Yay, Heath Ledger is finally ripe! I got my first tomatoes from my garden this week. Well, they’re not really my first tomatoes, because my first ones vanished mysteriously, but I’m glad that I’ve started to see delicious results, because the Savage Garden has been a giant pain in the ass lately.

After arguing about it for a couple of months, disagreements with my landlord finally reached a head (he thinks my plants are unsightly, I think he can’t point to anywhere in my lease that says I can’t keep plants on the front porch), and when it came down to “get them off the front porch or I’ll throw them away,” I decided not to risk it and put them in the backyard. Technically, my boyfriend moved them to the backyard while I was at work one day, because he could tell that I was super pissed about it and he is nice.

The backyard has jillions of mosquitos because the neighbor has a bunch of empty pots with stagnant water, and there’s less light than there was in the front, but the garden is doing pretty well (although my legs are not).

Except! Something is stealing my veggies!

I thought it must be a human for a while (all the other apartments in my building have access to the backyard), because it never just takes a bite and leaves the rest; it’s like there’s an almost-ripe tomato there one day and then the next day I go out to pick it and it’s gone. And if you look above, the stem of the ghost eggplant is cut pretty cleanly.

But I saw a squirrel doing something fishy with one of my tomato plants one day, so I guess maybe squirrels are smarter than I give them credit for. Or the backyard is infested with gnomes, I don’t know.

I took my cayenne pepper shaker and shook it on the buckets and made a little protective pepper perimeter around everything, sneezing the whole time. I haven’t had anything stolen since then, but I’m not sure whether to chalk that up to the pepper or to the fact that all the low-hanging tomatoes are gone or to the fact that I’m super careful to pick them as soon as they get close to ripe now.

Another thing: when I was making the planters, I had one set of buckets that was slightly smaller than the others. I put a tomato plant in it anyway, and the roots are already showing at the surface, which means that the plant has completely filled the space. So FYI, tomatoes do indeed need a full 5-gallon bucket.

I was super pleased to see my first non-green tomato yesterday, on my Early Girl (so named because the breed gives you tomatoes, uh, early), after a couple of weeks of nothing happening (shortly after I begged my tomatoes to stop growing, they seemed to hit their maximum height for the size pots they’re in). Also: first stubby eggplants!

I thought as long as I was trying to grow tomatoes, I may as well try to grow ones that I couldn’t get three for a dollar at Reading Terminal Market. Thus: heirloom tomatoes! Specifically, a Brandywine on recommendation of a friend whose parents grew and sold them.

I didn’t realize that many heirloom tomatoes, at least at this point in their life cycle, are ugly as sin and not very fertile. At the moment, the net production of my enormous Brandywine vine is the solitary, hideous tomato above, which looks sort of like Heath Ledger.

Mr. Stripey, which I picked for the sole reason that it was similar to my childhood cat’s name, is actually doing the best out of all three breeds, with tons of tomatoes that are just starting to show faint stripes.

Now: a race pitting my vegetables against my landlord’s waning tolerance of my keeping them on the front porch (there’s nothing in the lease about it, darn it!). Who will win?

Well, despite the recent weather wrecking any number of neat goings-on, at least something’s digging it: my vegetable garden. Over the past week or so, my tomatoes have gotten almost distressingly huge.

Mid-May

Beginning of June

Mid-June: Oh god somebody help me

So here’s an important gardening noob lesson I was not aware of when I went to buy tomato plants: the difference between determinate and indeterminate. I have two indeterminates and one determinate going on in my containers.

In a nutshell, determinate tomatoes will stop growing when they reach a certain size, generally around 2-3 feet tall. Indeterminate tomatoes do not stop growing, no matter how much you beg and plead and tell them they’re getting out of hand. All tomatoes started off as indeterminate, but somebody realized a natural mutation might be pretty useful and kept it going, leaving us with the convenient smaller-size plants.

But whatever, I’ve just got to figure out a way to keep these suckers from tipping over as they get even larger. I do have seven little baby tomatoes, though!

