Sprout's Green Blog Hop Week 6 - How Green does your Garden Grow?

How Green is your garden or where are you getting your fresh veggies this summer?

I love gardening!  It is one activity that is relaxing, enjoying and rewarding to me that I could do every day.  I'm a city dweller so I make do with the space that I have and I'm lucky to have a large south-facing balcony (overlooking Central Park!).  I have many large pots and even more small ones that I have been experimenting over the years with different vegetables, herbs and flowers to see what works best.  So far I have found that the veggies that work best are lettuce, peas, green beans, tomatoes, peppers and radishes.  I'm also still attempting carrots (I need to amend my soil with broken up packing peanuts to help lighten up the soil) and my son really wanted to do zucchini, so I'm trying that!  So far the zucchini sprouts are strong and growing fast (we just planted them over a week ago).  My herbs are doing great and I have tons of basil (which is good since I love to make pesto!).  I have to water almost every day with a large bucket and have found that watering my plants from the saucer at the base of the pots works best for strong roots and reducing fungus on warm humid days.

Since my balcony can only grow so much, I get many of my veggies and fruits from Whole Foods (which is on the next block!) or the farmer's markets when I am able to.  My friends often ask why I don't move to the burbs so I can have a large yard and garden, but as tempting as that is, I still love gardening in the city... and walking through the incredible scenery of Central Park, the Conservancy Gardens nearby and other landscapes that can only be in New York (the High Line is one of my favs! I'll do a post on that soon!).

Tell me about your garden or where you get your summer veggies...

Welcome to Sprout's GREEN Blog Hop!
The weekly blog hop for GREEN Bloggers to meet, share and grow our eco-friendly network and do 1 new green thing each week!

Every week a new linky will be posted. Join in on the fun!  I would love to team up with other GREEN bloggers, so if you would like to co-host next week's hop, please leave a comment below and I will randomly select 1 comment to co-host next week.  Please spread the word - the more people who know about this hop, them more we can connect to and expand the Green Network!

THIS WEEK'S THEME: Eco-friendly ways to stay cool!  Got a great tip? Share it in the comments section below!

THIS WEEK'S CO-HOSTS:

Sprout's GREEN Family

Going Green with Noah 

NEW this week:  It's A Mom's World: GreenLiving for the Whole Family

and: Untrained Hair Mom

 

Suggested Guidelines:

1. Please follow Sprout's Green Family on GFC

2. Follow the co-hosts on GFC and as many others on the list as you would like - if you already follow them, follow them by some other means (facebook, twitter, networked blogs...)

3. Be sure to leave a comment with your green tip and so we know to follow you back

4. Follow as many other GREEN bloggers in this hop as you want - the more  you follow, the more will follow you back and the larger our green network grows!

Optional:
- Follow @sprout5 on twitter
- Tweet about this hop and include @sprout5 and #ecomonday in text

1. Host: Sprout's Green Family	2. Co-host: Going Green with Noah	3. Co-host: It's a Mom's World	4. Co-host: Untrained Hair Mom
5. Hallie	6. Good Girl Gone Green	7. Tiny Green Elephants	8. Jem's Room green parenting tips

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