Balcony Garden 2015

Herbs are the name of the game this summer. While last year I poured my heart and soul into both herbs and veggies, I was left ultimately underwhelmed by the vegetable production. I yielded just one teeny tiny eggplant that was too cute too cook and a total of seven grape tomatoes - hardly enough for a sandwich, let alone the vat of fresh tomato sauce I had envisioned when setting up the garden. So this year, I decided to not even spend my energy on vegetables and instead focus on herbs - basil, rosemary, dill, oregano, spearmint, and lavender*. (*Yep, lavender is considered to be both a flower and an herb). I have to admit, though, that while last year I started everything from seedlings, I went the easy route this time around and bought these guys from the green market when they were toddlers. Why? Part laziness, part schedule, part crappy weather throughout most of pre-growing season. I only feel the slightest bit guilty about it, but then I realize that not growing your balcony garden from seedlings and instead buying your plants from the local farmer's market is a really silly thing to feel guilty about, so I get over it pretty quickly. Anyway, it's already July - how is my garden growing?

Basil - I'm having a slightly hard time with this one. There were some gorgeous leaves right away that I made sure to put on every pizza and dish of pasta in the tri-state area, but then it started to grow and flower, which I eventually learned is something I should not let happen to a basil plant. And then I heard on a podcast that once your basil starts to flower, the leaves are bitter and almost unusable. So is this a lost cause? Will I not have the spoonfuls of pesto I so longingly envisioned? I'm still watering every day and removing each tiny flower as soon as I see it, but I'm a bit confused as to how to proceed.

Rosemary - doing great! There are two decently-sized stalks(?) that are full and fragrant. Every now and then I pull off a couple of leaves and throw them into whatever I'm cooking, and the dish tastes fresh and wonderful. Good job, rosemary.

Dill - I think the dill has started to flower as well. And/or I don't know how to harvest fresh dill. AND whatever is there is so think and wispy I couldn't take a picture of it. DISCLAIMER - I plant things as if I know what I'm doing, but then never actually take the time to read or learn about the things I just planted, assuming that if my forefathers could survive off the land then I can grown some measly herbs. DISCLAIMER #2 - My forefathers did not, in fact, successfully survive off of the land, they instead took the first boat out of Italy when the going got tough and settled in urban Chicago, effectively removing any necessity of ever living off the land again. So clearly I come from hearty farmer stock. But back to the dill - what the heck do I do with this dill plant??

Oregano - flourishing. I'll probably need to repot this at some point, because it's threatening to take over my balcony. Anyone need any fresh oregano?

Spearmint - I have nearly killed and then miraculously revived this particular "Kentucky Colonel" like five times already. I secretly think my spearmint plant is punishing me for leaving Louisville six years ago (I lived there for three years and almost-but-not-really stayed for good), but I show him who's boss by adding a sprig to my bourbon while dreaming of simpler times when men were men and ladies carried parasols.

Lavender - so I haven't exactly turned my balcony into an idyllic and sun-streaked Provençal garden like Pinterest told me would happen, but I do have a solitary flower that smells delightful and is oh so pretty to look at. While I suppose my lavender sachet business will have to wait another year (which sucks because I already bought the domain to Spadoni'sScentedSachets.com), that little lavender bud is a constant reminder that hardships can be overcome and to always reach for the stars.

What are you growing this summer? Want to kick it grade-school-style and trade me half of your Lunchable for some oregano?

Happy birthday succulents!

Last year in a rare fit of adult-like domestic responsibility, I went to the Union Square Greenmarket and purchased five small succulent plants. I didn't expect them to last a month. In college, I watched one bamboo plant each year suffer a quick and untimely demise, my apartment in Louisville kept nothing but the roaches alive, and I welcomed "Shloopy the Succulent" into my first New York apartment but distraughtly watched him go to that great garden in the sky after just three months. So even though I had a ton of fun picking out ceramic teacups and creamers to be their new houses and even more fun naming them after the five Huxtable children, I had little hopes for future and survival of my new shrubs.

Much, much to my surprise and wonderment, it's one year later and they are all still alive. I think it has to do with the amount of direct sunlight they get on my kitchen windowsill, but honestly, I have no idea what is keeping these guys going - I've actually had to repot a few of them, and I'm probably due for another repotting sometime soon, but that's assuming I get my act together and get some larger pots (and then figure out where the larger pots can live).

I also tried my hand at propagation. Sometime last summer, one of the plants lost a leaf during it's "bath." I felt bad about it, so I threw the leaf into a rosemary plant pot on the balcony (was I supposed to do this? Probably not). About a month later, I realized there was new growth on the leaf. So I bought a new teacup (Fishs Eddy is my place to go for all things ceramic), filled it with dirt, and put the leaf into that. Amazing, that too is still growing.

Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. Millions of people grow all sorts of things all the time (if that's not the most obviously general statement ever, I don't know what it), and I guess a few little succulents aren't all that complicated. But I'm still pretty proud of my little guys. They keep me company when I putter around in the kitchen, and it was really refreshing to have life and growth in the apartment during those insufferable winter months. It's possibly fairly pathetic to wish happy birthday to a plant, but since I have yet to venture into the wide world of dog ownership and/or actual child-rearing, these plants are the only "kids" I have at the moment. So happy birthday to Sandra, Denise, Theo, Vanessa, Rudy, and the propagated Olivia - thanks for sticking around Apt. 4B.   ;)

Home Improvements - a little goes a long way

When I moved in to this apartment a year and a half ago, the list of immediate tasks was long but obvious due to the sheer fact that two people had to now inhabit a one-bedroom apartment previously occupied by just one person. Over the course of a few intense weeks, we reduced and reorganized and figured out how to make it all work. Stacks of books went to the Strand, bags of clothing went to the Goodwill, kitchen cabinets got reconfigured, a bedroom dresser and two nightstands were purchased, and the bathroom vanity got an entire overhaul. But once the major to-do's were completed, a lot of the smaller and less important tasks fell to the wayside as things like jobs and travels took up our spare time. Eventually though, I was able to revisit my "Apartment To-Do List - Tasks of Secondary Importance [working title]" and slog my way through it - and yikes, what a difference something as small as just putting up a few pictures can make to my overall mood.

I had long been wanting to put up a gallery wall. I'd actually purchased a couple of the above pictures with the intention to hang them in my old apartment, but never even managed to put them into frames before moving. When I realized that the space above my nightstand in my (new to me) bedroom was bare, I knew that was where my pictures were going to hang. It took a trip to Ikea and a lengthy measuring/cutting/framing/re-measuring/nailing/hanging/re-hanging session, but I finally got everything up - and it makes me so happy. One day I'd love to have one of those massive gallery walls that takes up half the room, but for now, these six pictures will have to do.

In the small-but-mighty category, I finally took control of my cookbook situation. Previously, I had all my cookbooks lined up at the end of my kitchen counter and held by one of those cheapo bookends. It was fine, but really kind of cluttered - and that's not to mention my old system of printing out various recipes and shoving them into random books whenever I decided to "clean up." So first I tackled the loose recipe issue - each random paper went into a 3-hole plastic sheet protector, and the stack of sheet protectors got bound into a folder. Simple, cheap, and amazingly effective. Then, the folder and all the cookbooks went into a wire basket that was big enough to hold everything but with a smaller footprint than that of the original line of books. It's easy to dig though the basket when I do need to grab a book, but for the majority of times when I'm not referencing an analogue cookbook, they're out of the way and neatly stacked.

And finally, the largest of the projects - a backsplash in the kitchen! About six months ago, my folks gave me an early monetary Christmas present with instructions to spend it on something for the apartment. J and I had been talking for a while about adding a backsplash to cover up the industrial-apartment-plaster, and that was just the impetuous we needed.

It took us a while to figure out just how to go about getting our backsplash. Should we buy the tiles and DIY it ourselves? Or do we go the peel-and-stick route? It quickly became clear that we were not going to do the installation ourselves - the time, stress, and tool investment would have been too much to handle, and besides, neither of us had ever done anything close to a project of that caliber. The peel-and-stick option wasn't for us either. None of the patterns really spoke to us, and price-wise, it wasn't all that different than traditional tiles. So we called our landlord and struck a deal - we'd buy the tiles/grout/sealant/etc. and our building's maintenance man would instal the tiles; when we eventually move out of the apartment, the backsplash will remain, adding value to the overall unit. Five trips to Home Depot later (one to buy some tile options, one to buy all the tile we though we'd need, one to return the unused tiles...you get the idea) and we had our beautiful backsplash.

All of these improvements were just that - embellishments to things that were already perfectly fine and functioning. But this being my first semi-permanent living situation in quite some time, it feels so good to put in a little time and effort to turn this apartment into a home.

Links to products mentioned: 
   ~ Gallery wall: top left, top right, bottom right
   ~ Cookbook basket
   ~ Backsplash tile
   

balcony garden/update 03 (final!)

It was a few days after the average date (we had a blissful week of Indian Summer), but the first frost finally hit the NYC area a few days ago. Luckily, my attentive boyfriend paid more attention to the week's weather forecast than I did and alerted me to the fact that I had about four hours to remove all signs of life from the balcony, lest I lose five months of moderately time-consuming work.

