My 2024 NYC Garden Layout // Plan my urban garden with me

Welcome to my urban garden! My name is Mari and I’m gardening in Queens, New York City. Zone 7b. And today I’ll be sharing with you what I plan to grow in my NYC garden for the 2024 growing season.

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Email: marisgardenandkitchen@gmail.com

Find out your first and last frost dates:
https://www.almanac.com/gardening/frostdates/zipcode

Soil and Gardening in NYC: https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/urban-gardening.page#:~:text=Do%20not%20grow%20root%20vegetables,direct%20contact%20with%20the%20soil.

Tips for safe urban gardening: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/environmental/gardening-contaminated-soil.pdf

Floret YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/@floretflowerfarm

GreenStalk Vertical Planter Discount: https://greenstalkgarden.com/?rstr=MARISGARDEN
Use code “MARISGARDEN” for $10 off $75+ order

Gardening Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHDaYPV0vsswZCVCZaYwUJ1WUmPPniPoA

Urban Heat Island Image Source: https://www.littlerock.gov/city-administration/city-departments/public-works/sustainability/urban-heat-islands/

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Hello everyone and welcome if you’re new here my name is Marie and I’m gardening Queens New York City and today I’m super excited to share with you the garden plan for the 2024 growing season so I’m not only going to share with you the garden plans for this year but I’m also

Going to guide you through my process I have a small backyard garden in a rental apartment and I also have access to bit of a bigger space about 10 minutes away from me and today we’re going to be planting both Gardens so the first thing with planting the garden is a good idea

To draw out your face if you don’t have all the measurements and everything you can just do it by hand just visually and draw the way that you know your garden is or what I tried to do this year I just went on Google Earth put my address

In there and then print an image of my backyard so this is what my backyard looks like I basically have this Square here there’s a little patio I have a raised bed here that was already in the apartment there’s a tree that gives me some shade in here and add some space

Along the fence here that I like to do some containers first thing I’m taking taking consideration is sunlight so my backyard here I am lucky that I have a salt facing backyard so I receive lots of sunlight through the day and it gets very warm because I have lots of

Concrete surrounding me so it’s a bit hotter and warmer the temperature outside than the forecast temperature on your phone usually says so I learned that but at the plot for instance and the front yard they’re both north facing so it’s a completely different thing even though we’re in the same

Neighborhood we have different conditions that affect that so the plot this is the orientation it’s north facing what means that the sun actually comes behind all of these buildings here it go that way so I have sunrise in here it goes all the way here then gets super

Blocked by the tall buildings that I have on the street in the afternoon so the plots usually completely shade in the afternoon even the summer but the advantages is I get some early morning sun in the spring which kind of hits up the space a little faster it’s hard to

Draw when it’s like this in the angles but but it’s just helpful to know about your scent situation so what I did too I just moved around and printed straight so it’s easier for me to draw and I ended up drawing this so after you have everything drawn we have our base map

Ready it can be as simple as you want then we’re going to start thinking about our goals my goal for this year is to have a productive abundant Garden I want to grow nutritious and flavorful food but I also want to introduce Beauty and Aesthetics and I can accomplish that by

Adding beautiful colorful flowers and with that I also encourage the production of my vegetable garden because I am also encouraging pollinat in Wild Life to come to my garden too and beneficial insects so if I have different plants different flowers the whole variety of beneficial insects they also help me with past control

Inevitably you’re going to attract all kinds of bugs to your garden the ones that are not super helpful like cucumber beetles or the vine borers or tomato horn worms but you can also attract your Predators you can attract ladybugs I love eating apads you can have lace wigs

And wasps that would take care of some of the other bugs too I like to encourage Birds to the plot because Birds also eat little bugs and some cardill and lav and stuff like that I’ve many times seen in the plot they’re coming they’re you know scratching the

Soil they’re picking in there or they just going to plant and start picking there so that’s a good thing and for that I like to plant maybe seed producing crops like sunflowers and keeping keeping Beauty in mind and mental health to be honest stuff to live

