Last week it was in the news that a Georgia man was fined $5,000 for growing too much food in his backyard garden. He’s been growing on his land for 15 years and growing food was the reason for him buying the land. He’s been selling some of his excess produce at the local farmers market and giving it to neighbors as well. The reason for him receiving the fine...
Author Archives: Mike Lieberman
I harvested the first carrots from my container garden on my balcony. The carrots were way too tiny. They were planted over four months ago in the beginning of May. I thought that this would be plenty of time for them to grow. On the outside the carrot tops were showing and looked great, but when I harvested my first carrot it was mad small about an inch and very thin....
The flowers on my cucumber plants are falling. For the most part, they appear to be doing well on my balcony garden. They are continuing to grow up the tomato cages, but none have set any fruit, just fallen leaves. I think this might be because of a pollination issue. I really haven’t seen many bees in and or around my balcony to pollinate the flowers. In looking...
I have already given you plenty of reasons to start growing your own food and am gonna give you another. In reading an article on Grist.org about urban agriculture, I learned that, “If some sort of natural disaster or terrorist attack were to shut down New York City’s food supply chain, our supermarket shelves would reportedly be picked clean within three days....
Hard to believe that it’s the middle of September already. That means that it’s time to start planting your fall vegetables. Ok, it’s been time to plant your fall vegetables, but now it’s really time. The best thing to plant in the fall, especially if you are container gardening, are greens. Lots of greens. They will survive the slight chill,...
We know that you need to feed your plants and amend the soil in your container garden. Here is a quick how to on amending the soil. You’ll need the following: Container that is free of plants Cultivator Compost Water How to amend the soil: Use your cultivator to break up the soil Add some compost to the container Work the compost into the soil Water the...
“Garden Writers Today” is a website (www.digplantgrow.com) for garden writers (duh) that’s been created to help the garden writing community. More importantly, it’s been created to help the readers of gardening websites, which is even more important. They wrote to me and other garden writers across the web asking, “What Can ‘Garden...
I’ve made another gardening mistake. This time I didn’t separate the plants when transplanting them into the containers on my balcony garden. When I did my first round of planting on my balcony, I popped the plants out of the plastic and just planted them into the container. This seemed like a good idea, but wasn’t. There were about 4-5 plants per bunch....
One of the things that I was most surprised during my trip to Costa Rica was how little the restaurants used locally grown produce. It became even more apparent to me how we have lost touch with our food. There were coconut trees nearly everywhere that you could turn. Yet it was impossible to go into a restaurant and get fresh coconut water. Some of the restaurants actually...
I am going away on vacation and this will be my last post until August 30, 2010. Please do your best to get by without me. I have been thinking about changing the focus of this blog to include more about the importance of growing your own food. For the past year plus this blog has been about growing your own food and how to do so, which it still will include. I want to...
One of the questions that people frequently ask me is revolved around the health concerns of growing in the plastic containers. Is it safe to grow in plastic containers? Is it leaching harmful toxins into the soil, water, plants and eventually my body. I honestly have no clue, nor do I claim to. I think there is a valid concern in those beliefs and generally avoid plastic,...
Now that I’ve remembered to amend the soil in my container garden, I’m going to be running a side-by-side test of soil amendments. Here is the test that I’m going to run. I have two cucumber containers on my balcony garden. In one of them, I have amended the soil with straight compost. The other container I have watered with the cow manure tea that I...
I am making cow manure tea to use as a soil amendment in my container garden. I’m brewing cow manure tea from Authentic Haven Brand. The brewing process will take 1-3 days to complete. You’ll need the following: One five-gallon container filled with water Bag of cow manure tea bag Towel or cloth to keep the bugs out You just need to drop the tea bag into...
One of the mistakes that I made last year was not feeding my plants and amending the soil in my container garden. When you first plant the potting soil that you use should likely have all the compost, nutrients and minerals for the plant to initially survive, but over time the plant will use these up and they will deplete. If you were growing in the ground, the soil would...
Thanks to everyone who submitted a comment to enter for a chance to win 6 packets of seeds courtesy of Botanical Interests. There were 61 comments submitted. To select the winner, I used Random.org to randomly select a number between 1-61. The number generated was 21. Counting from the top the 21st comment was from….Snow. Not sure if it’s the 90s white reggae...
When you started to plant your mesclun seeds, you likely just threw some seeds in your container and watered them to see what would grow. I know that’s what I did. Now that they’ve started to grow, you’ll need to thin out your mesclun plants to allow the strongest ones to survive and produce more. Yes, the container might look pretty with the purples...
In order to keep your tomato plant thriving and producing more food, you’ll need to train it upwards in addition to removing the suckers. The purpose of training your tomato plant is to keep the plant from getting to heavy and falling over. As it begins to blossom and fruit, it will start to slouch. To keep it from doing so, you’ll need to train it upwards....
Once your tomato plant starts to grow, you will want to prune it to remove the suckers. They will start to grow regardless of how you take care of your plant. You might notice them as your plant is growing, but think nothing of them. Suckers won’t harm your tomato plant, but will prevent it from producing more fruit. A sucker is off-shoot growth that grows where...
Pretty much everywhere here in Cali fennel is growing. It’s one of the most invasive weeds in the state. I see it growing in peoples yards, along the sidewalks on trails when hiking. I really don’t think that most people are aware of what it is and that it’s food that they can eat. It’s free food that is growing everywhere. Fennel can be used to...
