Author: Mike Lieberman

Learned my first lesson about planting celery during my first harvest. It’s definitely best to plant a celery plant per container.

When I first planted the celery in my backyard vegetable garden, I planted in two containers. The first container had one plant in it and the second had several.

I harvested them the other day and it’s apparent that celery plants like to be on their own. The one that was solo was much thicker and deeper color. The celery that was packed in was, um, pathetic. Ok, not pathetic just inferior.

You know what? That’s what this is all about for me. Doing, seeing the results and improving for the next time.

The other thing that I learned about celery is that harvesting it is a challenge. At least harvesting it out of the container was.

Check out this video to see what I’m talking about as I struggle getting the celery out of the container.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rng3ZtquLpo

There’s been a lot about urine in the news lately. Juan Manuel Marquez was saying that he was drinking his own urine leading up to his fight with Floyd Mayweather.

As fascinating as that story is, the story that piqued my interest even more was the one about urinating on your tomatoes and how it can help to give you fruits four times larger.

I decided to give it a go and urinated on my cherry tomato plant on my fire escape garden. Don’t worry before I started, I looked and gave a yell so no one got hit with some unexpected rain.

According to the research done by the Finnish team, it’s actually a mixture of urine and wood ash that is the ultimate eco-friendly fertilizer. I just used my urine.

A few weeks ago I said that I wouldn’t recommend growing red peppers in small spaces because they weren’t productive. I might’ve spoken too soon because they are starting to bloom again and are showing a lot of buds.

I’m wondering if I should’ve harvested the others earlier, which would’ve allowed these to come through. It’s started to get cold here fast with it reaching the low 70s during the day and 50s at night.

That’s making me wonder if the peppers will be able to survive in this cold weather. Guess I’ll have to wait and see.

What’s your thoughts?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CNRHoHcPCE

Now that I’m a bit more comfortable with this urban gardening, I’m starting to see things a bit differently. I look at things and think, “how can I use that to plant something?”

In walking around my neighborhood, the East Village, I saw something that really struck my eye. It was a cinder block turned on it’s side with some plants in it.

Cinder blocks wouldn’t work on my fire escape garden, but definitely would work in my backyard garden, especially since my grandmother already has cinderblocks.

They are also the perfect price. Free.

So I hit up the farmers market, bought some cinnamon basil, some fancy Italian dandelion and olive leaf arugula and got them planted in the cinder blocks.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37jBY6V0WLo

Three months after starting my fire escape garden, I was finally able to harvest my red peppers.

I harvested a grand total of two red peppers with the possibility of some more. Yes, it was rewarding and felt great to put them in my salad, but I was hoping for more.

If you are gardening in a small space and looking for productivity, I wouldn’t recommend planting red peppers. I’d either experiment with something else or plant something that is productive like lettuces or greens.

For those of you with more space to grow, then plant some red peppers. I’d plant them again in my backyard garden in Brooklyn.

Not sure if it was the kind of red pepper, Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Italian, or just red peppers in general. What I do know is that next season, I won’t be planting red peppers on my fire escape again nor would I recommend it for you.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woZ5o3xpJ28

The stories about the tomato blight are all over the news, including this op-ed piece in the New York Times, “You Say Tomato, I Say Agricultural Disaster.”

To my understanding it is an airborne fungus that wipes out tomato and potato crops. This year it’s affecting tomatoes hard.

From what I’ve read, the way it started this is year can be traced to the big businesses such as K-Mart, Wal-Mart and Home Depot. They buy their plants from industrial farms down South, which had the outbreak.

These plants were then shipped up north and sold to farmers and consumers. Since it’s an airborne disease direct contact isn’t necessary and it can affect a much larger population of plants.

Looking at my cherry tomato plants, they seem to be blight resistant.

The main reason why I think they are is because I bought from Silver Heights Farm, a local nursery.

Trina, the gardener at Silver Heights, starts from seed and oversees everything herself. The distance the plant travels from Silver Heights to my gardens is 30-40 miles, so there is less chance for exposure to disease.

It’s also easier for a local nursery to identify and isolate any chance of blight or disease at first look. The big industrial farms have too much acreage to be able to. By the time it’s noticed, it’s already planted in your garden and effecting your crop.

While it’s not guaranteed that what you buy from your local nursery won’t have blight, I think there is a much better chance of it not than if you were to buy from a big chain store.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFuCHuJC62w

When I first started to plan my fire escape garden I thought that cherry tomatoes would work perfectly. Cherry tomatoes are small, so the plant would be small as well.

Now that summer weather has finally hit the NY and the plant is starting to grow, it’s gotten to be pretty tall. It’s about a half of a foot taller than me and I’m a giant.

I’ve had to get creative with the way that I’ve been supporting them.

I am not sure if it’s the kind that I’m growing, Anna Aasa, or it’s just the nature of the beast. My grandmother is growing tomatoes in her garden and the plant definitely isn’t as large.

The lesson learned for me is that just because the vegetable is small doesn’t mean that the plant will be.

What’s your thoughts – are all cherry tomato plants large or is it just this kind that I bought?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc2ncfahim8

I won’t be posting this week because I’m going to be working on redoing the site to be more user friendly. I’ll resume back to regular posting next week.

I know it will be rough for you during this time, not knowing how my lettuce are doing or if my cucumber plant is blooming. Just deal with it.

I’ll holla atcha next week.

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