The complaint that I often hear about my fire escape garden is that it is a fire hazard and that I’m putting lives at risk. I do respect the fact that it is a fire escape and a means for people to evacuate the building in case of an emergency. This is something that I take seriously because on January 29, 2003, my apartment burned down. This is just one reason...
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 able to trim those off and toss into my indoor aerobic compost bin. The rest I had to wait to defrost. I put them in my room next to the heater. For those of you that have...
The other day on my fire escape garden, I got my mini greenhouses for my hanging soda bottle planters up. Now I finally got the greenhouses built for the self watering containers as well. The total cost to build the greenhouse was $0 since I used all materials that I had lying around my apartment. I was also able to cover two of the containers with one bag. The tomato plant was left uncovered because I don’t have a bag nearly large enough to cover that beast. Of course now that they are set up, the weather during the day is starting...
I spend a lot of time with my Grandmother. One day during the winter we got to talking and I expressed my interest in wanting to grow my own vegetables. She offered up her backyard, which was great. As much as I wanted to utilize it, it wouldn’t have been fair to her because some of the responsibility would be on her shoulders. Door to door Gram is about an hour commute from my Manhattan apartment. So making that trip 3-4 times a week would’ve been a bit much for me. She just turned 90 a few months back, but she’s still...
Last month, I read the book Plenty. There was a passage in it about “food traceability” and how our food travels on the average 1,500 to 2,000 miles from farm to plate. That has stuck with me, well because that number is insane. Besides the distance that it traveled, what about what else went into getting that food to me. How was it treated? Who are the people that worked to get it to me? How were they treated? Even though I didn’t start from seed, I can tell you that I got the planter from Trina at Silver Heights Farm,...
Urban Organic Gardener is the brainchild of Brooklyn native Mike Lieberman (pictured above). UrbanOrganicGardener.com is about giving you practical container gardening tips to grow your own food so you can avoid toxic pesticides, eat healthier and not feel limited by your lack of experience and space. Don’t worry if you have no previous gardening experience...
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 I was going with the vinyl tiles for the insert, I felt better about choosing the copper pipe. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxXZ1vMyFdI In shopping around for...
When I first moved into my apartment, my roommate had a small window garden. It was a shelf that bridged the areas between the window in the living room and my room. It was a small area that he use to grow plants. On a rainy winter night, the wood had enough and collapsed. It happened while I was home and the crash scared the shit out of me. Personally, I was never...
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