Inside Urban Green

NYTimes.com: Business of Food - Fish Farms, With a Side of Greens

Jeff Redmon - Sweet Water Organics, an aquaponics company in Milwaukee, raises perch and leafy green vegetables.

The future looks promising but it remains to be seen whether aquaponics becomes the “go-to” method of growing food in the city. This article from the International Herald Tribune via the NY Times explains more about this urban food growing method.

There may be questions about the future of aquaponics but one thing is becoming increasingly clear. Regardless of the frenetic drum beating by dirt huggers and fantasy farmers, the future is not in shoveling dirt and dung in often contaminated city ground. The future of “urban agriculture” inside the city is in the wise use of water and technology.

via www.nytimes.com

LONDON — In the Lowlands of Scotland, an old fire station donated to the community of Moffat for a symbolic penny has been converted into what may be the farm of the future. Forget about fields. Forget even about established norms of industrial agriculture. Using a new technology known as aquaponics, the Moffat farm, due to start production at the end of this month, will churn out fish and vegetables by the ton, in a space equivalent to a small factory.

Aquaponics — a combination of aquaculture, or fish cultivation, and hydroponics, or water-based planting — utilizes a symbiotic relationship between fish and plants. Fish waste provides nutrients for the plants, which in turn filter the water in which the fish live. Cuttings from plant are composted to create food for worms, which provide food for the fish, completing the cycle.

Read more...

CNN Eatocracy Blog: Fresh Vegetables On A Hotel Roof High Above Manhattan

This is an interesting comparison to the tower aeroponics garden atop the Bell Book and Candle restaurant in lower Manhattan. It is a vegetable garden on the roof of the Gramercy Park Hotel not far away from the restaurant.

I salute the creativity of the chefs in finding watertight vessels to repurpose into planters. It is also commendable that they are harvesting rainwater in repurposed barrels and are composting. Creative recycling definitely gets my attention. It is challenging and fun to make silk purses out of sows ears.

Unfortunately, here is where it goes wrong (minute 2:42). Thanks to our out of date education system, the method most publicized is micro-irrigation, or drip irrigation. You can see a stream of water directed on the plants. Does it remind you of a human activity? It is an apt metaphor. 

This emitter system works better than a watering can but a sub-irrigation system would be vastly superior. With all the time and effort put into this project it is unfortunate that there is not an auto-irrigation system feeding water into the reservoirs of sub-irrigated planter systems (SIPs).

The results would be greater productivity (in the range of +50%) while conserving 80-90% of the precious water they are harvesting. I will contact the hotel and offer my services. With minimal cost and labor, we could easily convert these planters to sub-irrigation before the next growing season.

Frieda Lim and I are working on doing the same thing with another rooftop garden here in Brooklyn. The planters are recycled beer kegs now top watered and to be converted to SIPs. We are using flexible corrugated drain pipe for the reservoirs. Stay tuned!

via eatocracy.cnn.com

"Kevin, wake up! We have a radish."

As the Gramercy Park Hotel's rooftop vegetables were first coming into flower, its three principal gardeners made no bones about delivering midnight progress reports on their crop. A lot can go wrong for novices on standard terrain - let alone those attempting to cultivate lovage, patty pan squash and chiogga beets many stories above the streets of Manhattan - so the trio make a point of sharing their triumphs as well as the losses.

A Wonderfull Idea On Open Ideo

What a great effort Avi Solomon is making to highlight the educational value of sub-irrigated planters systems (SIPs).

Please go to the Open Ideo website and show that you dig them rather than the dirt in your yard. Click some "applause" in the right side column under Avi's photo.

Please note that recycled utility buckets make great SIPs but are by no means the only or best way. Not everyone wants to look at plastic buckets.

You can make SIPs from any watertight container and you can even make them from traditional raised beds. All you need to do is line them with sheet plastic to make them watertight.

via openideo.com

Sub-Irrigated Planters (SIPs) are the most efficient and foolproof way to grow tons of food anywhere with a little sunshine. Kids can make their own SIP using two 5-gallon food-grade buckets. The SIPs remain free of weeds and need watering only once every 3 days.

CNN Covers The Rooftop Aeroponic Tower Gardens

It has been most surprising that the ABC TV coverage of the aeroponic tower gardens atop the Bell Book & Candle restaurant in lower Manhattan did not get much coverage by the blogosphere.

CNN, however, thought it important enough to cover the story with a video that The Huffington Post picked up and now I have also.

Though the price at $500 per tower is high as a consumer product, the technology appears to have awesome potential for urban personal food production. Do not let price cloud your opinion. It will come down as manufacturing volume increases and competition arrives.

Incidentally, I previously referred to them as hydroponic gardens in error. The manufacturer calls them aeroponic. I have corrected prior posts. Perhaps it would be easier to simply call them "personal food producing machines".

