Three cheers....

To taking half days at work and coming home and eating your work-lunch anyway.
To work-lunches being composed of E.S. Garden delicious, spicy, greens and asparagus.



To sunny days after a few days of much needed rain (not so much the hail).



Enjoy your weekend!

And then it was snowing...

If you know me, you know I complain a bit about the weather in New York. I am not a fan of winter. I do not do any of the fun winter activities that one does to help the burning hatred of cold, wet, miserable, winter. (I tried to snowboard, once, with the boy about three years ago. The falling...oh the falling...I do not need to feel that way again. Those sort of sports, in my book, are reserved for learning at a young age. When you have no fear, when nothing hurts, when the knees don't crack just from getting up off the ground. You feel me?) Wow, that was hell of a parenthetical phrase.
I would like to do some snowshoeing perhaps, that would be fun. Because damn I am willing and able at this point to find something that can help me enjoy hate less the bitter-death temperatures and accident causing ice crystal-covered dust specks.

Oh right, so the hail!

I (well mostly my car) lucked out and I was not home when it rained pellets of up to 1 3/4 " (That was the official diameter given on the news, but I didn't see any quite that big).

modeling nicely for us: The Boy's hand and shoe

Not something you see every day...in the middle of June...in New York. Can we say global warming?

Though this does put things into perspective. I bitch about this state quite often but really, I shouldn't complain:

+ We can (and do) use water like it's going out of style, and it's cheap.
- Many states have crazy water restrictions: like only allowing you to water your plants from 12 -2 AM every other Wednesday.
+ The extent of severe weather in New York is mostly damaging hail and other ice-type storms. (Though we did have a tornado way back when and apparently a small earthquake not too long ago??)
- Many states have to deal with hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes for many month out of the year, sometimes daily. (The Boy's family lives in Alabama and they are under constant tornado watch for pretty much six full months of the year.)

So yeah, I can't complain. We have it pretty good here.
Oh New York, you keep a tight reign on me, you do.

Little green balls of yum!

While I was out planting some new seeds* on the Apartment Garden porch today, I noticed our tomato plant has signs of yummy deliciousness!


I was given this plant from the girl downstairs...originally I wasn't planning on having any tomatoes because the E.S. Garden has enough for an army. So I don't even know if these are cherry or if they'll get to be humugo. Hopefully the former because the plant grew in a bit sparse and probably wouldn't be able to stand up to any mammoth tomates.

It was a great weekend to garden here in upstate NY! The E.S. Garden got a good working out of me, although I forget to bring along a picture shooter so no updates on that end. But check Flickr because the Apartment Garden has a nice update!

*I'm venturing into uncharted territory now...I planted some pumpkins and cucumbers. I babied them hardcore with compost and organic fertilizer, my fingers are crossed! We'll see how they do growing in a pot on a porch!

The Earth as we know it...

*So I was having a conversation about this with someone and got so worked up about it I was like, "I need to post this on my blog." Well I get here, and apparently I already did...so weird because I don't remember it at all...hmmm. Anyway, I wrote a whole new one before I realized I already wrote one. So to beat a dead horse, I'll put my new rants in here. Look for the ol' italics. Think of it as a review of sorts.*


earth2100

What would our world be like if we didn't have fresh water? If people could not grow food? If there was mass migration and its effects? What if our polar ice melted so much that NYC would face a six-foot ocean rise?

Worst case scenario?
Humans could essentially be extincted by 2100. (Less than our children's lives!)

This program was fascinating, I recommend anyone watch it. Especially those who still have the crazy idea that global warming and human global destruction are just "scare tactics" and made-up lies for those damn liberals to get what they want.
It does paint the U.S. a bit rosier than it should, essentially blaming other countries for the downfall of society, but hey, this is ABC so I guess we take the good with the bad.
The program was shot really interestingly in a very graphic novelish way. (Think Sin City) And it follows a girl who was born June 2, 2009 up until 2100.
Many will say it's a scare tactic, that it wouldn't really happen that way, blah blah blah. But I think there are some very good things to take away from it. OK, so NYC would probably not likely try and build a wall around the city to prevent the rising ocean current from getting in...but...hey, we've done stranger things. So we may not go down THAT way, but the program showed everything negative about human nature and why we would bring ourselves down, one way or another, if we keep acting the way we do.

Anyway, I am quite passionate about the environment, so from now and again I will get on my soapbox and rave a bit about this beautiful planet we live on.

If you enjoyed this maybe you should forward it to all you know who still leave the water on when they brush their teeth, who drive huge vehicles to transport only themselves, who don't recycle, who eat too much meat, who don't attempt to take care of this precious, vulnerable world we live in.