In a city that is so gr like New York and so competitive so for my own well-being I really want to grow more flowers in my backyard I have learned that you can grow a lot of food in a small space in 2022 I grew a lot more

Produce and vegetables that we could handle eating it we shared with neighbors we caned we preserved fermented we pickled but we still had too much and to be honest it felt a bit overwhelming so that’s something I also keep in mind on my gardening planning this year I want want to produce enough

Obviously some to share because it’s the fun part of the garden too is to get you know connected with people and share what you grow but not so much that now adds so much to my routine that makes me super overwhelmed leading me to a burnout in the summer that’s not what I

Want I want this Garden to be a pleasurable space I want this G to be my refuge to be a place that I go to calm my mind you know to feel connected with nature to appreciate Beauty and to also give me some food know some nutritious

Food but just enough food I decided with that in the plot to only grow half of the plot with vegetables and the other half with flowers diversity is also important for me so grow growing vegetables and flowers I want to support St Wildlife here in New York I’ll be

Honest with you when I first moved to the city and I started gardening I was afraid I was not going to get bees it’s like I’m going to have to hand pollinate everything cuz the bees is not going to come I was wrong there’s tons of parks and lots of flowers everywhere that

There are many pollinators and bugs and birds and little animals that will come to your garden too which is good and I appreciate that and I want to encourage that so diversity is important so I want to also introduce some native plants to my AA to create some resilience those

Plants tolerate my climate well they’re accustomed to it and thrive in the space that I’m growing also attract lots of these native insects and birds that depend on them to survive so last but not least I want to make a bit of a lower maintenance Garden sometimes if

You just let yourself go like I did and plant everything everywhere thinking that half of them are going to die because you know you don’t know what you’re doing but instead all of them grow and Thrive and produce a million things and now you’re in a space that

You overwhelmed then you don’t know what to do and then you Garden girls bigger than you you know you can’t have enough time in the week to go there and tame it so now the vines are growing everywhere you have weeds everywhere the fruits are falling tring the RO and say you don’t

Want to it can get a bit overwhelming so I want to have a place that it’s possible for me to manage by myself to account with the realistic amount of time that I have to to dedicate to my garden okay now that we talked about goals let’s talk about the fun part our

Plant selection I have put a lot of thought of selecting my plants to the Garden this year my first criteria was I want to grow most of the things that I already have because I did get too excited my first years of gardening I bought way too many seeds I can probably

Have a farm with the amount of seeds that I have so I did my very best to not order anything this year did one seed order which I shared with you guys in the pess video but was very little was four package of seeds only and I still

Have a lot of seed left so I ended up with this much for my summer garden all varieties that I have already own and I have already started a lot of my cool seasoned vegetables so part of your plant selection will also depend you know when you KN your Zone and your

Climate and your first and last frost dates so here in New York City in Queens we are Zone 7B I know a lot of people changed their zones this year but that stayed for us the same 7B we have the Urban heat island effect here too which

Makes us about 10° hotter than our surrounding areas we’re very hot and humid in the summer we have a good average rainfall New York has about a 50 in a year average rainfall which is pretty good you can kind of rely on rain to water the garden too and then your

Restrictions okay make your wish list I love to grow all this I’m going to think about it I love myself to grow onions and garlic and potatoes and all of that but I have to deal with possibly contaminated soil here so those are not

Going to go in the ground for me I still have a chance to grow them because I have vertical Planters but also onions are so cheap at the supermarket that I don’t want to give some precious space put that in my small garden when I could do tomatoes for instance that I can

Taste a ginormous difference between homeown tomatoes and Supermarket Tomatoes the onions I will definitely grow them when I have a bigger home one day in the future but for now it’s just not worth it for me so if you’re in an urban area you might have to think of

Contaminated soil you can get your soil tested if you want there can be a bit pricey especially if you’re testing for heavy metals so I’ve learned here from a few classes I’ve taken that you can just assume it’s contaminated and take some precautions to not pass that to your

