Tag Archives: urban garden

Neighbor garden development

27 Apr

After many, many hours of weeding and mulching, the garden is ready for planting!

Some extra hands joined us two weeks ago to weed, paper, add rabbit litter, and then mulch the second third of the garden. We’ll plant the front section first, and then wait a few weeks before planting the second section. By that point, much of the paper will have broken down.

We had so many wormy friends, I just hope that pulling up all of the soil didn’t mean a smörgåsbord for the birds.

Then a quick mow in the back where the sitting area will be and we added a few wheel barrows of leaf mulch back there, too. Hopefully we’ll just have to mow/weed whack it to keep the grass and weeds down, but we’ll use the whole space as a border from the grass outside the fence. We’ll add some plastic edging between the back and middle sections to try to keep the grass and weeds out of the main area, but we’ll still have to keep an eye on that front part. Just before the back section, we have some strawberries, a blueberry bush and a raspberry bush. Yay fruit!


Monday evening we headed out to pick up some supplies. Siggy joined us to pick up 16″ pavers for the center path (HEAVY), some veggie and wildflower seeds, plastic edging, buckets and potting mix for potatoes, and a few other bits and pieces. He was very helpful.


We raked out a bit of the mulch to level the ground and then laid the paving stones. They will hopefully eventually settle into the soil here so they’re flush with the ground, but I don’t think they’ll shift too much. The path creates a nice visual point for the garden and makes a safe walkway so we can avoid walking on the soil when not working in the beds. We’ll need to pick up a few more pavers to complete the path, as our initial measurements weren’t so exact…oops.

We also had a visit from my friend Becky, a VCE Master Gardener and fellow FOUA board member. She suggested we remove the white mulberry that is actually invasive in our area, so we got on that and hacked away at the roots. At the bottom of this photo is where the strawberries live. We were excited to discover them (they’re starting to bloom and have teeny berries right now) and also the blueberries in the bottom right corner.




Here is the finished garden, ready for planting next weekend! We’ll use some of the seeds we picked up, and I started cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, and sunflowers that we’ll move in about 2-3 more weeks.

Later that evening, I did a little time traveling and had a look at our future garden. I’m quite pleased with our progress.

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New garden and new friends!

4 Apr

Now, I’m not giving up my status as Roof Garden Gal, but when neighbors I didn’t know before messaged me asking if I really am “super gardener,” well, I couldn’t say no. Turns out, they had just been approved for one of the coveted garden plots in an Arlington County public community garden. Really….the list was long before the pandemic, and now it has grown to over 1,000 people! They got on the list in the before times.

Their new plot is in a great garden that’s about a 15 minute walk from home. They asked if I’d be willing to help them get started, as neither of them have gardened before. I’m not one to say no to dirt, so this weekend we jumped in. Based on what they have in mind for their plot, I created an action plan.

FYI… 20’x10′ is a HUGE plot, especially for new gardeners. That’s considered a half plot, too. My neighbors decided to work the front 2/3 and keep the back 1/3 as a little sitting spot. They’ll add chairs and a little table and make it a lovely spot to enjoy the nice weather.

I was really happy to run into some garden folks I know through FOUA and Plot, and I was even able to connect with a woman who’s new in town and looking for opportunities to help in a garden. This is why I always carry business cards with me! I gave her a FOUA card and she actually emailed me that night.

Back to the weeds. This particular plot hadn’t been worked in about two seasons, as the previous gardener had some medical issues and was unable to tend to it. It was packed with weeds. She apparently made some smart decisions that benefitted us, as she had put down some landscape fabric. I suggested we treat it like a newish raised bed and start from the bottom:

  • WEED (Get everything up, regardless of its actual identity.)
  • LEVEL (Level out the existing soil.)
  • NEWSPAPER (Several layers of newspaper to smother whatever else is there)
  • LITTER (Hey, if you have access to rabbit poop, you use it.)
  • MULCH (The county supplies lovely leaf mulch to the garden. You haul it to your plot from a big pile.)

