Brokelyn

If you haven’t yet started your windowsill garden, this weekend’s the perfect opportunity. Come to Ditmas Park on Saturday, Apr. 24, for a free plant swap, sponsored by the Flatbush Food Co-op and Sustainable Flatbush. The swap, from noon to 3, is exactly what it sounds like: you meet up, trade your expendable perennial or other plant and leave with a new leafy best friend. In fact, this is a swap of the best variety—you don’t even have to bring a plant to walk away with a new one. It’ll also be the place for trading gardening tips, whether you can’t keep a Chia Pet alive or you can help green another’s thumb. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Mike Lieberman.

Your seeds have sprung to life, you’ve composted, you’ve got your soil and you know where to grow (probably in a whole bunch of containers in one supremely cramped space). Congratulations, you’re well on your way to inviting a friend to dinner just to say, “Dude, I grew this.” Here’s how to prep your planting space, transplant your seeds, acclimate your veggies, teach them to share and just put it all together. Read the rest of this entry »

Fire-escape pepper photo by Urban Greenscaper. Click on it for lots more inspiration.

We know, we know… you probably don’t think you have the space or the know-how to grow a measly sprout, let alone the ingredients for a salad. And you might be right. But growing food in tight, urban quarters is not only possible, it’s easier than you might expect. Gardening experts estimate that every square foot of growing space yields almost a pound of food over the course of the growing season. That’s a sizable crop squeezed from even the most meager Park Slope patch of dirt. And if a Crown Heights fire escape is your whole domain, that’s at least a crudité. Here’s how to begin. Read the rest of this entry »

According to Real Simple Magazine, even your potatoes are ripping you off. Buying a few loose spuds for your Bubbie’s latkes will cost you twice the price of a bulk bag (plus, the more latkes the better.) A fun money-saving feature on the mag’s web site also tells you say no to non-grocery items at the supermarket and yes to multi-use gadgets like the “hori hori” garden tool (part knife and part trowel), an affordable way to keep your “yard” (see also 3×5 patchy lot) in check.

Feeling the urge to call Moscow? Visit aitelphone.com, and find international rates as low as 1.5 cents/min in comparison $1.70/min at Verizon. So slap on a smile and start saving (and jeeze Louise, we can’t see the fillings in the back of your teeth–so opt for silver instead of white enamel and pay half the price for four-times the strength). For lots more of this sort of thing, check out Real Simple’s “How to Save On…” guide.

From Dumpster swimming pools to a truck farm… how kooky is Brooklyn this summer? The locavore crowd is all atwitter about a vegetable garden growing in the back of a 1986 Dodge Ram, planted by Brooklyn filmmakers Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney as an experiment to show all the crazy places you can grow your own food. (Also excited is one Red Hook insalate caprese lover who’s been helping himself to their car-vest: “Some kid from the neighborhood keeps eating all of our basil,” Ellis told today’s Daily News.) As it happens, there’s more to growing a pickup garden than dirt, water and seeds, and you can click the photo to see videos that show how the duo achieved a mobile bounty of broccoli, arugula, tomatoes, parsley etc. The boys even have a CSA, where you can pay $20 for a “completely unknowable amount of truck-fresh produce,” which may well amount to an arugula leaf and a parsley sprig if this project continues to grow in popularity. Here’s hoping.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, photo by Dave Shafer.

Does everyone know you can get $20 from the city if you buy a new tree? As part of Bloomberg’s plan to reforest the city, you can download this coupon from milliontrees.org and use it to get a $20 break on a “1-inch caliper or larger” from a participating nursery. There are five in Brooklyn: Chelsea Garden Center, Dragonetti Brothers, Gowanus Nursery, Kings County Nursery and Liberty Sunset Garden; addresses and phone numbers follow the coupon link.