Urban WWOOFer: Escaping Worms!

The box of worms from my composting workshop has been under my kitchen counter for almost two weeks now (I have told two out of my four roommates of its presence). For the first week, I was afraid to open it, hoping that the worms would be happy to do their thing unbothered. When I finally opened it, half of the worms were searching an escape route! They were sitting up on the ridge between the bottom and its lid.

Bah!

What if they escape?!



What if my roomie wakes up, goes to get some coffee, and steps on a blanket of crawling, slimy worms?? This could be really bad. I reclosed the lid, taped it down tightly, and stepped back. Sometimes the best (read: easiest) action is no action. So that was what I did: I waited another week before I opened the box again.

Before opening this time, I inspected carefully; no worms were crawling down the sides, so the seal must be tight. I opened the box, and a waterfall of water fell off of the lid of it. That must mean they have been working, as breaking down food wastes should produce a lot of moisture. All of the newspaper, including what had been dry at the top, was now moist. The same worms, and perhaps a few of their invited friends, were chilling at the top of the box. I had to use a butter knife to [gently] pull them out and place them back down into the box next to the compost, where all the action is meant to happen, and I reclosed.

Then I went online to look for some consolation (not shoe shopping consolation; education consolation) and after sifting through a ton of information, found this concise and well presented vermicomposting guide.

Under “troubleshooting”, I found the answer to my concern.
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Problem 4 - The worms are escaping
If you are providing your worms with a happy home they will have no reason to leave and risk certain death.
Please note that worms will sometime explore their bin (lid and sides). Only if you find dead, dried up worms outside the bin is there need for concern.

Ah-ha! My worms are only interested in exploring their new home! How could I—the perpetual world wanderer—blame them? Worms will be worms, I always say, so I will let them continue their adventures…that is until the adventures take them beyond the confines of the box.

Urban WWOOFer: Pedal Power NYC

Coolest night ever!
27 June 2011

I spent yesterday at NYC’s Annual Gay Pride Parade, a particularly enchanting year of events two days after gay marriage was passed in New York State! Because of this, I happened to be in Lower Manhattan and I happened to mosey into Union Square Park right as a concert was being torn down. Alas, I had missed the concert, but I certainly happened something interesting, if not a little late. Pedal Power NYC (http://www.pedalpowernyc.org/ ) is a new organization in New York that grew out of connections with thriving similar such groups in other cities such as San Francisco. It started with the goal of capturing and repurposing human power with bicycles.

----
Their “About” website description includes:

Off the Grid Grooves, Electric Humans Unite

We provide the bicycles and the crew – you provide the Natural Ass! Let’s be honest, we’d rather power our stage with natural ass than natural gas—
and we’ve developed a live human-powered system that does just that without sacrificing sick sound quality.

Founded by Ariel Agai in 2011, Pedal Power NYC helps us imagine new possibilities for our energy use and celebrates Sustainability Creativity and Human Energy.

We want your Natural Ass to power our amps.
----


Thus, an entire concert can be put on without a single outlet. Next to this daytime concert stage were ten bicycles. Guests were encouraged to play their part in pedaling; they were helping the show go on. There were many performances, all powered by bicycle.

Afterward, the group had planned a ride back to their warehouse in Williamsburg, all to be filmed for a documentary on the day’s events. I joined on—why not?—and we took to the streets slowly so that all of Manhattan could enjoy our incredible pedal powered sound system and music as we passed by. We were at least 15-20, some with just bikes, some with giant sound systems strapped to the backs; and other trailing other stuff back from the concert. Ariel was the DJ, with an ipod and DJ soundboard strapped to his handlebars, and there were four other bikes
with giant speakers strapped on the back. We carried the dance party
through New York City, stopping and dancing at all of the red lights along the way. The entire route was marked by smiling faces shaking to fabulous dance music, and some very intrigued New Yorkers. (One guy had a maraca in one hand that was quintessential to the group as a whole...you really will have to see
the video when they finish it.)

