This is What Happens When Brooke Gets BORED!

When some people get bored, they watch TV or read a book. What do I do?! I play my new favorite homemade game called "Cherry Tomato Photo Shoot!" I know you are just dying to know how to play… It’s very simple: take pictures of the cherry tomato all over the house in different random places. The more unusual, the more points you can get! You can play solo or with others :-) This picture was my fav - it is in the cresent moon of my lamp. I bet you've never seen a tomato in the moon before!

Now, don't you worry - I do have a life. I'm just not sure where it's gone recently...

Local Food? Doesn't Get More Local Than a Trip to Your Front Yard Garden!

This was a great way to start a beautiful day here in sunny F-L-A! The weather is getting hotter, to the point where every now and then I need to close the windows and put the AC on - the humidity is unbearable! But the tan I get while gardening is a great perk :-)

As I mentioned before, my beefsteak tomato plant fell ill to verticillium wilt a month back and I cut the limbs off the root of the plant a week ago. I left the branches with about 20 tomatoes on them laying on the surface of its planter pot. To my surprise they have not so much grown bigger but have turned from green to yellow to orange and today to red. So what was a girl to do?! I picked those suckers off of their viney branch, which is somehow still in tact and not rotting, even though it is no longer planted in soil. They still need to ripen on my kitchen table, but we’ll see if I really can eat them!

I also picked a cute little cherry tomato and a zucchini which is huge! I’m not too sure what kind of recipe I will cook to use these beauties, but I’m sure I’ll think of something creative! It sure is nice to wake up, wander barefoot into the garden with my little orange and white cat following at the hem of my sun dress, and pick some organic goodness.

It still hasn’t really hit me yet – this whole garden concept thing. I have these wonderful veggies sitting on my kitchen counter, but for some reason it hasn’t sunk in that I grew these myself, and it took lots of time and preparation and TLC for these little babies to grow. Maybe it’s because it is only the beginning of the crop harvest here at the 10th Street Garden. Or maybe it is because I never thought I could be self-reliant enough to grow my own food. Either way, it will be a glorious summer as I plan to live solely off of the garden for my vegetable intake.

Happy Growing!
-Brooke N. Dressler

The Green Beans are Here!!! 10th St. Garden's First Crop!

Hello everyone! Well I am very happy to report that today, the last day in this beautiful month of April, I picked my first crop at the 10th Street Garden! This evening I picked 11 green beans from the little 13 inch plant in my garden. I have to admit that I was thoroughly surprised that the green bean crop gave me it’s harvest before my other plants.

You see I planted a Beefsteak Heirloom tomato plant and a Yellow Bell Pepper on February 21, 2009. Since then, the Beefsteak fell victim to verticillium wilt and has killed over. As for the Yellow Bell, it has been slowly harvesting, although may I add it is growing EXTREMELY slow. I almost thought about cutting one of the peppers off from the plant last week and “sacrifice” it so that the plant would be encouraged to set more flowers and then more vegetables. But it still remains my slow little grower.

In any case, I transplanted the Blue Lake Pole Green Bean about only a month ago and already it has yielded nearly a dozen of its beautiful beans. I know it seems silly, but I almost didn’t want to pick the beans from its stalk. I don’t know what I was waiting for, but I just felt like “Wait! Im not ready for these fresh veggies! Maybe they need some more time in the Garden to grow!” I don’t even know how I will use them, green bean salad, a stir fry etc. More than likely it will be the latter. Lately it seems as if they only meals I know how to cook well are breakfast, chicken and stir-fries!

Today was exciting. Getting my knees and sun dress slightly dirty from kneeling at the root of the green bean plant was a really organic experience. So this is what it is like to take care of a little seedling, until it is old enough to be transplanted, care for it for a month and then watch its crop grow?! How beautiful! I was surprised to even see the beans growing. The plants’ leaves are so large that I really had to dig and push them aside to see the beans.

So that’s it! The first edible crop at the 10th Street Garden, besides my herbs from the herb garden of course :-) Thank you, Mother Nature!

Until next time,
Brooke N. Dressler

The Beginning of the 10th St. Garden

<---The 10th St. Garden finished product. Let's start from the beginning however...

Hello! My name is Brooke Dressler and I am a student in St. Petersburg Florida, by way of Philadelphia Pa. I am finishing up at the local college and am planning to start Chinese medical school in the fall. The goal is to become a Doctor of Oriental Medicine before I turn 67 years old. I am 23 now :-)

**WARNING:**

This blog is contagious. Just kidding. This entry will be far longer because I've gotta catch you all up to speed! Shorter entries to follow, but do read all the way through!

I live in a decent apartment and have recently become very interested in urban homesteading. In learning how to grow my own food, wash clothes by hand and overall just try to be more self-sufficient, I found that sometimes I had difficulty finding specific info or photos during my research. So I decided to just start my own blog to document my experience and maybe even help or inspire others to join the bandwagon.

My overall goal for this blog is to just give daily/weekly updates of stuff growing and happening in the garden. Although I hope one day to own some livestock and a nice chock of land, for now the 10th St. Garden is where I live, eat, create and grow, and I’m loving every bit of it (okay that’s a lie.. no one ever told me tilling the land would take 6 hours)!!