Reaping the harvest
At this point in the season, I had one small planter each of oregano, basil, and chives, and four tomatoes total - one that was ready for picking, and three that showed up late to the party but so eagerly wearing party dresses that I couldn't turn them away. I tackled the tomatoes first - the red guy joined his previously picked bother on a most wonderful turkey and cheese sandwich, and the three unripe tomatoes got cut and placed in a jar of water. Disclaimer: I have no idea if that's what I was supposed to do with the unripe tomatoes, but it's been two days now and they are slowly turning from green to red, so I guess it's working(?).

Now, for the herbs: All three varieties were still doing pretty well, so I knew I wanted to save as much as possible. I had read a handful of articles suggesting that I freeze some of them in olive oil, so I did just that - I picked and washed the oregano and basil, and placed a small palmful of each (roughly the amount I'd use in any one dish) in the cups of an ice cube tray; three "cubes" got both herbs, in case I feel like using a oregano/basil blend (pasta sauce, anyone?). Then I filled each well 3/4 of the way with olive oil and placed the entire tray in the freezer. If I want fresh oregano or basil any time this winter, in theory all I have to do it throw the entire oil cube into a sauté pan along with any other vegetables I'm choosing to add to the dish.

I decided to try something else with the chives since I usually add them fresh to a meal instead of sautéing first. So I simply cut the chives at their base (I felt like I was giving the entire plant a hair cut) and placed them in an empty jar. I'm kind of shooting in the dark with this one, but my plan is to let them completely dry out and then either finely chop or grind them into a powder, and sprinkle that over my food whenever I feel it needs a chive-y kick (baked potatoes? popcorn?? the possibilities are endless).

The takeaway
This was my first time ever attempting to grow something other than a few (unsuccessful) bamboo plants in my college dorm room and one (equally unsuccessful) succulent in my first New York apartment. And honestly, I was pretty nervous. I was worried that nothing would grow and that all my effort would be for naught - but after a couple of pep talks from various green thumbs, I turned my visions of a thriving balcony garden into a pretty decent reality. After all was said and done I netted a small planter each of oregano, basil, and chives, and 6 (and counting!) cherry tomatoes. The eggplant though, I regret to inform you, was not as successful. I kept waiting for it to turn from a bright to a dark purple like I'd read on various gardening websites, but instead it went from bright purple to a sallow green. I don't know if I did something wrong other than not pick it at the correct time, but it ultimately was inedible. The succulents, I'm happy to report, are thriving. Maybe it's their placement on a well-lit window sill, or maybe it's the fact that for the first time in a decade I can control the temperature in my dwelling and therefore aren't living in an igloo five months out of the year, but my five little succulents grew into six after a successful propagation, and at least four of them are due for a serious repotting sometime soon.

So was it worth it? YES. I grew to love saying "good morning" as I watered them each day, and what became a ritual of going outside a few times a day provided an unexpected comfort and joy within me. Also, watching something grow from nothing into something is simply pretty cool. I'm almost certain I'll be in this same apartment next summer (not always a given in my freelance lifestyle) and I'll definitely be instituting Balcony Garden 2.0, but focusing more on herbs than vegetables. Growing tomatoes was fun, but one handful of cherry tomatoes in September doesn't actually help me out in any true culinary sense. The herbs, on the other hand, were so quick to grow (and grow, and grow) that I was able to begin incorporating them into my cooking by early June, and being able to walk the fifteen feet from my kitchen to my balcony to grab fresh herbs whenever I wanted was one of the highlights of my summer.

What's this I see? Is it - could it be - yes, I think it is. I believe my little black thumb is turning green ;)

20 sunsets

One year ago this month, I began the process of moving all my worldly possessions into J's one-bedroom apartment. There is no official move-in date because the entire event took almost three weeks - since I was moving a total of three whole blocks we never had the need for movers, so we simply took every spare moment to slowly pack and haul and unpack a half a dozen or so carloads of Ikea bags. Though I was a bit nervous about the whole endeavor (other than roommates, I'd never lived with anyone before!), it almost immediately proved to be the best thing I've ever done. It has been so much fun learning to coexist with my boyfriend, and I truly look forward to coming home to him each night (cue: early 90's sappy underscoring).