We went over the Williamsburg bridge and into Brooklyn (now in less traffic so getting off our bikes and dancing at all of the lights), and then had a wild
three minute dance party outside of a group of bars, getting people to
come outside to dance until a police vehicle pulled up and we took
off. When we finally stopped near the warehouse I got to actually introduce myself
to all of these strangers with whom I had just rode for two hours, and
it turns out another straggler had joined the group, too, when he
heard us pass by his window while he was reading in bed!

We went back to their warehouse and carried on the dance party, until I left to ride the twelve miles back up to Harlem at 3:00 am.

Urban Gardening: A Closer Look at Hydroponic Gardening

Since my recent encounter with hydroponic gardening I have been very interested and thus searching everywhere for more information, especially because it seems like there is money here in New York ready to support such projects. However, the more I look at it, the more it seems like the new twisted--but organic--version of GMOs, pesticides and fertilizers.

What??

Hydroponic garden will produce healthy food. It’s great. However, it is a plan meant to fit into our everyday more so consumptive lifestyles, utilizing a current mentality to address a problem, overlooking how our problems are a product of that mentality to begin with.

NY Sunworks' website provides a “do it yourself at home” guide, including a list of products you will need to purchase in order to make a hydroponic system successfully. Alice’s Garden Nutrient Formula, Hydroton, CocoTek, and Rapid Rooter among the products, the instructions bring me back to a scene of Wayne and Garth bemoaning people who bow to sponsors, all the while sporting the sponsor’s logos. The point: in order to create your own “at home” version of this great sustainable system, you’ll have to purchase the magical and mysterious products from our sponsors in order to make it work. And in addition to the necessary chemicals you need to purchase, video footage and blueprints of the larger gardens show giant, shiny electronic metal structures “necessary” to do the work if your system will grow. In my last post I presented the concern of whether this is accessible to a school in the Bronx as it is to a school on the Upper West Side. Whether that school in the Bronx can find funding or not, the problem is also that the purveyors want to cash in on the rewards of the system's growth. They see no problem with our current lifestyles, or at least do not connect our food to our current lifestyles beyond a basic environmentalist point of view. “If only we can still live our lives unchanged but pat ourselves on the back for producing food close to home and not transporting it long distances.” This ignores the socio-economic problems that are inherent in our current system and exemplified in the question of which school—the one on the Upper West Side or the school in the Bronx—can afford this garden.

A food system built around the necessity of commercial inputs and not inputs found in nature is built around the desire for profit for whatever company is providing those inputs. The overall goals of both partners are different: the consumer wants fresh food, presumably at the lowest cost, and the producer of the goods wants to find a way to make the most profit and thus make sure that the supply and creation of its products remain solely in its hands.

This means that the people earning profits from a future in successful hydroponic gardening will be high up top; the people in the center will be comfortable, affording to constantly pay for the necessary inputs in their hydronic gardens and also benefiting from fresh food; and the people at the bottom will benefit from neither.

Next problem: Columbia University Professor Dickson Despommier, a giant proponent of hydroponic agriculture, celebrates that we can define the nutrients that go into the food, so we no longer need to worry about toxins. In essence, we think we know exactly what a plant needs to survive and thrive and we know exactly what it does not need. Up until a few decades ago, we thought that nitrogen was the only real instrumental factor in agriculture and that if you had enough nitrogen, anything could grow healthily. We also thought ourselves gods when we uncovered that the human body needed fats, proteins, and carbohydrates to live, now assuring the populace that with manipulating the intake of these three macronutrients we could perfectly nourish our bodies. Slowly, science has uncovered other important nutrients and factors. Nonetheless, as we come to each new discovery, we never content ourselves to say, “Wow. This Mother Nature is pretty complex. Imagine how much more there must be to know!” Instead we say, “Wow—this is great! With this new information I now know everything that I need to in order to manipulate nature to my benefit!” We have always had the hubris to think that we can discover in the matter of years or decades of research exactly what is needed to replicate or change the natural world successfully, and in the long run we are pretty much always greatly mistaken.