Oh man, the poppies I grew from seeds finally put out their first flower! I’m very excited about this, as it means that my front box now no longer looks like a giant mass of weeds. Yeah, it looks like a giant mass of weeds with one big flower poking out, but it has purpose that the neighbors can believe in.

So after weeks and weeks of failure, the vegetable container garden plan is actually not doing too badly! Check it out:

Two weeks ago

Today

The sub-irrigated bucket planters I made (and tutorialized) are functioning so well. I just pour water in the funnel (I finally just duct-taped cheapo plastic funnels onto the tubes) until it splorts out the little hole on the side every couple days, and the tomatoes grow like crazy. They kind of remind me of tattoos in a weird way, in that I feel that same compulsion to get more.

I’ve also got my first actual returns from the garden thus far: fresh basil that’s going into lasagna tonight. It smells really good.

So I tend to go out of town every once in a while during the summer. Unfortunately, not watering your plants for four days to a week and a half is not good for them at all.

There are a variety of self-watering planters for sale, but they either tend to be too small to hold big veggies or too expensive for me to get more than one. But the internet always provides.

There’s a royal ton of schematics for self-watering planters out there from various local-farming advocates, so I sort of cobbled a few of them together based on what what I already had and what I could get for free (I’m friends with a lot of science people who have an infinite supply of 5-gallon buckets and people who buy the big plastic bins of kitty litter, for example, so those are what I used. If you have a lot of plastic rectangle storage bins left over from college, I would use those).

I couldn’t find a step-by-step picture book-type explanation for idiots, though, because I do best with projects when I’m not left to improvise, so I decided to make one. It’s a slightly more complicated than “one bucket in another bucket,” but that’s the basis. It’s eventually gonna look like this (if it were made of of crappy neon lines):

The bottom bucket’s job is to hold water. It has a drainage hole in the side so that the water level never rises above the soil in the top bucket, cuz that will drown the roots. The wicking cup (just a classic red solo cup cut full of holes, in my case) is full of soil and is a bridge between the top and bottom buckets. Physics (or something) will slowly draw the water up from the bottom bucket through the cup as the top dries out, so you can leave it unwatered for a few days and it’ll be fine, plus you can’t overwater it. You refill the reservoir through the watering tube sticking out the top. Simple enough? Well, here’s how you do it.

YOU WILL NEED:

• two five-gallon containers (five gallons is pretty much the minimum for growing big veggies like tomatoes)
• a drill OR a nail and a lot of patience
• about two feet of rubber tubing about an inch in diameter
• EITHER a piece of copper tube about an inch in diameter (you can get these in the plumbing section of the hardware store) OR a 1″ hole saw drill bit
• a plastic cup with a base diameter of about 2″
• EITHER a piece of copper tube about two inches in diamter OR a 2″ hole saw drill bit
• A plastic garbage bag
• an exacto knife or scissors
• potting mix
• seeds or seedlings

OK, so you've got a top bucket and a bottom bucket. The top bucket's base is going to get one big hole for the solo cup wicking device, one medium hole for the watering tube and a whole bunch of small holes for drainage. The bottom bucket only gets one small hole in its side for drainage. I'm painting my bottom buckets yellow, but this is only necessary if they're visible and you have pissy neighbors

For the top bucket: the copper tube gets heated up to poke a hole for the water tube

Stack your buckets, then measure how long the tube needs to be to reach the bottom

Unstack the buckets, and start heating up the large copper tube to make the large hole in the middle of the top bucket for the solo cup wicking thing

Now drill the base of the top bucket full of lots of evenly-spaced holes.

OK, top bucket, you're done for the moment.

Stack the buckets again, because you need to figure out where the top bucket's base is resting so you can drill a little drainage hole in the bottom bucket right below that so the soil won't actually ever be IN the water, just sucking it up through a plastic cup. It occurs to me now that it would be easier to just stick a ruler in the big hole. But what I did was measure how much of the top bucket was sticking out...

...then measure that distance minus about a quarter inch up from the base to mark the spot

This picture was taken before I located my drill under some stuff in the broom closet. I recommend using a drill, as poking a bunch of holes in plastic buckets with nails heated over a burner takes a really long time, makes your apartment smell really bad and probably also gives you cancer.

