Happy six more weeks of winter, according to our favorite, favorite groundhog, Phil.  But before we worried about more cold weather from the world’s wee, furry winter season soothsayer Punxsutawney Phil, there was the day the Celts called Imbolc, or St. Brigid’s Day, to determine whether the winter would continue six more weeks.  Unlike the marmot medium, the Celtic goddess of winter, Caileach, was said ensure beautiful, wood-gathering weather on February 1st in order to gather her firewood and ensure her favorite wintry weather would continue.  Monday, it appears it was a good wood-gathering day, as Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, and predicted 6 more weeks of winter.

The good news? You can plant a terrarium or air plant indoors, no matter the weather!

It’s easy to create and care for your own air plant or terrarium. What do you have in your home to house your indoor greenery?  A fish bowl?  A jelly jar?  The City Farm’s Cow Milk Glasses? A sea urchin from your last ocean dive, such as what LA-based designer Cathy Van Hoang creates, with upside down shells as planters to create indoor, aerial jellyfish? Mother Nature Network gives an easy, step-by-step guide:

• First, rinse out your choice or terrarium with bleach water, and let it fully dry out for two days, to prevent any mold or spores that might affect your plant.
• Because your jelly jar or sea urchin doesn’t have drainage, start your terrarium with an inch or two layer of pea gravel, and then break up some sphagnum moss or burlap on top of the gravel. (According to MNN, the moss or burlap will prevent potting soil from seeping down to the bottom of the container.)
• Next, add a half inch layer of horticultural charcoal, to absorb unwanted odors, and then, adding approximately 2 inches of potting soil, depending on the height of your container.
• Visit your local nursery to choose the plants you want for your terrarium – thick, leafy plants like reindeer moss and ferns are favorites.  You can also add decorative rocks, or little tchocktkes that you love – miniature unicorns? Why not?  (Sweet Digs is a fabulous shop in Yucca Valley, just outside Joshua Tree, where you can create your own!)
• Keep your plant moist, but not wet, with misting, and placing it in indirect sunlight.  If you can’t see your plant through the condensation in the container, you’re giving it too much moisture.  And if you notice mold or fungus, you can remove bits of the plant, as well as dead flowers or leaves,  with tweezers or chopsticks.  Twice a year, feed your plants with small amounts of a granular fertilizer.

Six more weeks of winter?  Bring it, Phil.

Will you be planting a terrariums or air plant? Show us your gorgeous indoor garden on Twitter!

(Photo Credit: Air Plant Jellyfish by Petite Beast, Mother Nature Network)

How to grow your own oregano:

Resolutions are SO 2014. So this year, instead of making new year’s resolutions, I set intentions.   It’s probably no different, but I’m hoping that by embracing a different term I might make these intentions realities, ways of life.

The dark winter days paired with the feeling of a fresh start and new intentions make this month a perfect time to create a garden nook inside, to add some green and growth to a corner of your life.  Take a look around — is there a space that is stocked with unused tchotchkes? A stack of sweaters you might take to your local shelter, or that collection of CDs you can transfer to the cloud, and create room to grow green things?  Look for a spot with natural light, or where you can connect and hide a cord to plug in some plant lights.

Search your cupboards for favorite jars or cups to create a collection of unique planters – and take a look at our City Farm collection to add a few new pieces for variety: a gum ball jar or wire bottle tote to display cut flowers? A votive cup to house a succulent?  A ceramic bowl?  Choose different shapes and heights to create an eclectic space that is uniquely you.

Creating a work station is part of the fun of making the most of small spaces – is there a spot to store your potting soil, a small trowel, a watering can?

With weak winter light, if you plan to start seedlings, and you’re feeling extra crafty, check out this how-to guide to transform an old bookshelf into an indoor grow light / plant stand!

Next week, kick off your indoor garden by growing your own celery! Until then, keep up with us on Facebook & Twitter. Happy New Year!

It’s hour 23, you’re dressed for your boyfriend’s boss’s | sister-in-law’s | pet vet’s holiday dinner, and there’s no time for Prime to deliver a host gift.  What to take? That magnet your kid made in 2nd grade? That block of Humboldt Fog you bought to savor by yourself in quiet after hours of small-talk? That gift card for a sushi bento box from your local fish dealer?

Plants make the perfect gift, as they keep on giving and growing. If you want to keep it festive, consider picking up an Amaryllis, a Cyclamen, or a Christmas Cactus. If you have a bit more time, you could create a “grow” kit, filling a mason jar with rich, organic dirt, to package with a packet of seeds or a box of bulbs, a pretty pot and watering can, and a spade and / or gardening gloves. In your holiday card, you can include the following hand-written instructions for your host to care for her new plant!

