Inside Urban Green

Ficus Trees Multiplied

As you can probably tell, these Ficus trees are not on the floor of a greenhouse. Look below after the jump.

There are now more than 50 of them growing in the CuGreen plant lab. It is rather amazing to know that these desktop trees were propagated from four small bags of cuttings starting about a year and a half ago. Read the back story here.

There is no special equipment here. The light gardens are Inter-Metro type storage racks from Costco and the artificial lighting is supplied from inexpensive shop lights (4’) using ordinary 40-watt fluorescent tubes. The racks are located in east facing windows so they also receive natural light during the day.

The planters are made from recycled pop/soda bottles. To encourage rooting they are covered with clear plastic deli containers to start. It typically takes 3-4 weeks to root the cuttings and the deli containers are then removed.

These seven Sansevieria plants were propagated using the same system. Who knows how many new plants will be propagated from these plants over the next year or so. I will post the progress.

McGill University Edible Campus

via www.youtube.com

Note: There is loud background music in the video. Check your sound.

The website that hosted the McGill University Edible Campus slideshow went out of business. Thanks to jardinssurtoit this video shows them all.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Multiplying Sansevieria: Green Desk Plants

Margaret Sheri, Parent Coordinator (and school garden organizer), at PS 102 gave me this Birds-nest Sansevieria (Sansevieria trifasciata 'Hahnii').

Now there are seven of them growing new roots in recycled 2.0 pop/soda bottle planters. Soon they will go back to the school and grow on the shelves of their new light garden which will produce "green desk plants" for classrooms.

The children in PS 102 will quickly learn some plant science basics and the benefits of sub-irrigated planters (SIPs). While doing this, they will also learn about repurposing plastic bottles into objects of significant value.

New: Recycled Pop Bottle Planters 2.0

Click for larger sizes on Flickr

Recycled pop/soda bottle planters are the best way that I know of to learn how to grow and maintain plants in containers. I’ve justifiably called them the Rosetta Stones of urban greenscaping.

The only thing that has bothered me about these sub-irrigated (aka "self-watering) planters is their height that makes them more difficult to conceal in a cachepot.

The simple solution is to cut off the neck of the bottle to reduce the height of the section that holds the plant. I used a hot knife heated over my gas stove. Doing this also requires lowering the height of the reservoir section.

You can see the significant difference in the photo above. The pop bottle planter 2.0 on the left now fits nicely into a ceramic planter like this one from IKEA. Incidentally, a standard 6” grow pot will not fit into this planter but the 2.0 pop bottle planter does.  

I would definitely recommend the 2.0 planters for all indoor plants. It will not work as well for outdoor plants in sunlight because the capacity of the reservoir is reduced.

Look for detailed instructions and an update of this Flickr photo set in the near future.

White House Pushes Science and Math Education - NYTimes.com

via www.nytimes.com

To improve science and mathematics education for American children, the White House is recruiting Elmo and Big Bird, video game programmers and thousands of scientists.

President Obama will announce a campaign Monday to enlist companies and nonprofit groups to spend money, time and volunteer effort to encourage students, especially in middle and high school, to pursue science, technology, engineering and math, officials say.

Go Elmo!

Top Ten Container Gardening Books on Amazon

Following are the top 10 container gardening books on Amazon.com. At number four is Fresh Food From Small Spaces by R.J. Ruppenthal (an attorney and educator). What is significant about it is that he covers the subject of self-watering (aka professionally as sub-irrigation) in other than a cursory way. There is a full section titled The Case for Self-watering Planters.

Fortunately the concept of the self-watering container has continued to spread and several gardening companies have refined the concept into a much more productive and modern form.

Although you can use any type of container for planting vegetables, I highly recommend that you use one of these modern self-watering containers to maximize your small garden's production and simplify its care. 

Use the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon (upper left) search on self-watering and you can read much more of what he wrote on the subject. It is the most extensive coverage of sub-irrigation (aka "self-watering") in any book I have reviewed about either container gardening or houseplants. It is long overdue.

Oasis of the Seas' Central Park by the Numbers

Royal Caribbean has provided some interesting factoids about the Central Park atrium.

Celebrity's Solstice-class ships may boast the first-ever real grass lawns at sea, but Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas will have the first-ever park, filled with plants, trees and flowers. It's no easy task to plant a garden on a cruise ship, so we asked Denise Eichmann -- Senior Project Manager for Ambius, the landscape contractor in charge of creating Central Park -- how it's done.

Central Park was designed by landscape architect firms Wilson Butler Architects and Waterfield Design Group, and Ambius' job is to make their vision a reality. That means selecting which plant varieties to use (researching salt tolerance in plants and working with the USDA to find plants unlikely to transport pests and diseases between Florida and the Caribbean), getting the flora grown, transporting it to the port and loading it onto the ship.

Take a closer look at the process with our Central Park fun facts -- by number! 

Central Park On The High Seas Arriving To Pick Up Its Greenery

oasis of the seas_inbound, originally uploaded by Monica R..

Oasis of the Seas arrived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida today. The plants grown locally in Florida can now be installed in the ship's awesome Central Park atrium. This photo gives us an idea of the gargantuan size of the ship. It is 40% bigger than the next largest cruise ship. 

Now that the ship is in Port Everglades, workers will attend to the final details. Perhaps the biggest job is the installation of 12,000 shrubs, plants and trees to give Central Park, the first of its kind park-at-sea, a leafy, green ambience.

Read more in the Miami Herald.

More videos Have a look at the one titled Oasis of the Seas Inside. The Finns in Turku where she was built were invited to tour the ship. This is Las Vegas afloat!

Recycled Pop Bottles Light Pole Planter

A friend of mine sent me this photo of recycled pop/soda bottle planters attached to a light pole in the James J. Byrne Memorial Playground (site of the Old Stone House) in Brooklyn (5th Ave at 3rd Street). Note the brackets that look professionally made and the overflow drain holes.

The photo obviously doesn't do justice to the idea because whatever was growing in them has now died in the cold autumn weather. What a creative use of these very efficient planters. Does anyone know the story of how they got there?