Solo cup, my old friend

Cut four vertical slits around the cup

Yup, four.

Pokin' some holes, pokin' some holes

Cut through the top brim of the cup and curl it up so it's more tube-ish than cup-ish

Tuck the cup into the hole so the base of the cup touches the bottom of the outside bucket

Dirt time! Take them wherever you want to keep them, they are going to be heavy

Pack the cup full of dirt first, then fill up the bucket and plant your seedling

Water it from the top this one time to get everything in order, but after this just pour water into the tube with a funnel

Happy plants!

One thing I forgot to take pictures of: cut a piece of garbage bag a little bigger than the circumference of the top bucket. Cut an X for the plant to fit through and an X for the water tube to fit through, then fasten the plastic around the top like a lid with the seedling and water tube poking out. This prevent the water from evaporating as quickly and keeps bad bugs out.

OK, I didn’t just forget to take pictures. I forgot to do it. But I recommend that you do it.

I have kind of failed at my project of growing plants from seeds in my apartment. Sad face. I’ve accepted that there’s not enough light for them to grow up strong, and furthermore I have a tendency to go out of town for a couple days and not want to be that “Oh, uh, can you maybe come over and water my plants this weekend? I”ll bake you cookies!” girl.

So I went to one measly wedding in Southern Virginia and that basically signed my already-sickly seedlings’ death warrants. Sorry, guys. Sun rolling high, sapphire sky, great and small on endless round, etc. If it’s any consolation, I feel really bad about it.

Anyway, I got another batch of seeds going which are doing much better because I can put them outside where the sun is. But just in case I mess those up too (and there’s a high probability that I will), I decided to hedge my bets and headed over to Greensgrow, the 3/4 acre urban farm post-industrial land smack in the middle of Kensington. I had heard many good things, and it’s also the only decent-sized nursery not out in the burbs or down by IKEA. From their website:

Greensgrow is THE nationally recognized leader in urban farming (don’t just take our word for it…) and is open to the public from early spring through Thanksgiving. A small but dedicated staff runs a multifaceted operation, including a nursery, a farm market, and a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, proving that abandoned land is only abandoned if we choose to leave it that way.

Their CSA, in which you pick up a bunch of produce grown on the farm every week, filled up way back in March, but the farm stand will be opening May 28 if you’re in the mood for some locally-grown stuff; and of course there’s tons of pretty flowers and grasses and little teenager trees. I thought I’d post some pictures I took, because I had heard a lot of press about this place but had no idea what an urban farm actually looked like (hint: pretty big, with lots of bright colors).

And for those of you who don’t live in the area but visit occasionally, it’s a 15-minute walk from the Berks stop and about two blocks from Memphis Taproom. The address 2501 Cumberland St. kind of delayed my going for a while; I’m not super familiar with Kensington street names, and all street names I’m unfamiliar with sound way far away to my lazy ears. Placing it near a landmark removed my “But it’s faaaaaaaaaar!” excuse, and perhaps it will remove yours.

They’ve been around since 1998 and have been doing the farm stand since 2002. But before you shout OLD!, I’d just like to say what the heck, my friend who recently bought a house less than a mile from Greensgrow had never been there accompanied me yesterday and is now in love. Here’s a couple of pictures, more after the jump.

You can see rowhouses all around...

...on every side

I went with Mr. Stripey tomatoes because that's what my cat growing up was named, seemed as good a reason as any rational ones I could think of

Growing foodstuffs for the CSA

My visit took place during what seems like the one sunny hour of the past week, but it was definitely ominous

Cheery checkout counter

That's way less than a box of strawberries

Bearded dudes at work

I wish I could buy all of these and put them in my room

Veggie starts!

Hummus: slightly less expensive than compost

The corner of Cumberland and Almond streets

My selections: three eggplants, three tomatoes (heirloom because why the hell not, they cost the same), two strawberries I have no idea how to grow, parsley and basil. We'll see how fast I ruin these bright-eyed young plants.

