Welcome to the (tomato) jungle

For some reason, unbeknownst to either one of us, our tomato plants, particularly our heirloom tomato plants, seemed to be growing and growing and growing and growing and growing...(you get the idea).  Initially, we tried to "handle" the situation.  Using a few leftover stakes and some trellises, we attempted to reinforce the tomato plants so they would stop toppling over and tangling with their neighbors.  But, as soon as we had one windy/thunderstormy kind of day, they'd all fall over again into a massive clump, as you can see below.

Soon, it became evident that we had 2 problems:

1. Our beds were too shallow, meaning we couldn't shove the stakes into the ground deep enough in order to support the weight of our tomato plants.
2. Our stakes were too short for our plants.  Or, to put it another way, our tomato plants were just WAY TOO TALL (duh, because we are such adept gardeners). And by tall, I mean very tall. These plants, when straightened, were well above my head. 

I'll pause here so those of you more irreverent readers can get all the short jokes out of your system....

Okay! And we're back.  So yes, we were having some major tomato problems.  I bet you're all chomping at the bit, anxious to know what we did to solve this problem, am I right??!!  Well I'll tell you-

Absolutely nothing.

Maybe next year we won't plant so many tomato plants.  And we'll definitely get some taller stakes.  

Cherry tomatoes anyone?

And yes, they DO taste as good as they look.

Another harvest!

Check out my feast! I cooked a delicious dinner featuring our very own kale! Well, as you can see by the picture, the feature of this dish may have actually been the plain, store bought pasta, while the kale played a more supportive role.  But this was only because our kale, once harvested, was not as abundant as it appeared while still in the ground, and not at all due to a lack of quality or taste.  Thus....SUCCESS!

Here's the recipe if you care to experiment with kale!  

http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/winter-pasta-recipe.html 

Farewell Squash and Squash Vine Borer

While there are ways to rid oneself of a squash vine borer infestation, all seemed too costly and labor intensive. Plus, we were both so thouroughly disgusted by those slimy caterpillars, we were more than happy to uproot all the squash.  I would have done anything to never have to see those maggot looking things ever again.

And so....squashicide.
 
See below for the squash cemetery commemorating our loves ones.

Trouble in squash land

For weeks, we were utterly perplexed by our squash.  Each variety was growing, there was no doubt about that; the plants were spreading out, serpent like, all over the place- beneath the kale, around the carrots, right out of the garden itself!  And along each stem we saw dozens of squash blossoms.  Yet, we could not find a single squash.  We also began to notice that after a few days of blooming, each squash blossom was then shriveling up and DYING!!! 

Something was not right.

So we began to investigate. We donned our matching detective hats and scoured the internet for some sort of explanation. We ruled out the weather. While we've continued to be graced with ungodly heat, which, as I'm sure you remember, was the cause of death amongst our other dear friends (the beets and peas) it was not to blame for our sickly squash.  Squash apparently love the heat.  We also ruled out lack of nutrients or moisture as we've been fertilizing on a weekly basis (which by the way, is a very unpleasant experience as our fertilizer is quite pungent- and not in a nice way) and watering every day.   We also deduced that whatever the problem was, it was unique to squash as our other crops (we're down to tomatoes, kale and carrots at this point) were growing rather beautifully. 

And then...we figured it out.  We had a garden pest!!! A nefarious, foul looking creature called the squash vine borer.  dun dun DUHHHHH!!!!

The squash vine borer (Melittia cucurbitae) is a diurnal species of sesiid moth that attacks wild and cultivated varieties of squash. The moth is often mistaken for a bee or wasp because of its movements, and the bright orange hindleg scales. The females typically lay their eggs at the base of leaf stalks, and the caterpillars develop and feed inside the stalk, eventually killing the leaf. They soon migrate to the main stem, and with enough feeding damage to the stem, the entire plant may die.

But, the only way to be 100% sure that we had a squash vine borer was to cut open one of our squash stems and look for these "caterpillars" which look more like maggots.

And so we did...and this is what we saw...

GROSSSSSSS!!!!!

Yup, we definitely had squash vine borers. 

Garden Progression

Our burgeoning garden. We're so proud!

