Recycling e-waste in NYC gets a boost

I am posting this notice because I support recycling. If you are in NYC and want to learn how to recycle your e-stuff, check out this event.

COUNCIL MEMBER GALE A. BREWER AND

LOWER EAST SIDE ECOLOGY CENTER

WANT YOU TO RECYCLE TODAY

FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

                        WHAT: Electronic Waste Recycling Event

                        WHEN: Sunday, January 27, 2013, 10AM-4PM, Rain or Shine

                        WHERE: West 63 Street between Central Park West & Broadway, Manhattan

On Sunday, January 27, 2012, Council Member Gale A. Brewer, along with the Lower East Side Ecology Center and the West Side YMCA, kick off the New Year with a free e-waste recycling event. This event will provide individuals, non-for-profits  and businesses with the opportunity to safely recycle electronic items, including working and non-working computers, monitors, printers, scanners, keyboards, mice, cables, TV’s, VCR’s, DVD players, phones, audio/visual equipment, cell phones & PDA’s.

All are welcome to attend this free event. There is no limit on the amount of materials that can be dropped off, and a tax deduction is offered. For more information contact the Lower East Side Ecology Center lesecologycenter.org or (212) 477-4022 or Council Member Gale A. Brewer office at (212) 873-0282.

Recycle your plastics! Here's how and why

I received a request to publish this graphic showing how recycling plastic can save resources and eliminate waste. Sadly, not enough of us make the effort. According to the table below, college students are less likely than those over 40 to get involved. Well, get on it people. Recycling just makes sense! Whole Foods is a great place to drop off your plastic bags, yogurt cups and other #5 plastics that NYC does not currently collect. It even accepts the corks from wine bottles. Best Buy takes CDs and jewel cases. See you there!
For more information about this graphic go to OnlineEducation.net

Broccoli flowers

Oops, I forgot to harvest this purple peacock broccoli floret, and lo and behold, it blossomed! But no worries. I steamed it up and ate it anyway, along with some less mature shoots, and it was delicious.

Sandy, Nor'easter knock out my garden

Last two bell peppers

After a hurricane and blizzard, I guess it's safe to say the harvest season is over. Just don't tell my lettuce or broccoli plants, they're still growing. Some of the herbs are plugging along too, though the basil was whipped away by high winds. I pulled the last two bell peppers from the vines before Wednesday's nor'easter, and frankly I couldn't believe they survived Sandy!
But all in all, it's time to shut down the watering system, clip the rose bushes and close up shop.
It was a tough season. Our tomatoes had too many problems to list. Okay, I'll list a few: Rust disease, blossom drop and all around lousy production. The broccoli, though still trying, never amounted to much. The cucumbers failed. Even the pepper plants were under-performers. Only the Japanese eggplants came through in a meaningful way.
So, what's an urban gardener to do? Why look forward to next spring of course. We've already decided to go back to our old faithful tomato varieties of Brandywine, Cherokee Purple and Aunt Ruby's German Green. Just one season without them proved how valuable those strains are, at least in this growing zone. The newbies we tried out -- the Azorean Red, Black from Tula and Green Zebra --  just hated the heat. We had an early spring harvest and then nothing until October! I may try broccoli again, but I'll wait until fall; it prefers cool weather. And I'll remember to plant Kirbies instead of cucumbers. The smaller fruit seems to do better in pots.
I know it seems like a long way to planting season, but it's never too soon to start looking forward to it.

More grief in the garden

Sometime in August, after the heatwaves broke and the weather got back down to the low 80s, our tomato plants perked up again. Flowers bloomed and tomatoes formed. None got more than the Green Zebra, which sprouted some 15 egg-shaped orbs.
I plucked the first ripe one on Monday. It was quite delicious and I was looking forward to enjoying the rest, a kind of booby prize to finish off a disappointing season.
Well, not so fast. A gusty wind storm knocked almost all of them off the vine.
Figures...Still, we have been getting a nice end of season harvest, including plenty of Angora sweet cherries and even some of the beefier Black from Tula and Azorean Reds, though the current cold snap could curtail that trend.

