Inside Urban Green

110 Year Old Sub-irrigation Planter

1182. Sub-irrigation with two runs of tile

1183. Sub-irrigation with two tiers of tile.

Thanks to Google, we have these photos of a sub-irrigation planter (SIP, aka “self-watering planter”) that is about 110 years old. When a vendor touts their "new self-watering planter" invention, just smile.

The photos are from the Cyclopedia of American Horticulture, by Liberty Hyde Bailey and Wilhelm Miller (1900). Many consider Liberty Hyde Bailey as one of the founding fathers of American Horticulture. He was also co-founder of the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS).

We can also thank our reactionary consumer horticultural education led primarily by the USDA extension program, for the fact that a hundred years later sub-irrigation is not more widely known in mainstream America.

Due mostly to our backward looking education, we are stuck in an outdated age of clay pots and drain holes. If we have a problem feeding people living in densely populated urban areas, we can trace much of the fault to this broken education system.

The planter designed by Professor W.J. Green of the then Ohio Experiment Station, in Wooster, Ohio works essentially the same as an EarthBox, Tomato Success Kit, Garden Patch Grow Box and all the other homemade sub-irrigation planters (SIPs, aka “self-watering”) including utility bucket SIPs. All use the simple principle of capillary action. Green's sub-irrigation work dates back to 1890-1891. What have we been doing since then?

Professor Green made his SIP with materials available in his day. There was no sheet plastic, no plastic pipe in those days. Instead, he used concrete and clay tiles to create the planter using a greenhouse bed.

Read the entire section from the Cyclopedia of American Horticulture.

Download Sub-irrigation - Cyclopedia of American Horticulture – 1904

These are some of the proven benefits of sub-irrigation that Professor Green cited. They are the same as those for present day SIPs.

EarthBoxes Helping to Feed the Hungry in Haiti

via theglobalinstitute.wordpress.com

THOMONDE, Haiti–In association with the Millennium Village Project in Marmont, the Project Medishare agricultural team began in May 2008 experimenting with 20 of the 220 Earth Boxes which were donated to Project Medishare by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) through the FAO Growing Connections Program. Project Medishare is receiving not only assistance from FAO but also from the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida (IFAS)who are providing technical assistance for the Millennium Village Project’s agricultural program. The program is an effort to begin an alternative growing program for the vulnerable (elders, sick, handicapped), children and adolescents.

Sub-irrigated planters (SIPs aka "self-watering") like the EarthBox work in New York City too, ...and Newark, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles and any other city in America where there are food deserts, a scarcity of tillable land and hungry people. Do we need the U.N. to save us?

Confessions of an EarthBox convert - Fresh Dirt - Sunset.com

My plants, absolutely thriving.

The EarthBox tomatoes are on the left and doing much better compared to the ones on the right, living in galvanized pots.

Photos and excerpt from the blog freshdirt.sunset.com

I've been an EarthBox skeptic for a while now, not wanting to believe that growing vegetables in a plastic box could possibly be a good idea. Call me old fashioned, but I like my tomatoes in the ground.

Like many things in life, we probably shouldn't judge them until we learn a little more. It turns out that the EarthBox has a lot of features that make good sense and keep plants healthy:

This is the first information that I have ever seen on the Sunset Magazine website on the subject of EarthBoxes or self-watering or sub-irrigation planters (SIPs) other than this rather over-priced and over-publicized planter for houseplants.

This glaring lack of information about sub-irrigation (aka self-watering) is rather unbelievable considering the supposedly trend-setting status of California. What are they thinking in light of the fact that we regularly read about California water shortages? It is even more amazing considering the number of ag and horticultural grads turned out by Cal Poly, U.C. Davis and U.C. Riverside.

What are they teaching about modern methods of personal food production, sustainability and conservation of natural resources?  