Forward it to all you know who have young children or who plan to have children. Because our world is going to be a vicious place to live in if we don't do something now. And we may not have to face the total wrath of it, but our kids might, and damn, I know I don't want to have to apologize to them their whole lives.

Knockout!

Votes were counted, briberies were offered but refused, and the results are in!

Winner of the 1st Annual 2009 Who Has The Most Diesel Seedlings Contest:


























Any who have followed the travels of these seedlings should not be surprised by the winner. Jiff's pods prevail! Frankly coconut fiber, you suck:

















These pictures were taken on the same day. The coconut seedlings are yellowed and droopy while Jiff's pods are lush and green.
What you typically see before transplanting a healthy seedling is a well established root system around the medium you use.

Healthy rooted seedling

I do not have a picture of the coconut fiber seedling but when I took it out of the six-pack the medium crumbled away. The roots were growing straight down and through the bottom. So most of the root was wallowing on the plastic bottom instead of in some nice, helpful dirt. It makes sense they would be so yellow and unhealthy looking.


In other news...

I embarked on quite the lettuce seedling thinning process recently

















I had a ton of 1" pots and old Tupperware laying around so that made for easy temp. storage containers. I plan to give away many of the seedlings, I have plenty to keep for myself.
See the finished products here, and here.

It has been a busy few weeks over in the E.S. Garden. Enjoy the pictures of the flowers, they are especially wonderful. Thanks to the boy for taking lovely pictures, much more pro-fes-sion-al than myself. I've been over there quite a bit planting, weeding, mowing, and planning. We've had more greens than we know what to do with. The asparagus continues to grow enough so we're picking it every few days. We've had a taste of the radishes, as well, and wow are they little fire balls. I'm attempting to grow some apartment garden radishes, let's hope they can still enjoy a more confined living arrangement.

As you can see we've been very busy over here at The Pale Gardener!

Get your soil tested

There are many reasons to get your garden soil tested. Many plants thrive in certain PHs, some do very poorly when a PH is too low or too high. By testing your soil, you will be in the know about what's in all that dirt. Then you can adjust as needed. Many fertilizers and other supplements will state right on the package the percent of nutrients included and you can adjust your soil as needed.

Here's another great reason why you should get your soil tested, and it's a bit more serious than having the best tomatoes:

For Urban Gardeners, Lead is a Concern

As we all know, lead is quite the scary substance!

Fortunately there are many ways to test your soil.
Cornell Cooperative Extensive will test your soil for you for a small fee. And here is their PH testing kit. They will even give you recommendations after they've tested your soil!
For those living outside of New York State, you may still send your soil to Cornell CE, however, they will not be able to give you recommendations because their recommendations are based on the soil composition of NYS.
I recommend doing a Google search for soil testing in your state, you're sure to come up with something more local.

New Home

We have successfully upgraded living quarters for some of our plants. It was a relatively pain-free process. For normal, run of the mill plants, the big parts to remember when repotting are :

-Start out with a clean pot. That way any yucko fungus or bacteria is cleaned away from the previous inhabitant.

-When repotting it's generally accepted that your new pot should be a size larger than your current pot.

-I like to breakup the root ball a bit before I plop it in. I've read that you can even trim the roots a little before you put it in its new pot. Just make sure the cutting device you use is clean.

-Leave a little space at the top of the pot so there's enough room to water without making a mess.

-Water the plant after it's all set in its new home.

*I just want to note that I am still new to this whole blog idea thing so I often forget to take pictures midway through the process. I will try and remember next time. For now, all I have are the finished products.*

Here is our aloe in its happy new home. This was not originally on the list of repots but part of the plant was heading right over the side and making it a bit of a balancing act trying to get it to stay up sometimes. So I figured it was time to upgrade. There were many, tiny, new aloe plants growing interspersed in the soil so it was a little tough to make sure none of them were sacrificed and burried alive (wow that sounds so morbid!). It has been in its new home for a few weeks and it seems to be adjusting nicely.

























I split the jades up into two pots. There were four plants in one teeny pot and generally you want one to two in a pot. I wanted to use wider mouthed bowls so they could sit a decent distance from each other. I recycled the old pot that held the aloe plants for the first set and I used the old pot that housed the fern for the second set of jades. They have also been in their new pots for a few weeks and are doing very well.
I also moved the jades back from the window a bit because they were starting to look a little pale. Since then they're back to their deep green color. So it seems jades like more indirect sunlight. Now they are about ten feet back from the window when before they were about three feet from the South-West facing window.


I'll be moving some of my plants out on the porch in the next few weeks. I can't wait to get some floor space back!

I was over at the E.S. Garden yesterday mowing the lawn, and everything is getting so green! I brought home fresh greens and asparagus. Here are some pictures to enjoy!