The Take Away: Anybody needs a constant input of money to grow their own food hydroponically, not just labor or not just a few up-front costs, so it can never be part of a subsistance lifestyle or something that can be used by economically poor people to take care of themselves. In the case of this elementary school on the Upper West Side, the garden is being spearheaded by a few well-meaning mothers. They probably have nothing but the best and most genuine interests in mind, but living rather comfortably on the husbands’ Upper West Side income, they do not realize that the long-term implications of the project that they are supporting.

Urban Gardening: Plants getting stronger!

The tiny space taken up by my garden. IMAGINE the possibility of this entire roof covered!



Now imagine the possibility of ALL of these roofs covered!


Do a week by week comparison...everything is growing so tall!



The broccoli, for which I had so little hope, has proven itself a survivor! All three plants are now flowering beautiful broccoli florets. What a testament to a plants ability to regrow new roots, shed and replace dead leaves, and adapt to new conditions!



Day after day, the leaves of more and more carrots chirp up!



After two weeks, I finally transplanted the last clump of seedling onions. Their roots had turned into a giant mass, and to pull them apart left some of the onions with virtually no root system and others with roots that did not belong to them. A week later, though, all seem to be happy, showing that with a little soil, sun and water it took nothing to grow back those roots!



Seedling onions (left) compared with transplanted onions (right). All are healthy!



When I walked up to the roof, this beautiful flower awaited me! Does this mean this is the start of a giant eggplant? We will soon see!




I fastened the tomatoes and eggplants one more time to the bamboo sticks with a scrap of pantyhose, about ten inches higher than where I had fixed them in place before.


Week by week comparison...the early susan (far right), meant to produce tomatoes sooner than most other tomato plants, is obviously at the top of her game.

Urban Gardening: Starting Vermicompost in my Kitchen!

Leading up to this Saturday I was woeful because my long-standing plans of beach and live Brazilian music were shattered when my new boss requested I work in the afternoon.

But then I saw an email from my CSA, with an invite to a free composting workshop Saturday morning, before my workday began! So Saturday morning I hopped on my bicycle and rode to this community garden in the northern tip of Manhattan. The workshop was on vermicompost, a method of composting suitable for the city dweller. The Morris Jumel Community Garden received a grant to give composting workshops from borough President Stringer’s office, so gardener Ellen Belcher has given three workshops—ones on outdoor composting, bokashi composting, and vermicomposting—with grant funding. At the workshop, attendee Pam and I worked on building a bin together. We started with a regular storage bin with a hinged top, a drill, duct tape, some plastic mesh covering, some washers, and a spigot with a back cover to add drainage.

We began by drilling nine one-inch holes all around the bucket two inches from the top. We also drilled a hole on the end, one inch from the bottom for the drainage. Next, we covered all of the top holes with mesh: a way to get air circulation without allowing for an easy escape route for the worms. We screwed the faucet into the bottom hole (we had appropriately measured and made the right hole size, first!) with some washers to prevent leakage. After…we were finished! We added loads of shredded paper, and it was time to add the worms! Red worms and not just your regular earth worm are needed; they are small, hungry and can thrive in a contained space living in newspaper and food scraps.

At the end of the workshop, Ellen gave me the bin to take home! Golly—I had not expected to walk away with a free bin! In fact, I had not even expected to begin my own compost this summer. I may only be in this apartment for a few months, and I cannot necessarily leave my roommates a box of worms as my parting gift. But what the heck; the opportunity presented itself!

I had been keeping my food scraps in the freezer and periodically carrying them to a community garden with compost, so upon returning home I gave them to the worms for their first hearty meal (I like to be a good host). I then pushed the bin snuggly under our kitchen counter (hoping my roommates do not notice until it is thriving and my ability to keep my worms under control is no longer in question)!

Urban Gardening: Interesting Stuff Happening on the Roofs of NYC Grade Schools

A New York Times article from last year entitled, "On a School Rooftop, Hydroponic Greens for Little Gardeners" highlighted a grade school that is experimenting with a relatively new and innovative idea. Inspired by The Science Barge and aided by New York Sun Works , the school now has a greenhouse covering its roof. Under the panes of glass, a hydroponic system of soil-less plants, water, fish and a water circulation system are teaching children about agriculture and have the potential to feed the entire school, and then some (more about how a hydroponic system works).

