Other People's Dirty Work: Part 1

Saw this guerrilla garden setup along the Metro Branch Bike Trail. The location is between Rhode Island and New York Avenues.

Speaking of the Metro Branch Trail, did you see all the raspberries and blackberries growing earlier this summer?

Eat, drink, be merry, and get dirty!

Margie

I Spy

Remember my post "There Are Bugs In My Bush?" Here are the little guys growing up. These were taken around the 4th of July.

Eat, drink, be merry, and get dirty!
Margie

Like Your BC Pills, Don't Skip a Day

6 pounds of tomatoes, mostly from that one monster bush.

I didn't pick my tomatoes one day, and this was the haul I got the following day.

For every 5 tomatoes I put on my salad each day for lunch, I find myself picking at least a dozen tomatoes.

Oh, and educational moment: you do not need to wait until your tomatoes are red on the vine to pick them. Pick them when you see them start to "blush." Unlike commercial tomatoes which are injected to force them to turn colors when they are not actually ripe, once your tomatoes start blushing, they are ripening and will continue to turn red on their own. I rinse mine off and leave them in a bowl so I can just pop 'em in my mouth as a snack. You can also leave them on a windowsill. It will take about a day or two for them to fully ripen.

The reason you want to pick them before they are fully ripe are: 1. It triggers the plant to produce more tomatoes more frequently, 2. You are less likely to miss some and end up with rotten tomatoes (I have not had a single rotten tomato), 3. Bugs and other pests are going to find the tomatoes before you.

The blush I am talking about is when you just start to see a yellowy-peachish coloring on the green. You can see some of them above.

Eat, drink, be merry and get dirty (and eat A LOT of tomatoes!)
Margie

There Are Bugs In My Bush!

Praying mantises rock! If you find these guys on your plants, leave them there. They eat all of the nasty bugs that hurt your vegetables. Of course they also eat the good ones...and each other...But hey, it takes a lot of

energy to keep my bushes clear of pests!



Eat, drink, be merry, and get dirty!
Margie

Sometimes You Can Be Too Wet

Tropical Storm Andrea hit DC yesterday. There was no major damage, just lots of rain and backed up sewers (yuck!). One of my water jug planters could not keep up with the amount of water it was getting, and unfortunately my carrots didn't take it too well. I'm not too bummed, because I did get to eat some of them. Mostly I'm happy that my first attempt at carrots was successful (except for the rain). I might get some new seeds going for the fall.

This is why you want to make sure your plants have good drainage if they are going to be outside.

Eat, drink, be merry, and get dirty!

Margie

Next Time It Will Have to Reserve Two Plane Seats

Earlier this winter I made a garden bed out of some pavers that had been stacked up in a corner of the back yard.

I also made a path.

I laid them so they would be about 6" above ground level, then filled them with compost I found on Craigslist.

I put newspaper down to act as a weed barrier
before adding the compost.

The back yard is on the western side of the house and has no trees, so it gets good sun.

I planted everything far enough apart so that I thought they would each get enough room. (Of course I forgot to take pictures.)

The first really active guy was my Texas cherry tomato I grew from seed.

Texas cherry tomato on the left. A baby I would call adorable.

It hasn't stopped growing.....

Feeeed me! Cue "Little Shop of Horrors" music.

You can't see them, but there is a bunch of string trying to contain the branches.

Escape for your lives other plants!

These tomatoes are designed to survive Texas heat. Well, it survives in Texas and thrives in DC. Is there such thing as invasive tomatoes? I have never seen these tomatoes get this big in Texas.

Those are some big cherries to pop.

It's trying to send out aerial roots! I'm going to see if I can cut and plant some in the front, let it fill in that space.

It's amazing how well this guy is producing. What a bed hog!

Eat, drink, be merry, and get dirty!
Margie

Soda Bottle Planters

Soda has more uses than making college cocktails and helping with 4 am finals cramming, or at least its container does. Some of my best plants were grown in 2 or 3 liter soda bottles.

Supplies:

• (1) 2 or 3 liter soda bottle, emptied and cleaned
• Gravel
• Soil
• Slow-release fertilizer
• Mulch (if available)
• Scissors
• String/twine
• Clean fingers
• A plant

Step 1: Acquire and empty soda bottle. Rinse it out well to get all the sugar out. Remove the label if you want.