We are actually GROWING VEGETABLES!!! That my friends, is a squash. (at least I think)

Tomatoes! Whether they are cherry or heirloom is unclear, but should be evident soon enough.

RIP Beets

The time finally came to uproot our poor little beets- they just couldn't take the heat.  Their poor little leaves were all withered and brown.  But, they will return this fall.  We are going to replant them once the temperature isn't quite so extreme. And this time, they will flourish!!!

However, in spite of this tragic ending, look at how cute and tiny the little bulbs are! We considered eating them, but then we came to our senses.

Well, Shit

I guess our beets and snap peas aren't fans of the unadulturated sunlight and 100 degree temperatures we've been having of late.

The pictures don't really accurately depict the withered, brown look these veggies are currently donning, but you get the idea. I wonder how they'll taste...

                 

Our first harvest!

We have reaped a crop! Check out our delicious looking mesclun leaves.

OMG our seeds are actually growing

Yes, it's VERY exciting. Every vegetable has at least one seed that has sprouted.

FEAST YOUR EYES!!

Maintenance now is very easy. If it doesn't rain, one of us goes out and waters at night.  That's about all.  Someone once told me you should only water at night so the water doesn't evaporate during the day. I have no idea if it's true or not, but that's what I do.

It's fascinating to see the different growth patterns of each vegetable.  Some are big and leafy, like the squash, others are more spidery and twist their way up the trellises we stuck next to them, while others seem to attract the most attention from the birds and are currently covered in layers of bird poo....

Before and After Pics- Pre Seed Sowing

Before...

(Obviously we had some very wild terrain to hack through)

Action Shots

 

After Shot!

(See you later overgrown shrubs and dirty dirt!)

Dirt Removal: Final Chapter

As you can see by the title of this post, our dirt removal woes have FINALLY ended. After the many disappointments and failures, Plan E proved to be stalwart. I can't express to you how accomplished we both felt and still feel, after finally ridding ourselves of over half a ton of old dirt.  Here's how it all happened:

It began with a night of, you guessed it, MORE digging. Yippee, my new favorite pastime.  We headed into the backyard, both of us having just finished jogging and thus full of endorphins and energy.  Our bags of dirt were not in the best shape after three days of heavy rainfall.  Nonetheless, we each took a stance over one of the lumpy, "unliftable" bags now covered in pools of swampy smelling water and mud, and began shoveling out small clumps of dirt which we then threw into new, freshly opened Hefty bags. Though it was dark at this point, our one motion-detecting light was able to provide visibility. Although... I learned a couple things about our motion-detecting light that night.  One, the light only shines brightly for about 30 seconds after detecting motion.  After this 30 seconds, the light becomes significantly dimmer.  This wouldn't be a problem at all if it weren't for the second thing I learned about this light:  It seems to be very picky about the types of movements it deems worthy enough to earn its light.  Thus, we found that the only acceptable movement involved jumping up and down and waving our arms all while positioned in one far corner of the patio, nowhere near to where all of the "unliftable" bags of dirt were in fact sitting.  So you can imagine how quickly our frustration developed when we were forced to stop digging every 30 seconds in order to walk over to that specific area of the backyard and "charm" our motion-detecting light with our frenetic movements. After doing this 14 or 15 times, we both decided it was less obnoxious to work in near darkness.  Remember when I said we were full or endorphins and energy? Yea, that lasted about 5 minutes, after which, we grew increasingly ornery. There we were, bundled up in 5 or 6 layers (because the Northeast winter finally decided to show up, 4 months late, which is especially cruel after that summer tease we had a few weeks ago) shoveling dirt from one open bag to another, all in the dark, at 10 at night, cursing anything in sight- stupid dirt, stupid shovel, stupid bag, stupid LIGHT- all the while, our bags felt as though they were cloning themselves.

It sucked.