New York Sun Works works designed and built The Science Barge in 2006 as a first example of high yield urban food production with zero net emissions. "The Greenhouse Project" is another project: by building hydroponic greenhouses on the roofs of schools K-12 to be used for science labs, they seek to improve environmental science in urban schools.

When I saw this New York Times article, I immediately called the school to see if I could visit the exemplary garden. In addition to the hydroponic system, they also have a rainwater catchment system, a weather station, a sustainable air conditioner made of cardboard, a worm-composting center and solar panels, to name a few. What an example to set!! That said, this is a school on the Upper West Side, not a school in the South Bronx or Bed-Stuy. But why couldn't it be? Why couldn't some donor choose to help out a school in a low-income area rather than a high one? It would be in everyone's interest. These kids on the Upper West Side may think that this garden is good and great in high school, but they grow up learning and seeing that to be successful they should be in suites and cubicles. So while some may fill green-collar jobs on the professional level, we need more green-collar workers in vocational jobs, and as Sun Works knows, there is no better way than to start them young.

Hopefully, I'll be able to visit this school, and several others, to find out what it is they are doing, where they get their funding, and how projects like this can be expanded beyond the Upper West Side's of the world.

Urban Gardening: Transplants Chirping Up

The leaves of the carrots--pathetically wilted when I brought them--are now gaining back their fibrous structure and standing tall!


The dead leaves mixed back into the soil, the broccoli plant is not up to 100% but it is definitely fending for itself!


Look at my tomatoes and eggplant grow!


The tomato plants are flowering!


My garden looks so healthy! Now that the stakes are in, the tomatoes seem to have found new confidence to stand up tall and reach for the sky. The broccoli, for whom I had the least hope, are showing signs of revival, with numerous little heads now pushing through. When it was not doing well, I cut off all of the dying leaves, tore them up, and mixed them back into the soil to return their nutrients to the rest of the plant. The leaves of the carrots that were horribly wilted after transplantation are slowly perking back up, and the onions are tempting me to pull them up and eat them right now! The basil has grown wildly; yesterday I cut off the ends, cleaned them, and stuck them in my freezer. When I gather enough, I will have to throw a pesto dinner party!

Urban Transportation

My original goal was to ride my bike 50% of the time. Almost three weeks in my new New York City apartment, I have not taken the subway once!

One plus (only with regard to this) is that I lost my waitressing job nine miles away and have now found a new one about one mile away. Losing my job meant I had the opportunity to search for new jobs closer to where I lived; it also meant that I had no disposable income to do much that would require public transportation!

That's not to say I have not been riding around plenty. This past weekend, I participated in the World Naked Bike Ride, in the process rode over the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn and back four times. Last night, I rode to my Sierra Club Inner City Outings meeting and then afterward rode downtown to go salsa dancing. The typical salsa dancer shows up in a taxi with a little black dress and heals; I show up on a bike with a helmet and tennis shoes. Nonetheless, I prove myself inside, and there is little better after a night of dancing than the late night cool and quiet streets of New York, or even better, my ride back home up through Central Park!

Important Note: Manhattan may seem a little crazy for cyclists by looks, a little intimidating to the cyclist concerned about safety. You just need to know where the biking resources are! First you need to get yourself a NYC Bike Map, available at almost all biking stores for free in the five boroughs. Or you can use google's new directions by bike option. Both provide you with the best routes that take you along bike paths, through parks, and in the least precarious cycling streets possible.

Rooftop Garden: My mornings with my plants

Morning routine. Since my move-in to my new apartment I have been waking up to the sun, running in Central Park, watering my plants on our roof and doing yoga next to them. It is a fabulous way to start the day!