Anyway, I digress. Despite the lack of heat, lack of air, lack of windows, lack of screens on said windows, paper-thin walls, consumption-riddled upstairs neighbor, occasional infestations, moldy bathroom ceiling, frighteningly rusty fire escape, terrifyingly ancient basement, uselessly nonagenarian landlord, and even more uselessly nonagenarian super who once locked me out of my own bedroom, I will forever hold a soft spot in my heart for my first New York apartment. I lived there for four years - the longest I'd lived anywhere since moving out of my parent's house and into my college dorm. My tiny bedroom with three blue walls and one burgundy wall was the space in which I laughed, cried, loved, lost, slept, didn't sleep, dreamed, despaired, tried, failed, and learned what it meant to be a single white female living in New York City in the late 2000's (cue: Sex and the City theme song. actually wait, don't take that cue. that show is a terrible representation of what life is like in NYC, and anyone who deludes herself into thinking her life is going to be one tenth of what Carrie's is needs to fall into one of those frozen polar-vortex curbside puddles pronto).

I knew I was getting a lifestyle upgrade when I made the move towards cohabitation. In addition to that whole life-partner-automatic-wedding-date thing, the apartment we share sports a few amenities I had previously convinced myself I could live without. Things like ceiling fans, a dishwasher, cable television, screens on windows that actually open, a bedroom big enough for not one but TWO nightstands, a washer/dryer in the apartment, and most important, that dial on the wall that lets you TURN ON THE HEAT WHENEVER YOU WANT TO (I'm told it's called a thermostat, but that term is unfamiliar to me) have become de rigueur - and I have enough self-realization to know that I don't want to go back to the prehistoric era anytime soon.

There is one final aspect of the apartment that I love love love - our balcony. It's by no means a fire escape, and it's so much more than a Juliette - it's a full 15'x5' lanai that houses three chairs, one table, seven plants, and two plastic flamingos - and faces west, offering daily and stunning views of Manhattan. I know I just sounded like an advertisement right there, but there's really no other way to describe the feeling I get when I want to know what color the Empire State Building is rightnow and realize that I can just duck out to my balcony and take a look. Some of my happier moments of this past year have been on that balcony - early morning coffees, quick trips to say hi to the plants, cold beverages on hot summer afternoons, watching in silent awe as the sun drops below the skyline, and late-night conversations with only a citronella candle to light out words.

True-to-form, I developed a bit of a sunset-photo-obsession when I moved in. I try not to oversaturate my blog posts with sunset pics (a "if you've seen one, you've seen them all" kind of thing), but that doesn't stop me from hitting the pause button on whatever we're watching on tv to run outside with my camera. I assume that eventually, the novelty of a gorgeous sunset over Manhattan will fade - but it's been a year now, and my love for this view is still going strong. Granted, I miss a lot more sunsets than I get to see. Nine times out of ten (or rather, six out of seven nights a week), I'm at work before, during, and after the golden hour. And there were a whole lot of late-winter/early-spring Monday evenings when I was home but only to witness the sky turning from light grey to dark grey. So maybe that's why I get so excited when I am able to catch a sunset - it's still a rarity in my life, and I'm like a kid in a candy store when they come around. The pictures above were all taken from the same vantage point on my balcony, give or take a few feet in either direction. Some color-correction was done in either Snapseed or Instagram, but by and large those photographs are showing their true colors - and my favorite view in the whole world.

balcony garden/update 02

Houston, we have vegetables!

Well, ok. That's not technically true. What we have is the for-real beginnings of some soon-to-be tomatoes and one honest-to-goodness eggplant. BUT STILL. Seeing as how it's been three months since I haphazardly threw a bunch of seeds into a few pots of dirt, I consider this some serious progress.

Regarding the tomatoes: I have three different pots of plants. Two are filled with stalks that I replanted when the original pot got overcrowded, the third is full of the initial plantings. I'm not sure why, but that third, original pot is doing the worst of them all. The stalks are short, the leaves are kind of pitiful, and there's no sign of a tomato. The other two pots, however, are delivering a bounty handful smattering smidgen of fruit! There are currently three little green orbs fighting their way to fruition, and I couldn't be more proud of my little pomodori ;)

The eggplant is thriving. Granted, I was gifted this plant from a farmer-friend, so I can't take full credit for its' prosperity. But I did receive it before there was even the hint of a vegetable, so the fact that I nurtured this guy to near-edibility is pretty impressive. I'm not 100% sure when he'll be ready for picking, but I feel like a good Google search should generate that answer.

