Update

I haven't had a lot of luck with my cool-weather crops so far this year. The collards that surprised me by overwintering bolted almost immediately. (I cooked them up for dinner, buds and all.) Something is eating my baby bok choy seedlings, and only my baby bok choy seedlings, and yet I can't find anyone living in that container. And all of the new collards I planted this year have failed to come up, or have died immediately.

However, I have a number of bunching onions that seem to be doing well, although I think they could use a little fertilizer. (If only my worms were quicker with the compost - don't they know I have plants who need nutrients?!) My beets and carrots are still tiny seedlings, but so far they're doing well. And I have some lettuce seedlings that are doing better now that they're getting full sun on the roof (they had been mostly in the shade on the balcony), but I fear they won't last very long once it starts to get hot up there.

I'm hoping for better luck with my warm-season crops. I have a successful little tomato seedling that I hope to transplant into a larger pot soon, and another one that seems quite happy but is in no rush to develop its first true leaves. I also planted a bunch of squash and melons from saved seeds - watermelon, zucchini, and spaghetti squash. The spaghetti squash and the watermelon both got super-long only a couple of days after planting. I hadn't though that a seedling could get leggy before it developed its first true leaves, but the squash in particular is 6-8 inches long and floppy. Now that it's in a sunny windowsill with a light added, it seems otherwise quite happy, and I'm not sure whether I should be starting over or just seeing where these seedlings will go.

I'm also trying something new this year by planting potatoes. I ordered seed potatoes from groworganic.com, and am excited to see how they do!

Some spring housekeeping

We've been having a chilly spring, which has prevented me from doing much in my garden by virtue of the simple fact that I don't want to be outside when it's cold out. I know I'm waiting a bit too long for some of my cool weather veggies, though, so last week, I bit the bullet and got some work done.

I brought the 5-gallon buckets I'd gathered in off the balcony and finally washed them out in the shower, so they'd be ready for drilling and filling as soon as I can borrow a power drill. (Goal: go as long as I can without having to purchase my own drill, despite the frequency with which I seem to need one.)

I was planning to pull up what was left of a collard plant I had harvested at the very end of last season, so I could feed it to the worms and plant a new one in its place, but I noticed a few green leaves and began to wonder if it could have possibly accidentally overwintered - despite the fact that I had assumed it was dead and abandoned it to its fate. Maybe my very cold balcony still provided enough shelter to keep it alive? Just in case, I decided to water it instead of uprooting it, and we'll see if maybe I have an earlier harvest than I was expecting. I added a few scallion seeds around the edge, since the pot seems plenty big enough to hold a couple of smaller plants as well, and those don't take up much space. I also took a large, low, container where I'd been storing some of last year's potting soil and mixed it up a bit and then planted half a dozen spinach plants and scattered a bunch of lettuce seeds.

So far, this year has been a bit haphazard, and my planting has been done without much planning. I should have amended the soil before I started planting, but failed to do so, so I need to make sure I get my hands on some fertilizer once these seeds start sprouting.


Update: in just the time it took to compose this quick post, I asked for and received permission to borrow a friend's drill. I may have my drainage holes drilled by the time you read this!

It begins

I'm just beginning to start some seeds for the upcoming season. I can only manage to plant a few of each variety, because as much as I'd like to fill the building's entire roof with fruits and veggies, my eyes are, once again, bigger than my supplies.

I use the lowest-tech, lowest cost, method of starting seeds that I know of, which is recycled yogurt containers. This year I'm also using recycled soil from last year, although I'm already wondering if I'm going to regret it: the first thing that sprouted is something I did not plant. Right now, my little seed pots are just on the living room floor (on an old church bulletin, as you can see), but I'll move them to a sunny windowsill (well, the sunniest windowsill we have) as soon as I see green.

So far, I've started a handful of scallions (Evergreen Bunching Onions from HVSL) as well as some spinach, but haven't seen any action yet. I'm skeptical of the spinach, because it's a 3-year-old packet from my last apartment and was not stored well during years 1 and 2, but I figured I'd give it a shot for now, while most of the seeds in my library won't need any attention or resources for a few weeks. I plan to direct sow more scallions later, but wanted to get a jump start with at least a few - and yet walk the fine line of not planting too many, because last year our own scallions were ready right about the time, of course, that our CSA was overflowing with scallions, and we ended up with more than we could eat. I ended up leaving ours in the ground longer than intended, and eventually just tossing most of what we got in the CSA into the exchange box for a few weeks.

Earlier this week I picked an empty 5-gallon bucket out of the trash near a bar in Midtown, because those are the cheapest, easiest pots available for planting. My husband was, I think, a bit embarrassed that I went trash picking and then carried home with us on the subway not even something cool, or vintage, or salvaged, but a piece of obvious garbage. However, with all the restaurants I pass on a daily basis, I don't see nearly as many of these as I'd expect to, and so I need to take advantage when the opportunity presents itself! As I've mentioned, my plans for this year are bigger than my resources necessarily allow, but free vessels to use as pots represent the most cost-effective way of expanding my garden. I just have to clean them out (this one is currently on the balcony, covered, with some pickled ginger still stuck to the inside), and drill some holes in the bottom. Instant container garden!