Photo From The Grange

It's been a while since we've posted an update from the Urban Grange! We've been busy harvesting? While our little farm doesn't really keep us that busy, we have been enjoying tomatoes, mint and a carrot or two. Meanwhile, the peppers are about ready to pick! MC came over last week and we squoze in a new crop of peas, which are alraedy starting to sprout.

I was out poking around, looking at all the progress when I noticed some flies pollinating the mint. I sat down and decided to try to photograph them. I was aiming for a portraite, but super macro is hard! Yet I managed this neat shot:

While flies are pretty gross, this just goes to show how almost anything has a beauty to it if you look hard enough.

Hopefully we'll get a chance to post some more appetizing phots soon!

Produce Exchange

Check it out:

i got.  u got.

The backyard food garden exchange.  None near the city yet, but let's change that!

Gizmodo Reblog: grill planter

There Are Plants All Up In My Grill! [Cooking]: "
Living in a city means you often don't have a lot of space. Put a grill on your deck, and suddenly there's no room for plants. So this combination planter and grill from Erbe is pretty clever, if way odd.

The top holds a planter, where you can grow herbs or, you know, herbs. And it comes right off to reveal a heat-insulated ceramic bottom with a little hibachi where you can satisfy your munchies. This is one of those things that makes me glad stoners exist.

[Chiasso via Red Ferret]

First Flowers

Here are the first buds:

Future cukes.

The first pea.

Tomatoes.

Peppers.

Orchid Study

Here are some shots of an orchid my folks got me.  I believe it's called phalaenopsis.

 It lives inside, which is a nice way to extend the Urban Porch Grange in doors.

Clinging Peas

Looks like the peas are taking to the trellis.

Growth!

Here's an update on the Grange.  Looks like it's time to harvest some spinach!



Only took a month.

Tomatoes, welcome to your new home! Known as EarthTrainer, its the latest and greatest in urban gardening lo-fi technology and its suppose to grow great tomatoes. The simple premise is a bottom up approach to watering your crops. Rather than watering from above the soil the EarthTrainer feeds the plants from below the surface thus training the roots to grow nice and deep. It also conserves a lot of water. Conventional ways of watering allow moisture to evaporate right back into the air.

Tomatoes prefer consistent and evenly moist soil. Soil that is too dry will stunt the plants growth. Too much water will cause the fruit with crack. Earth Trainer will keep the soil perfectly moist by wicking up only what the plants needs. The results - healthy and delicious tomatoes.

To read more on EarthTrainer:

http://www.earthtainer.org/

Time to Plant the Summer Crop

A visit home on Mothers Day got our garden in gear to start the Summer. Thanks Dad for the extra seedlings: tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and cukes. That will round off our Spring plantings: lettuce, spinach, snap peas, carrots and strawberries.

It was a busy day on the Grange!

We hit up Home Depot this evening to buy these plants a new home for the season, four planters. The tomatoes got the special treatment; a fancy grow box with a below soil reservoir. The peppers got lucky and they'll share that space with the tomatoes. Each eggplant got its own pot to grow in and a long tray will house the Cukes. Rachel and I got the seedlings settled into their new homes while Alex got busy building a trellis for the peas, already several inches tall, to start their climb.

To cap off the evening we got to taste the first strawberries of the season. Sweet Gams!

All the plants look very happy with their vast southern sunny exposure. The Grange looks like it will be a great place to garden this season.

Some Urban Farming Links (and a photo)

Here's an orchid photo I took at the New York Botanical Garden and two neat urban farming ideas from Lifehacker:

Filing Cabinet into a Rolling Container Garden

Wood Pallet Vertical Garden

Sprouts!

Rain is less depressing when you have a garden.



















We came home from vacation to this beautiful growth.  Now MC has to come over so we can start thinning the crops to give them room to grow.

Day 1

So Mike and I started an urban garden.  We decided to get a few seeds in the ground before the Passover break.  Lettuce, Spinach, Carrots and Peas are officially in the ground:

We're hoping for 'cukes, basil, mint, peppers, tomatoes, onions and more in a few weeks.  We also got the already started strawberries seen above (with the sign facing away for some reason).  All for like 50 bucks @ Home Depot, not bad!  Check back for updates!