There are a few berry bushes that we left, but everything else came up. We watered in between each layer. (BLESSED ON-SITE WATER!) The soil looked amazing, there were tons of healthy looking wormies in there doing their thing. Thanks to the pieces of landscape fabric, all we had to do was pull up the sections that were still there, shake out the dirt, and move on. This way, we were able to disturb very little of the layers of soil bacteria that have built up over the last two years.

This was about 7 hours of work over two days. Three people the first day, five the second. Many hands make light work! That was the bulk of the heavy work, I think. Maybe cleaning up that back part, too. We’ll have ot put in some deep edging pieces to keep the grass from leaving the sitting area. Gotta see how that will work. Hopefully we’ll get some rain this week, but if not we’ll go back and water the mulch some more. It should break down in about 4-6 weeks. I’m thinking that next weekend after layering the second bed, we’ll add some more mulch to the first bed, and then plant some seeds there. The second bed will be about two weeks behind for the whole season. Turning the clods of weeds over reveled those yummy beneficial worms and also some evil grubs. Thankfully, other garden neighbors were more than willing to help us out.

My neighbors want to put a walking path through the middle using large pavers, which is a super idea. It will make a safe stepping place, differentiate the beds, create visual interest, and cut down on some of the space to work.

The one thing we forgot to do was a soil test, but I’m not too worried about that at this point. We can always do it when we return next weekend. (See the How & Why To Test Your Garden Soil I made last year)

There was already chicken wire in good condition in the plot, so we’ll get some new stakes and reuse the wire to create a fence. We were warned to protect young seedlings with individual barriers. LOTS of bold critters enjoy this garden, including this guy, who was more annoyed that we were interrupting his dinner than anything else.

Speaking of creatures….I didn’t pass up this opportunity to pick a few pesticide-free dandelions for the buns. Considering they’re also going to be contributing to the garden, it is compensation. Theo, of course, was not interested, and Ellie, of course, ate both.

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Kickoff 2021 with Plot Against Hunger & FOUA

21 Feb

Arlington FOUA is the new official home for the Plot Against Hunger program! Formerly part of the Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC), Plot is a network of private home, community, and school gardens that raise fresh produce during the year to help feed our neighbors. Due to the pandemic, AFAC saw a significant increase in the number of clients needing food assistance and had to shift resources to focus on its core mission of providing free groceries to Arlington families in need in 2020. Along with growing food, Plot also supports a network of pantries that distribute the produce to clients in Arlington and parts of Alexandria. Here’s our full press release about the transition.

The Plot Against Hunger program will be a collaborative effort managed by FOUA that includes Arlington Virginia Cooperative Extension, Marymount University, Master Gardeners, Master Food Volunteers, food pantries, and individual gardens and gardeners. 

In addition to seed distribution events for participating gardens, we’re starting off the year with a big kickoff week of online events, some distanced demonstrations, and even some surprise giveaways. Here is more info, including a link to registration. If you’d like to get involved in Plot, you can contact me here or through the FOUA web site.

Please also observe my newfound design skills with this bangin’ promo poster.

 

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Video

FOUA, School Victory Gardens, and an Interview!

19 Jun

Have I mentioned I’m on the board of directors of Arlington Friends of Urban Agriculture? FOUA is new as a 501(c)3, though the group was formed in 2017 out of Arlington County’s Urban Agriculture Task Force in 2015. Our mission is to build and support a fair, equitable, and sustainable food system in Arlington. I love talking about urban farming and small space gardening, so it’s right up my alley, huh? Plus, I get to use one of my advanced degrees yay!

A few weeks ago, I talked to the Ballston BID about urban agriculture in the county. Honestly, I was pretty nervous about how it would come out, but due to the producer’s magical editing skills, I think it’s pretty good! Here it is, all 27 minutes of listening glory.