Urban Gardening: from New York to Detroit

I found an article this afternoon called "From Motown to Growtown: The Greening of Detroit", a mediocre article that tells of a potentially very inspiring comeback. Detroit, at its 1950 zenith, had a population of 1.9 million. Today, it's population is half that, at 900,000. Public services have declined, grocery stores have all but disappeared, money and jobs have left and far more buildings are demolished than constructed. Unemployment is at 15.5%, and "the onetime 'Capital of the 20th Century' now reigns as the U.S. 'murder capital.'"

Yikes.

So what does a city in this state do? Take back its space, plant some urban gardens and produce for itself! Detroit has lots of cheap, empty space; an abundance of labor but a shortage of money; high crime and poor health.

Can planting a garden really help?

It can help all of those problems, actually. First of all, why do we work? To acquire money? Unfortunately in 2011 some of us see this as the reason, but originally I think the reason to make money was to afford those essentials that you did not produce for yourself. Like food.

So now you live in Detroit, you cannot afford fresh food (nor can you access it, anyway, with such a lack of markets) but you have ample time on your hands, as you are unemployed. So you go outside, and you start a garden. Perhaps a neighborhood garden, with your other community members. You pay little start up cash for seeds and some tools and perhaps you get a little help from The Greening of Detroit . Three months after you started, you have fresh food growing out of the ground for free. Food is what you need--not money--money was only a means of getting to food. Now you have fresh healthy food to feed your family, while when you fed them from the supermarket you had to choose Wonder bread over squash and canned string peas over real ones. You improve your family's health, and along the way, you have built community with the people who live around you. This helped to build community health, to create a safe space outdoors because of your presence, and to create a sense of self-worth and pride in your community members to replace the desperation and apathy of before. Small community by small community, the Detroits of the world can rebuild in ways like this, that serve the needs of the people in them and take advantage of the wealth of the people who populate them without exploiting them.

Ironically, governments are not usually so keen on these ideas: empowering downtrodden tends to go against their agendas, especially in the case of self-sufficiency, a word that does not please capitalism. Thus, "farming" within Detroit is essentially illegal.

This has gotten me geared up to return to my birth state and give back! When I moved from outside of Detroit to Ohio at the age of five, I had no idea that I was moving from the rich 'burbs filled with the white urban flight of 1960s, 70s and 80s Detroit. Later, when I realized the hypocrisy of where I had lived and learned about these cool, guerilla gardening-like groups trying to rebuild Detroit, I got the desire to move back--into the heart of Detroit--to lend a hand.

Another addition to my summer list: Explore Urban Planning Programs in Michigan.

Selecting a CSA

12 June 2011

I have my heart set on joining a CSA this summer, so I spent a while asking around, prying local friends to give me any information that they had, and finally, when I searched online, it was easy as could be!

A CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, is a way to purchase local, seasonal food directly from a farmer. The farmer offers a certain number of "shares" per season based on what he expects to produce, and members pay for a share, usually meant for 3-4 people, upfront. By paying upfront, they help the farmer with the upfront costs of food production, help absorb some of the risk, and receive food in abundance if it is a fruitful season. Buyers get to meet and directly support their producers, the food is ultra fresh and they receive a box full of surprises every week, challenging them to experiment with new cooking.

The first time I lived in New York, my roommate and I shared a box of Urban Organic every week; a different way of getting fresh produce to city dwellers. Urban Organic delivers a box of organic produce directly to its NYC customers' doorsteps each week. It offers the ultimate of flexibility: you pay by the week so can stop or pause at any time, and you do not need to leave your house to take advantage of it. I love it!

But I love CSA's more, and so it is time to move on. Urban Organic focuses on organic over local: I remember shipments with definitely not local organic bananas and pineapples among the contents. I'm ready to eat like a farmer, even if that means all greens this month and in November all squash!

So I found justfood.org, an NYC based organization that strives to connect NYC residents with local farmers across income barriers to support food that is fresh, seasonal and sustainably grown. They promote CSAs, city farms, community food education, policy and advocacy, and connect soup kitchens and food pantries with local produce (add to my potential future job search list!) Their website has a wonderful map of all of the CSAs in NYC, so I could either plug in my zip code or search the interactive map for the closest CSA pickup.