A Fig Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Fig trees are growing in Brooklyn? According to this New York Times article they're sprouting fruit all over the borough. Well, then, why not plant one in Manhattan. Sounds like a great addition to my already overflowing urban garden. I'll be on the lookout for a sapling come next spring!

Swallowtail butterfly picks parsley

This caterpillar turns into a black swallowtail butterfly

What a discovery I made this weekend - I found this creature noshing on my parsley! Turns out this green gobbler is the precursor to the black swallowtail butterfly. I recall seeing one of them fluttering on my terrace a few weeks ago. Who knew she was dropping her eggs on my greens. I am so amazed that these bugs, which seem to be randomly flitting about, can suss out the exact plant on which to host their offspring amid the inhospitable concrete jungle. How did she find my little patch of parsley - the preferred diet of the black swallowtail? Unfortunately, I didn't want to sacrifice my parsley (this thing eats amazingly quickly and would have polished off the whole plant in a day or two) so I plucked it off and plopped it in the green space beside my building. Alas, there was no parsley planted there, but I hope it will find a suitable alternative. And yes, I feel a little guilty...



Black swallowtail butterfly



Heartbreak garden: A summer to forget



Last of the red hot tomatoes - we picked these in late July

 Oh how I hate to admit it. How I wish it wasn't so. But this season is fast shaping up to be our worst ever! We have had terrible luck in the garden, no where more evident than with our tomatoes. The season started off well. Putting the plants out a couple of weeks early thanks to a warm spring resulted in ripe tomatoes in mid-July, a full two weeks before last season. But our plants have since punked out on us. Just when we should be getting a bountiful harvest, the vines are completely bare. Not a hint of red peeking through the green leaves.
Frankly, it's a depressing sight. The prolonged hot weather, with several weeks of 90 degree or higher days and nights, is surely a culprit. Tomatoes grow best when the temperature is 80 degrees to 85 degrees during the day and in the 70s at night I recently read. Prolonged heat waves like the ones we had this summer inhibit pollination, causing blossom drop - when the flowers dry up and fall off instead of producing fruit. A recent New York Times article throws cold water on this theory, quoting lots of local farmers crowing about their fabulous crops, but I'm sticking to it, since I have only my own garden to go by.
Our choice of heirlooms may have added to our woes. We experimented with completely different varieties this year, Black from Tula, Azorean Red, Green Zebra and Pantano Romanesco, buying our seeds from Tomatofest.com. Though they were highly rated on the site, maybe they aren't as hardy as the Cherokee Purples and Brandywines we've been growing all these years. Even the Kellogg's Breakfast, with its beautiful orange fruit, faded in July after a strong start. I suppose we should always go with what we know - experimenting is fine, but with one or two plants at most, not all of them!
There have been other problems in the garden this summer. I planted cucumbers when I should have gone for the smaller Kirbies, which grow better in pots. Somehow I forgot this after learning the same lesson two years ago. The broccoli seemed like a winner early on, but so far I've harvested only three florets. My lettuce was also overcome by the heat - though now I have new seedlings growing.
To top it all off, those clever mockingbirds took to pecking at the few tomatoes we had on the vines! They're probably pissed that we put nets around our blueberry bushes.
Is it too soon to pine for next summer???

Mockingbird's lunch

Kellogg's Breakfast tomato, perfect for dinner!

This beauty is known as Kellogg's Breakfast tomato. The orange heirloom is definitely our stand out this summer. It's sweet and juicy, with just the right amount of acidity and bite. We picked this 1.8 pounder two weeks ago. It was a tasty treat with mozzarella and basil, a sprinkle of olive oil and some pepper. Perfection! 



Kellogg's Breakfast for dinner



The berries are alright!

A healthy, homegrown breakfast featuring our very own blueberries and strawberries. Though the strawberry plant produces pretty sporadically, the blueberry bushes are prolific, especially now that we've protected them from our resident Mockingbirds with netting. Every morning I gather just enough berries to top my yogurt.