A Brooklyn Seed Exchange

This past weekend, the Revel Gardener hosted a seed / plant swap at her house.  It was the first seed / plant swap that I ever attended and it was so much fun!  It was a small crowd, with just 4 of us attending, but what we lacked in numbers, we definitely made up in enthusiasm!  We were all eager to talk about gardening, gardening, and more gardening.  Revel Gardener had such a great setting for our seed swap,  we milled about in her beautiful backyard.  She has a gorgeous peach and cherry tree and vegetable garden in her Brooklyn backyard.  I can't believe I didn't take one photo of the yard or the trees!  Believe me, it was stunning!  In addition to bringing seeds and plants, we also were asked to bring something for the pot luck, something we made from the garden.  I brought some homemade brushchetta using all homegrown ingredients including heirloom tomatoes, garlic and Italian Genovese basil. Genovese Basil is my new favorite basil to grow.  Wow, the smell is intoxicating, so very fragrant!

I was so impressed with the attendees of the swap.  I met a fellow Staten Islander, Ralph, who brought many plants, among them these two awesome banana plants!  I was thinking people would bring seedlings but he brought two large trees!  He propagated these two from another banana plant.  Aren't these just amazing?  I couldn't unfortunately take one of these home with me because I was taking public transportation and these were in what looked like to be 10 inch pots.  I don't think I would have been able to carry one of these plants on the subway.  Hahahaha.  I would have tried though, believe me!

Red Garden Clogs brought this box of planting goodies.  In the box, she had lots of different perennial flower seeds, a couple sage plants, metal plant markers, and lots of gardening books that she no longer needed.

She also brought some peppers she grew, these look awesome!

I came home with these two books.  One from Red Garden Clogs and the other from Revel Gardener. 

And I scored these stash of seeds!  Everyone had so many seeds to share!  I also was the recipient of the sage plants.  Everyone else was already growing sage, so these all came home with me.  I also took home some plant markers and some scallion seedlings from Ralph.

The ending to the amazing event was this homemade dessert!  Revel Gardener made us apple cobbler and her husband made homemade ice cream.  Oh wow, was this ever good!  A perfect ending to a perfectly fun time!  I can't wait until Spring for our next seed / plant exchange!

A Plant Exchange Does Happen in NYC

When we started gardening, we were such newbies that we were a bit overwhelmed.  I looked for other garden blogs from fellow New Yorkers and they became my inspiration! I am truly amazed by how city folk could create such amazing edible landscapes in this urban setting that we live in! From rooftops, to fire escapes and balcony gardens, and edible front yards, nothing stopped these urbanites from growing their own food. It was inspiring to find so many like minded "urban gardeners". What I like most about reading other nyc blogs is seeing what they are growing in the same climate region. It really opened our minds as to what we can grow here in our zone. Earlier this week, I saw that one of the bloggers that I follow, Bucolic Bushwick, was offering a Sungold Cherry Tomato Seedling giveaway.  If you don't know her blog, do check it out, she has an amazing roof garden in Brooklyn.  She also makes her own DIY Self Watering Containers, which I think is pretty darn cool.  I've always read about how wonderful Sungolds were, but we have never grown them.  She and I had traded seeds a couple of months ago, and so I contacted her and arranged a plant swap.  We had a spearmint plant that had sent out runners last fall, and we planted many of the runners in hopes that it would produce roots and turn into seedlings.  Indeed it did, and I had arranged to swap the mint plant for the Sungold.   Luckily for us, Bucolic Bushwick also had a Fairy Tale Eggplant seedling that she offered to trade too.  Cool!  Having never grown this type of Eggplant, I Googled Fairy Tale Eggplant, and was surprised to see that it has these cool white stripes on the purple fruit. Really pretty!  These are the plants she gave me.  Don't they look awesome?  She uses a grow light system, I really have to get my hands on grow lights.  These seedlings look so much nicer than the ones I started indoors. 

I arranged the plant swap on the day that I had to go into the city for a client meeting.  I brought the mint plant with me.  The hubs drove me to the subway station with mint plant in tow.

It's a bit of a ride to the subway, so I put the mint plant in the cup holder on the console.  A perfect way to transport seedlings if you ask me!  Don't forget, today is the last day to enter for a chance to win some leaf shaped pie cutters!  To enter, you must leave a comment on this post.