The City of Philadelphia’s Water Department has a great program for getting rain barrels to collect water run off from our rain gutters. We have had ours in place for 2 or 3 years now. They are great for collecting rain water for your small lot gardens. The rain barrels are delivered and installed free…
Small Lots and Gardens
Urban Potato Tower Garden
Attempting an Urban version of a potato tower in our raised Philadelphia small lot veggie garden. I saw a video on Facebook about building a potato tower and I was hoping to give it a try. As of May 2017 everything on the zoning challenge front is still in the fight, so I figured why…
Maintaining A Big Old Tree 2010
Maintaining a big Old tree We had our arborist come out to inspect our for health and safety, as we do just about every year, since 2010. They examine the tree and this year we got another good grade. Later, they will come out and give it some vitamins to keep it strong. In Philadelphia…
Small Gardens Produce a Healthy Soup
How about some Healthy Gazpacho Soup? It was a great day in the garden. The cherry tomatoes are growing like crazy as they always do. We never did cucumbers before, but they are sure producing really well. So well, that I had to figure out something to make with them, because a simple salad was not…
Tree and Green Space Haters in Philly
Tree and Green Space Haters in Philly We got a kick out of the comments on Facebook and other sites regarding our campaign to maintain open space and a 80 year old tree in South Philadelphia. Some will make you laugh and others will make you go what? Please help save open space in development…
Value of Small Gardens in Tiny Houses
Small gardens are now the in-thing to use in marketing and sales ads for tiny homes and small living spaces . With people feeling like they paid too much for their homes, having a small piece of garden is an oasis in a sea of concrete and stucco. We were walking along South and 2nd Streets…
Bumble Bees in the Garden – It would be Cool to make Honey
While in the garden today, there was lots of Bee action. Today, I mainly saw Bumble Bees and a flew wasps/yellow jackets. I wish I saw some honey bees. Here is a video: I remember seeing this youtube video below on facebook awhile ago. Wouldn’t it be cool to set up a bee hive in…
Gardens on Philadelphia Vacant Lots
With all this muckety muck going on about zoning and use permits and such, we did some research on vacant lots, licenses and gardens and we found this, under Philadelphia Code, Title 9, CHAPTER 9-3900. PROPERTY LICENSES AND OWNER ACCOUNTABILITY: § 9-3904. Vacant Lot License. (1) Required. (a) The owner of any lot on which no…
The Tree of Heaven Nature’s Gardening Clock
The Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) is admittedly a very tricky tree to maintain. We have been maintaining our for many years now. I have to say, it loves to create seedlings. The Tree has a long Philadelphia connection. From http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/ailalt/all.html Sprouts from the first tree-of-heaven in North America, planted in Philadelphia’s Bartram Botanical Garden 1784,…
Gardening on Small Lots
Gardening on Small Lots is a Great Idea. Small lots provide many opportunities for families and local communities to enjoy nature and family time. Our family has been gardening our lots for many years. Every year we try new things. In our 15ft 9in x 20 ft corner lot we have set up: two 4ft…