We hit the ground running this year when we took on the COVID-19 crisis. A combination of factors lead us to our Victory Garden project that includes the new home of the Plot Against Hunger program (formerly of AFAC, the Arlington Food Assistance Center) and our school garden program.

With the approval of Arlington Public Schools, we are working with Arlington Virginia Cooperative Extension and garden coordinators at existing gardens to provide administrative support, volunteer bodies, trained Extension Master Gardeners, and in a very happy and unexpected twist, funding. When schools closed in March because of the pandemic, gardens struggled. Right before most gardeners begin their spring planting, volunteers and students were not allowed on school grounds. We presented our plan to the schools superintendent that FOUA would support the gardens by turning them into production gardens (or aiming to increase production for those that already were) and donate produce to a number of local food pantries that have seen a sudden and incredible increase in need. Our goal is 2,500 pounds by the end of this season. We started with three gardens in early/mid May and have made a ton of progress so far. We’re beginning to donate from each of the gardens. Plus, next week we’ll be onboarding a fourth school garden!

Follow us on social media for updates, on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and now YouTube (please subscribe so we can eventually get our own username!) I’ll be posting photos and making videos on a regular basis. Here are the first two videos I put together.

 

 

More updates as the season continues and our donations pick up.

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Indoor update!

11 Mar

Since losing my garden last year, I’ve focused a lot more on indoor plants. This winter, however, I wanted to start some miniature tomato and pepper plants. I bought some grow lights and made this little set up. They were inexpensive and super easy to set up. I’ll probably move them around in a bit. They are connected to a timer, so I don’t have to remember to turn them on an off every day. 

 

The plants seem to LOVE the lights. I have to work on transplanting them all to larger containers. I’ll take care of that this weekend. The yellow fly tape is TERRIFIC. The fungus gnats are annoying, but they’re not interested in anything besides the plants.

I started everything from seed in late Jan. (I always mark dates on the tags when I start.) Here I have micro tom tomatoes from Baker Creek, several kinds of purple and green basil, parsley, hot jigsaw peppers, and hot Peruvian aji peppers, and some dwarf sweet alyssum. The wheatgrass in the corner is for my bunny, Miss Elliott Hopsalot. I have a lot of that lining the windowsill, too.

Some of the basil will be donated to the Central Library’s Plot Against Hunger garden to go into the tanks in a few weeks. 

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Summer’s Here…With Cucumbers

28 Jun

Bla bla bla…started tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, peppers, herbs from seed. Planted them. You know the drill. I added a whole bag of organic soil to each tank, and topped off all of the tomato pots. Everyone got food when planted, and tomatoes got a ton of crushed and powdered egg shells. The calcium will hopefully avoid the blossom end rot that I’d dealt with in the past.

One thing I did this year is use plastic containers for pots before ultimately tossing them in the recycling bin.They were great. I used quart yogurt containers, pint sized coconut creamer containers, and cut milk containers in half, drilling holes in all of them. They were large enough that I didn’t have to rush to plant. I’ll do it again next year.

 

Now, we harvest!

Earlier this month I went away for two weeks, and my neighbors watched and watered the garden. They got lucky, as we had the perfect combination of rain and warm weather. Their job was easy, and I came back to GIGANTIC cucumber plants in both tanks! I planted regular cuces and lemon cucumbers, the later being part of a seed trade I did with a friend in the winter. The lemon ones look like lemons but taste normal.

I’ve been picking them for about a week now. I learned that bitter cucumbers are thought to come from irregular watering, which makes sense for me. The difficulty I have with water on the roof sometimes leads to a day or so of improper watering, but I’ve tried to keep up with it this year. Still, the first few green cuces were a bit bitter. Peeling them worked, so I’m not terribly worried. The lemon cucumbers were better though. Taste just like any other cucumber.

Tomorrow…two cucumber recipes!

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Garden Catch Up On A Rainy Fall Day

17 Nov

It’s cold and rainy out today. I’m going to think happy garden thoughts so my feet will warm up.

