Last Thursday, after staring at a laptop for 8+ hours, I decided to ease my digitally-overloaded mind by flipping through Trowel and Error: Over 700 Tips, Remedies and Shortcuts for the Gardener by Sharon Lovejoy, a recent birthday gift from a friend. It’s the kind of book you can read word for word or opt [...]

After my earlier seed-sprouting mishaps (I forgot which seeds were which and what needed what), I’ve come up with a system this time: If the powers that be were making a prequel book to “Seed Sprouting for Dummies,” the should ask me to write it. The amount of things I’m unsure about that you’d think [...]

… has gotten out of control. I almost just called it a “tree.” But it’s not a tree, or it didn’t start out a tree, anyway. It was squarely in house plant territory when I bought it. Windowsill-plant territory. Now, however, it has quite unabashedly overtaken my windowsill and is slowly (but quite deliberately, I [...]

I was overzealous. Remember all that stuff I planted? Basil, dill, arugula, spinach, sorrel, mugwort, lavender, rosemary, thyme, a few things I can hardly remember (feverfew?) So many different kinds of seeds. So many different light, heat and water conditions required for their care. I couldn’t keep track of it all. Or, rather, I didn’t [...]

The seeds he’s lying next to refuse to sprout. Good to know they’ve got a second purpose as cat pillow.

Everything I read online about starting seeds had me convinced that only, say, 1 in 35 seeds I planted would actually sprout. For basil, I lined up a whole tray of peat pots (18 total) and sprinkled each one with a couple seeds and … they have all sprouted. I now have 18 pots of [...]

This Saturday, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s “Making Brooklyn Bloom” conference will feature workshops and lectures dealing with growing things in the city: Kick off the spring gardening season at Brooklyn Botanic Garden with this daylong conference on how to green up our communities by revitalizing our soil, the foundation of life in the garden. This [...]

It’s seed-starting time, and I’ve gotten much more ambitious than I was last fall. I am attempting: spinach, two different kinds of arugula, sorrel, rosemary, thyme, lavender, dill, cat grass, chives, mugwort, feverfew and cornflowers! Oh my. The seeds I ordered either don’t come with instructions or the packaging is printed in Italian, so I’ve [...]