Who I am and What Im Doing

Hey everyone and thanks for taking a second to stop here on my blog. I wanted to have as my first post an introduction about who I am, my goals for this site, and my personal goal for my garden for this year.

My name is Monti and I am a transplant to New York (Bushwick in particular) from Virginia. I have always been interested in great food, but ironically, never took seriously the idea about growing my own until moving to New York.  I love cooking and making lavish meals from scratch for myself and my friends and this is how my interest flourished.  I was constantly annoyed at after buying herbs they would go bad before I could use all of it. Now, I have two compost piles so at least I can put the rotting herbs to use, but it is still annoying. My first attempt to grow something other than a houseplant was a year ago growing cilantro in my window and I have never looked back.

Next, came growing leafy greens and some tomatoes and peppers under a grow light. While in theory, this would save me a ton of money versus buying fresh produce at the farmers marker/grocery store, it ends up being a wash due to the cost of the electricity used with the growlight, but the flavor makes it worthwhile. Now, I am expanding again by using the roof to grow a lot more produce on the roof from strawberries to thai chili peppers to sweet potatoes to beautiful flowers to attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Im so excited for this summer and can see a lot of garden parties!

There are a ton of resources out there about just about every aspect of gardening. I haven’t seen many focused mainly on growing under growlights (using soil) and growing in an urban environment on the roof. This site will primarily be a journal of my journey with a lot of tips/tricks/resources thrown in an attempt to remind myself of what works and what doesn’t and to also be a guide for you if you want to start a similar journey. I can be reached at brooklynorganicgardener@gmail.com.

Next up, will be a list of my goals for the site and garden and some pictures of my landscape before I begin. For now, I invite you to contact me to let me know of some of your tips for urban rooftop gardening or awesome resources that you have found that would be helpful. Thanks for reading. Talk soon!