2010
So here are my two-week-old baby sugar snap peas. They’re only about three or four inches tall, but they’re growing really vigorously. Almost every day they unfold new pairs of leaves and those creeping curious tendrils.
Here’s a closeup:
You can see they’re next to a wicker and yarn structure, right? That’s a handmade trellis; I bought some cheap bamboo rods from the hardware store’s garden section, and used some extra yarn to bind them together.
Pretty nifty, huh? It’s easy!
Just make sure to wrap it around each individual stake as you go. It stabilizes the tension and creates a nice structure for the peas to cling to.