And then we were miraculously done, save the 3 bags that we had initially left in the alleyway.  But, when we went to retrieve them, we instead encountered a large, pigeon-y looking bird sitting right next to the bags, almost as if it were standing guard...weird.  We slowly approached the bags and bird, growing more and more nervous, as this bird was not moving, but instead sitting there, staring at us. We whispered back and forth- What should we do?! This is creepy! Should we leave the bags?? No! We've come so far, we're almost done! Okay fine, should we move slowly?! I don't know! I'm scared! Should we just grab them and run? Why are we whispering? Is it even alive?!- I might also mention, that this seemingly pathetic fear of birds is ENTIRELY warranted due to a previous incident in which a bird broke into our apartment, completely unannounced, and proceeded to hide for several hours, and then pop out, scaring the living daylights out of us, and then fly around like a crazy person, completely at random, for several days before finally departing...but I won't get into that...back to the very suspenseful part of this story.  We continued to step closer, our eyes darting back and forth between the bags and the bird.  We were only a few feet away, furiously debating whether or not this bird was in fact alive, when, quite suddenly, it moved. I won't embarrass myself by narrating the next 10 seconds of my life, but let's just say, this effectively ended our work for that evening.

A few days later, the Polish men from Craigslist returned. Without a word, they began moving out the roughly 30 bags of dirt, including the few we had left in the alleyway, from our backyard to their truck out front.  20 minutes and $125 (TOTALLY worth it) later, we were dirt free.

It was, quite possibly, the best day of my life.

Dirt Removal: Chapter 4

Plan D, once it became a plan, made us smack our heads over our stupidity for not thinking of it WAY earlier. All this time we had been trying to figure out how we'd get this dirt out ourselves, but duh, we would pay someone to take away the dirt for us! And, upon searching Craig's List we found that there was quite a market for "backyard rubbish removal." So the next day, I called one of the listings, negotiated a price of $150 and made an appointment for that evening.

I waited in anticipation. When I finally got a knock on our front door, I opened it to see two giant men and one giant truck. All good signs. I happily lead them to our backyard and presented the haphazardly thrown bags. One of the men immediately stepped forward, moved to lift a bag, failed to lift the bag, and concluded, in a heavy Polish accent, that the bags were "unliftable." I mean, I knew they were "unliftable" by someone like me, but I assumed that for these men, the bags would somehow be "liftable." I guess not. They instructed me to redistribute the dirt amongst more bags, so they were lighter. And then, they left. It took only 3 minutes for Plan D to completely crumble.

And now it's today. I'm sitting in our backyard, smiling at our garden and then cringing at those bags, which are growing heavier by the day, I'm sure of it. They stare back, mocking me as I strategize on Plan E.

"body" bags

Dirt Removal: Chapter 3

Fast forward from the joy of breaking ground and getting started on our garden in the beautiful sunshine, to five days later, at night, when I glanced outside and saw to my horror that those bags of dirt were still sitting there! My anxiety levels at an all new high, I decided to execute our plan of throwing the dirt over the fence and into the empty lot, all in pure darkness. I carried out our ladder to the backyard and found some weird little container in which to scoop the dirt. Then I attempted to make a dent in the enormous mound of dirt in one bag, trying not to look at the other 19 bulging bags, including the first few we had left in the alleyway. Just one step at a time, gotta stay positive, keep your chin up, these were my thoughts as I scooped up the dirt, climbed the ladder and threw it over. Of course, while I was doing all this, I completely forgot about the trees that are sitting in our yard and the adjacent yard because it was PITCH BLACK OUTSIDE, and so my dirt ricocheted off the branches of those sneaky trees and came flying back at me before landing right back into our backyard. After a few more throws with the exact same unsuccessful result, I gave up, and began constructing a plan D.

Dirt Removal: Chapter 2

After spreading our dirt throughout the backyard, we decided to throw the rest of the dirt into the Hefty garbage bags we had purchased. Again, no plan here. I guess we just assumed that those garbage bags would miraculously transport themselves from the backyard to the front with little to no effort on our part. But, as we filled a couple bags, only halfway might I mention, and realized, even half full, they were so heavy we could only move them by dragging them, we called for a time-out and had a proper discussion on the dirt removal process. It was at this point that we had our first semblance of a plan. Upon inspection, we saw that the fence on one side of our backyard, by our alleyway, has a door that opens to the next yard over, which is also connected to the street. So, we decided that we'd drag all the bags to the alleyway, and then hope that the people next door would at some point allow us to drag all these bags through their yard and into the street. Whereupon, the car that neither one of us owns, would be sitting there waiting for us, in a parking spot which is normally not available, so we could easily load up the bags and drive to the dump that may or may not exist in our neighborhood. Easy peasy. Both of us agreed on what a great idea this was and began to drag the bags toward the alleyway.

