I was tending to the balcony garden, taking care of the self-watering containers and spraying down the seeds when I noticed a big bit hole taken out of a romaine lettuce leaf. When I took a closer look at the leaves, I saw a little green critter on the back of a leaf. Pretty sure it was a cabbage worm that was going to town and munching on my stuff. It took a few attempts...
Author Archives: Mike Lieberman
Now that I have some seeds directly sown and another seed experiment going on, I am trying to figure out which tomato seeds to start for my balcony garden. I have 7 packets that I received for free from WinterSown.org. You just need to fill out the form, send them a SASE and they’ll send you free seeds. Nice. I learned on my fire escape that just because they are...
Last week I direct sowed carrots and mesclun lettuce into containers on my balcony garden. I’m not seeing anything coming up on them yet. This week, I’m experimenting with starting seeds indoors and outdoors to see which light works better. I don’t have any self-watering containers to direct sow into, but I have seeds. So why not get some started? For...
When I started my balcony garden this year, I changed up how I was making the self-watering containers. Last year I used vinyl tile to separate the reservoir from the plant and soil. It worked well and served it’s purpose, but I learned my lesson when breaking them down. The containers froze up, and I had to wait three months until I was able to break them down. As...
Two more self-watering containers were made and put out on the balcony garden. I started seeds in each of them. After some discussion about if it was better to start seeds indoors or by direct sowing, I decided it was best to start the carrot and mesclun seeds by directly planting them into the containers. When I started to plant the carrot seeds, I noticed that the package...
While hiking in the LA mountains this weekend with my girlfriend (roommate), I was noticing the vegetation on the side of the trails. It got me thinking about something that I read by Fern Richardson of Life On The Balcony about growing aloe indoors over the winter. She mentioned that you can cut off the “pups”, replant them and grow a whole new aloe plant....
Now that I have the balcony garden set up and am gonna be starting the vegetable seeds, I needed a new project. Since my new roommate, Anita, likes flowers, I decided to get her flowers. I bought seeds from Botanical Interests to start growing flowers instead of buying them. After reading an article in Green Lifestyle Magazine about the flower industry and how most flowers...
The last time I checked in on the Urban Kinder-Garden, the class was watering their garden and it looked great. A few weeks ago the class harvested their first salad that they were able to enjoy. Since that time, the garden has taken a turn for the worse. Some of the plants have bolted, some have been infested by pests and some have just died. In taking a look at the...
Now that I have my LA balcony garden started, I want to work on starting some seeds. There are about 12 packets or so that I’d like to get started of lettuces, kale, beets, carrots, tomatoes and some herbs. Since the weather is warm here in LA, I’m wondering whether it will be better to direct sow the seeds into the containers or to still start them indoors? I...
I got my first set of planting done on my LA balcony garden. The day started with building five self-watering containers. This year I built them using two containers, instead of one container and some tiling. I planned on building six of them, but the last pairing of containers were mismatched and wouldn’t work. To start, I planted Kale, Purple Kale, Romaine Lettuce...
Now that I’ve arrived in Los Angeles, along with my worms, I’m starting to get the hand of this worm composting thing. The Worm Factory 360 is definitely performing much better than the bins that I had built and killed all my worms with. Though in checking in on them, I’ve noticed that there are little white dots on the food scraps. There seems to be...
When I decided to move to Los Angeles, one of my concerns was figuring out the best way to ship my worms. Well, I figured it out and the worms safely made it. I had a pound of worms and filled up 4 plastic containers that were checked along with my luggage. Here’s how I packaged and shipped them: Lined the bottom of a large coffee container with shredded newspaper. ...
I’ve arrived safe and sound in Los Angeles. Now I have lots to do to get my balcony garden set-up. It’s a much bigger space than the fire escape garden that I had in New York. I’m working with a 13×4 space, plus some areas for possible hanging planters. Not sure if I’ll be able to use the soda bottles though. I’m going to find out where...
Please Note: There will be no posts over the next two weeks, so I can wrap things up here in NY and get settled in LA. I’ll be back to regular posting starting April 12, 2010. Wow, it’s hard to believe that it’s been a year (and a day) since I started writing this blog. March 25, 2009 was my first post when I decided to grow a small window garden. Here...
I asked my Grandmother what her thoughts on me moving out to LA were. She is not one to hold back what’s on her mind. Before answering the question, she wanted to make sure that she was camera ready and asked if her hair was combed and looked decent. Then she chimed in with, “I don’t like to see you go, but if you think you are going to be happy there,...
I began the first part of moving the Worm Factory and the worms with me to LA when I moved them to my Grandmother’s. They will be stored there until I move out to LA. In order to make sure that the bin didn’t break open in the car ride to my Grandmother’s, the working tray cover was duct taped to bin and the bin was duct tape to the base. This is to ensure...
I learned another lesson when making an outdoor compost bin – don’t start it in the middle of the winter. Yea that seems to be pretty obvious and common sense now, but it wasn’t two months ago when I started. Due to the freezing weather, I haven’t been able to turn the compost at all because, well, it’s been frozen. That makes it kind of hard...
Now that the weather has warmed up a bit and the containers aren’t frozen, I was able to finish breaking down the self watering containers in Brooklyn. Since I’m moving out to LA, there is no need for me to put the remaining soil and plants into the outdoor compost bin. The soil was just tossed into the gardening beds that I had planned on using. My guess...
Now that I’ll be moving my garden and life out to LA, I think that I’ve gotten this worm composting thing down. It’s been almost a week since I’ve started using The Worm Factory 360 and it’s the most lively that any of my worms have been. That’s not saying much because my worms have mostly wound up dead after a few days. The fact that...