I found a few within cozy bike riding distance and sent a few emails. I soon--within the hour--received a phone call from a lovely lady at Kitchen Table/Project Harmony CSA.


Facts on My (hopefully soon to be) CSA:

- Pick-up Thursdays between 5-7 pm
- Duration: 22 Weeks
- Cost $370
- Enough food for 2-4 people

Cons:

- Short pick-up window
I have no regular schedule! As a waitress, who knows if I'll be working Thursdays. But she assured me, you make friends quickly who will help you out by picking up your order and holding it for you.
- Duration: 22 weeks
That is until the end of October! I may not stay in NY for that long...so what if I leave in August? But I am assuring myself, even if I leave, I pass the rest onto someone else, and even if I lose the money, I've helped a small, local organic farmer.
- Cost $370
Yikes! That is for 3-4 people to share, but knowing how much I cook, I should not share with more than one. All the same, this cost is still probably significantly less than a summer's worth of produce from a grocery store, and certainly much fresher and healthier for me, the land and people around me.

So with whom do I share my share? My roomies are skeptical (although they will be so envious when the boxes start arriving!) I have a friend who lives about twelve blocks away who was interested...but also said he's probably too picky for 3/4 of the box's contents. Being a newbie to the building I haven't met many other residents, so tonight I posted a sign at the entrance, hoping to catch some interest. It is hand-printed in torn out notebook paper, red marker, and signed with a smiley face, so hopefully they will appreciate my minimalist method.

Rooftop Garden: Preparing Stakes for my Tomatoes

11 June 2011

Structure for tomatoes

My plants now have bamboo sticks to climb! This is necessary for both the tomatoes and the eggplant. There are many ways to do it. You can purchase a cage-like metal structure and place it directly over the plant: the easiest and most expensive. Or, you can use stakes or sticks of any kind and fashion a vine climbing wall that serves the same function. This was my route. I arranged the bamboo sticks and used old pantyhose to tie them together and to loosely tie the plant to the wall. Now, with the support of the stakes, the weight of the eggplant and the tomatoes will not make the plant collapse under the weight.

Eclectic Summer: Right Balance of City, Country, and Everything Else

Monday night I went to a naked dinner party, filmed for a Food Network program. What? That’s right, and then I went salsa dancing…then rode my bike five miles home at 2 am. Then I woke up at 7:30, and after my run, yoga on the roof and garden watering, I put on my apron and spent half the day cooking fresh hummus and weeks worth of veggie burgers. Between going back and forth to the stove, I was writing an academic research paper (roughly 25 pages) about the social, environmental and economic sustainability of modern movements in Italy. In the evening when I needed a break, I walked to the park and sat with my (now) Senegalese friends who play music in the park several evenings a week right at the entrance near my home.

I sometimes wonder, if I ever chose to fill out a personal description for an online dating service, if as the program tried to match me the entire network would not freeze and send thousands of desperate singles into a panic until the problems are righted.

Rooftop Garden: How Much Water is Too Much??

7 June 2011

This Morning I woke up to water, visited, but did not pour any water. I’m thinking maybe too much water was a problem; now I’m trying tough love. (Maybe I’ll go check on it now...)

Rooftop Garden: The Right Amount of Attention

13 June 2011

I’ve been watering my garden every morning and usually visiting it every night. I may be irritating it as it has starting to show signs of wilting…I think it needs space. It’s tough being a loving mom who only wants what’s best! The transplants are looking rough, and even the tomatoes do not look as chipper as when they came from the store. How can it know what’s best for itself: it’s in a new environment, certainly not evolved to thrive in a plastic clothing bin sitting in Styrofoam on a silver painted six story New York City roof! That said, I do not know what is best for it, either. I’m a new gardener, or at least in terms of my own personal garden!

Rooftop Garden: Getting Started

2 June 2011





Acquiring Materials

After calling to make sure they had organic seedlings, I went to a Long Island garden store. The selection was limited, but that’s fair enough: June is pretty late for getting started.