(Bags abandoned in alleyway)

An hour or so later, we came up with what we thought to be an even better plan. So the back side of our backyard faces an empty lot- it's one of those lots that is basically all dirt and weeds, with a few scattered bushes and what not. So we thought, why not throw the dirt over the fence and into the lot? Sounded good to us. Of course...we didn't want to get caught doing it, so we decided we'd do it at NIGHT. Yup, that was our plan- be super sketchy and throw dirt into the empty lot next to us in the darkness. So for the time being, we decided to drag all the bags toward the back fence instead of the alleyway. Our process was as follows: Fill a bag with dirt (takes about 1 minute), take turns straining with the weight of the bag and dragging it toward the back fence (takes about 5 minutes), repeat. Soon we had a nice little trail of bags leading to the back fence. Once we finished digging out the garden, we were too tired to deal with the bags of dirt. We decided to figure it out another day...

Dirt Removal: Chapter 1

One problem we did not foresee upon starting our garden was how difficult it would prove to be to get rid of the old dirt. When we initially planned all this, we barely batted an eye at the so called "challenge" of dirt removal, even when our landlord, who is built like The Hulk, expressed some serious concern. So our backyard is completely blocked in on all four sides with no access to the street? No problem! We'll "figure it out." Those words are now haunting me as I stare at 20 Hefty bags filled with dirt, too heavy to be lifted, and scattered throughout our backyard, looking more like body bags in a scene from Dexter, than bags of dirt because honestly, WHO HAS 20 BAGS OF DIRT LYING AROUND??

But, let me explain how we got to our current situation. When we first started digging, a week ago today, we decided to scatter the old dirt throughout the rest of the backyard. Not a bad idea, even in retrospect. We threw some dirt over here, threw some dirt over there, no problem. We were previously warned that if we did this, we had to make sure the dirt levels weren't higher than the patio level, as a rain storm would cause a serious overflow of dirt and lead to a mud pit. So while Alyssa uprooted the shrubs, I handled the dirt dispersal. At first I just shoveled the dirt and chucked it into some nearby areas, barely having to move at all. But fairly quickly, in order to ensure that I didn't cause a "dirt overflow," I needed to travel a few steps from the garden pit so I could throw the dirt onto a new spot. And very soon after that, I seemed to have exhausted all easy to access spots and so, while tromping around, spinning this way and that in search of sparser areas, all the while holding my extended shovel, causing Alyssa to shrink back in fear, I happened to knock off the ears of every single porcelain garden rabbit that had been placed in the backyard by the previous tenant. Oops. All in all, our first attempt at dirt removal was relatively successful. Aside from the rabbit casualties, I was able to spread a good amount of the dirt throughout our yard and not cause any type of overflow. Of course, much to our chagrin, I had barely made a dent in the volume of dirt we still had to remove.

Let the digging begin

We broke ground on a beautiful, sunny Saturday afternoon. Our landlord had allowed us to use the random assortment of spades and hoes that he has in the basement. So we armed ourselves with our tools, along with a fancy pair of shears we had purchased the day before, and began hacking away at the shrubs and plants while clearing away the dirt . One change to the initial plan- instead of creating two separate 4'x6' sections, we decided it would be easier to just make these two sections into one giant section. We mostly decided this because the other section in which we had planned the garden has an enormous shrub in it with thick branches that our shears would not have been able to handle so well. Plus, it ended up begin easier to remove all the dirt and add the new soil into one giant section, versus doing it in two sections. So, after several hours, we were able to haul away all the old dirt and plants, bushes and weeds. By "haul away" I really mean, we threw all of this stuff into a bunch of heavy duty garbage bags which are now sporadically lying across our backyard, as these bags, once filled with dirt, proved to be unbelievably heavy and difficult to maneuver. We're still trying to figure out what to do with said bags...more to come on that. But for now, back to the garden!

