your.moms.urban.garden...now with more pictures!

Two posts in four days! Whoa! Someone’s on the ball! How exciting!

First off, thanks to Dave’s extremely patient dad for hanging around our apartment while we took the car to go to the Gowanus Nursery to pick up all of the plants. He even helped carry up 6 bags of soil and 1 enormous package of peat moss (take notes Wynn Phillips)! We owe him big time.

So once Dave got back into Brooklyn on Sunday we carried 6 large bags of organic potting soil and one larger than life palate of peat moss up to the roof. For those of you who haven’t been to my apartment, that’s like 4 flights of (oddly) steep stairs. We filled the large planter with a layer of peat moss. If you remember from previous posts, we had already drilled drainage holes in the bottom, covered them with metal mesh and lined the inside with a plastic bag. This was to ensure that no chemicals from the treated wood leeched into our soil. We had some left over soil from Serena’s previous attempts at a (failed) garden and some other soil from the herbs we planted and this formed the base for our garden.







Peat moss loosely in place, we filled the rest of the planter with really rich organic potting soil. On top of that we laid out the vegetables in a zigzagged pattern. The directions recommended 18-24 inches between every plant but that’s just crazy. How big can these plants get (this question is not to be answered in the comments section)? Obviously we didn’t follow the rules and I am predicting an extremely lush oasis of tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and strawberries.





After we planted the veggies in the box we whipped out the secret weapon...THE TOPSY TURVY. Topsy Turvy is an elegant plastic piece of white trash hanging from the lintel of the rear facade of our house. As Anne McYawnfest so enthusiastically demonstrates in the video, it’s great for tomatoes.


However, we threw caution to the wind and planted A ZUCCHINI PLANT INSTEAD.



You might all think we are the badest of badasses in the gardening community (and you’re right to think so) but we can’t take all the credit for planting zooks instead of tomatoes. If Anne’s lazy ass watched past the 0:58 mark of the Topsy Turvy advert below, she would have found that you can also plant “cukes” (ew, and I’m not commenting on the taste of cucumbers. I’m commenting on the taste the word “cukes” leaves when it rolls off your tongue...BLECH ) peppers and herbs. So cram it Anne McLazybones and gimme a call when you and your yardlover.com posers decide to come up with something better than a half-assed version of the original Topsy Turvy commercial. Take some notes from surprised blonde middle-aged woman #1 in this video and let us know when you’re ready to tango.



Ugh. Now I’m all hot and bothered so here are some soothing pictures of our flowers, hanging from the industrial chain link fence and stolen-from-the sidewalk table. Sit back, relax, and let the menopausal woman inside of you indulge in this:












BAH! CAROLE! WHAT’S THAT CAT DOING THERE!?!