Inside Urban Green

A Modern Kitchen Garden

How refreshing to see this modern kitchen garden full of robust and healthy plants. The photo is from Jacquie's HomeGrown blog.  

These are EarthBoxes and there are good reasons to buy them. The planters are made from UV resistant recycled plastic and EarthBox donates many planters for good causes through the Growing Connection, a UN agency. 

Just know that sub-irrigated grow box (or bed or bucket) technology is generic rather than proprietary. 

Sub-irrigated (aka self-watering) planters have been around for more than forty years that I personally know of. Other brand names are Tomato Success Kit (Gardener's Supply) and Grow Box (Garden Patch).

Plant Room is Part of an Air Cleaning System

This video helps to clear up the misunderstanding created by the widespread publication of the Kamal Meattle TED conference presentation.  

This plant room is part of an air cleaning system in the Paharpur Business Center (PBC) in Delhi, India. Along with the plant room, the system includes an air washer and duct filtration. 

As you can see the plants are not scattered throughout the building as one might incorrectly assume from the slide presentation. They are not employee personal plants. 

Grouping a large quantity of plants (over 1,200 in this case) in one location creates the ability to remove a significant amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the indoor air. 

A living plant wall is another way of doing this. Canada has been a leader in this technology. 

See this prior post. 

Air Cleaning Indoor Plants

TED stands for Technology, Education, Design. It has become a very popular conference bringing speakers together from these three worlds. The following slide presentation is from one of the talks at the recent TED in California. 

How to Grow Your Own Fresh Air - TED 2009 Talk

View more presentations from jaymeattle. (tags: plants greenhouse)

Kamal Meattle, is founder and CEO of the Paharpur Business Centre (PBC) in Delhi, India. Many of the TED talks are available online as videos. Unfortunately, this is not one of them. A video of Mr. Meattle's talk might have been more explanatory. It is a great story.

Unfortunately, this slide presentation inadvertently led to widespread misinformation in the media and blogosphere. There is a good message in the presentation but the conclusion drawn by the media is incorrect. 

What Plants?

Is there anything in this Apartment Therapy post titled Adding Color With Plants that raises your hackles and gets you gritting your teeth? 

Do you consider plants a part of your overall decor, or are they in your home for non-aesthetic reasons only?

This simple question led to an interesting commenter brouhaha. There are 49 comments at last count.  

Rooftop Garden Hose Job

Design bloggers have been gushing over the Gehryesqe rooftop garden in Los Angeles called SYNTHe. The only thing gushing here is the hose held by the executive chef of the Blue Velvet restaurant which is located in the building. 

It may be an eye catching design, but this project made little functional sense when I first saw it. With the publication of this photo it makes even less sense, particularly in light of the drought in California. 

 

See the Cool Z-Bar LED Desk or Plant Lamp

The Z-Bar LED Desk Lamp - Better a living plant than a dead flower. 

I really like the Z-Bar lamp and think it would make a cool (and efficient) plant lamp. You can see in the video how flexible and versatile it is. These LED desk lamps are pricey now but it won't be long before they become more affordable. 

The Z-Bar was at the top of Metaefficient's list of best desk lamps for 2009. 

Source: Koncept 

Sedum Green Roof Sandwich

This is one type of green roof system. The layers shown in this photo can be used to support a sedum type (extensive) green roof. Be aware that there are other approaches to the green roof "sandwich". 

Here, a felt wicking layer (white material) sits on top of a moisture retention layer (gray molded cups). Water in these cups is wicked up into a soil layer supporting growth of low water using sedum plants. 

You might think of this as a form of sub-irrigation. As you can see, however, the moisture retention ("egg cups") layer provides only a small reservoir of water. This isn't meant to be a sub-irrigation system to support larger plants such as vegetables.  

Stoop Tomatoes

This assortment of planters was on the front stoop of a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn row house last summer. 

All of them are drench and drain planters. None of them are sub-irrigated (aka self-watering) planters. 

The productivity of these planters would be up to 100 percent higher if they were sub-irrigated and properly fertilized. 

They would also use less water and save the owner time by requiring less watering. 

It makes so much sense. Why, you ask, didn't the owner use sub-irrigation? It is my firm opinion that it is a lack of information, rather than a lack of intelligence. 

The fault lies with our institutions that should be teaching these methods but are not. 

The Center for Urban Greenscaping has a top priority to hold free public education sessions. 

If you live in New York City and have a meeting venue, I will do my best to arrange a consumer education session to fit your audience. 

Bob Hyland

aka Greenscaper

UrbanGreenscaper [AT] gmail.com 

Wal-Mart Going Green-Mart

    

A New York Times article tells how Wal-Mart decided to go green and push CFL light bulbs.

By virtue of its herculean size, Wal-Mart eventually dragged much of corporate America along with it, leading mighty suppliers like General Electric and Procter & Gamble to transform their own business practices.

Read the entire article...

I wonder what would happen if Wal-Mart got behind modern sub-irrigation methods for growing both decorative and edible plants. My opinion is that they could make a major impact on consumer ability to grow family food. 

Wal-Mart sells a self-watering planter line called Misco. It is not very well designed and they provide no consumer education along with the planter. 

One of the shortcomings is the saucer styled open reservoir at the bottom. It has limited capacity and it is not easy to determine the water level in the reservoir. A plastic tube pipette can solve that problem but Wal-Mart could definitely do better. 

A thought! What if Wal-Mart got behind a pop-bottle planter recycling campaign. That sounds like an ideal job for the Center for Urban Greenscaping. Stay tuned.

Photo Report on Urban Farming

Time magazine reports on urban farming. Not one of the 12 photos demonstrates a current real world modern method such as sub-irrigated boxes, beds or buckets. Their examples are either futuristic high rise gardens or backward looking dirt gardens.