Step 2: Cut holes in the bottom of the bottle for drainage.

Step 3: Cut the top off where the curve straightens out.

Step 4: Have a beer break.

Step 5: Put about a 1/2”-1” of gravel in the bottom.

Aaaahhh...that tastes good...

Step 6: Fill with dirt so that the top of your sprout container is level with the top of the bottle.

Step 7: Plant your sprout.

Step 8: Add some plant food.

Step 9: Fill rest of way with mulch (if you have some).

Step 10: Toast your new plant.

Share a pint.

Enjoy your new plant!

Give it some new friends to hang out with.

You can poke holes about an inch below the top and thread twine through to make a hanging plant.

This is a great project to do with kids, too.

You can make the bottles more artsy by painting them.

Eat, drink, be merry, and get dirty!
Margie

A Tight Squeeze

Just to show you how much you can fit on the patio. You can see the large tomato, corn and aloe plants growing among all of our smaller plants. This was our first apartment together. We would fit two dogs, a cat on a leash, a snake and the two of us out here during happy hour. (Sorry for the quality. Old phone pictures I found)

This wasn't a planned patio garden, and a lot of it was done on the cheap. But I would get so many compliments from the other residents. We were fortunate to have a south facing porch with a well-placed red oak to protect the plants from the worst of the Texas sun.

Eat, drink, be merry, and get dirty!
Margie

The Not-Quite-So-Protected Indoors

I'm learning a couple of things from growing plants inside during the winter:

1. I need to be patient and not start seeds so early. I think I am still on Texas season time.

I got this fan for $25 and it has a wind
option that produces random breezes.

And 2. Plants can still get sick/pests inside. My chives and a couple other plants got mites and aphids. My rosemary got powdery mildew (powdery mildew looks just like it sounds: a white powder on the leaves). It makes sense why, though. It's warm inside. There is more moisture around the plants. And the big thing: there is very little air circulation. Once I moved the plants outside they perked up quite a bit.

Well, it got cold again, and had to bring the warm season veggies in. I tried putting a fan in the room to move the air a bit, and holy crap the plants I moved back in perked up! My tomato grew about 2 inches overnight! So, fan in the room. Do it!

As for the bugs, I use organic liquid hand or dish soap. A small drop (seriously, barely squeeze the bottle so a tiny drop comes out) of that in a tiny spray bottle will dissolve the waxy outer coat of the pests and dry them out. The other option is to wipe down the plant gently with your hands to manually remove the insects.

For the powdery mildew I wipe the plant off gently with my fingers and some of the soap/water. I planted the rosemary I had inside in the ground a month and it hasn't died yet. The room I stored it in got a lot of sun, but I think it enjoys feeling the direct sun and wind on its leaves.

Eat, drink, be merry, and get dirty!

Margie

My First Blog!

Here it is! With a catchy title and everything! Welcome to my first post about apartment patio gardening.

I'm starting this blog after a bit of pressure from one of my friends and my boyfriend, J. I recently moved to Washington, D.C., from San Antonio, TX, and one thing I noticed when I got here: there are a lot of freakin' apartments and many of them look sadly bare. One day my friend from Austin asked me for advice on what to grow on her small apartment patio. She wanted some kind of plant that would cover her view of a typical, bleak parking lot, as well as survive a beginning gardener's care and Texas summer. Then she said: “What I'd love is an herb and vegetable garden, but I'm not sure how feasible it is with such a small space.”

!!!!

Such a small space?! Size doesn't matter.....for a vegetable/herb garden. It's amazing in how tiny a space you can see a plant grow. J sometimes gets a little intimidated by how much I manage to squeeze on our balcony and still leave some room for us. I say there is always room for more. ;)

So my lovely friend asked me more questions about how to start a garden on her patio. She then said that she couldn't find much help online about making apartment gardens. Some internet digging turned up plenty of great little projects uran gardeners can do, but there seemed to be little information about how the omst beginner and black-thumbed gardener can get started. And that is why I decided to start a blog on apartment balcony gardening: to show people in DC and other cities that it is possible to have a garden in the smallest of living spaces, how to get started, and feel like you have a small idea of what you're doing.

Eat, drink, be merry, and get dirty!

Margie