I am going to be out of the country( if you need me go to lat 9.339788 long -82.231137) until april 5th so I did one last thinning and did a quiet first novena over the little greenlings.

pre-thinning:

Just about everything has sprouted and kicking ass. The snap peas and pickle cuces are like monsters but everything else just moves along at its own pace.

They all have water through a wicking system and someone is going to stop in and say high so I think we should be ok.

cheerio until the 5th, I will let you know that the damage is then.

(My rad horticultural cousin corrected me and pointed out that I am thinning not pruning)

With a bit of melancholy I did the first pruning thinning today (I wish i could keep them all.) Both kinds of peas, both kinds of lavender, sweet basil and the cucumbers have sprouted and as happy as little plastic enclosed clams. Mostly it was the lavender that I clipped but some of the cucumbers and peas also saw the mighty violence of my pointer finger and thumb.

Here is how things are progressing mid-prune thinning:

Push the little Lavender and make them come up!
 The frist little sprouts have broke ground, and lavender is the frist to cross the starting line. (the sprouts are very small so the picture is a little blurry because my camera is not so good with macro, it is not blurry because you have been drunkenly surfing for organic heirloom seedling porn)
 

Much to my surprise and excitement right after my last post on friday I went out and found in my mailbox the rest of the seeds from Victory Seeds(victoryseeds.com).

Now came a bit of a problem, yesterday was the first day of spring and in my opinion the nicest first day of spring NYC has ever seen; so while I did want to garden I also wanted to spend as much time outside as possible(one of the many ironies of urban gardening.) It was not until last night that I got do the planting, but once I got down to it, it was sweet.

Lavender-Lavender- Sweet Basil-Water Mellon.

It went pretty quick but I did find that my big vienna sausage fingers were having more then a little trouble with the tomato seeds. Regardless with the help of a chop stick to poke holes that were not to big I was done faster then you can say “freakish weinerbraten digits”

I did not get any requests for any greens, truckers friend tomatoes or Jubilee tomatoes so sadly they did not make the cut and were not planted. 

Now the heating pad and plastic cover is on and we wait to see little plants poke up from the coconut coir (what I am using as a starter medium). 

Seed planting music

Hello gentle readership.

After a prolonged delay I started 2 kinds of peas(snow and snap) 2 kinds of lavender(spanish and fernleaf) and sweet basil today with the help of a fellow brooklyn green thumb Sarah Betson (who after seeing my simple set up is going to make her own for her beautiful backyard garden).

The victory seed company sent me and email saying the other seed (tomatoes and melons) are on their way, so I am hoping to get them started early next week. Now that the weather is so awesome I feel like I am getting going too late, mea culpa.

No one has asked for me to start any greens yet so I may not be doing any as I don’t think I will be growing any in my garden.

After going to both of the big box hardware stores in yesterday and not finding any simple flat bottom trays (and generally being upset that they were basically the same store with different color packaging) I decided to take a wander out to the Red Hook “garden center” district. One of which looked kind of bare but then I made it over to Liberty Sunset (libertysunset.com)(which is where the earlier picture of the pitcher plant is). It was a little odd but really fun, I met a few great folks (if you are reading this, I apologies, your names jumped out of my head the moment I walked out into the sunlight, but you have my card so email me please!) One of these fine folks told me about her huge roof garden which sounded amazing and I hope I get to see it at some point

Another one of the great  people who was there was urban garden guru: Robert Hyland of insideurbangreen.org who was really encouraging about the roof garden and the DIY bent of the gardening I have been doing. Even though I did not relise when I was talking to him his site was the inspiration for my frist sub-irrigation 2 litter soda bottal experiment!

I had gone also to see if they had this: http://www.groworganic.com/item_GP180_Potmakertrade.html

but they did not so I showed them how to make newspaper pots from a soup can like I had learn last night from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8qPAV-LDnM&feature=related

It seems like Liberty Sunset  is going to be doing lots of cool workshops and community events so check in with them and see whats what.

Just a quick update. I have the peas and lavender seeds as well as all the greens. Still waiting on the tomatoes and cucumbers. If I don’t get the rest of the seeds in a day or 2 I will just start with out them and they will have to spend time after school to catch up.

Just got our first order for a pablano pepper plant and a sweet basil! Thanks K.C. !

And I am pretty excited that they wanted to pay with produce later in the summer, I think I may be on to something.

Also I got the light set up for the mini-garden:

It is pretty basic but it is adjustable, does not take up too much room and was cheap. I don’t know if I will use the footstool as the table, it is big enough now, but just barely.I have been keeping my eye out on my walks for something better that I would not feel bad about about putting back on the street at the end of the season.

I found out today from my super awesome horticulturalist cousin ( I am sure she will get lots of plugs on this tumblr, maybe I can even get her to write a post!) that I can use a heating pad on low for germination so no need to go and get a fancy rubber propagation heating pad.

Want to know more about seedling propagation?

These are some of the links that are helping me find my way:

• http://www.gardeners.com/When-to-Start-Your-Seeds/5215,default,pg.html
• http://www.retrovore.com/
• http://www.seedlibrary.org/learn/

Want to know what this site is about:
http://heirloomseedlingsnyc.tumblr.com/post/434936835/heirloom-seedlings-grow-in-brooklyn