A River of Sub-irrigated Planters (SIPs)

Photo by Greenscaper

This is near where the Waterpod was berthed in the Harlem River. I wonder how many people we could feed with sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) made from the debris floating in this river?

What if we converted every planter with drain holes to efficient sub-irrigation by the method shown here and here for example? How many plastic containers would be kept out of our landfills and put to productive use instead?

Simply put, plant containers with drain holes are a bad idea. They contribute to wasted water, wasted plants and wasted time. They have no positive benefit on the environment.

We should have an organized program to "compost" our plastic trash into SIPs? We would help the environment and grow an enormous amount of fresh food in the city if we did.

This from the New York Times

   
                                                                Click to enlarge

Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations.

The movement is simple in concept if not always in execution: Produce less waste. Shun polystyrene foam containers or any other packaging that is not biodegradable. Recycle or compost whatever you can.

Tom Friedman: The New Untouchables

                                                                                         
via www.nytimes.com 

My background and experience over a long lifetime covers both technology and horticulture. My blogging beat now covers the field of urban horticulture or what I call urban greenscaping. It reveals very few "untouchables" as defined by Tom Friedman in his op-ed column. 

Most of the institutions involved in urban greenscaping and the media covering it are living in a prior century, a "drain hole century" if you will.

The good news is that there are terrific career opportunities for creative minds willing to explore new ways of bringing the natural world of plants into the built environment. The door is wide open for "new untouchables" to walk through.

The New Untouchables

exerpts:

But those who have the ability to imagine new services, new opportunities and new ways to recruit work were being retained. They are the new untouchables.

That is the key to understanding our full education challenge today. Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait. Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive. Therefore, we not only need a higher percentage of our kids graduating from high school and college — more education — but we need more of them with the right education.

further...

Just being an average accountant, lawyer, contractor or assembly-line worker is not the ticket it used to be. As Daniel Pink, the author of “A Whole New Mind,” puts it: In a world in which more and more average work can be done by a computer, robot or talented foreigner faster, cheaper “and just as well,” vanilla doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s all about what chocolate sauce, whipped cream and cherry you can put on top. So our schools have a doubly hard task now — not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity.

Bottom line: We’re not going back to the good old days without fixing our schools as well as our banks.

Growing Food, Growing Minds

Photos Rana Abu-Sbaih

Parent Coordinator Margaret Sheri and her green team parents held another open house today at the PS 102 PONG. It was a gorgeous fall day made even more beautiful by the presence of groups of young students shepherded by their teachers.

This, after all, is what this garden is really all about. Growing tomatoes is significant but growing minds is far more important. This was just the beginning of using the new garden as an outdoor classroom. It was great to see it happen!

Margaret reports that 56 staff members visited, 22 scheduled their classes to come into the garden, and four even visited today with no advance planning. What a great start!

Margaret and the parents who have worked so hard to make this all happen deserve a standing ovation.

View the full photo set on Flickr. (click on the slideshow icon at the top of the page)

Indoor Urban Farming as a Business?

Could this hydroponic food growing system work in American cities? We'll never know unless we modernize our horticultural education system and spend money on applied research for new urban agriculture technology. As it is now we are in the weeds. Note that this invention is from Canada, not the U.S. where we seem to be mired in dirt and drain holes.

via www.theunrulymob.com

If you are a retiree in a densely populated northern city, perhaps you should consider becoming an indoor urban farmer – either in your own home or, if you have bigger aspirations, from a warehouse. Farmers have long known that indoor hydroponic gardens grown without soil or sunlight produce yields 10-30 times greater than traditional soil-based gardens. But traditionally, hydroponic gardens needed to lay flat, thus consuming vast amounts of space and electricity to power the grow lights.

