Author Archives: Mike Lieberman

Andrew Odom (@AndrewOdom) is one of my imaginary friends that I met on Twitter. He lives and gardens down south in Georgia. He built an almost recycled hoop house for his garden for under $30. I’m jealous. Since the small plastic greenhouses that I made failed, this is something that I will definitely consider for my backyard vegetable garden in Brooklyn next winter....

It’s time for me to troubleshoot my worm composting problems again. After starting my worm composting bin in my kitchen, they died when I made a composting mistake and drowned them out. This time I kept the bin too dry and the worms died. I brought the container into the worm lady at the Lower East Side Ecology Center in the Union Square Farmers Market. I wanted...

I decided to make an undercover outdoor compost bin at my grandmother’s for my backyard vegetable garden in Brooklyn. Why is it undercover? It is because my Grandmother would flip out if she knew I was composting in her backyard? Why would she flip out? I dunno. She’s 90 and does that kind of thing. We are talking about the woman who freaked out when I brought...

Since my fire escape garden died after the snow storm in December, I needed to break it down. Breaking these down were definitely easier than breaking down the ones at my Grandmother’s. Yes these froze up as well, but I was able to bring them indoors to defrost for a day. Some of the dead plants that were above the soil line weren’t completely frozen. I was...

My winter container gardening ended in December, so I started to break down the self watering containers at my Grandmother’s. Once the sun went down the cold became freezing and I had to stop. When I woke up the next morning to finish breaking down the containers, they were frozen solid. All of the soil that I had been storing in the wheelbarrow was frozen as well....

Since my backyard vegetable garden died, I needed to clean it up as the first step for getting ready for the spring season. The first step was to breakdown the self-watering containers. Here is how I did that in my Brooklyn garden: Tilted the container so that the water drained out of the drainage hole. I leaned the container up against a fence for a few minutes. Laid...

I’ve heard from many people that seaweed is supposed to be real good for your plants and compost. It’s said to be high in all kinds of nutrients and minerals. So I decided to head out to the beaches in Brooklyn on a fine winter day and hunt for some seaweed. No better time than the present huh? And yes Brooklyn has beaches. Before I headed to the beaches I...

My winter container gardening has already ended on my fire escape. It’s also ended for my backyard vegetable garden in Brooklyn as well. This can be attributed to a few things. The first being my neglect. I didn’t go to my Grandmother’s for two weeks to tend to the plants. I’m sure that the snow and cold weather also contributed to the plants dying. Now...

My fire escape container garden did not make it through the first big snowfall of the season. Once the snow cleared up a little, and I was able to check things out. The small plastic greenhouse was sunken in because of the snow. When I took the cover off, the red peppers and kales were dead. Luckily I was able to get one last harvest out of the kale a few weeks back. Unfortunately,...

With this being my last post of the year, I wanted to share with you my favorite moments from UrbanOrganicGardener. This might seem a bit self-serving, but when I first set out and started this project my goal was to get just one salad. It’s turned into a bit more than that. I’ve been able to get that salad (and many more), but I’ve also been able to...

The kale has been doing well on my fire escape garden. With the weather dropping into the 20s, I decided it was time to harvest and eat it because that’s what it’s there for. In harvesting my lettuce, I learned that you should pick the outer most leaves. Otherwise the plant will bolt. Personally, I don’t want it to bolt and want it to keep producing...

The composting mistake that I made is pretty simple – I killed my worms. Shortly after starting my worm compost bin, I had to dry it out because it was too wet from all the coffee grinds. That didn’t work and the worms were all dead. So I properly buried their remains along with the newspaper bedding at the local community compost. That didn’t stop...

Here we are three months after I urinated on my tomato plants. If you recall, I did this because it’s supposed to make them grow larger. Did it work? It’s hard to say, but the plant is still fruiting and blossoming. So they didn’t necessarily grow larger, but it could’ve helped to extend their lives. Can that be attributed to my magical urine? I’m...

This is the first check in of my fire escape garden since returning from my Urban Kinder-Garden Workshop in Los Angeles. The weather has dropped into the 40s here and 30s at night, but the kale plants are thriving in this cold weather. Once I removed the small plastic greenhouse from them, they still look healthy and to be growing. The container with the red peppers in...

Before I left for my Urban Kinder-Garden Workshop in Los Angeles, I scrapped the small plastic greenhouses in my backyard vegetable garden. Now that I’m back, December gardening is upon us. So far the garden is holding up better than I thought it would. This proves that the self-watering containers are pretty low maintenance because I didn’t check on them in...

[flickrset id=”72157622928169088″ thumbnail=”square” overlay=”true” size=”medium”] The second day of the Urban-Kinder Garden Workshop with Miss Avalos’ class was the real fun because I got to work with the kids on planting everything. No offense to the parents, I totally enjoyed my day with them making the containers...

[flickrset id=”72157622911237720″ thumbnail=”square” overlay=”true” size=”medium”] For the first day of the Urban Kinder-Garden Workshop at Kester Ave Elementary School, I worked with the parents and relatives of some of the students to build the self watering containers for the garden. We also discussed the environmental...

I’m on the left coast this week conducting an Urban Kinder-Garden Workshop with Miss Avalos’ Kindergarten class at Kester Ave Elementary School in Sherman Oaks, CA. Miss Avalos is tying the garden into the curriculum for her students. Art The first part of the project was having her student paint the containers, which helps them to express themselves creatively....

I’ve decided to scrap the small plastic greenhouses in my Brooklyn backyard vegetable garden. The past two weeks I’ve had problems with support for them and realized that I should’ve built a larger greenhouse. It’s not that they don’t work because they work fine on my fire escape garden. The problem is that I get to my Grandmother’s...