Cyclamen are beautiful and delicate, but they’re actually hardy plants that do well in colder climates.  HGTV warns that three things will harm your cyclamen: over-watering, heat, and too much light. The coldest room in your house is the best home for your bright plant, which is much easier to grow from one in full bloom than from seed.  (But if you like a challenge, check here for tips, and google a “germination chamber.”)

Christmas cactus, or Schlumbergera, a genus of cacti originally found in the coastal mountains of south-eastern Brazil, are winter-blooming cacti that are easily cared for indoors.

•  To propagate, cut a short Y-shaped segment from the stem tip of a healthy plant, and place it in slightly sandy soil a quarter of its length deep, according to GardeningKnowHow.com, who also  recommends an even watering, and choosing a well-lit spot for your plant to thrive, but avoid direct sunlight.
• Cut your shoot back at the second joint, and after a few weeks, the cutting will start to show growth, which is the time to transplant it to a larger pot with a potting soil mix of compost, loam and sand.
• Water frequently, especially in spring and summer, the cacti growth period, keeping the soil slightly moist.  The plant should not sit in water, however, or it will develop root rot.
• Find a room where the temperature remains between 60 and 70 F.  And come fall, when your Christmas cactus has stopped flowering, encourage it to eventually rebloom by starting its dormancy cycle: reduce its light (12 – 14 hours of darkness), temperature (between 50 and 55 F), and moisture.

Do you have a last-minute holiday host to honor? A growing gift will remind them of your gratitude for their hospitality for months to come.  Take a photo of your “grow kit” gift and share it with us on Facebook or Twitter.  Happy Holidays!

(Photo Credit: Christmas Catcus: New Floridians)

“I’m not really a “desert” girl,” I’d explain when someone asked why I had never camped out in Joshua Tree National Park.  I grew up in the lush green of Oregon’s rainy Willamette Valley.  The desert just leaves me thirsty.

“I may be a desert girl,” I said to the boyfriend while we sat on the cold wall of the patio of a Joshua Tree house, watching the sun rise over the stark mountain range, the sky slowly turning a baby blue with streaks of golden-tinged pink, quails waking to scuttle across the hard-packed dirt that is spotted with succulents whose beauty is neither flashy nor brilliant, but spare, somehow both delicate and hardy.

And then I entered Joshua Tree National Park, and I GOT IT.  It’s a magical place.

Initially created as an 825,000 acre National Monument in August of 1936, Joshua Tree was designated a National Park on October 31st, 1994 by the Desert Protection Act, adding an additional 234,000 acres to the park. The rock formations look like they must come alive at night, gentle giants that stomp through the park, illuminated by moonlight, campers exhausted from a day of bouldering and hiking too deep in sleep to know. Each rock-monster step shakes the ground, witnessed only by the slow-growing, deeply rooted Joshua trees.

“Yucca brevifolia” the plant species now known to Bono fans and desert-lovers as a Joshua tree was so-nicknamed by a group of Mormons, settlers crossing the Mojave Desert in the mid-19th century. According to Wikipedia, the tree’s unique shape reminded them of a Biblical story in which Joshua reaches his hands up to the sky in prayer.

Joshua trees may need more than prayer; the Wiki entry notes that conservationists are concerned that they will be eliminated from the National Park, “with ecological research suggesting a high probability that their populations will be reduced by 90 percent of their current range by the end of the 21st century, thus fundamentally transforming the ecosystem of the park.”

If you live in a similar region to the Yucca’s native Mojave desert, you could grow your own “crooked cross” from seed. SF Gate gives you the how-to, here:

• Fill a 4-inch planting pot to within 1 inch of the rim, with a sterile seed starting mix. Avoid using any mix that contains soil or compost, you want great drainage.
• Add water to the mix slowly until excess water drains from the bottom of the pot. Set the pot aside to drain completely so that the mix is slightly moist.
• Place the Joshua tree seed in the center, on top of the mix.
• Pour a handful of the potting mix into a kitchen sieve. Holding the sieve over the pot, tap the sides to sprinkle a 1/8-inch layer over the seed.
• Using a spray bottle, mist the top layer of mix with water.
• Place your heat mat in a west-facing window, set it to 72F, and place your pot on top.
• Be sure to keep the soil slightly moist at all times during germination.
• Over the following week, slowly turn down the temperature of the mat after, til you reach 65F, until the seed sprouts, usually within 30 days, but it can take much longer, so have patience.
• When your seedling reaches 4 to 5 inches, transplant into a larger pot, filled with a gritty cactus mix. (SF Gate)

