Frost-free Update

I noticed that the street-level in-ground gardener up the block put in all of his tender plants this past week (I see basil, peppers and tomatoes). Given that he has likely been gardening in this area for over 25 years, he's probably developed a good feel for the season.

For the most part everything is growing well now that we're into mid-May. We've been taking regular harvests from the lettuce and puntarella. The bush beans & squash reminded me that they are super-quick to germinate by pushing through the EB covers in less than a week. Hands down, save for radishes perhaps, they are the best feel-good crop for newbie container gardeners.

This weekend's chores: pulling all victims of the storms and wind of the past couple of weeks (some tomatoes, all basil, most peppers), thinning out squash and beans, sowing herbs (lemon balm, anise hyssop, florence fennel), sunflowers (dwarf firecrackers) and more bush beans.

Harvest & Hope

First harvest of the year was a small batch of french breakfast radishes that we tossed in our dinner salad. Radishes are an excellent "placeholder" as they take roughly a month from seed to harvest.

Busied myself this morning by direct sowing squash and bush beans, and transplanting strawberries, tomatoes, basil, peppers into the EBs. Had followed the Seed-Starters Handbook timing guidelines for the seed-starts and found them way too early for someone in an apartment with limited space and no dedicated grow setup to ensure sufficient light for them (though my guessing on a 4/15 frost-free date in NYC was also a factor). I started them all in six-pack cells and then moved the tomatoes and peppers to bottle SIPs. Tomatoes & peppers are "leggy," while the strawberries and basil seem hardy but stopped growing about a month ago; I put them all in anyway and we'll see what happens.

A Stokes Farm rosemary plant found its way into our Ikea planter.

Other things going on - chives are sending up blossoms, cilantro is up, lettuce is up, mache is up, blueberries are forming, lavender is sending up flower stalks, chinese fringe tree getting ready to flower, zinnias, marigolds, calendula are up, and the Silver Heights Farm lettuce & puntarella seem happy in their EB spaces.

Spring

When forsythia bloom in NYC it's a sure sign that spring has arrived...or at least spring weather has arrived. Just returned from a short vacation and glad to see our forsythia has held onto its flowers while we were away. The pussywillow has shed its catkins (picture below is a couple weeks old) and is now "leafing" out. The abundant buds on our blueberry bushes turned out not to be leaf buds, but all flower buds, so we're excited about the prospect of a fruit harvest this year; now it's a watching and waiting to beat the grackles to the ripe fruit.

My wonderful mother kept my pepper, strawberry, basil and tomato seedlings alive while we were away, but they are long overdue for a transplant to bottle SIPs. Pictures to come.

If I ever get caught up with work after vacation, I'll put lettuce, parsley, cilantro, calendula and more chives in containers...soon squash and bush beans will go in as well. Already in EarthBoxes are french breakfast radishes (up) and sugar snaps/snow peas (went in a number of weeks ago, a possible fail).

Finally, I'm gambling on April 15 being the last expected frost date for NYC, so a whole host of other seeds will go in around then. Stay tuned.

2010

New year brings new posts - as my faithful reader could easily tell due to the lack of posting, I experienced a sudden lack of motivation for the garden and the blog. Considering the amount of effort put forth towards getting it started earlier in the year, I can't say that it was a surprise.

So we rode out the year with a few fall crops (pictured right, a broccoli head that bolted before we managed to harvest it...hence it served as a kitchen ornamental instead). In the past week I've been going through the envelopes & envelopes of seed; saying that I overbought would be quite the understatement. I'm putting together a list of contenders for our limited space, and in the course of my research, I learned in The New Seed Starter's Handbook that strawberries should be started now if they are to bear fruit in the first year. So where did I stash that seedstarting mix?!

Calyces Ripped My Flesh & Eyeball-Busting Humidity

Transition time here at the urban garden. Salad boxes have been put back into service with surrey arugula, broccoli raab novantina and a "kitchen sink" micro-green mix. In the EarthBoxes, the fungus-challenged squashes and tomato, as well as all the tiring bush bean plants have all been pulled and in their places went sowings of waltham and calabrese broccoli, snowball cauliflower, rat's tail radish, noble spinach, wakefield cabbage...all of which are seeking sun through their mulch covers already. Picked up some more Etruria basil plants and anise hyssop from Silver Heights Farm.

Still enjoying regular harvests of lacinato kale, swiss chard, collards, basil, rosa bianca eggplants and jalapenos. All things considered it's been a successful season here so far. It hasn't been without its challenges, but we've managed to eke out some good harvests from six EarthBoxes and three salad boxes; next year I plan to keep a record of our yields.

Issues edition

Some less serious updates on flickr.

Blossom end rot on tomatoes. There is much information on this around the internet, but of interest to urban gardeners is that on the EarthBox forum there have been comments about this being somewhat prevalent in first-year EBs. While precise explanations weren't offered, it seems that it has something to do with needing a year for the box to shake itself in terms of calcium distribution from the added lime. We'll see what happens next year; while many of the fruits on the tomato have succumbed, we do have a number remaining and waiting for warm weather to boost ripening.

Not entirely positive on what this is, but it affected many of the tomato plant's branches. Tomato spotted wilt virus? I pruned the most affected branches and am now playing the waiting game.

Powdery mildew. I had noticed this on a few leaves early on in the growth of the two ronde de nice plants and ignored it. After a few days, it had spread to the entire plant. There has been new leaf growth on the plant and even these young leaves have been affected. Next year I will be more vigilant about treating with natural fungicide in the early stages. Also noted that the adjacent vegetable marrow squash is not affected, so perhaps the ronde de nice is a susceptible variety.

Healthy and since-harvested ronde de nice on the left, starved, failed squash on the right. Happened on all three squash plants. Not sure what causes this, but since the squash fruited so heavily, and I've read that squash are heavy feeders, I imagine that the EarthBox, which is supporting three squash plants and a cucumber, simply couldn't support all that fruit at once. We had our initial harvest of squash and I was concerned that was it, as there was no apparent additional fruit. In the past week though, the squash has advanced, and a second fruit set is well into development.

Delicious set of aphids. Again, I was a little too enamored with all the jalapeno peppers on these plants and I slacked on my aphid vigilance. They received a dose of neem oil-based spray and will be dust in a few days.

balcony update in pictures

Calyx of forming rosa bianca eggplant.

Wind-blown rosa bianca eggplant.

Forming tomato on adopted tomato (unsure of variety).

This pic of the tomato has a very jack and the beanstalk feel to it. Will be researching tomato pruning this winter.