If it grows together, it goes together...
Laura Comerford is a Southern girl, city-seasoned. All recipes here use as many locally grown and sourced ingredients as possible, including produce from her own backyard Brooklyn garden and wild-edibles foraged in public parks.
She knows how to re-craft, re-work, re-use and make it totally fab! If you don’t grow it, know where it comes from. And we’ll do our best to help you find out.
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Urban Home is the brainchild of co-producers/co-writers Laura Comerford & Lauren R. Fritz.
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How to Start Your Urban Garden
The Root:
If you've ever entertained the quaint idea of an urban kitchen garden, now is absolutely the time to get to it. The most economical and fun way to start your garden is of course, with seeds. With soaring food costs and the creepiness of so much genetically modified produce on market shelves, why not just do it? If you have a shorter summer like we do here in New York City, Zone 7, it's wise to start warmer weather crops earlier indoors. The ideal time to do that depends on the seed, and usually starts around February...but you still have some time. Certain seeds can be sown directly into the ground as soon as the ground is workable; they have a shorter growing season and even like cooler temperatures. But the rest can be started indoors to extend their growng season.
Don't think that you need a lot of space, a basement or a greenhouse to start seeds intended for a garden. If you don't have a modest yard space, maybe you have an accessible roof-top or even a sunny room that gets ample southern light exposure, a fire escape where pots can be carefully and legally hung. Maybe you don't have any of these things, just a dark city-closet to live in–hey, I've been there– but you still want the thrill and the challenge of starting your own summer crops from seed. If nothing else, chances are you have a community garden on your block that will welcome you and your seedlings with open arms. Look around. If you're in any of the NYC boroughs, start with CENYC an invaluable site listing community gardens and goings-on for you and the environment.
FOR THE FULL HOW TO GO HERE
A wee little BLOG: A few tips on supplementing of soil for your kitchen garden. Just potash, kelp meal, organic blood and bone meal, and a good ole dose of NYC decomposed leaf material. I acquired about 400 pounds of delicious compost from the NYC Give-Back Compost event. They are held intermittently throughout the season, so keep checking in or when to put out your compostable yard waste, as well as when/how to pick up your free compost. It works magic! Work it into the garden prior to planting, as well as around trees, shrubs and any perennial berry or plant you want to fertilize.
I'll be planting a seed mix of beneficial border flowers/herbs (i.e., marigold, basil, buckwheat, black-eyed Susan, baby blue eyes, nasturtium, etc.) around my garden plots prior to transplanting my seedlings. This gives the flowers a head start so they can do their job in the garden. Some of these are perennials and I can expect them to come back this year from past year's plantings, as well as next year.
I've also been hardening-off my seedlings. This means I take them outside for larger increments of time over a period of about two weeks. This acclimates them to the harsher conditions outdoors, and builds their strength. I've even jiggled their trays indoors, and positioned a low-speed fan on them. Both of these efforts accustom the seedlings to wind and weather...and Frank the cat. We'll deal with him later though.
Ah, the great outdoors! And lovely photos, compliments of my super talented Renaissance-neighbor Adam Bailey.