So much has been happening, I don’t know where to begin. I always promise myself that I will blog once a week. I don’t Its terrible.

Home Grown Tomatoes

We have been busy beavers over at the shop and have been making all sorts of mischief. Over the past coupla weeks we have totally transformed out outside space into a big, luscious garden. We have also planted a few thousand herbs, veggies and fruits just for you. We like to grow our own so we know its all good and organic, and we can grow all sorts of cool varieties that I never see on the market.

Teapot Vase Featured in Time Out New York

Mother’s Day is around the corner, I peeked in my back yard and saw the first roses. They always bloom around Mother’s Day. The market has been full of GEORGOUS! Peonies and I can’t get enough of them, Lilacs have also been coming around….but this year I have been mad about Hyacinths. Hyacinths have the sweetest scent and I have noticed an incredibly long vase life. We take a lot of care when processing them to make sure that they last extra long. Click here to place your order, we sell out.

Photo by Danny Kim for New York Magazine

Wedding season has begun and we are in full force production. I was excited to see that we where one of the few people selected to be in New York Magazine’s Summer 2012 issue. This beautiful headpiece is made of Wax Flower and Anenomies. I was inspired by some vintage headpieces that I had collected. These can be made and shipped overnight all over the country.

Me on Martha Stewart

Press!! In addition, we were named as one of the top 10 garden centers in New York City by Time Out New York. I was shocked and incredibly honored to be on the same list as Jamali and the Garden center at New York Botanical Garden. Even happier because we didn’t need to have a mascot or some trendy gimmick to get there, just great plants, cool gifts, and sound advice.

Martha!! I was so excited to be on the Martha Stewart Show. OK, in the audience on the Martha Stewart Show. It was a special about Etsy and the great sellers there they featured a terrarium class that I taught at Etsy Labs. My mom was excited to see me on National Television but didn’t understand why I wasn’t interviewed and on the show more, thanks Mom.

Birds and Bees

Speaking of Mascots though…I love bees and our birds. Yesterday I had the pleasure of installing not one, but two packages of Bees. These are Italian honey bees shipped up from Georgia and they are chemical free. I am proud of my organic bees. We put a hive on the roof of our studio along side our Fruit trees that we just planted. Ok. Yes I hauled a few dozen fruit trees onto a

Tara and the Bees

roof, but what the hell. A little exercise won’t kill me. I hope the bees will feel at home. I also put in an observation hive so that everyone can come and see the bees in action.

Tara, is my bee keeper partner. She grew up in Queens and has been keeping bees since she was a little girl, before it became all kinds of cool and trendy and she got me hooked on bees. Last year she got stung and discovered that she is allergic, after all, but was still a trooper and put on the white suite and ventured forward. I can’t wait for the honey and bees wax.

Moss Graffitti

Moss Graffiti. We love moss and taught a fun class on how to paint with plants.

Robb put together a nice presentation and even played MC Hammer to get people inspired to make some graffiti.

Last night we had the pleasure of teaching not one but two classes at Etsy Labs.
Nestled in a converted factory building in Dumbo, Etsy Labs is a wonderful place full of crafting treasures. All the work is done on huge, over-sized wooden tables and the walls are lined with all sorts of scissors, brushes, glitter, glue, screen-printing materials and more. I love it. Lavender and I have taken classes there and we really enjoy them its a lot of fun.

We were joined by Britta Riley of Windowfarms , Just Food, and Compost for Brooklyn to talk about all things green and good.

SEED BOMBS!

Seed Bombs

We were invited to teach about Terrariums and Seed Bombs there. Those are two of my favorite things!

Seed bombs are made with clay, organic matter and seeds. They were invented by native Americans who lived in nomadic tribes. The seed bombs are a way to insure that the seed will have enough moisture and food to grow if gardens are planted and not tended to. By doing this, the tribes were able to plant gardens, travel and come back to reap the rewards. They are perfect for chucking into some piece of land where access may be prohibited.

The clay acts as a binder and as a source for water and moisture. Clay retains water very well and slowly releases it to the seeds and little plants. The organic matter, compost or worm castings, feed the seeds.

Seed bombs can be placed on the surface of a pot to grow or they can be put in a tree pit or chucked into a vacant piece of land. If sowing “in the wild” so to speak, please make sure that you use native plants and not invasive species. What a way to get your Guerilla Garden going

Wild Flowers and Mallets

How to make Seed Bombs.

