Indoor garden takes root

Basil, rosemary, oregano, parsely, lettuce, and tomato. They're all growing in my living room. In fact I plucked some basil leaves from the very tiny plants and put them into my salad last night. Mmmm, fresh!
It's an experiment to be sure, but a very reasonable one. A trip to the Union Square green market, where I picked up three pots of herbs for $5 dollars, resulted in over a dozen basil shoots, several parsley shoots and a healthy oregano plant. I also bought a small flat of heirloom pirat head lettuce, flecked with red, which held over a dozen plants, for $4.50. I've transplanted them all, finding pots in closets and commandeering a few from my inlaws in Scarsdale. The little sprouts are sitting by the windows, soaking up the sun.
In other good news, my colleague Lisa adopted three tomato plants that Mitch created from seeds when we were more optimistic that our terraces would be ready for summer (heirloom brandywine, cherokee chocolate and angora cherry.) She plans to plant them in her Westchester garden. Hopefully, they will be fruitful and we'll get to share...
So, with or without a terrace, I'm pursuing my summer of urban gardening...

A cool site for locavores

When I'm not gardening, I admit I work at a desk as an editor. In that capacity, I taught a journalism class at Baruch College a few years back. One of my former students, it turns out, covers all kinds of news related to growing crops in the city at newyorkbounty.com. Click on the link to the right to read about raising chickens in New York, keeping bees, and, this urban gardener...

NYC Gardener guest blogs at The Three Tomatoes

Urban gardening is in season, and I'm spreading the word. Please check out my post at thethreetomatoes.com (link to the right.) I will be guest blogging about the joys of urban gardening all summer, so keep checking in. If you're a Tomato visiting for the first time, let me know what you think about growing your own in the big city. Thanks for stopping by!

Urban Gardener's Podcast Debut

Exciting news! I've been featured on my first podcast discussing our urban garden on a wonderful new website, theholisticoption.com. On the program, I talk about the fun of gardening in an urban setting and some of the surprises that come with the territory. Please check it out and let me know what you think. (see the top right corner of this blog for a link to the podcast.)

Green shoots

The seedlings are here! Little green shoots growing on our window sill will turn into big tomato plants soon enough. Mitch planted seeds we got last year from tomatofest.com - heirloom Brandywine and Sweet Angora cherries. The Charlie's Greens and Cherokee Chocolates are in the mix too, but they haven't sprouted just yet.
We've never used seeds for two seasons, but this year is different. Our little babies may be growing up in the diaspora. Since the construction on our terraces (due to building maintenance) has been delayed by cold winter weather and a rainy spring, we'll most likely be putting our plants into foster homes.Hopefully, we'll get invited over for a tasting...
Any takers out there??

PS. don't forget to login to http://holisticoption.com/ on April 23rd to hear my podcast interview on urban gardening!

Easy Composting

Urban gardening has inspired me to become an urban composter. I started out composting my garden waste, stems, leaves, flowers, roots last summer. As I pruned and picked, I realized I was creating a lot of waste. I needed to recycle all that green. Since Mitch wasn't into the smell of compost wafting across the terrace, I decided to start hauling my garden gunk to the Union Square Green Market on Saturdays, where a nonprofit, the Lower East Side Ecology Center, collects the waste in giant plastic tubs. The group uses the compost to feed its worm farm. Worms devour the compost and turn it into rich soil, which is sold for a few bucks a bag.
Though I started with leaves and stalks, I have since expanded my recycling to table scraps. Now, I collect pretty much all of our vegetable waste. I collect cucumber, carrot and onion skin, lettuce and pepper cores, tea bags, egg shells, banana peels and orange rinds. It's amazing how much vegetable waste two people can accumulate over the course of a week. The only thing verboten is meat and dairy. I guess the worms are vegetarians. I store the compost in the fridge all week in a strong plastic bag and tote it to the market on my bicycle on the weekend. If I can't get to the market, I freeze the stuff so it doesn't get too smelly.
I feel good about doing composting. Of course, I'm hardly alone. Each week the center collects leftovers from hundreds of New Yorkers, turning it to soil, instead of landfill. And the more the merrier. Do you compost? Would you consider it??