The tree is a lesson in patience, observation, and quiet, growing only 2.3 inches per year. That morning, as I sat watching the the desert day begin with the swooping of birds, the scuttling of lizards, the crowing of a neighborhood rooster, remembering the soft sound of a cotton-tail bunny’s erratic hops between brush and then, later, the howling of a pack of coyotes in the dead of night, I realize that however slow or quiet the desert seems, it teems with life.  Edward Abbey writes about desert music in his book:

“A few flies, the fluttering leaves, the trickle of water give a fine edge and scoring to the deep background of – silence? No – of stillness, peace.

…“In the desert I am reminded of something quite different – the bleak, thin-textured work of men like Berg, Schoenberg, Ernst Krenek, Webern and the American, Elliot Carter. … their music comes closer than any other I know to representing the apartness, the otherness, the strangeness of the desert. Like certain aspects of this music, the desert is also a-tonal, cruel, clear, inhuman, neither romantic nor classical, motionless and emotionless, at one and the same time – another paradox – both agonized and deeply still.

“Like death? Perhaps. And perhaps that is why life nowhere appears so brave, so bright, so full of oracle and miracle as in the desert.”

~Edward Abbey, “Desert Solitaire”

[Photo Credit: Rebecca Snavely]

This Thanksgiving, are you going patriotic on your dinner party? Does your pilgrim menu hearken back to only that which the Native Americans served? That sounds fun!  Educational! And limited!  If your menu is missing some flavors, think bigger.  Like Statue of Liberty big, this land is your land, big.  There are a lot of fun flavors and foods that are very ‘merican.

Because America’s dinner tables are just that, a flavorful mix of other nation’s cuisines.  So while it is good to honor what grew natively in our land, it’s très American to add hints of flavor from around the world, honoring that poem carved on the base of Lady Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus’s words are so powerful, I wouldn’t dare change them. But if I did, it might go a little like this:

Give me your meatballs, your macaroni,

Your spaghetti, yearning to breathe free…

If I could add on, it would be to ask all immigrants to continue sharing the food and recipes from their native lands, letting us all continue to learn, taste, and grow.  NPR’s The Salt highlighted this very sentiment in their piece “A Journey Through the History of American Food in 100 Bites.”  “Apple pie isn’t American in the way people often mean. Every ingredient, from apples to butter to nutmeg and cinnamon, came from somewhere else.

“But then, so do most Americans.”

Let’s start with Brussels sprouts.   “Sprouts were believed to have been cultivated in Italy in Roman times, and possibly as early as the 1200s in Belgium. The modern Brussels sprout that we are familiar with was first cultivated in large quantities in Belgium (hence the name “Brussels” sprouts) as early as 1587, with their introduction into the U.S. in the 1800s. They were grown in California in the early 1900s, with the first central coast plantings in the 1920s.”

Mother Nature Network has 10 recipes guaranteed to make your mouth water, though I swear by the same simple one I posted about cauliflower.

To grow your own Brussels sprouts:

• Start seeds indoors 6-8 weeks before last spring frost.  (Overnight frosts bring out the sweetness in the plants.)
• Work fertilizer into soil a few days before planting or transplanting.
• Plant transplant seedlings 12-24 inches apart.
• According to OrganicGardening.com, small sprouts (about 1-inch diameter) are the most tender. Harvest them as they mature from the bottom of the stalk upward. Remove sprouts by twisting them from the stem. Pinching off the plant tops forces sprouts to mature faster. Just before a severe freeze, uproot the plants, remove any remaining leaves, and hang the “logs” upside down in a cool place for a few more weeks of harvesting.

What are you preparing or planting for your cross-cultural/American Thanksgiving?  Leave a note in the comment section , or tell us on Twitter!  @TheCityFarm & @RebeccaSnavely

(Photo Credit:  UndergroundWineLetter.com, ClarendonSquare)

If you read my post on “’Little Women’ and the History of the Squash,” you know my love for the 1994 film adaptation of Alcott’s book, and my Christmas tradition that surrounds it, trimming a tree and watching the film with a friend over a bowl of popcorn and mugs of mulled wine.