Ingredients

• 2 parts garden soil
• 1 part Clay powder
• Worm castings or compost
• Seeds
• Water
• Trust and Love

1. To make clay powder, purchase red sculpting clay from an art supply store, cut it very thinly with a wire and let dry. Pulverize with a mallet or a meat grinder. This is the hardest part. I think about urban blight and pretty flowers when I am pounding clay. Old boyfriends, annoying room mates or a mean boss may be some other sources for inspiration.
2. Mix the soil and the clay together and sprinkle some worm castings on top. If using compost, then omit the worm castings and replace the soil with compost.
3. Add enough water to form a ball and have the materials bind together. Very similar to making a pastry crust. Not too much water, not too little, just enough to get it to stick together, add a little at a time.
4. Roll about 5 seeds onto each ball. Just 5 . maybe even 3. Remember that each little seed has the potential to grow into a plant.
5. Let dry for a couple of days and enjoy. Trust that your seeds will grow, and Love the beautiful gardens that you create.

Terrariums!

Terrariums

Wow, wow and just wow.

We have been making terrariums for a few years now and I am still overwhelmed by how popular these are and continue to be.

I haven’t gotten the official count yet, but from my estimate, we taught about 150 people how to make them yesterday.

It was BYOC (bring your own container) and people showed up with everything from 1 gallon jugs  to little test tubes. We made moss terrariums yesterday, just to keep it simple.

Here is how you make a moss terrarium. I must have repeated these steps about 50 150 times yesterday so I know it pretty well.

How to make a Terrarium

Termaid

Ingredients

• Clear Glass Container, with or without a lid
• Rocks
• Sheet moss or Sphagnum Moss
• Charcoal
• Peat Moss
• More moss and Decor

1. Add a layer of rocks on the bottom. Make sure that you use clean rocks that are scaled with your container.
2. Add a barrier layer of sheet moss or sphagnum moss
3. Add a thin layer of charcoal
4. Add a layer of peat moss…
5. OK. Now let the fun begin. You can plant this with moss, lichens, decor, mini plants, what have you. MOSS MOSS and More MOSS!

I saw all sorts of things from a lady that looked like a mermaid in a terrarium, I call her the TERMAID, to little figurines.

I brought in some mini slate slabs that people colored with pencils. Those were pretty cool.

As always, we are available for any of your terrarium questions.

Check out the fun action below.

ps. a certain film crew from a certain tv show that has the initials MSL was there documenting the whole event. Can’t wait to see the footage!

Seeds, seeds, seeds.

I love seeds. I really do. I like looking at the catalogs, reading all the descriptions, trying all the varieties, saving seeds, collecting seeds, trading seeds. I love talking to seed growers and getting all nerdy about all the different cultivators and reminiscing. When we say Brandywine, or Moon and Stars, Even Freckles and Deer Tounge, we smile, because we know what that means an we all have our favorites.

If you haven’t tried it, using seeds to start your garden can be very rewarding. There are so many varieties that just wouldn’t be available to you if you didn’t grow them yourself, even things that (gasp) would not be available at the Farmer’s market. I know, I know, they seem to have everything but there are some bizarro things out there, Purple, Conical Cauliflower?. Lettuce, radishes, and beans and sunflowers are very easy and if you are timid, I suggest you start with those.

We teach a few classes on how to start seeds. I am always proud when my students come back and show me pictures of what they grew. One of my very first students moved on to create his own Roof Top Seed company, I am so proud.

I personally have tried almost every method of seed starting and there are two that I will swear by, ok, three that I swear by. These are; winter sowing, jiffy pellets, and baby beds.

Seeds are a miracle and once water is added, the whole process of life begins. Have you watched your garden in the spring, and notice how bare the earth is, and suddenly, after a warm day, life pops up out of nowhere? Weeds, weeds, weeds and lots of them. No one mollycoddles these plants, no one sets up growlights or painstakingly cares for them and yet they grow. Whaddup with that? Sometimes you will notice that the seedlings look a little familiar and many times, healthier, but smaller versions of ones you started in your home weeks before. Those volunteer tomato plants, sunflowers, and herbs just pop up, all on their own. Get Out! These seeds rest in the ground all winter and when the time is right, for them, POP! I have noticed that the volunteer plants almost always catch up to the ones I started, and even out grow them, not fair.