In other plant-related news, I inadvertently propagated one of my succulents! Apparently this is an actual thing (see: here, here, and here), but I only discovered it after an arm (leg?) fell off one of my succulents. J had been watering them (like all good parents, we give them a bath in the kitchen sink on Wednesdays and Sundays) and a little piece fell right off. I felt so guilty about the dismemberment that I couldn't bring myself to throw the arm away, so I put it on the surface of the dirt in which I was growing oregano outside. Women's intuition? A mother's love? A potentially innate über green thumb? Whatever it was, I unintentionally aided in the regrowth of a succulent, because in order to propagate them, you need to pull off any extra growth and lay them on top of some dry cactus soil. The soil I used was neither dry nor cactus (it's been pretty rainy in the northeast and I wouldn't know a cactus if it poked me in the face), but after about six weeks, the little arm started growing some new, um, arms!

I finally put the oregano out of its' misery and moved the succulent to his own home. Following the advice of people who actually know what they're doing (better late than never), I carefully removed the leaf and placed it on top of some new soil. He has since rejoined his brothers and sisters on the window ledge in our kitchen.

My other succulents are doing shockingly well. They're actually starting to get a bit overgrown (I've had to "stake" them using extra chopsticks from last week's beef and broccoli), but I'm not sure if I'll be able to foster any more propagation, simply because I'm running out of both room and time. I love my apartment, but it sure isn't set up to house a greenhouse full of succulents (I think I'm testing J's patience with the four vegetable, three herb, and now six succulent plants we currently host). And weather-wise, it may be hard to believe but cool fall mornings are on the horizon, and I don't want to harm any new plants by exposing them to harsh conditions. So until then, I get to just marvel at the private Jurassic Park that lives in my kitchen.

They grow up so fast ;)

Balcony garden!

Confession: I've secretly always wanted an herb garden of some sort, but previous to this year, have never lived in an apartment with appropriate ledges/sunlight/floorspace/wallspace/etc. to do so. Confession: I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing when it comes to plants, herbs, vegetables, green things, things that grow in dirt, or anything else of the "plant it yourself" kind.

But this past Easter, along with the requisite egg-shaped Reese's and $20 bill tucked into a plastic easter egg, my mother sent me her version of a home-gardening kit. Seed packets, gloves, a plastic trowel, and one of those knee-pad-kneeling things, all tucked into a watering can and wrapped with a raffia bow (my mother rocks, you guys). So after some mid-April hesitation and anxiety, I threw caution to the wind, bought some pots, bought some dirt, and planted the seeds.

Then I spent the next two and a half months fretting about like a worried mother hen, constantly checking for growth, freaking out that nothing was ever going to grow, jumping for joy when the first little buds popped up through the dirt, and marveling when those little buds turned into actual plants and herbs.

But through this all, at no point did I do any actual research on what I was doing, because why take the fun out of experimentation? I mean, this is the life cycle - shouldn't it just work on it's own?

I did, however, spend one entire afternoon procuring and affixing two plastic flamingos to the balcony railing. Priorities, people, priorities.

Thankfully, the herbs pretty much did just grow on their own. I planted chives, oregano, and basil, and though the oregano has been a little slow to grow, the other two seem to be flourishing (although there might be some weeds in the oregano and basil? Let's not forget that I have no idea what I'm doing). Regardless, I'm sensing some homemade pesto and possibly some baked potatoes with chives in the near future.

There was a point in which I showed a picture of my tomatoes to a coworker, who turned out to be an ex-farmer (I love New York), and she told me that my planter was getting too crowded for all the tomato seeds I haphazardly threw in there and that I needed to replant the seedlings into larger pots. This same coworker also showed up the next day with an eggplant plant that she picked up for me at the green market, which officially makes her my favorite ex-farmer of all time. So after another few trips to the Bargain Stop for cheap dirt and plastic planters (I love New York), I put on my big-girl-gardening-pants and replanted my tomato plants. I now have three different planters of tomatoes - one is full of the original planted tomato seeds, the other two house the replanted tomatoes.

Strangely enough (or maybe not strangely at all, because again, no idea what I'm doing here), the repotted plants are doing much better than the plants that never left their original home. Everyone is getting equal amounts of sunlight (the balcony faces west and we get ample amounts) and I've been pretty consistent in when and how much water I'm giving them - about 8oz. in the morning unless the forecast calls for rain, which at that point I let God do the watering. I think (?) what I'm doing is working, because just this morning I found TWO little new developments - a little bud of something on the eggplant plant, and a little flower of something else on one of the tomatoes.

Are these the beginnings of actual vegetables? Am I secretly a gardener-savant? Should I push this urban farming thing to its' limits and add some chickens to the mix??* Stay tuned, because all these questions and more will get answered in the next installment of Mary's Balcony Garden!**

*No chickens were or will be harmed in the making of this blog post.

**I should probably find a day job. I'm working on that, I promise.