Grand Clifton Garden

Made a lot of progress in the garden last weekend. There is a thicket of sunflower plants that Wilder planted last March (which I told him would never grow - little did I know) and I transplanted a few out along the fence. There's now a good long row of sunflowers and hollyhocks along the Grand Ave fence, many of which are now over a foot high already. So after the transplanting I put down a thick layer of mini pine bark nuggets as a mulch. It looks a lot nicer than weedy dirt, and hopefully it will help keep the super-aggressive weeds at bay.

I almost have to love weeds. Even if I can't truly love them, I definitely respect them. We went away for a week, and I put a huge burst of activity into the garden before we left. Planted out a bunch of seedlings, planted some seeds, gave everything a nice drink of seaweed fertilizer and a top dressing of worm castings. And weeded. Everything was in pretty good shape. And upon our return there are big bushy thickets of weeds all over the place. Some of them are two feet high. It's kind of exciting. The soil must be even better than I thought, but I feel like this is going to be an epic battle unless I get some kind of mulch down. I have never been partial to wood chips but I think there may be a load of them in my garden's future.

Planting chilis on Cinco de Mayo seems appropriate. I was thrilled to receive my shipment from Cross Country Nursery (aka www.chiliplants.com) today. The plants arrived in a very cleverly-designed box which protected the plants perfectly. There was also a very clear and well-written set of instructions for best care of the seedlings, which due to imminent travel and weather conditions I decided to ignore. Instead of letting the plants rest and get used to the Brooklyn climate I decided to plant immediately since rain is imminent and I want to get everything in before our trip. So I have planted: chilhuacle negro and rojo, szechuan, chimayo, pasilla de oaxaca, guajillo, pulla, aji limon, hawaiian sweet hot, czech black, datil sweet, and tarahumara chiltepin. If things grow well this could be the best year for mole ever.

I'm planting out as much as I can this week, as we'll be away all next week and who knows if I can get someone to water the babies in the basement. Eyvonne and Shakira have been eager helpers again tonight. In this bed we now have four each of Tigerella and San Marzano tomatoes. The seeds came from Seeds of Change and Wilder and I have grown them so far in the basement.

An auspicious day in the garden. I hoed the 2' wide bed along the Grand Avenue fence again, working in 7 bags of leaf compost. (Efforts to secure free compost this year have so far failed, so I'm patronizing the Midtown Nursery for organic soil amendments.) Then I planted about 12 or 15 Carnival Hollyhock seedlings from my basement nursery. Each baby plant went in with a bit of worm castings at the root and as a top dressing. Eyvonne was an excellent helper planting the seedlings and Shakira was an eager watering helper.