2014 was a mildly upsetting year up on the roof, though that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn anything! Over the next few weeks I’ll post by general topic instead of a play-by-play.

First, a catch up.

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Herbs. Dead rosemary, returning chives, returning thyme.

All in all, my “harvest” was much smaller than in years past. We had some gross cold, cold weather that actually killed my rosemary plant. It had been doing really well over the years, and I had given it a much larger pot. I thought it was pretty hardy. I heard that lots of other folks lost their rosemary. The rest of my herbs came back, though. Chives, thyme, and oregano all came back in their pots. I planted new parsley in a pot, and then both green and purple basil in one of the tanks from seed. They wound up doing well. I still have not replaced the rosemary. Debating what to do there, if I should try some indoor herb gardening this year. I brought one plant inside last week but I don’t know if I want to make a whole indoor garden out of it.

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Tank 1, cucumber seed, bean seedling, tank 2.

Then we had a bit of a cold snap in May that killed off several seedlings I had started indoors and had replanted outside. I started beans inside. They died, so I wound up planting them a second time. Here are my tanks and some wee baby seeds. The tank on the top wound up with cucumbers, beans, and beets. The one on the bottom had the same as last year, two tomato plants, variety of carrots, and the aforementioned green and purple basils. I planed fewer carrots than last year, and I think they grew much better because of it.

I decided to tackle my problems with water this year. I built (what I thought would be) a great rain barrel! You’ll have to wait for my next post for my great 2014 water adventure.

The highlight of this year was certainly my composting abilities. I had two buckets that did really well. I’ll save that for another post as well.

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I pick a peck of pickled peppers

24 Jul

IMG_8658Well, they’re not pickled just yet. This is last week’s pepper harvest. Banana peppers from ShmErin’s plant, bells from ShmAli’s, red jalapenos from my plant. The plant currently has about a dozen banana peppers ready to pick. I’ll do that tomorrow. The bell peppers are also doing well, but they’re not getting to, like, actual pepper size. The green peppers here are supposed to be red and the red ones are supposed to be green. Some picked too early (they were starting to get soft spots) and some too late. I have actually transplanted three of the plants…more on that in a day or two.

Here are the three plants that these peppers came from. The bell pepper has been getting really thirsty since this heat wave started. I’ve been bringing it water about 2x a day. It generally responds within about 15 minutes by waving “thanks” to me.

So about three weeks ago I asked my neighbor if she saw anyone taking my chocolate cherries. Although I’ve offered her tomatoes and herbs as she liked, she has repeatedly refused, saying I should enjoy the fruits of my labor. So, I couldn’t figure out who was stealing my cherries. Then, I noticed one of the other tomatoes on the other plant was half eaten. Then another. Could this be the elusive soft-bellied tomato pecker that Alton Brown and neighbor McGregor talked about in Good Eats episode 6, season 6, “Tomato Envy”?

Cucumbers were moving along really nicely for several weeks. I decided to pick off the little baby cucumbers once I saw one or two nice sized ones growing on each plant. It really seemed to help them along. Rather than having the plant focus on a dozen babies, I encouraged them to just pay attention to a few. Seemed to work well. I actually picked enough to not know what to do with them at one point. We sliced them up and nommed on them while biking one day. Great snack! I wound up making a cold cucumber soup. Easy and totally delish. Used cuces and onions from the garden.

But, all good things must end. After picking a whole bunch of beans one day, I noticed that most of the leaves were starting to yellow and the beans themselves weren’t looking great. The cucumbers in the tanks were also not so hot anymore, probably because it has been so hot. I’ve been bringing each tank a full 5 gallons every day, plus more for the smaller pots, but with almost a week of temps near 100, it just wasn’t working. Sadly, this tank is nearing its end.