I purchased:

• Two tomato plants (one Early Girl and one Beefsteak)
• Two basil plants
• One mint plant
• A Thai hot pepper plant
• Onions
• Organic potting mix
• Organic fish fertilizer
• Package of bamboo canes

I then visited my friend Coryna’s garden and dug up the carrots, onions and broccoli that she had planted before deciding to head to Oregon for the summer. I had not planned on there being so much, so I carefully tore as few roots as I could, threw in some extra soil (more for the free soil than for the well-being of the transplants) and I transported the buckets of plants back to my Upper West Side garden. I returned late at night, so there was no chance of me planting before the morning. I was worried, though: the plants were in one big clumpy mess, and I could not water them without making it worse. I took a spray bottle and misted all of the leaves, told them a bedtime story, and left my little green friends on the roof until the morning.
Before going to bed, I realized that I had forgotten my mom’s Styrofoam at home, which I had planned on using on the bottom of my pots in place of rocks. In a potted garden, rocks are good to put under the first layer of soil because the roots do not go past them, so extra water sits in the rocks and does not rot the roots. Styrofoam, though, is cheaper and lighter for a transportable garden and serves the same purpose. In a frantic rush, I searched Craig’s List and Freecycle and send out a dozen messages, hoping to get someone’s used Styrofoam packing peanuts without purchasing my own. Not because I can’t spend five dollars, but because I cannot justify purchasing new something so entirely environmentally ravenous, especially something that people throw away after one use all the time.
In the morning, I woke up with no responses. I needed to get started early so I would have time to bike the 8.7 miles to my waitressing job by one, so I caved and looked for the closest Staples. It was close, but on my way I stopped at every store that looked like it may receive fragile shipments that would need packing peanuts. The fourth stop was the winner: I got a giant bag of packing peanuts from a Christian bookstore and hurried home to plant!

Planting my Garden

I took everything up to the roof and got started. First, I showered a layer of the peanuts into the bottom of each plastic bin and pot. They should cover the entire bottom. Then I poured down the soil that I had stolen from my friend’s garden in plastic bags (shhh!) and covered the rest with purchased potting mix. I planted everything and realized that I have way too little space; I had not planned on bringing so much of my friend’s garden, and they need a lot of space to grow. For now, I planted them all too close together. In reality, I am not too optimistic that they all last the transplant. The ones who do not make it I will pull out, and hopefully that will make elbow room for everyone else. I then watered and headed down the beautiful Hudson River bike path on a beautiful day to work!

From Organic Farms in Italy to New York City!

2 June 2011

Life Change:

Within the past two weeks, I have returned from three months of WWOOFing and executing research in Italy, graduated from my university, Couch Surfed around Brooklyn while on an apartment search, moved into Manhattan, and started waitressing. And gotten two parking tickets. I found an apartment with four other Couch Surfers for roommates on 111th and Adam Clayton Powell, one block from Central Park, for $550 (shared room the size of a closet sleeping on the top bunk!)

Challenge to Self:

Living in New York City--especially in the summer--is fun. So much fun, in fact, that you could spend all of your non-working hours going to free concerts, lazing in the parks, fine dining...and never accomplish anything. This is not the program for my summer. I am going to explore how to live as locally as possible in the Big Apple and find others who are doing it, too. I just returned from pulling weeds, making honey and milking goats on small Italian farms, and I want to find the equivalent here.

1. I will ride my bicycle as frequently as possible. I live 8.7 miles from my waitressing job in Little Italy, a lovely ride down the Hudson River Greenway . I vow to ride my bike 50% of the time. That means locally, but also to work, into Brooklyn, to go dancing, and to those free concerts. And in the rain.

2. I will learn how to fix my own bike, attend Times Up! bicycle repair events and find other bikers!

2. I will grow an organic garden on my apartment building rooftop.

3. 95% of my food will come from the locally owned organic market, farmers markets, and a Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA.

4. I will find other people doing the same in NYC! I will seek out other urban gardeners, share strategies, and--more importantly--build a critical mass of us. There are restaurants that grow their own tomatoes and apiculturists who make their own honey, all from their urban rooftops. I want to expose them!