Garden: April 2007 Archives

>> and other musings. But first the plant porn.

So Gowanus Nursery is no longer in Gowanus; it is now in Red Hook on Summit Street. (For reference: 1st Place turns into Summit Street when you cross the BQE.) I hit up the new location on opening day in need of some early season garden inspiration. As a result of the nursery being in a bit of disarray (truthfully, it felt like they were still moving in) and my lack of imagination when it comes to pots with only green sprouts poking from them, I left without much inspiration. I'm sure once settled in, the new space will be lovely, but I worry that it's a bit out of the way and won't work well for people without cars (for the record, we don't have a car, but from time to time we do borrow one from friends). Will also be interesting to see what happens when the Chelsea Garden Center's new location opens next to Fairway in Red Hook on April 23--as a Brooklyn Record commenter mentioned.

A trip to Lowe's provided little more inspiration, although we did manage to rack up $160 in an attempt to make our dirt healthier and more nutritious with minimal use of fertilizer products. The booty: grass seed, sand, lime, peat moss, top soil, two seed germination blankets, and something called the "twist tiller," which is probably better translated as "back killer." Also, almost all the organic lawn and garden food was out of stock, but we did get two small bags of Plant-Tone's garden all-natural, organic fertilizer. Why Lowe's just doesn't stock compost is beyond me.

Which brings me to our next project: making our own compost. Dennis was kind enough to get me a compost bin, and so yesterday we started collecting kitchen waste, which we plan to mix in with some pine wood chips we also purchased at Lowe's--not having any "brown" to add to our compost mix at the moment, wood chips seemed the best option. Wish us luck.