And thus you’ll understand my distress upon reading the recent news that ABC is going to attempt a television version of my beloved book and movie.  I wondered what it is I love so much about the 1994 version, besides the obvious: Susan Sarandon IS Marmee and know one else should ever try to replace her.

It’s also Jo’s imagination, that “late at night my mind would come alive with voices and stories and friends as dear to me as any in the real world. I gave myself up to it, longing for transformation.”  It’s Laurie’s heartbreak when Jo refuses his proposal.  It’s the friendship between sisters who care for each other and burn each other’s books and create the Pickwick Club to critique stories and put on plays. It’s Beth’s love for the poor Hummel family.  It’s Amy’s limes in winter and Marmee’s feminist indignation when Amy’s teacher tells her it is “as useful to educate a woman as to educate a female cat.”

There are so many beautiful details in the film, colors that stand out against the stark, often dark landscape of the lean times surrounding The Civil War.  The bright green limes in the winter snow, the soft green pear Laurie leaves in the mailbox to announce he is home for a visit from college, the bright red petals of the poppy scattered over Beth’s death bed.  (Errr, spoiler alert.  Beth dies.)

Want to live like one of the “Little Women?” Surround yourself in the colors and tastes of the March household.

Amy’s Limes  “I’m so degradetated. I owe at least a dozen limes.”

• Growing limes works best if you live in a warm climate, zones 8 – 11, with a mild winter.  However, if you live in a colder climate, dwarf varieties grown in protected containers will thrive as far down as USDA Zone 4.  If the temperature drops below 50F, bring your container(s) inside.
• Plant in full sun, with soil that drains well.  Limes dislike salty or clay soil.
• Nourish:  According to SF Gate, fertilize your citrus tree every couple of months, using citrus plant food or slow-release fertilizer with extra nitrogen. “The nitrogen content should be nearly double when compared to the phosphorous and potassium content; for example, 20-10-10. Only a third of the recommended amount of fertilizer needs to be used each time.”
• When your soil is dry 6 inches deep, give your limes a healthy drink of water, approximately once to twice a week.
• Fun fact – limes actually turn yellow when they are fully ripe, but are most flavor-packed with picked while still green, with just a tinge of yellow. (If lemons are your thing, read “Confessions of a Lemon Addict,” here.)

Laurie’s Pear “Laurie’s home for the weekend! In need of funds, no doubt. We’d have a week’s groceries for what he spends on billiards.”

• Plan to plant pears? Choose two varieties and check with your local nursery that they are compatible with each other, as pears need cross-pollination to produce.*
• Plant in full sun in the winter or early spring.
• If you choose full-size trees, you’ll need a little more room, as they should be spaced 20 – 25 feet apart. If you’re tight on square footage, consider a dwarf variety, to plant 12 – 15 feet apart.
• Similar to planting peaches (https://www.thecityfarm.com/hocus-pocus-magriculture/) if you’re transplanting from a container, lay the root ball on its side and use shears to remove any circling roots.  Your hold should be dug a few inches wider and deeper than the spread of the roots, and does not need to be fertilized before you plant.
• OrganicGardening advises that you give each tree 5 to 10 pounds of composted manure to start and mulch the trees generously.  For the first few years, be sure your trees get an inch of water, whether from rain or your hose.

*OrganicGardening notes that the “available varieties include Asian types, European types, and hybrids of the two. The classic European pear varieties—’Bartlett’, ‘Anjou’, ‘Bosc’, ‘Comice’, and lately even ‘Seckel’— have become highly susceptible to a widespread bacterial disease called fire blight. They’re wonderful pears, suited to USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 5 to 8, but not the best choices for large swaths of the East and other regions where warm, wet springs—prime fire blight conditions—are the norm.”  If that sounds like your region, your best bet is the “Magness.”

Beth’s Poppies “I know I shall be homesick for you even in Heaven.”

Oh my god Beth.  I was trying to end this on an up note. But I do love sobbing in that moment, when Beth tells Jo she can be brave, too. That she’s not afraid to go ahead of her sisters into the unknown.  Cut to beloved hausfrau Hannah, tearing red poppy petals from the flower to sprinkle them over Beth’s empty bed, her worn, wrinkled hand pausing to grasp the hand of Beth’s doll.

SO SAD.  But poppies, although associated with wartime death, don’t have to be. Work with me. They’re bright. Cheery. So here’s how to add some cheerful color to your garden and remember Beth in her better days, writing about the history of squash.