Food so one of the things that you can do is only grow above the ground plants so you grow things that fruit and plants that grow up so tomatoes peppers eggplant they will grow up the stem you can trim the bottom leaves give a good space between the soil and the leaves

Hopefully mulch it so you prevent spice back from this rain and then your Harvest is going to be on the top the plants itself won’t uptake a lot of the toxins and the roots from what I’ve learned so it’s still okay to plant fru in plants like that but not really good

To plant things that have direct contact with the soil like root vegetables gy greens Etc on top of that I have a rat problem or I had a rat problem last year let’s say they finally found my garden last year we were gone for a month and

The garden got no maintenance a little bushy and wedi and give them the perfect space to go and make their nest set and it was a bit of a battle to be able to take them out I almost gave up on gardening there but then I took a class

About managing rats in urban Gardens and that gave me more confidence to try again this year I know to implement a few things to discourage them from coming to my garden to begin with which will be also same thing giving space between the plants they like places that

They can hide or the low hanging things touching the soil she trying to prevent rats and rodents don’t do that try to plant things that are high and get some space between the soil and the plant obviously you can plant some smaller things like a little Merry gold or

Something like that they’ll be B but here but make sure there’s enough space that you can see what’s going on around that they can’t hide or get triggered to dig and make their borrows in there so I will not overplanted so much also I tend

To plant a lot but I need to kind of leave it a little bit more spare this so I can see what’s going on and discourage this rats to go back possibly there so the little ones that were born there the year before don’t come back anyway so

Those are my restrictions have written in here the plants that I plan to grow I also have the varieties in here it’s just in a separate box but I wanted to have it together with the same drawing of the garden plan but I’m only going to go over today the main cultivars which

All the the plants are any where they’re going to go I’ll make another video later explain each variety that I’m planning to grow so this video is not too long but I wanted to keep in here just for my own reference so tomatoes are the ones that we like growing the

Most I did grow way too much of it in 2022 so this here I narrow down to 10 plants of the big tomatoes and four plants of the cherries my 10 tomato plants are going to leave in the plot garden and I’m only going to dedicate

Two beds for tomatoes this year so this one over here and this one over here is going to be for tomatoes I’m going to write it in here and the reason why I picked those two beds is cuz I’m trying a different Tris in system I want to put some kind

Of connect this fence to these arches here here and try to trus my tomatoes that way I’ll will show that to you guys with the grow season coming I’ll make a video about it but in the year that I had my good tomato year in 2022 my

Plants tended to become way too big for what I had and flop over so I’m trying to make sure I have a trailers that is tall enough to support all of their Healthy Growth this season and I’m going to keep the Sherry Tomatoes close by me

Here on my backyard and I’ll grow them in buckets and containers moving on to the next beds we’re going to grow peppers here here this year right next to the tomatoes right here I want to grow eggplant so I want a peppers tomatoes and eggplant close together the reason why too it’s because

This side of the garden is the sunniest side we have buildings behind here and this gets shaded first and then Shades here so this usually receives the most amount of sunlight so I’m going to put a lot of the really heat loving plants on this side over here now this part used

To be a compost and I’m turning that into to a three sister garden bed this year probably want to do uh maybe three six okras in here because since this is going to be a three sister bread so three sisters are corn squash and beans I’m going to do

Corn baby 10 corns and then I want to do two squashes this year a big squash in here and a big squash in here those are going to be winter squashes I want this one here which will be a bigger one kind of send its sleaves

And sort of act a bit like Mulch and they will help shading the soil a little bit because they have prickly leaves they kind of keep the little small creatures away mammals and stuff so that’s what I want to see if it works for me in the garden this year too they

Block the sun keep the soil moist and also hopefully avoid some der rodents to walk around everywhere and they are adapted to the climate that we grow in so I want to give it a try one more time and that would be mostly the plants that grow up the squashes that exception but

The squash I think is still the leaves are spare enough and prickly enough they will actually deter the rats instead of attracting them we’ll see we’ll find out also I have a Vine borrower problem here Vine borrowers there’s flying bugs that will put an egg in the leaf of the