Omega Gardens,a Vancouver BC company, has developed a vertical/horizontal hydroponic system that rotates plants around a grow light and thus requires as little as 1/100 of the footprint of a traditional flat soil garden (depending on how high you stack the systems) and about 1/6 the electrical power per square foot of surface growing area compared to a traditional hydroponic farm or green house. Hydroponically grown plants grow about 4-5 times faster than traditionally grown plants with proper enclosure – and of course do not suffer from plagues, insects or varmints – so yields are significantly greater than soil gardeners expect, says Inventor Ted Marchildon. In short, they live in a perfect environment year round.

Simple Sub-irrigation Planter (SIP) From The Rooftop Garden Project

Update: March 1, 2010 - Check out this method of construction using recycled plastics.

Current Version "Ready to Grow Kit" Rooftop Garden Project photo
Current Version "Ready to Grow Kit Rooftop Garden Project photo

Prior version "Ready to Grow Kit" Rooftop Garden Project photo

The world-renowned Rooftop Garden Project in Montreal has long offered a tote box style sub-irrigation planter (SIP). They sell them to the people of Montreal at a “suggested price” of $40. I built a copy and blogged about it. Incidentally, I would now favor making this much simpler version shown here and here.

What got my attention recently were photographs of their newest version of the  “Ready-to-Grow” kit or Prêt-à-pousser. See the top two photos above.

In place of the crosshatch or egg crate design these clever young people have had a one-piece platform made by a low cost molding process. This is so cool. What a simple and functional design.

A forward looking marketing company could easily make an “iPod for food” from this design. I believe we are on the doorstep of bringing local fresh food production to the mainstream market on a very personal level. We just need to connect the dots from consumer to manufacturer.

Simple SIP From a Recycled Planter

Update: March 1, 2010 - This is another SIP using the same method in a tote box.

Click on photos for larger sizes on Flickr

This is one of two planters that were at the entrance to the PS 102 garden collecting junk. They were full of gravel and debris. I cleaned them up, installed the simple sub-irrigation planter (SIP) system and now they’re worth a lot more than when they were new.

There are planters like these all over the city just waiting to be repurposed as SIPs. For illustration purposes I planted three bell pepper plants that I had left over on my fire escape. They could, however, be planted with any terrestrial plant be it flowering, fruiting or foliage.

One day in the not too far distant future you will be able to buy a SIP planter like this either empty or planted in all home improvement stores and garden centers. The cost for most of them will be well under twenty dollars.

Remember that despite urban legend type propaganda all over the web, drain hole planters are really dumb. There is at least some intelligence behind a SIP.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” Lao Tzu.

How it works

Helping to Green the Third Avenue Festival

Thanks to an invitation from NYC Councilman Vincent Gentile we helped add to the green theme of the 36th Annual Third Avenue Festival in Bay Ridge this past Sunday. Great weather was a blessing and it was a pleasure to be part of this history-steeped event.

Evidently, it was a record setting turnout. Judging by the river of people flowing by from noon on, that would be not be a surprise to me. The photos above were taken earlier in the morning before the big crowd arrived.

While urban greenscaping includes growing both decorative and edible plants in the city, the most interest was about vegetable growing. It was clearly the hot topic and no surprise based on all the media hoopla this past summer about Victory Gardens and the White House Garden. It was interesting to hear how many people have gone to the unnecessary trouble of breaking up concrete and tearing up grass.

If the media understood the advantages of portable sub-irrigated planters (SIPs), we would have more PONGs and personal gardens with no need for the backbreaking and costly work of breaking concrete and blacktop. It is simply not necessary. SIP gardening also avoids the risk of contaminated soil. Information about the many benefits of SIP gardening was obviously new for most visitors.

There were many interesting visitors but the one that excited me the most was a representative from a prestigious New York university. We will talk some more about the possibility of a project similar to Montreal's Edible Campus at McGill University here in New York.

The outstanding McGill project was accomplished in partnership with the Rooftop Garden Project. I greatly admire what these young people have done. New York City should have at least one or more edible campuses. Perhaps one day in the near future all campuses will be edible campuses with no need for jack hammers and front-end loaders.