Before I explain why I am attempting to homestead, let me take you all the way back to square uno. First things first: let me just WARN you that I haven't a clue as to what I am doing. This is my first time ever growing anything other than the dainty flowers my mother and I planted outside our old house in Philadelphia. Additionally I have never really “blogged” before and in that regard am still unclear how to operate my facebook account. I make up for my lack of experience with my passion and drive to live a more sustainable, self-reliant life (at least that’s what I keep telling myself). Im sure you’ll enjoy the journey as much as I have.

February 2009: This entire concept started as a hybrid idea from my good friend Daphna. She owns some land and after settling back into St. Pete from my stint on the Obama campaign I really wanted to start my own garden. What started as a community garden project on her land developed into me wanting some vegetables to grow via containers at my apartment. This whole idea of wanting to grow my own food literally started with two plants and I never intended it to be anything more than growing one pepper plant and one tomato plant. Little did I know that the two plant idea wouldn’t keep little ol’ me satisfied.

March 2009: Seeing how easy this whole ‘growing your own food’ thing was, paired with my sheer boredom one weekend (probably should have been studying) I decided I wanted to GROW big. Instead of my 2 plants I wanted like a bajillion <– and yes that’s a real word, according to some people. I decided to plant over 15 more vegetables – some from seed, some from transplant – and instead plant into the ground this time. I thought I would just get a rake or something and start raking the dead grass and underneath would be beautiful, rich, dark brown soil. WRONG, WRONG, and one more big fat WRONG!!

I forgot that I live in Florida now. Translation? No frikken dirt, just black sand that has horrible, if any, drainage. Not to mention it wasn’t as easy as raking. Oh no… it couldn’t be that easy! I had to go buy a cheap hand garden tiller and spent over 6 grueling hours tilling the land. The plot is only 15 x 5 feet. Here are some before and after photos so that you get the picture (literally….get it? No? You don’t get it? It’s okay, let’s move on!)…

So after tilling the land, I went ahead and planted my transplants. At this point I do owe homage to a good friend who helped me unload the soil and manure and plant the transplants. Everyone say hello to Johnny! I will spare you all the gritty details and instead will just let you gander at the photos.

This is the front yard BEFORE tilling. Hard to believe this USED to be my yard! Yipes!


After a couple hours of raising the garden till high above my shoulders, slamming the spike into the ground and pulling our those weeds with all my strength. I seriously don't think I've ever physically worked that hard before in my life!

A collection of small roots removed. I never knew I could get so angry at just plain old land.

Almost finished digging up the first layer of pesky weeds. Then it was on to hand picking roots. That's what that little green mat is doing in the yard. Hands and knees and dirty hands...




Not to mention DIRTY dirty feet...

This is the next day when all the brush and debris was cleared out. Looks nice aye?

Dug a trench for the seeds, let the hose run to irrigate the soil then sowed the seeds...

After planting the seeds, we put in the transplants and secured the wood. So this is the final product! Well at least it was for that day (3.21.09). The garden looks much different now and I will upload those photos soon!

The garden has changed several times over the past few months. Right now I am currently growing bell peppers (green, yellow and red), hot peppers, cherry tom’s, eggplant, cantaloupe, long cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, string beans, sugar snap peas, Asian snap stir-fry peas, and Boston pickling cucumbers.

I am also growing the following herbs: lavender, rosemary, Thai basil, peppermint, thyme, chamomile, stevia, and catnip. Over all it is over 100 square feet of organic garden vegetables and herbs.

I also have random flower plots around the land, but I tend to kill flowers quickly. That and the relentless Florida sun will kill most any non-tropical plant very quickly. No wonder why we have so many damn palm trees here. Do you know how hard it is to kill one of those things? They’re like the terminator of plants! Ok moving on..

The 10th St. Garden started as a project and a hobby, not so much as this idea that I wanted to save the plantet by reducing my carbon footprint (although it has turned in to that now). I’ve always wanted to grow my own food, as I prefer organic produce but am not a big fan of the prices. Even though I usually buy locally from farmers markets, I started thinking about where my food comes from, who is growing it and how much fuel is being used to get the food from the farm to me? I wanted to grow from home to see if I could succeed without killing anything.

But now it’s become this game I play to see how much I, as a human being, can do for myself without relying on corporations or big chain stores to acquire my goods. I wanted to see what would happen if the world shut down and I was left to provide for myself. I had this really deep uncontrollable desire to be connected more to the things around me all of a sudden. Don't get me wrong, this wasn't all sunshine and sun flowers here at the 10th St. Garden. The temperatures in Florida are well into the mid 80's, and thats just at 9am. Not to mention I have had my fair share of disappointment and have killed some of my favorite plants.

All in all however, It’s a pretty awesome feeling when you can wash your clothes by hand, let them dry in the same sun that is feeding your vegetables and then make a yummy dinner from the herbs and veggies that are on your land. It is definitely more rewarding than anything I’ve done so far. However election night Nov 4, 2008 when my previous boss, Barack Obama took the presidency might (just a little bit) take the lead on this one.

It’s so amazing that all you need is some good soil, some sunlight, water and a couple of seeds to grow all the food you’ll need. What I’m doing isn’t genius. It’s not even original or clever. It is so fundamental that it seems extreme. Growing all of your food in your front yard seems pretty strange in our day and age. But I’m used to being a little odd…

So now that you know who I am and how this whole thing started I can now retire to bed.. I hope you will visit soon and tune in to the next episode of the 10th Street Garden. Till next time..
-Brooke N. Dressler