Apartment Gardening

Lilies on your windowsill? Tomatoes on your rooftop? Green thumbs aren’t limited to people with back yards. Even something as simple as sand in a tray, raked into a pattern, can be called a garden (and its owner a Zen master).

Apartment gardening is all about being creative and working within your space. Here are a few ideas for transforming your loft, studio, stoop, or rooftop into an urban Eden.

Rooftops and balconies
If you have the luxury of rooftop access at your residence, you can easily transform this area into a thriving green space, with a little imagination and nurture from Mother Nature. These areas can be windy, so you’ll need to plan ahead to shelter your plants from the elements. A glass shield provides a permanent wind shelter that doesn’t reduce light and doubles as a lovely coffee-break area. In contrast, installing a netting material allows you to integrate additional vines’ from beans and peas to ivies into your hideaway, while still sheltering your main plants from the breeze.

When considering a rooftop or balcony garden, it’s also important to map out which areas are sunniest and which are shadiest. Plan your plant layout based on the plants’ shade and sunlight needs: This will help them stay vibrant and alive.

Window boxes
Window boxes are one of the easiest and most versatile growing tools available to the urban gardener. They can be used for salad vegetables such as leaf lettuces and radishes, herbs such as chives, thyme, parsley, sage and marjoram, or flowers such as daisies, impatiens and marigolds. Best of all, they can grow flowers and vegetables at the same time — and look beautiful.

When designing a window box, select plants with a variety of growth habits: those that grow upright, those with bushy tendencies, and those that vine or trail. If you’re making a flower bed, choose plants that bloom in complimentary hues; however, also consider the shapes and colors of the foliage for the full effect. Place the tallest plants in the back of the box, a few on the sides, and let your favorite trailing plants dangle their feet over the front of the box. Be sure to thin out your stragglers (by one-third) in mid-summer so healthy plants keep blooming in full force.

A word of warning: Before planting a window box check with your apartment manager to make sure adding window boxes is allowed

Hanging baskets
Hanging baskets are among the easiest plants to care for – a perfect choice for the fly-by-night type of urban gardener. Two of the easiest hanging plants to grow are pothos vines and philodendrons, which come in a number of varieties. Best of all, both of pothos and philodendrons can thrive in relatively dark living spaces.

Some other hanging plants for trend-savvy indoor gardeners include prayer plants, whose leaves close at night, passion flowers, which produce a stunning purple and green bloom, and chenille plants, which have fuzzy red feather-duster-like flowers.

Air plants
If the thought of hanging baskets don’t excite you, a unique and container-less option is the air plant. Air plants are Bromeliads that get their name from the fact that they grow not in soil, but instead attached to branches and rocks. Their roots serve only to give the plants a firm anchor to whatever they are growing on. All of their moisture and nutrition is absorbed through their specialized leaves.

Air plant leaves possess tiny scales, properly called trichomes, that serve two major functions. First, they assist the plant in absorbing water and nutrients by holding greater amounts of water against the leaf surface for a longer period of time. Second, they help to reflect the intense sunlight off of the leaf surface that can be so common in their growing environment. These trichomes are what give many of the air plants their characteristic gray color.

It is often easy to determine the growing requirements a given plant needs by the appearance of the plant itself. Those that have a dense covering of scales on their leaves are most probably from an area with bright light and little water. Whereas a plant with more glossy leaves is most likely from an area of lower light and higher humidity.

Plant maintenance
Keep in mind, the most important thing for a beginning gardener — no matter how trend-savvy – is to water the plants regularly. When you forget to water, bugs will attack.

However, over watering can be just as harmful to a plant as under watering. So how can the “green” green thumb tell if his or her new plant is drinking enough?

Stick your finger in the dirt. If it’s moist, you’re in the clear. If it’s wet, it needs to dry out. It it’s dry, the plant needs a drink. In the case of the air plant, just mist it with water once a week or so (individual species will vary, of course).

Is my move tax deductible?