Squash and that this lva will hatch and go inside the stem the stem is hollow it will make a borrow in the stem and damage the plant so that happened to me every year TR to grow squash here but then I learned that if I let my squash

Spar down on the ground they can s a set of advantageous Roots so where the stems touches the ground they will root in there and also help the plant giving more nutrients and becoming stronger so if does get affected by a Vine b in a different location they still be able to

Grow so we’ll see let’s see if it works obviously I’m not super comfortable having my squat to in the soil because of a problem with contamination but I am thinking that I might try to cover them stockings or something and also they have a hard shell right they have a hard

Outer layer so I’ll just make sure sure that I peel it before I eat it cuz I know that could have been contaminated too with the contact with the soil with this first Thrillers here I want to grow a vining plant so I’m growing at Magnolia tender pee so it’s a purple pee

That has sort of a strong Vining habit and it will grow early I want to have that filled up a little bit earlier in the season and I’ll be able to harvest some peas from that too and then on the second one I’m going to grow some long

Beans which I really like to eat and I think they will look very nice and the trilers too I really hope that they can fill that up and make it look very pretty this year I’m growing actually po beans on the th is a bed too but those

Are going to be using the corn as their support to grow upright this area here is heavily shaded so I’m thinking to put some flowers in here because they the veggies usually tend to require more sun flowers would do better if they have Sun of course but they will tolerate a bit

More shade than the vegetables you but I don’t need them to produce fruits so they can still do okay with a bit of shade on them I still get six hours of full sun here in the morning I have a fig train here that also gives me a lot

Of shade that was already planted by my D’s father when he used to Garden there and then there’s a grape vine that was also planted by him many many years ago it’s very strong and established and it kind of takes over everywhere so this year I’m going to learn more about

Growing grapes and try to manage it better there’s some maybe things in here like potatoes I say that can’t grow them in the ground but I have grown them in buckets before and had good success with them so I might put buckets of potatoes right here on this side and this here

Are going to be cool flowers so I have started already all of these cool flowers this is the entrance of the garden and I want the entrance of the garden to look very pretty so I want to try to put cut flowers here I have the

Pictures of my flowers in here those are the flowers that I have started for my clue season garden and hopefully all of them will do well so far only the poppy right right here haven’t germinated so I might not have that I also want to dedicate this area here of the flood for

Flowers as well to attract more pollinators on the next bed I have r beas that I’m not sure if they’re going to come back or not this season so I’m going to wait for them and see if they will come back before I make a plan for

This space I loved growing flowers last year and as I said I want to dedicate the whole half of the plot to that that’ll be very helpful also with pollinators and hopefully help us out a little bit more with Pest Control I’m we planning to maybe grow some cucumbers

Right next to the arch as well but I haven’t decided yet I still have to think about it and that will be it for the plot I’m planting the things that I can’t grow in the ground because of the contaminants and my restrictions being an urban area in containers right here

In my backyard so it’s in clean soil safe above the ground and you still be able to enjoy those varieties too so I have two green stocks that live right here that I plan to do one with brass CU of seas and crops so they’ll have cauliflower broccoli kale and May maybe

Some flowers and herbs another green stock that I’m not going to plant in the spring I’m going to wait and I’m going to plant with hot peppers when time comes around May then I have my greens over here by my door cuz it’s easy for

Me to access and I eat greens all the time so I wanted to keep it up here and that’s going to be planted very early too maybe even this month let’s see depending on weather and I have a frost cover for that so I can plant them out

And cover them so they can start getting acclimated outside too and then down here I’m also growing container friendly varieties so they’ll be a bit smaller than the ones that I’m growing at the plot I’m planning to do some cherry tomatoes that do well in containers maybe some summer squash which doesn’t

Get as big as a big Vining winter squash little eggplant variety that’s smaller as well and a few other things around here I think I’m going to do some peas in here some more snappies some snappies in here be Little T trailers I want to do some spinach extra on this space as