I have gathered from online that problem is that the seedlings, despite being underneath a damn skylight, are not getting enough direct light (12-14 hours per day).

Evolution’s solution to this is to have the seedlings put all their energy into growing vertically really fast so that they can shoot up above whatever other plants are blocking their light and block their light. However, when the problem is less other plants in the way and more the poor planning skills of an amateur gardener, the non-direct light just causes the seedlings to grow really, really tall – so tall they can’t support themselves and fall over.

My other seedlings didn’t come up as quickly, so I’m hoping there’s still time for intervention before they get all Jack Skellington on me and fall over, too. I am trying two things:

Intervention 1: Plant field trips

Hopefully it’s not too chilly out there on the roof…

Intervention 2: Moving to a south window

Apparently even a north-facing skylight is still not as effective, sunlight-wise, as a south-facing window. Who knew? In any event, I moved my parsley downstairs to the window as an experiment a week or so ago. I chose the parsley mostly because it balanced pretty well on my bike seat, as I only got a little table a couple days ago.

It’s been doing waaaaaaaay better than all the others. It’s the only one thus far to put out true leaves (most seedlings look kind of the same when they come up, which is to say a stem and two flat leaves called cotyledons; the leaves that look like the plant’s leaves will look like come after). And look, there they are!

So I’ve moved as many plants will fit onto the teeny IKEA table I found in hopes that they will not get freakishly tall and fall over.

This is one of them, in an Arizona Iced Tea self-watering container. If you’re trying this yourself, remember to label your seedlings; I have absolutely no idea what this is.

My spinach is growing up so fast!

I worked on my apartment garden a bit more yesterday, and I made some bigger self-watering containers to hold smaller stuff like herbs for the kitchen (obviously, this will not work for tomatoes or eggplants or pumpkins).

Like I said, I’m not very good at remembering to water plants (or remembering not to overwater plants), so self-watering containers are pretty much my ideal. Cotton strings (only use cotton, btw, synthetics don’t have the same wicking action) act as training-wheel roots, drawing water from the reservoir in the bottom half of the milk jug and distributing it evenly around the top half; all the forgetful gardener has to remember to do is occasionally make sure the reservoir isn’t out of water.

I thought I’d try to illustrate the process of making these supremely useful and almost-free self-watering pots out of old milk jugs with pictures rather than words. Show, don’t tell! OK, here we go:

(Oops, some words are needed here. The strings don’t wick up water very well if they’re dry, so you need to soak them for a few minutes. Also, I forgot one step – tie a knot in each string a couple inches from the end so they don’t work their way down.)

Curl the strings over so they cover different levels and areas of the pot as you fill it up with dirt. This will make sure the water is evenly distributed.

I forgot another step: cover the seed holes with more dirt (it’ll say on the seed packet how much dirt) and water it a little more.

So yeah, those two times you water it from the top are going to be the only times you ever water it from the top. All you have to do now is just put it in a sunny place and make sure the bottom half of the milk jug isn’t empty and you’re golden!

Adapted from this Instructables

GOOD DAY: My seeds sprouted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

I am very excited that I haven’t killed everything yet! It’s totally dumb, because forests have grown with no aid from me for thousands of years, but it’s weirdly magical seeing the little sprouts pop up. Spinach was first, then eggplant. The self-watering Dixe cups continue to be doing better than the peat pots.

Damn, I have some envy here. I would love to make this greenhouse; it was made by Instructables user cheft out of old windows from a house being renovated in his neighborhood and then posted as a DIY.

Lord knows that in Philly random windows from teardowns are a dime a dozen, but sadly this is meant to be anchored in a backyard; my roof is not a safe place for anything that can be moved by wind (we’ve lost 1.5 lounge chairs since September).

Maybe someone out in West Philly with a nice big yard can make it. That’s certainly one way to keep the squirrels from eating your eggplant.

Instructables: Greenhouse out of old windows

Speaking of gardens, I checked on my day-old Savage Garden experiment this morning, and there’s some clear results: the self-watering Dixie cups didn’t need watering, the peat pots were very dry.

Self-watering Dixie cups: 1

Peat pots: 0