There is a method called Winter Sowing. Basically, you take your seed starting kit, take out container, milk jug or what have you and you plant your seeds, water them, and place the whole thing outside, in the middle of winter, in the snow. When the time is right for those seeds to grow, they will, with no help from you, and they will thrive and be healthy. Just be sure to water them when the weather warms up. The cold kills any of the damp-off fungi, and also helps striate hard seed coats. This is the only way that I have been able to successfully grow Lupins and Columbine (both native plants) from seed. Funny enough, tomatoes, and peppers also do very well using this method. It may not be as much fun as starting them inside, but you will get good results.When the seedlings are large enough, you just move them to where you would like them to be in the garden.Yes, it is that easy. You don’t need to worry about planting charts, frost dates, grow lights….ect. They will grow when they are ready to, it almost takes all the fun out of it.

Jiffy pellets, I love, love, love them. Before I had a garden in the city, I had one in the country in upstate New York and I would grow my seedlings at home; first in a walkup in Alphabet City, and then in a real grown up’s apartment in Park Slope, even in the hatchback of my Saab, which was a terrific greenhouse, as well as a fun car.

Starting seeds can be messy and the fine seed starting mix can go everywhere. Filling the trays is a hassle and it always makes a mess. One year I discovered Jiffy 7′s and I was hooked. Jiffy’s are little disks of peat-moss that are flat, but when you add water, they pop up into little pots that are surrounded by netting. Storage is easy and they last forever.

Mini Greenhouse

Put three seeds in a little pot, cover with a clear lid and wait for your seeds to sprout. Take off the lid and watch your plants grow. When you transplant, move the pot into the soil, its that easy. Sometimes I rip off the little net, sometimes not. These pellets come in little mini greenhouses with 6, 12, 20 or 72 pellets. 72 will fit into a full tray, and they work great in combination with the plastic 6 packs that come with the 72 cell greenhouses. 72 plants! once you get started, you will want more, and more and more….

Other methods, peat pots, newspaper cups, the paper towel, ect…. never worked out that great for me and I always had watering issues, mold (especially with the newspaper cups) and general poor performance.

The last method that I like is similar to the winter gardening method but uses a cold frame instead of individual containers. You basically set up a small raised bed, about 2′ x 4′ and fill it with a light mixture of vermiculite and peat or coir with some sand. 3 parts peat or coir to one part sand and one part vermiculite. A 15g smartpot would also do well.

Smart Pot

Plant your seeds, well spaced, in little rows, don’t forget to label them. When the plants are big enough, use a transplant trowel (skinny and thin) and move them to where you want them. If you like you can cover the box with plastic hoops or with an old window or piece of glass, creating a cold frame. Don’t forget to prop it open on sunny days or you will have an oven.

The backs of seed packets have lots of great information. Ignore most of the planting instructions, except for if it tells you to direct sow, some seedlings don’t like to be moved around much. Remember to always space your seeds, each seed has the potential of becoming a little plant. A pack of lettuce seed can have up to 400 seeds, so avoid at all costs, making a little furrow and sprinkling all the seeds in that furrow. Thinning is a waste of time, and a waste of seed, and it is damages the plants. Its always best to put 3 seeds in a spot, every few inches. One out of three is bound to grow.

August News, Big Sale!

It has been a long, hot summer. Time to sow your fall crops. These cool nights are reminding me that fall is just around the corner.

Did you know that now is the perfect time to sow seeds for those cold weather vegetables? Every time I go to my favorite restaurant in Greenpoint, the ones with the Knights, who’s name I can never pronounce, I think about fall crops. All those lovely cabbages, carrots, parsnips, beets, and turnips; they love cool weather and now is the time to sow your seeds. If you have a little spot where perhaps a zucchini didn’t make it (damn caterpillars) or a plant that is just limping along, yank it and sow some seed. Didn’t get around to planting a garden this year, don’t worry, you can sow these now. Varieties like dwarf kale, carrots, spinach and lettuce work great in containers, so don’t let a lack of an outdoor space stop you

Twig Terrariums!Crime

It ain't no Crime

It Ain’t no crime to love terrariums, we do for sure. Twig is back in the house and will be teaching a workshop all about Terrariums. Featured at the Museum of Arts and Design, Twig has bought terrariums to a new level, and the girls are super sweet too. Come take their class and learn all about terrariums.