Well lung planter that I have because I’m I don’t think I’m going to have space for spinach or my green sock I already start too many things for it and then I’ll leave two of those open because I want to be able to change my mind I am thinking to do one with

Cucumbers and potatoes but I also want to have some flexibility with this I have a lot more pots here I have pots enough pots to go all over here and all over here too but I’m trying to also think of Aesthetics this year and then

To have this as a place that I can have people over so I can invite my friends we can enjoy the garden maybe do some cooking put a table here in the middle so I’m trying to downsize the amount of pots that I have on the backyard a bit

And my backyard bed would be all flowers for two reasons first for joy and enjoyment and for cultivating Beauty having a beautiful place for me to go to and I’m stressed out about living in the city but also because I have a problem with Aly cats that come to my garden

They visit and they use this as a little box and I also could take the same approach as the plot and then only grow things that grow up you know like tomatoes and peppers but I already have lots of them growing there I don’t need more so I decided to dedicate the whole

Bed to my favorite flowers which are dalas so I have printed here the varieties that I already have I tried to save my Dal tubers from last year and they’re doing good in storage so far so the ones that have survived storage up to this point are this ones over here so

This is the selection that I have I’ll try to see if I remember all of them by name so the first one is Diva and then I have peaches and cream this is Cafe ol Fern Cliff spice Linda’s baby sweet Natalie fine ivone Cornell bronze breakout Colorado classic I don’t

Particularly like this one but she survived so I’m going to grow her again I don’t really like the color M Dalia and this one’s called boom boom white I believe so this is my Dalia selection for my bed that I hope to also be the background of my videos hopefully during

The gardening season they’ll look very nice so I had some beautiful flowers behind me when I’m filming so also that’s one of the goals so you guys can enjoy some beauty too while watching the videos and I’ll have a few flowers in front of it too as a border but those

Are mostly the varieties that I’m growing and I actually might be getting lots of new tubers from another Garner here in New York City from Brooklyn and she’s being very generous and say that if her two birds survive stories she also shares them with me so I’ll talk

About the varieties once they come and everybody loves dalas apparently because I had a bit of a problem in the plot last year people getting in to take them so I’m not growing any dalas at the plot this year but I’m also doing a little experiment for me for fun I’ve been very

Inspired by floret I’m not sure if you guys watch her Channel she’s has a beautiful Farm on the west coast I will put a link to her channel in the description box below she breeds flowers now and I’ve been you know getting my hands into also saving seeds and trying

To grow things from seed and I collected Dalia seeds from my own dalas last year and I’m planning to do a little Dalia pry experiment on the front are of my building this year because I live in a very busy street and I have lots of people that commute to the train pass

Through my building here and they always complement the flowers when I was growing flowers there they always say they brighten up the day they will come take this route so they could see the flowers so I want to make sure that I grow some beautiful flowers in there too

Just for the wellbeing of the community to help out with people that might be having harder days here in New York too so that’s where I’m going to plant a bunch of Dalia seedlings so I want to isolate them from the dalas that I have

Here uh in case I want to say SE it again because a lot of them are going to be open face and I prefer the double varieties and if that’s getting to advance let just turn back and not and just explain a few things aalas are usually grown by tubers so they are

Clones of the plant so let’s say these beautiful plants over here they will produce seed but they have two birds underneath that you can dig up and plant again and divide and they will come back to the same plant that you’re seeing over here so you planting the same plant

Basically over and over again but if you save seeds from it if you let the flowers stay in the plant get pollinated and mature they also produce seed and if you save seeds from it each seed will give you a new different Dalia so dalas

Are not true to type like if I save a seed let’s say from stock right this plant here that I have on my face that let’s say didn’t get cross-pollinated so I have all this purple stocks growing just this and then I save seed if this is a open pollinated variety I most

Likely will end up with the same plant if I plant them again next year with dalas because of the the way their genetics work they have a lot more combinations of jeans that can happen they will actually each seed will give you a different plant and that’s how new