Pasta Fresca

Thanks to our good friend, chef and cookbook author Michele Scicolone, my husband Mitch has learned the art of making fresh pasta. Michele gave Mitch a personal pasta lesson last month. Last weekend, he whipped up his first solo batch of fetuccine after purchasing a shiny red KitchenAid mixer and pasta attachments. We defrosted our last batch of homemade tomato sauce, made from the fruit of our 2008 crop and enjoyed a simple, yet delicious meal. Perfect with a nice bottle of Sylvanus white wine from Channing Daughter in Bridgehampton. Locavore all the way.

NYC Gardener and the Holistic Option Podcast

So, urban gardening is becoming a trend and here I am at the epicenter - well - at least I'm a part of it. And so, I'm going to be featured on a podcast at a great Website, The Holistic Option.
Kelly Campbell, who founded the site a year ago found me through Facebook and we spoke last week about gardening in the heart of Manhattan. She'll be posting an edited version of our chat at her site, http://holisticoption.com/, on April 23rd.
So as we begin to prepare for this year's crop - and hope that we can reclaim our terraces from the construction which has been delayed by all the cold weather - I'm also looking forward to hearing from old friends and new ones who hear the podcast and have any questions or want to share about their own urban gardening experiences (or inexperiences...)

Great gift for an urban gardener

It's the dead of winter, it's been cold and snowy here in the city, and our terrace is still covered in scaffolding. So, planting is hardly happening in the near term. But I must tell you about a great gift I received a couple of weeks ago. My friend Renee came up from D.C. with a belated birthday present: Crops in Pots, a book by Reader's Digest. I know, you're thinking Reader's Digest, not cool. But let me tell you, there are tons of great planting ideas in this book. I have been thinking about branching out, doing some lettuce, cukes and other veggies to complement the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants we've been growing the past few years and this book gives pointers on how to grow all those plants and more in pots on the terrace.
So, when the warmer weather comes (and if the building finishes the construction by the spring) I am going to be ready to start another great growing season!

What a meal!

Well, it's been far too long since I've posted, but life has been hectic, what with the stock market crash and all. Anyone who's still got a job is working twice as hard, especially if you work in publishing!
But enough about things we can't control. I'm here to tell you about life's little pleasures. And of course, it all starts with the garden -- and this blog.
This summer when my friends Valerie Smaldone and Rick Steinhaus came over for one of our tomato tasting soirees (see Monday, Sept. 1st post) Valerie wrote about our private party at thethreetomatoes.com and posted some photos of the evening. Her friend Michele Scicolone, a master chef and cookbook author, happened to see the post and she recognized our terrace, because, get this, she lives directly across the street. She'd spent many a night on her lovely outdoor space, wondering who was growing all those tomatoes across the way.
So, last week, Valerie brought us neighbors together at the Scicolones for the meal of a lifetime. Michele created a menu to die for, starting with homemade cavatelli topped with a fresh tomato sauce with tidbits of eggplant and swordfish, followed by a tender roasted pork loin with fennel dust and rosemary, roasted red peppers and perfectly prepared broccoli rabe.
Her husband Charles, a gifted sommelier, paired each course with a perfect vino, starting the evening with a delightful Sergio Mionetto Prosecco, followed by two superb Italian red wines, Morellino di Scansano "il Monte" Giunti 2003 and Sangiovese "Cimbolo" Poggio Bertaio 2000.
For dessert, Michele brought forth sweet pears poached in red wine sauce and Charles popped the cork on an incredible sparkling red dessert wine, "Pineto" Marenco Brachetto D'Acqui. We ended the evening with a smooth grappa.
What a treat. What a New York story!