My compost had been growing weird things…I was advised against nibbling on these mushrooms, as they are toadstools and will kill me. I’ll skip them. I also saw a number of larvae squirming around here and there. So, I got another bucket and divided the compost in half, adding several days of rabbit litter to each one. Today, both bins are doing well, no mushrooms, and no wiggly things.

Finally, some lovely garden photos…

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The Pepper Whisperer

11 Jul

FYI…I’m rather enjoying Instagram and Picstitch, as you may have picked up in the last few posts.

Last week, we put up lights for our July 4 get together on the rooftop. I was really surprised at how pretty the tanks looked with the lights all around. We also made lots of snacks.

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We’re really cooking now! Tomatoes, cuces, peppers, beans…almost everything is growing well up on the roof. What’s not? Cilantro. But, remember, I don’t really care, as it tastes like soap. I don’t, however, know why it died. I’m thinking it’s because those bins don’t dry out as well as the terra cotta pots or the tanks. It wasn’t a problem in the past, but I think with all of the rain we’ve gotten in the last few weeks it hasn’t had a chance to dry out, and therefore the cilantro is over watered. The parsley and peppers in the same bin are fine, it seems, but the baby onions in the other bucket seem Imageto be stunted also. Oh well. Win some, lose some. On the left here are some scenes from the most recent strong storm we had. In and out in under 45 minutes, usually. I haven’t even collected water for weeks.

Now, on to veggies I actually like.

I have become the pepper whisperer. Two friends brought their sad, almost sickly pepper plants up to the roof, and lo and behold, magical healing takes place under my watch. ShmAli brought her yellow bell pepper over maybe three weeks ago. She was keeping it on her kitchen windowsill. Once up outside, it dropped a bunch of sad leaves, and then started to regrow new ones quickly. ShmErin also had two indoor peppers, a banana and some sort of chili pepper. They had grown to about 3′ tall and were kind of lanky. They also had spider mites. Booo. After two weeks on the roof, a ton of banana peppers appeared.

Beans I wind up picking every two days or so. The smaller, thinner ones are REALLY sweet. Cuces are doing quite well. The two plants I put in the terra cotta pot and expected to die have been productive and have offered a few final products of their own. I have to pick them before they seed, as the plant’s goal is to reproduce. If you pick them before the seeds inside mature, it will keep making more plants. Same with the beans. The ones that are left on the plant too long get really dry and not tasty at all. Also, smaller seeds taste better and are less fibrous.

I’m really looking forward to the tomatoes. They seem to be the crowning achievement of everyone’s home garden, for some reason. Might be the beautiful color contrast.

The cabernet grape plant…I don’t think is. These do not have a grape shape. They are more like large cherries, but I’m excited to see how they’re going to do anyway. I think I’ll be ready to pick a few of them this coming weekend.

And, for good measure, some of my babies, via Instagram.

As always, I had a willing parsley taste tester.

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Welcome to the Rooftop Nursery

7 Jun

Babies!

I have babies!
Cucumber babies, tomato babies, carrot babies, jalepeno and bell pepper babies….even BEANIE BABIES! (Sorry.)

The cuces are sending out their little curly tendrils, often grabbing the leaves of the bean plants. I threw in some bamboo stakes to encourage them to grow up in that direction and eventually on to the fence. Didn’t happen on its own, so I’ve been gently moving them right over to the fence.

I’ve always been told to pick off the suckers that grow on tomato plants. At some point, they get really big and become another branch of the plant. I generally pick the smaller ones off and if I happen to miss any until they’re really big, I will let them stay. They form in the little armpit area between the branches and pop up as leaves.

My compost is marvelous. Everything is breaking down in there, it is letting off a good amount of heat, indicating that it’s working, and as my neighbor says, it smells like walking through the forest after a rain. SCORE! The heat will kill these mushroom spores I found in there a few days ago.

Speaking of mushrooms, I found a mushroom in the tomato tank. Of course, it popped up overnight. Farmer Russell says it’s an indication of warm, rich soil. Considering it was next to a sleeping gnome, I think it was a magic mushroom.
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