• Poppies are easy to grow, in zones 1 – 10, and best to grow from seed.
• Plant perennial poppies outdoors in early spring, as well as annual varieties at the same time for Zones 3-7. If you live in Zones 8-10, sow in the fall.
• Scatter the seed in your garden, or barely cover, in well-drained soil.
• Watch them grown, cut for indoor arrangements. Scatter to re-enact the saddest scene.

What is your favorite scene in “Little Women?”  If you haven’t seen it, or it’s been a few years (or days) you can buy or rent it on YouTube.  Pour a glass of gluhwein, pop some corn, curl up with the March sisters, and tell us all about it.

Twitter: @RebeccaSnavely & @TheCityFarm

(Photo credits: Limes – Under a Blue Tree; Pears – Daily Hiit; Poppies – History Mike; Little Women – Abby Rosebrock)

Artist Sam Van Aken is making magic with agriculture (magriculture?), creating a tree that blooms in various colors and then produces over 40 different fruits.  No, Van Aken is not trying to play God, though he was inspired by the Catholic rite of the priest transforming the wine and bread into the blood and body of Christ.

Sam had been performing “hoaxes” on the radio, hijacking commercial stations with his own versions of ads and songs.  Researching the etymology of the word “hoax,” he was led to the transubstantion of the Eurcharist in the Catholic church, as “hoax” is derived from “hocus pocus,” which is in turn from the Latin “hoc est enim corpus miem,” meaning “this is my body,” the phrase the priest uses to bring the mystery of the body of Christ into the present, physical space for the people of the church.

As an artist, Sam was intrigued. How could he alter the appearance of a thing while the reality of it remained the same?  Combining his childhood, growing up on the family farm, with his work as an artist, he began to build a fruit tree.  To graft together the more than forty stone fruits, he approaches local farmers and growers for their fruit, adding an element of the political surrounding the diversity of food production to his growing statement on art and commerce.

But, Sam told Epicurious in the interview, “first and foremost I see the tree as an artwork. Like the hoaxes I was doing, I want the tree to interrupt and transform the everyday. When the tree unexpectedly blossoms in different colors, or you see these different types of fruit hanging from its branches, it not only changes the way you look at it, but it changes the way you perceive [things] in general.”

You may not get the chance to graft together a fruit tree to blow your mind and neighbors’ preconceived notions about life.  So how can you see the daily or mundane in a new light?  Oftentimes all it takes is a shift in perspective.  Growing your own fruit tree, caring for it, nurturing it, watching it finally blossom and produce delicious fruit can be a way to see your world through new eyes.

If you want to plant a peach tree, put it on your calendar for this spring!

• Peach trees grow best in full sun, in sandy soil, in USDA Zones 5 to 8. If you live in colder regions, check with your local nursery about varieties that will do best in your neck of the woods.
• Choose a young tree to transplant, approximately one year old. If possible, plant the same day that you adopt your tree.
• According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, if you have a container-grown tree, remove the plant from its pot, lay the root ball on its side, and cut away any circling roots. For grafted trees, plant the inside of the curve of the graft union away from the sun.
• Dig a hole a few inches bigger and deeper than the reach of the root ball. Make a small pile of dirt to set your tree on in the hole, and gently spread the roots away from the trunk.
• If you’re planting more than one tree, give regular sized peach trees 15 to 20 feet of space; if you’re growing dwarf trees, place them 12 – 15 feet apart.

I admit, I take compliments ALL the time for remembering birthdays, anniversaries, and first dates and I don’t give Google calendar ANY credit.  But it’s the only way I remember to do anything. Mail my rent? Check. Eat lunch? Check check. Fertilize my peach tree three years after planting?  Definitely need to set an e-mail reminder for that.  It’s like a free personal, electronic assistant. To take the best care of your peaches, add these dates from the time you plant your peach tree:

• 6 weeks after planting, fertilize your peach tree with one pound of nitrogen-rich fertilizer. Year 2, use 3/4 pound of nitrogen fertilizer once in the spring and once in the early summer. Year 3, add approximately one pound of nitrogen to your tree(s) in the spring. (The Old Farmer’s Almanac)
• Pruning your peaches is critical. Check out these videos on YouTube for a how-to from Dr. Mike Parker, Tree Fruit Extension Specialist with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service at North Carolina State University: click here to learn about pruning your two-year-old tree, and here what to do with your three-year-old.

How do you see the magic in your daily surroundings?  Tell us in the comments or over on Twitter @RebeccaSnavely & @TheCityFarm.

(Photo Credit: Epicurious.com)