BYOC Terrariums. Have a special container that you love, want to learn a little more about DIY terrariums? Take our BYOC class and bring your own container.

BIG FAT SALE!
Yip-pie, it is our end of summer sale. Now that your sunburns have finally turned into tans, I know its time for a sale. All outdoor plants are 30% off, All gardening supplies, hoses, tools, are 50% off.. WHAAAT? We have to make room for fall plants, so buh-by, summer plants, buh-by, soaker hoses, buh-by and buh-by rakes, spades, and forks.

Give the Gift of Love. Dahlias and Celosia Locally grown flowers

Did you know that Flowers are a natural Aphrodisiac? They are, why do you think they have been gifted since ancient times? We all need a little love, right? So to help we are bringing back HAPPY FLOWER HOUR, so from now until Labor Day, we will be offering 30% off all fresh cut flowers, Thursday-Sunday from 5pm to 7pm. Our Flowers are Locally Grown, so you can skip the crowds at the Farmers Market and save your Weekend for other stuff, bow-chicka-bow-wow. If you want to be even more romantic, you can have one of our stunning bouquets delivered to your sweeties door. Call 718-486-3569 or Order On line for a single bouquet or up to a year’s worth of flowers, delivered to your sweet-heart once a month for up to a year.

Cool Places for your Air plants to Chill.

Air plants need homes too, and we have lots of cool globes, lanterns, and twig wreaths for your little friends to hang on. Don’t have any air plants? Don’t worry, we have plenty of those in stock too.

Great Minds? I like to think so and I was super excited when I saw my favorite pots featured on Design Sponge, My favorite design blog.

Great minds think alike? We have a full selection of beautiful Campo di Fiore pots with luscious live moss come and snag yours. Once planted, Campo de Fiori terracotta pots will begin the natural aging process, creating a varied surface texture of vibrant mosses along with naturally occurring colors that evoke the classic look of antiquity. We are proud to have them at our shop.

Campo di Fiore Moss Pots

NEW HOUSEPLANTS!! We just got in a new shipment of crazy houseplants just for you. Lots of low light plants for that middle room in your railroad apartment, lots of tall plants for that double high window in your duplex. No green thumb? Don’t worry, we have a class just for you.Creeping Fig

Rhipsalis

GETTING MARRIED?

Have a friend who is tying the knot, jumping the broom, taking the plunge, well you get the picture. Our wedding flowers have been featured in New York Magazine, and on Merci Bride Kimberly will teach you the ins and outs of personal flowers, how to make your own corsages, bouquets, and boutonnieres. Look all fancy all the time.

Moss Boutonniere

Hope to see you in the shop soon!

Kimberly, Enrique, Lavender and Sweet William.

Rose Red & Lavender
653 Metropolitan Avenue
www.roseredandlavender.com

I love making Jelly. What a terrific way to capture the tastes of Summer in a jar. I started making jelly when I was a little girl. I would help my mother pick the first summer strawberries, and we would make delicious jam.

Our strawberries grew wild, by the edge of the woods, we lived in a house on property on top of a mountain in Western Maryland where my mother’s family had lived since 1720….who knows where those strawberries came from but they were teeny tiny and very, very sweet.
She would make the jam and can it in quilted jelly jars and pour hot wax over the top. Back then, where we lived, jelly jars were small, narrow glasses, some of them had pretty graphics printed on them, others, had fancy quilting and some were just plain. They were sealed with wax, topped with some cotton batting and then covered with a piece of fabric and tied.

We traded our extras with our Mennonite neighbors and it was always a treat to taste what they made.
Our closest neighbor, Van, who lived over the hill, had an old farm house with a pump in the kitchen and a wet sink and a dry sink. The wet sink was made of carved soap stone and the dry sink was made of wood. I loved to visit her and pump water in the kitchen, she was very sweet and always wore black shoes, floral dresses, a clean apron and a little white cap trimmed with lace.

Van made the best pickles which we traded for some strawberry jam.
Yesterday, I did a demonstration at the Williamsburg Farmer’s Market. It was a lot of fun. The day was beautiful and I made Strawberry Jam with Black Pepper and Mint. This is a variation of a classic French recipe that I love. The french version takes 3 days to make, mine takes about 20 minutes.

