After being away for six days, I was shocked when I returned to see the growth of the lettuces in my containers. It was definitely time for my first harvest. Most of the leaves were at least 6 inches and didn’t want them to get much larger. This brings me one step closer to my goal of getting one salad. Didn’t turn this into a salad because I had already eaten...
Author Archives: Mike Lieberman
We’ve been through how to build a self watering container, talked about what kind of potting soil to use and how to make it. Now I am going to tell (and show) you how to water them and how to tell it’s filled: On my fire escape garden, I use a funnel and an empty juice bottle. In my Brooklyn garden, I use a hose. Fill with water (not Kool-Aid) through the...
After the poor display of the herbs on my fire escape, I was very happy when I checked in on my Brooklyn vegetable garden. Everything looked real good, well except for the cucumber plant or what was the cucumber plant. Peep these photos: I am heading out of town this afternoon and heading to Bonnaroo. I’ll be back on Monday, but I still have posts scheduled for...
It’s been a rainy week here in Seattle, I mean New York, so I haven’t been paying much mind to the vegetables out on my fire escape. When I finally checked on them, I was happy to see that the lettuces, peppers and tomatoes looked pretty healthy. Then I looked above them and noticed the sad, sad sight of the herb garden I started to grow in the upside down...
In a previous post, I explained the basic differences between coconut coir and peat moss based potting soils. Now I am going to show you how to make your own potting soil using a peat moss base. Here’s what you need to make your own organic potting soil: Sphagnum peat moss – holds water and air; provides little nutriton Vermiculite – provides minerals...
This whole experience is all new to me, especially the part about actually planting. Here’s five things I learned about how to plant vegetables in a self watering container: Be gentle. Pop the vegetable out of it’s cell. Push it from the bottom and gently pull out. There are many plants in a cell. A lot of the cells contain multiple plants, so you have to...
It’s one full week since I’ve planted my vegetable gardens on my fire escape and in Brooklyn. Here’s an update on how things are progressing. Before I do that, I wanted to let you know that I decided not to garden at my parents in Staten Island and to move those containers to Brooklyn. Logistically, it makes more sense that way. My Fire Escape Vegetable...
After using all of the indoor compost to plant on my fire escape, I started a second batch. This went much smoother and I expect it to continue that way. Here are some of the lessons that I learned from my first go around: Don’t put too many greens in the compost When putting in the newspaper make sure it’s not in chunks. Separate the pieces. Don’t...
First off, from what I can tell there is no difference between potting soil, potting mix and transplant mix. It’s all the same thing just different names. The reason that you want to use potting soil is that it allows for aeration and water to flow. If you use traditional soil in a self watering container, the roots would get too compact and not be able to grow....
After two long, but fun, days and some rain I set up my vegetable garden in my grandmother’s backyard in Brooklyn this past weekend. All said and done I planted in 16 containers and 5 herb planters. The vegetables I planted were – buttercrunch lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, collard greens, crisphead lettuce, cucumbers, escarole, onions, radicchio, romaine...
After getting the news yesterday that the vegetable gardening season already started and some plants should already be out, I need to get moving quicker. I went out to visit the ‘rents place today in Staten Island to make all of the self-watering containers at their crib. All of the materials were there, so it was just a matter of putting everything together....
I took a trip to the Farmers Market at Union Square today to find out when it’s ok to start putting the containers out and how many plants go in each bucket. Yes, it would make sense if I had all of the containers and buckets ready, but I have just about zero complete. Still want to know how much of and what can be grown. Went straight to the Silver Heights Farm...
It’s been two days since I attempted to get rid of the smell of the indoor compost pile. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsxvgPNor-w There is no more leakage out of the bottom and the smell gone. The takeaway from this is not to take it easy on the food scraps. Now I can take that and use it when building and maintaining my home composting bins at my parents and...
On Tuesday when I turned the compost all was well and there was no smell. Two days later not so much. It stank and it stank bad. The batteries on my video camera died, so there is no video, but that has nothing to do with the smell. I had a feeling that the last pile of composting greens were too much. Just got too over zealous. Instead of scrapping the bin all together,...
It’s been a about a week since the last layer of food scraps were added to my < a href="/category/composting/indoor/">indoor compost bin, so I figured it was time to give it a turn. To turn it I use a broomstick to poke around and loosen everything up, then I take a small shovel to mix it. It’s been taking me about 10 minutes each time I turn it. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwyFFpE-yYg It’s...
After days of back and forth, I decided to go with copper pipe instead of the vinyl tubing in the self watering containers. Wasn’t very clear on the benefits of one over the other because read lots of pros and cons on each of them. For using copper pipe, came across a few articles that spoke about leaching into water. Came across the same articles for vinyl tubing. Since...