Varieties are discovered and then we have this amazing selection of varieties too so if you find a flower that you like from a seed that you planted they’ll also produce tubers you’ll save the tuber and then now you get your own cultivar to call you know whatever you

Want and to grow in your Gardens too so I want to kind of give a little try here in the garden too I did plant some D from s last year and it was so fun to just wait and see what they’ll turn up was all different from each other it

Gave me a lot of joy and uh I had so much fun so I want to do that in the front yard and I know that’s not everyone’s cup of tea so I might not talk about it so much here in the channel unless if you want to so let me

Know in the comment section down below if you be interested but I will be doing my seedling experiment with lots of my homegrown collected seeds from last year in the front yard this year so that’s mostly what I have for the garden planning I’m going to take some time now

To put what I have drawn in here in paper as well and also make a little ra draft off the backyard garden so here’s how I do it I would try to actually trace it I’ll do it in here so I can take notes on this side as well so just

Going to see if I can follow the lines I could use my ruler to do this but let’s just do a freeh hand so it doesn’t need to be super precise just off the physical structures all the green stocks cuz they already live there but these pots can be moved

And my bed it’s I can’t move either it’s there the spare tree also it’s here to stay so I have to account for that as well so now we’re just going to trace it I will use rer cuz my drawing is not very steady so it just looks look a

Little better since I have the ruler here so now kind of going to lightly follow the form here and you know it’s not going to be perfect but it’s already helpful um I will do another video with a detailed like placement of the dalas in this bed if you’re

Curious and then on the plot too maybe with spacing but just so much to talk about in one video you know this is just the first draft and that’s also something that it’s good to keep in mind that things change during the season having some flexibility is also good so

Things are going to evolve depending on what seids germinate and what things are happening at the time there are planting things in the garden so this is just like a basine and we will evolve from there but there here it is now we have the backyard but actually I have a pot

In here with a Tris that I PL to grow peas I already know that these are going to get my greens spinach it’s just easy like rough draft or everything I have two green stocks in here one I’m just going to write here warm season and cool season peppers and herbs broccoli

Cauliflower and kale probably some flowers around two to fill up other the pockets cuz there’s lots of pockets on this guys that is are going to be most of this part I do get some shades from this gate on this little area here get that’s heavily shaded so I’m not putting

Any dalas here but mostly all of this it’s going to be dalas and on the edges in here I’ll put some smaller flowers just so it looks nice for some visual interest I already have some AIA growing around here which good they’re native flowers and I have some scabiosa panial

And what else do I have I have some Rebeca that I’m not sure if it’s going to come back this year or not but well we’ll see if not I’ll just replant with some that I have started this also serves as my husband garage so when he

Can’t find Space to park outside he will park inside so his big car it’s taking out the space here but once the car is not in I put it we put a little table with two little chairs and that’s where you know I kind of turn to hang out in the morning

Before I go to work or come in with my coffee when it’s warm and plan my day and sit down in the garden for about 10 minutes it’s my favorite way to start the day this year we got some foldout tables here too I want do some more

Outdoor cooking have some fire pits we going to put out so hopefully we can have a little bit more fun at the Garden too so that’s the plan lots of things going on the next video coming up would be talking about the varieties that I’ll be growing this year with more detail

And I also want to talk about when I’m going to put them in the garden I know I did not give any measurements for this I actually have the measurements for the plot and for the backyard I just couldn’t find it I will talk about in a

Future video too I promise if you made it all the way through all the way to the end to this video thank you so much I really appreciate you I would love for you to like this video and put a comment in the comment section to you saying

That you stayed here to the end and watch the whole thing let me know about your garden plans if you planned anything fun and exciting for the garden season this year and if you want to give an advice for growing on 7B if you are

In New York City also like me and you want to also share something that I missed or want to say something else that you have experience with please put that in the comment section down below so this video can be helpful for more people and if you curious about the

Seeds that I have started already I will link a couple videos in here with my cool season flowers and the cool season vegetables and that’s it thank you so much for watching today I hope you’re having a great day I hope you’re getting excited about this new growing season 2

And I’ll see you next time