How To Make a Sub Irrigated Planter! We grow HUNDREDS of pounds of vegetables in our planters! Follow these easy DIY step by step instructions on how to make your own container garden. These planters are perfect for gardens of any size, and they’re cheap to make!

What is a Sub Irrigated Planter?

Sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) have been a game changer for us since we started using them almost 10 years ago.  The main difference between them and traditional container gardening planters is that with SIPs water is introduced from the bottom and is absorbed up through the growing media via capillary action.  This method conserves water and makes sure that moisture stays where your plants need it most – their roots.  

Hundreds of pounds of vegetables grown in a couple sub irrigated planters!

We originally learned about building SIPs when we used to garden on our NYC rooftop (and grew hundreds of pounds of vegetables!).  Watering had become a daily multi-hour chore and we were looking for solutions to combat the hot and windy conditions that quickly evaporated water from the garden and always left our plants looking thirsty. 

There are numerous premade SIP solutions to buy but they can get expensive and didn’t really fit the level of production we wanted so we decided to build our own.  Our two favorite resources are Earthtainers and Global Buckets. The first summer we used SIPs we were in love.  Our evaporation woes were over, watering wasn’t a constantly required chore and best of all the plants looked great – especially our 8ft tall tomato plants that were giving us pounds (and pounds!) of vegetables a day!

(btw need tomato recipes? You NEED to try my stewed tomatoes and cherry tomato sauce!). 

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Find out what’s growing in our Brooklyn Community Garden space in June! We have a update on peas, tomatoes, onions, kale and peppers!

Hey everyone!  Hope you had a great weekend!  Ours was a hot one, with temperatures on the rise!  We stopped by our Community garden space to check on our vegetables and I decided to take some photos to show you a update!

If you missed it, we decided to go back to our roots (no pun intended!) and grow in Brooklyn again this year.  The last 2 years we grew Upstate, but the heart was heavy for urban city farming again!

This is our 4×4 garden space, with a little expansion with our sub irrigated containers!  Like everything in the city, we use every inch of space we can get! 

Happy Baby!

And here’s one happy baby who’s already trying to nibble on my kale and drag the hose around! A big reason why we decided to garden again in Brooklyn was to show her how fun it is to grow your own vegetables in the city!

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HOW TO STORE CILANTRO to make it last for weeks! This easy trick shows how to keep cilantro fresh in water in your refrigerator to last for 3 weeks! It’s the perfect way to store cilantro for a long time!

I’m back with another tip to help your vegetables last longer! Remember how I shared my tip to keep your lettuce fresh for a month? Well this trick will keep your cilantro fresh for weeks!

Cilantro – are you one of those people that love it or hate it?  I love it! But my issue with cilantro is that it never seems to last long enough to use it all.  Often recipes only call for a small amount of cilantro, and it’s hard to find things to do with a whole bunch of it!  With this tip you’ll no longer have to let your cilantro go to waste!

You guys know I don’t like to waste anything we grow.  I’ve showed you how to make tomato powder out of tomato skins, and how to make mint tea, but now I wanted to show you my trick on how to how to store cilantro to make it last longer!

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Top 10 Easiest Vegetables To Grow in the garden! All these vegetables are easy to grow from seed and in containers!  This is the perfect list for a first time gardener! 

I get asked a lot “I want to start a garden, what vegetables are best for beginners?”.   The short answer is ALL OF THEM! The long answer is “Well, they all have their pros and cons and there are so many variables that go into a specific vegetable, but here’s the ones I think that would work best for you depending on your space and climate”.  

10 Easiest Vegetables To Grow

I thought about this recently as this question usually starts to pop up frequently in the Spring.  So I decided to make a list of the easiest vegetables to grow in your garden!  All of these vegetables are grown from seed and specifically grow good in containers (even sub irrigated planters)!  I picked vegetables that can grow successfully across different climates, including heat tolerant vegetables!

So now…. the list…!

Easiest Vegetables To Grow In Containers

 #10 TOMATOES

Did you know that one tomato plant can yield 50-80 pounds of tomatoes?  Yup, that’s a lot of tomatoes!  Make sure to give your tomatoes enough water in the Summer as they continue to grow.  Use cages to support the plants as they grow high!

Need tomato recipes? Try my reader favorites: Stewed Tomatoes and Oven Roasted Cherry Tomato Sauce.

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This year we’re going back to garden basics.  And we’re back in Brooklyn y’all!  After spending 2 Summers gardening Upstate we’re going back to our garden roots – growing in a small space in the city!  Let me introduce you to this Summer’s experiment – how much can we grow in a 4×4 garden?

The 4×4 garden begins!

This year we joined our Brooklyn neighborhood community garden and got a 4×4 garden plot.  We’re going to be using every inch of that 4×4 space, including the outside of the box with sub-irrigated containers!  Seriously, we’re going to use all the space that comes with our little growing area!  

So here’s my goal. I want to show you that you don’t need a lot of space to grow your own food!

I want to grow 100 pounds of vegetables in a 4×4 garden plot!

We’re not growing any heavy vegetables this year, such as pumpkins or watermelons, so the majority of the pounds would come from tomatoes.  Instead of growing 3 types of tomatoes like we did every year, we’re only growing roma tomatoes this year because that’s what we use and can the most.  

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