Organic Gardening: the Key to Our Future?

One neat solu­tion that would bypass many of the prob­lems would be for peo­ple to grow at least some of their own food. In such a way, they would be con­nected to what they eat, would have absolute con­fi­dence in how it was grown and, last but not least, would expe­ri­ence the pride of hav­ing pro­duced it themselves—something absent from gen­eral soci­ety for at least half a century.

Your answer to this might be, “Oh, but I can’t do that! I live right in the mid­dle of the urban sprawl! How am I ever going to grow any­thing?” Well, how about this? It was very suc­cess­fully done by a guy who lived in an apart­ment in Brooklyn, New York. And he did it right on his own fire escape.

Meet Mike Lieberman—the Urban Organic Gardener

“There were a cou­ple things that inspired me to want to grow my own food,” Mike Lieberman told Organic Connections. “One is that I eat a lot of organic fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles, and it can get to be a lit­tle expen­sive because much of it is shipped and not local. Another is that I was read­ing quite a bit in the last two years or so just to become more con­scious and aware of what I’m doing and how that’s affect­ing oth­ers around me in the envi­ron­ment. I read that the aver­age travel from farm to table was between 1,500 and 2,000 miles, and I sim­ply wanted get back in touch with my food.” With these fac­tors in mind, Mike stepped out on his fire escape and decided it would do just fine.

One prob­lem, how­ever: Mike didn’t have the first idea how to grow any­thing. But that wasn’t a bar­rier. “I learned mostly by trial and error,” he said. “I read half a book on gar­den­ing, but I found it to be kind of bor­ing. So I tell peo­ple, `I’m sure it’s not the sim­plest thing in the world, but what hap­pened 500 years ago? People didn’t con­sult a mas­ter gar­dener or some­one who had a fancy cer­tifi­cate.’ Nothing against mas­ter gar­den­ers, but what did peo­ple do back then? They took seeds; they threw them in the dirt, watered them and waited to see what would hap­pen. So that was kind of the approach I took as well.”

One thing Mike had avail­able that farm­ers 500 years ago didn’t: the social net­work­ing capa­bil­i­ties of the Internet. He set up a blog called Urban Organic Gardener, and as he learned, he put his lessons on the blog. He also asked ques­tions as he went and turned the whole adven­ture into quite a dia­logue. The blog became pop­u­lar, and soon all kinds of peo­ple were watch­ing Mike as he pro­ceeded and his fire-escape gar­den became more expansive.

Mike made good use of the resources avail­able to him. He built his own con­tain­ers from mate­r­ial he col­lected around his neigh­bor­hood, because he found that the right con­tain­ers could be a bit expen­sive. He bought soil from a local ecol­ogy cen­ter that made and sold com­posted soil at a local farm­ers’ market.

Through the first sea­son Mike raised numer­ous crops. He grew but­ter crunch, leaf and romaine let­tuces. He planted and har­vested sweet and hot pep­pers, cherry toma­toes, kale and Swiss chard. He grew herbs as well: mint, oregano, tar­ragon and others.

As part of his learn­ing expe­ri­ence, Mike also planted sev­eral crops in his grandmother’s back­yard in Brooklyn and shared those results with blog read­ers as well.

Click on any image above to see a larger version.

Across the Internet

Meanwhile, as the pop­u­lar­ity of his blog grew, Mike was enjoy­ing plen­ti­ful inter­ac­tion. “That’s one of the great things about the Web these days: the inter­ac­tion and the advice and sup­port from the peo­ple on line,” he said. “It’s been great. I would post a video on YouTube and within two to three hours peo­ple would be com­ment­ing on it. I would get back insight and advice in terms of what other peo­ple had done, or maybe I was shar­ing ideas new to them. So between my site, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, there’s been a lot of inter­ac­tion and a lot of shar­ing of good ideas.”

Before the sea­son was over, Mike found that his con­tin­u­ing story was serv­ing as quite an inspi­ra­tion. “One woman wrote to me who lives out in DC,” Mike related. “She has a patio back­yard space with a fence. After see­ing some of the stuff I’d done with soda bot­tles on my site, she decided she was going to do some­thing as well. She took a bunch of soda bot­tles and planted let­tuce and herbs and just hung them up on her back fence. She’s sent lots of pic­tures to me. Now she has a whole setup and is going to be grow­ing a lot more.”

One e-mail Mike received illus­trates how gar­den­ing can help keep a fam­ily together. A woman in Phoenix needed a project to bond with her teenage son. At a time when the boy was learn­ing about plants and pho­to­syn­the­sis in school, the woman came across Mike’s Urban Organic Gardener site and real­ized she and her son could start a gar­den, uti­liz­ing Mike’s “just try it” approach. It has worked, and Mike has stayed in touch with the woman. It’s a story Mike is par­tic­u­larly proud of.

“I really enjoy inspir­ing peo­ple and show­ing that you don’t need to be an expert,” Mike said. “Your gar­den doesn’t have to be pretty and per­fect and prim and proper. As long as it’s func­tional and pro­vides you with food, it works and it’s possible.”

So what’s next for the Urban Organic Gardener since his first suc­cess­ful sea­son ended? A new adven­ture: he’s mov­ing to Los Angeles. His fans are fol­low­ing along on his blog as he packs up his pots, his worms and all his sup­plies. When he arrives, he’ll be plant­ing a gar­den on a bal­cony there and start­ing all over again!

Follow the adven­tures of the Urban Organic Gardener at www.urbanorganicgardener.com.