1. We dug into the ground about 6-8" deep.
2. Next we leveled off the ground with our hoes.
3. We laid the landscape fabric over the dirt.
4. We dumped our rocks evenly throughout the pit and over the landscape fabric.
5. Finally we emptied a combination of potting soil and compost over the rocks and spread it around. Our calculations of how much soil we needed were a bit off, we never claimed to be math experts here, because we have a few extra bags, but we figured the dirt may settle a bit and we'll need this extra dirt at that point. We'll see.
6. Voila! A beautiful raised-bed garden ready to go!

Soil has arrived!

And so it begins... After several failed attempts at delivery, due to the garden store owner’s extreme flakiness, which consisted of a no-show on the first delivery date, a miscommunication on the second delivery date, and a 2 hour delay on the third delivery date, our soil arrived! We stood aside as the soil was carried through the apartment (our attempts to help were almost laughed at- 40 pound bags of soil are not as easy to carry as you might imagine) and watched in anticipation as the bags piled up in the backyard. Meanwhile, our landlord, who had happened to stop by that day, stood in the doorway, at first shaking his head and laughing at our garden aspirations, but then quickly becoming more and more horrified as the number of soil bags continued to arrive. We tried to placate him by painting a picture of a quaint little garden with luscious, ripe veggies poking through the greenery, but his stress levels continued to rise as he pictured, not a quaint veggie garden, but rather a massive construction zone.

Next steps:

1. Buy some gardening gloves and gardening shears- there are some aggressive looking shrubs in our current garden that need to be uprooted.
2. Buy some giant, heavy-duty bags to put all the old dirt in. Eventually we’ll have to cart all this old dirt to some sort of dump.
3. Recruit more gardeners to help dig! Our next-door neighbors expressed some interest...
4. Start digging!!!

Where do we start?

It's what we asked ourselves, for days and days. We scrutinized urban gardening books, which proved to be useless, scoured the web, and searched for classes or workshops in the area, but still, we had no idea what to do. If only we had a teacher to help guide us...and then, we remembered we already knew someone! Our friend Pat, rugged outdoorsman and gardening aficionado agreed to be our mentor.  

And so, we began constructing a plan...

1) First, we decided on raised beds ie: no planting directly into the already existant dirt, rather, fresh, newly-bought dirt would need to be hauled in. The reason? This is New York City and we don't want rat poo in our veggies! Plus, we want this to be an organic garden, so all soil needs to be preservative and toxin-free.

2) Next we picked our favorite veggies (well...our favorite veggies that also happen to be "easy to grow" according to Cornell Cooperative Extension)

• romano beans
• beets
• carrots
• cucumbers
• kale
• mesclun
• shell peas
• sugar snap peas
• heirloom tomatoes
• cherry tomatoes
• summer squash
• butternut squash
• delicata squash

3) Then we had to plot out which parts of our backyard we wanted to use. We decided on two approximately 4'x6' sections as well as a few free standing pots. Pat our mentor told us that our beds needed to be at least 6"-12" deep. So then came the most challenging part of the process thus far- math. Based on all those measurements, we needed to come up with cubic feet, then figure out how many pounds per cubic feet, so we could know for sure how much soil to purchase. I'm still not sure if we did our calculations correctly but we ended up with 24 cubic feet and around 30 40-pound bags of soil.

4) Finally, on a crisp Sunday afternoon, we journeyed to Crown Heights to a gardening store (we chose it just because it was the only gardening store that happened to be open at that time) in hopes of buying some soil. After deliberating with the owner of the store, who appeared to be competent in the art of gardening, (more to come on that later) we walked away with $350 of soil/supplies to our name:

• 1 roll of landscaping fabric (this goes at the bottom, for drainage)
• 6 bags of rocks (these go on top of the fabric, also for drainage)
• 30 bags of soil (mix between potting soil and compost)
• 1 bag of peat moss (to keep the soil light)

It would be delivered the following week. We left the store that day feeling accomplished with our progress, slightly intimidated by the task ahead and also extremely discouraged after having spent $350 on dirt.