We started with fresh strawberries, hulled and cut in half. To these we added the juice of one lemon and a box of pectin. Pectin comes from sour apples or citrus rind and is completely natural and ok by me to use, its not chemicals and completely necessary for some types of fruits to jel. Stirring, I bought this to a boil and added sugar. I cooked the whole thing until jelly stage and turned off the heat. I added some chopped mint an d a dash of black pepper, stirred and let it sit one minute.
I ladled everything into modern 3 pc. jelly jars which I steralized at home, wiped the rims and inverted the jars.
Strawberry Jam was Born…..
Robert from the market invited us back to make pickles, so stay tuned for some bread and butter slices….recipe from my old Mennonite neighbors.

Button holes, hairpieces, corsages, bouquets and boutonnières, I love them all. In the trade, we call them personal flowers; I think they are a lot of fun to make and extremely rewarding.

Tiger Lily

Most boutonnières that we make consist of four elements; greenery, a main flower or grouping of flowers, some sort of botanical element, and trim typically they are used for weddings, or some important dinner.

It takes a lot of work to get the look right and a lot of finesse to hide all the parts and pieces. I always feel very Japanese when I make personal flowers because of all the attention to detail that it takes and the implied simplicity of the form. Each individual element is carefully selected, individually wired and taped and a simple boutonnière may have six to seven components. No, its not just a flower and a leaf wrapped with some tape.

Moss and Berry

Care has to be taken because these are usually in every picture of a couple and often photographed at close range so all the armatures and doodads must be hidden and the flowers must be kept fresh looking all day and while centerpieces and bouquets can be made a day ahead, personal flowers must be made the day they are used.

Pussy Galore

I am so happy that I am seeing resurgence in interest in boutonnières. I think they are super cool and thanks to shows like Boardwalk Empire, local dudes are becoming more appreciative about being dressed up, and accessorized I often get requests for special flowers for birthdays and even Friday night dates.

Last weekend, The Brooklyn Kitchen and The Meathook had their one-year anniversary. They decided to celebrate by throwing a prom and chose little old us, to be the florist of choice for their personal flowers.

When the orders came, I did get some design direction, like “Big-N-Pink” and “70’s Texan Prom” but for the most part, I was flying blind. Most of the lads that I spoke with seemed to be a little standoffish about the whole flower thing. Flash back to the 9th grade, and a homecoming dance where all the guys thought they were too cool for a boutonnière, and that their friends would make fun of them. I started thinking about our local florist and her love for carnations, babies breath and fern and big, big tacky ribbon adornments, they probably were right.

Orange Berry

Should I have played it safe, I wondered? Carnations boutonnières and orchid corsages for everyone? Give people what they remembered as corsages, akin to those horrors that are sold in Costco and in the aisles of supermarkets. Nah… I wanted to have some fun.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I had carte blanche to create whatever I wanted. I wanted to make sure that the guys had respectable and cool flowers, and that the girls wouldn’t have to wear anything too campy. I just remembered a pile of vintage PBR patches that I have in my kit, dammit, next time.

Must Smell Nice

The theme of the prom was “under water, in the sky” so I made a bunch of sets using shells. I also made a series of James Bond inspired flowers with names like “Tiger Lily”, “Gold Finger”, and “Pussy Galore”

It was fun, and the icing on the cake for me was when someone commented that I had changed her boyfriend’s opinion about flower shops. Yipee!… And now lets get ready for Valentine’s day.

We had a fun Terrarium class Thursday and wrecked all sorts of lightbulbs.

I was showing how to gut a lightbulb and managed to smash right through it. I think that made everyone feel a little better, and not so nervous about smashing theirs. No other bulbs were broken.
It never fails to amaze me how when people are given the same basic ingredients, they can come up with so many variations. Example, bulbs, moss, lichen and a figurine.
Look at the results.

Alice

Lady

Man

A few weeks ago I was chatting with some folks from Etsy about lightbulb terrariums. I love making them. There is a divine pleasure in breaking some glass, ripping the guts out of a lightbulb, and making something beautiful out of it. The folks at Etsy agreed and decided to make a video of the whole process.

Anyhow, here it is, I hope you enjoy it.