I almost slept through my first garden planning class today.

The kitten figured out that by knocking the alarm clock off the table, she shuts it off and can walk on my head and snuggle with me longer. Awww.

So I raced up to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for Day One of Designing a Brownstone Garden, and skipped coffee, breakfast, and all manner of required grooming. I did wear a big pink ribbon so no one would notice my fuzzy hair or the big kitten scratch on my nose.

The class is more formal than I’d thought, and we have been asked to draw out a map of our garden space for re-working. The teacher did not mention vegetables once. However, there is lots of time for asking questions about the space we have and the constraints specific to gardening in the city. I am not concerned that he will suggest that we landscape a sweeping prairie vista or plant thousands of bulbs if we truly want to commit to a color scheme. We looked at a lot of slides of before (looked like my curret garden) and after (looked like Sunset magazine) shots of gardens he’s done and/or bid upon. I look forward to having a knowledgeable ear to advise on cutting back the grape. I think that I might prune it significantly if I can do it without killing the whole vine.

He did, however, insist that we come up with a Theme for our gardens. Uh-oh.
I hadn’t considered a Theme beyond my overarching philosophy of organic growing and responsible watering.

I’m pretty sure that despite a Theme, containers will still be ugly and a little clumsy. The point of this is the plants and their fruits. Maybe I should paint all of the wooden containers a unifying color. We do have some mis-mixed zero-voc paint at the office: a bright yellow called Yellow Finch, a coral pink called Petal .06, and oodles of flat white with varying tints of cream and blue.

Maybe I just need to rename it: Raucus Garbage, Dowdy Detritus, Exuberant Herbage or Castoff Containers Painted Bright Colors Distract You From Looking at Them. I don’t know, I like people to look at my containers and know that the box over there was a door and 2 futon frame pieces, that the prior tenant left a vintage toybox on the roof, and that once upon a time, an Italian neighbor made wine in his basement in that 5 gallon bucket from Hoboken.

Is Clever Salvage a Theme?

Jeff got me out in the snow to hear Amy Francheschini (Future Farmers) Michael Hurwitz (Director of NYC’s Greenmarket) and Kate Zidar talk about urban gardening at Housing Works in the city. After a long day, I wanted a cold beer, some kitten love and to yammer with Paul about the Big Snow we saw in Truckee and how this was tiny snow. So I went straight from work to sit in a giant pink-cheeked crowd that smelled of wet wool and hummus.

Amy Francheschini’s Victory Gardens 2007+ project in San Francisco is a large-scale version of what I’d envisioned for my project initially. Given some of the same statistics about food production in home gardens during World Wars I & II, she is growing a well-tested, common-sense urban farming campaign. She is specifically drawing on the inspiration and power of the wartime garden propaganda and casting it in modern terms.

I like knowing my idea is not unique, and that righteous people are equally galvanized by the wholesome, accessible images of the wartime Victory Gardens. And, as a California native, I am proud to know that despite the avocado-brained nincompoops clogging every San Francisco cafe, people like Amy are organized and getting some attention from government.

Today I’m thinking about seeds.

They’ve arrived in the mail but are still in their little packets. Allegedly the rule is to figure out your safe planting time (after new plants won’t get damaged by the last frost). So I’m supposed to figger out what magic date was the last frost, count backwards through the germination and baby seedling time, and plant seeds that day.

Every time I’ve ever done this, I’ve messed up my seedlings most righteously.

• Plant too early, the babies are too leggy and spindly and weak.
• Plant too late, and they’re too small to be set out on time and tomatoes never ripen before September.
• Plant too close to the radiator and get great, early plants that fry to a crisp when the last cold weekend causes Saharan desert condition in the house in late April.
• Cat starts chasing soil gnats. Cat knocks petunia seedlings onto ground. Cat eats petunia seedlings. Cat pukes petunias and soil gnats all over rest of seedlings. Cat eats remaining seedlings when I try to clean up puke. Cry and lock cat in bathroom. Start again.
• Early summer rains allow only flood-resistant seedlings to survive. Drought kills rest of garden in July.

Hopefully I’ll learn better how to do this in first garden class in February. Have been collecting cardboard egg cartons for seedling starts.

Will try doing plants in homemade newspaper pots for easy transplant. Ma talked me through it the other night on the phone. In trial runs, it seems that brown paper bags and brown paper wadding is easier to make pots out of than newspaper.

I have a grow light bulb, and have scouted a place in house that is far from radiators.

Protecting the seedlings from Kitten and Big Cat, and later, Neighborhood Feral Cat is clutch. I’m working on a very cheap system of barriers using old busted out window screens with ag netting instead of screens. Testing commences on Superbowl Sunday, which is my favorite day to go to the giant hardware store: it’s all mine.