Which is more fun: moving, or filling out your tax forms? Under certain circumstances, completing the one can get you a break on the other. Here are some guidelines as to when you can and cannot take a tax deduction on your move.
When you can deduct
The IRS employs three “tests” of whether your move qualifies for a tax deduction: the “start of work” test, the “distance” test, and the “time” test. The start-of-work test requires that you move for a job. Generally you can deduct moving expenses if you move within one year of starting a new job, provided that you meet the other two tests. You may be able to stretch that out longer, however, if you can show a reason why you took more than a year to move — if, for example, you started work but delayed moving for more than a year to keep a child in school or stay close to an ill family member. You don’t have to start work before you move to meet this test.
The second test is the distance between your new job and your old home. If your new job is at least 50 miles farther from your old home than your old job was, you can deduct expenses. So if you previously drove 10 miles to your old job, your new job will have to be at least 60 miles from your old home for you to meet the test. (If you haven’t worked in a while, or this is your first job, the “distance” between old job and old home is defined as 0 miles.)
Also, your commute between your new job and your new home can’t be longer than your commute between your old job and your old home, unless for some reason your employment requires you to live with a longer commute. Essentially, the IRS wants you to show that commuting between your new job and your old home would be a significant hassle.
The third test requires you to be employed for at least 39 weeks, working 40 hours a week, in the year after you move. It doesn’t all have to be for the same employer, and any vacation time, personal time, or illness counts as having worked full-time. If you’re married filing jointly, either you or your spouse can meet the time test, but you can’t combine weeks worked. Exceptions apply to the time test if you get transferred or laid off, or are in the military.
What you can deduct
If you’ve made it this far, what can you deduct?
• The costs of packing and transporting your household goods (that includes anything you spend on movers);
• The use of your personal car, if you use it to move, or other travel (such as plane tickets) from your old to your new place;
• The cost of shipping your car or pets;
• The cost of disconnecting utilities at your old place and setting up utilities at your new place;
• Any lodging costs you incur between leaving your old place and moving into your new place.
Things you cannot deduct:
• Any part of the purchase price of a new home, or the security deposit on a new apartment;
• Any pre-move expenses you incur looking for a new place;
• Memberships for clubs, such as gyms, that you might have to give up when you move;
• Expenses related to getting a new driver’s license or car registration.
Be organized
As you may have guessed by now, if you want to deduct your move, you’ll need to keep good records so that you have everything you need when you prepare your taxes. This can be particularly challenging during a move; one strategy is to keep a special folder or envelope in a bag that remains with you (as opposed to something you pack) and toss everything moving-related into it.
You can read more about moving on the Internal Revenue Service’s Web site .

Be prepared for tax time!!

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” Benjamin Franklin wrote to a friend in 1789. Around tax time, many people might start seeing death as the more pleasant of these two inevitabilities. But there are things you can do to make taxpaying an easier and less painful process, both psychologically and financially. Here are some tips that will help you with your taxes.

Get organized
Current and former employers are required to send you your W-2 or W-9 forms for the previous year, stating how much they paid you and how much tax they paid on your behalf, by January 31. If you get to mid-February and you don’t have the right forms, contact the company’s human-resources department.

Keep these forms and your other tax information in one place so that when it comes time to do your taxes, you will have everything you need. Other items you will need to do your taxes may include receipts for charitable donations, interest statements from your bank or a lender, and dividend reports on any investments you may have.

Do some research
The American tax code is a complex and bewildering beast, with changes coming fast and furious every year. The IRS has information on the most recent major changes on its website, including answers to different “What-if?” scenarios, such as applying for unemployment compensation. You might also benefit if you…

Get some electronic help
Tax programs, both online and out of the box, can perform many of the services of an accountant for a fraction of the price. The most popular program is Intuit’s TurboTax but you might also try TaxACT or H&R Block’s TaxCut. If you have a copy of an older version, you should be able to download an update for a small fee incorporating this year’s rule changes. Tax programs will also help you file online, which could help you get a refund faster. If your tax situation is complex, you might want to…

Use a professional
If you have changed jobs a few times in one year, gotten married, started a company, or had any other developments that might complicate your tax situation, it might be worth your while to use a retail tax service or hire an accountant. It’s their job to know the letter of the tax law, and a professional may be able to find a few extra deductions that you would miss.

Businesses such as H&R Block and Liberty Tax Service can help you prepare and file your taxes. If you don’t use a retail service, make sure that you an Enrolled Agent (EA) or a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). CPAs and EAs have to pass rigorous tests and meet certain standards to be licensed by the government to practice.

Whether or not you use an accountant, check and see if you can…

File for free
Every year the IRS specifies a certain income ceiling ($56,000 for filing taxes on 2008) and allows anyone who earned less than that amount to use its “Free-File” program. Free File is supported by a consortium of companies; you can pick the one that suits your needs through the IRS’s website. When you use that company to file electronically, it will waive the usual fees (although only for federal, not state, tax returns). But no matter how you file, you’ll want to…

Keep copies
The IRS recommends keeping copies of tax returns for at least three years and employment tax records, such as W-2 forms, for at least four years. You may prefer to print out copies rather than keeping valuable financial information on your hard drive. If you own your own business, you will want to keep your information for longer in case of an audit. If you do get audited or have a problem filing…

Don’t panic
The IRS prefers working with people to tracking them down and prosecuting them. If you aren’t going to be able to pay the full amount you owe, or if you still owe money (or returns) from previous years, as scary as it sounds, your best bet is to call the IRS at 1-800-829-1040 and explain your situation. You could be offered a short-term extension or the possibility of paying on the installment plan. (You can file for an extension to October 15th, but the extension applies to getting the return in, not paying the amount owed.)

If all goes well with your taxes, you can possibly…

Look forward to your refund
Who couldn’t use some extra money? You can track the status of your return and find out when you will get a refund (if one is coming to you) on the Internal Revenue Service Web site. If your refund is very large, consider adjusting your withholding amount so you can keep more money in your pocket during the year.