Philadelphia Urban Garden: Spring 2025

03/17/2025

Planting Serviceberry Trees

I'm not a botanist, arborist, or herpatologist so I try to avoid planting anything not indigenous to the area I'm in. Hawaii was once overtaken by mongeese, it might still be, and a ghostly town on the Pennsylvania/Maryland border houses an invasive species of what appear to be giant cocoons wrapped around the tops of telephone poles. I also like the color purple, not the Forest Whitaker film but the one made of hues.

I love the old saying, "Plant trees in which whose shade you shall never sit," and yet for some reason I had never planted a tree. To rectify this grave mistake, I did a little research and found that Serviceberry Trees may be an idea choice. I have a park across the street so I decided to do some guerilla farming and place a tree where one seemed to be missing. I'm having trouble locating it now but perhaps I need to swing by during the day so I'm not crawling around on all fours with my phone as a flashlight again.

I planted three Serviceberry saplings in total. One in the park, one in my backyard (close to a wall to help the cats jump over,) and one in a pot, to gift to a friend.

03/21/2025

Relaxing After Digging the Garden Bed

I had originally planned to rebuild the raised garden bed but didn't have the time or energy. Instead, I opted to dig out as much soil as I felt necessary to remove the fecal matter, replace the soil with garden soil, and build a ring of rocks around raised soil to create a fence to keep the cats out. I purchased a chiminea to burn away the old wood and dried weeds so I would no longer need to hire assistance to tote things out of my yard.

03/23/2025

Enjoying a Sunny Day in The Backyard

The sun brought with it some warm weather and my yard finally doesn't smell like a litterbox. I decided to make some cucumber lemon green tea and enjoy my new found freedom by watching a D.B. Cooper documentary with Isis in the backyard. D.B. Cooper definitely survived the jump and definitely none of these people are related to them at all.

03/24/2025

Planting Vegetables and Deterring Cats With Chili Powder

I did some research on companion planting and did my best to order a variety of seeds that would work together in the limited space I have. I opted for Sugar Snap Peas, Cucumbers, Buttercrunch Lettuce, Potatoes, Strawberry Bushes, and a large assortment of herbs to act as pest control.

The first batch to arrive were the Sugar Snap Peas, Cucumbers, and Buttercrunch Lettuce. I planted them in the garden bed I had previously dug up next to my bedroom window. You don't really need to be an expert. All of the necessary information was on the back of the seed packages. Certain seeds need to be planted at certain depths, shallow depths in this case, and spaced apart in rows.

I used Apple Notes to map out my garden and help me keep track of everything. This particular sketch looks more legible in night mode.

You may be able to see a red sort of soil gleaming through the pictures of the garden. It is incredibly hard to keep these cats out of the garden and after some research I learned of a few deterrants. One was chili powder! This makes sense to me, I'm sure their sensitive little noses don't enjoy the burn near as much as I do without the prerequisite gourmet meal behind it. Another is egg shells! This is great because they break down into nitrogen which contributes to healthy growth and bountiful yields. The last is used coffee grounds! This is perfect because I cannot survive without coffee, in any kind of state that another may enjoy. These three simple ingredients of which my kitchen stays producing actually work to keep the cats mostly out of the garden. They still take turns running through it but have ceased thinking it as their litterbox.

03/29/2025

Measuring the Saplings While the Birds Enjoy Their Seeds

With my vegetable seeds planted, I decided to measure the Serviceberry Saplings to keep an honest if not entirely acccurate accounting of their rate of growth. I caught the birds diving in and out of the birdhouse and seemed to enjoy their new source of grub. One, however, didn't like the pet name "Sweet Pea" and I do not blame her.

The Serviceberry sapling in the yard comes in at just about 13 inches tall, and the one in the yard at about 10 inches.

Clearing Weeds and Digging a Potato Garden

I did my best to clear the yard of troublesome weeds after I had chosen a spot for the potato garden. I dug out a big rectangle sized pit and threw the excess soil to the side. I plan on planting catnip and other feline attracting vegetation in furtherance of my dedication to keep the cats out of my garden, while providing a pleasing safe haven for them to live.

The potatoes look pretty badass in their lil rows.

Building a Vertical Herb Garden Out of an Old Pallet

There was an old pallet in my backyard already placed vertically against the fence. The wood was mostly rotted and there was an unknown material fastened to the bottom of the cross sections. It seemed the previous tenants had already planted something here, long forgotten. I discovered the unknown material was called weed mesh, so I ordered a roll of weed mesh and some nails and screws to see if I could repair it. There was also a multitude of old flower pots all growing their own weeds. I emptied and spread these out across the yard, to inventory them and research which flowers they will contain.

03/25/2025-04/02/2025

Lettuces Sprout and Herbs Arrive

The previous tenants were kind enough to leave a couple of watering pales among the wasteland I inherited. While Huma naps in my favorite chair I took to the garden to check for progress. I was ecstatic to find my first sprouts reaching proudly toward the sky, shaking off their lil mulch helmets. I can almost feel my smile in them. My variety pack of herbs arrived and I did further research on companion gardening and pest control. I found that chives and basil pair well with the combination of lettuce, cucumbers, and peas. Dill should pair well with potatoes and strawberries, though I found conflicting information on whether strawberries pair well with potatoes.

I attempted to screw as many rotten boards back into the pallet as possible and when I could no longer find spots amenable to repair by screw, I used nails. I then used scissors to slice the weed mesh into workable sizes and attached them to the pallet with nails, too many nails. Too many nails still somehow felt like not enough nails but at some point you just have to fill it with soil and see if it works.

Every time I'm accosted in my garden by racoons I get deja vu. It's always the same two racoons and they fear no human unless you yell and clap shoes which is a kind of crazy thing to do in the middle of the night. The only time I needed to make a scene about it is when they were overly curious in the newborn kittens and Isis was at my backdoor at 3am, wailing for me to come deal with it. They're still a nuisance though it seems.

I suppose the birds accepted my peace offering as I woke up one morning to find them eating insects out of my garden.

A friend visited me before he was to attend a Deftones concert later that evening and got a tour of the bourgeoning garden. We had a little fun with an Abernic emulator console I copped from Amazon with a plethora of old games on it. Our favorite discovery was a Michael Jackson game made by Sega called Michael Jackson's Moonwalker.