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Chef John Mooney shows off the rooftop farm above his soon to open restaurant, Bell Book & Candle, in this video from CNN.

NYTimes.com: Told to Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries

Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

The NY Times reports that kids are still not eating vegetables. Teaching children at a very early age about the use of modern technology-based, personal vegetable production systems might help. It is worth trying.

I had a candy addiction as a young child. Fresh picked vegetables were just like candy. I ate them because they were sweet and tasted good, not because they were nutritious and good for me.

Handing shovels to digital age, mobile phone using kids and telling them to dig dirt is pure folly. In my view, that idea is as dumb as dirt.

via www.nytimes.com

The baby-carrot industry tried to reposition its product as junk food, starting a $25 million advertising campaign whose defining characteristics include heavy metal music, a phone app and a young man in a grocery cart dodging baby-carrot bullets fired by a woman in tight jeans.

On the East Side of Manhattan, crates of heirloom vegetables with names like Lady Godiva squash were auctioned for $1,000 each at Sotheby’s, where the wealthy are more accustomed to bidding on Warhols and Picassos than turnips and tomatoes.

Maker Faire NYC In Flushing Meadows This Weekend

The Maker Faire NYC is this Saturday and Sunday at the New York Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows Corona Park (Sat 10-7, Sun 10-6).

On Sunday, Frieda Lim of Slippery Slope Micro Farm, and I will spend some time with Avi Solomon in his booth.

Avi is a long time professional advocate of modern methods of personal food production such as  sub-irrigated planters (SIPs).

That's what we will be talking about. Hope to see you there.

via makerfaire.com

During these recessionary times it's a good idea to try and grow some of your own food to cultivate your sense of independence.

Many are daunted by this 'complicated' prospect and give up on the idea prematurely. But there is a simple, 'slam dunk' way to grow your own food: using Sub-Irrigating Planters or SIPs.

Professional Panel Discusses Urban Agriculture At NYU

People packed into this room at NYU because they were eager to hear the opinions of a select panel of urban agriculture professionals this past Tuesday evening. You can read more about who they were and what they said in the following Red Rooster Group report. The session was moderated by Daniel Bowman Simon, People's Garden NYC, produced by the Sustainability Practice Network (SPN) and co-hosted by the NYU Stern - Social Enterprise Association (SEA).

In the Q&A session, there was an opportunity to poll the audience by show of hands. I asked who of them were familiar with sub-irrigated planter systems (SIPs), micro gardens and simplified hydroponics. The response was less than 10% of the audience to all three questions.

It was most revealing to once again experience how little the subject of modern methods of personal food production are known in our society. The USDA fog machine (and others) have done a most effective job of keeping the focus on traditional dirt farming methods that are clearly less appropriate for personal use in city neighborhoods.

Simple-to-use personal food growing systems are safe, highly productive, produce no run-off and conserve water. 

These systems avoid growing in often-contaminated city soil and produce in the range of 50% more produce per square foot while saving 80-90% of the water used in overhead irrigation.

People can grow on concrete, on balconies and rooftops. Space in the sun for a micro garden system is all they need. Unlike dirt gardens, micro gardens or micro farms can be certified organic from day one. 

There is no need for time-strapped people to have to travel to a dirt garden to grow some fresh food. These gardens are fine for people who have the time and motivation to garden in a group but they should not be the sole option.

There is no reason for people holding two jobs to water plants two times a day during the heat of the summer. Dirt gardening as the norm makes little sense in the city. If we really want to reduce obesity and hunger, we need to live in the modern world and use some very simple but highly productive technology. The only thing holding us back is lack of education. 

via redroostergroup.com

Will urban gardens save America? This lofty topic was taken on tonight by a panel of experts representing different aspects of the urban agriculture movement that provided an interesting overview of the issue.

Teaching kids to eat dandelion leaves, ensuring capital for commercially-scalable urban agricultural projects, and the impracticality of rooftop gardens were theme that punctuated the diverse conversation in an exploration of how we grow our food

 

Update

You may have noticed that my blogging activity has slowed down significantly. There are two reasons. For one, I am dealing with blogger burnout, a malady known well by veteran bloggers.

Blogging isn’t just about writing. It takes extensive research to publish a blog like this and what I read each day is mostly quite disturbing. Our horticultural education is clearly deficient using 21st century standards. A blog post is merely the tip of the iceberg when compared to my research. I have enough information to keep two more bloggers busy, or enough to write a book. 

The second and more significant reason is my energy level. I am currently undergoing pre-op testing before surgery to replace both of my knees. I have been living in pain with the debilitating symptoms of end stage osteoarthritis and have been procrastinating about surgery for far too long.

Where I used to power walk an hour a day only a year ago, a six-block walk to the store now wears me out. Dealing with this drains my energy and I spend a lot of time taking naps to recover. I don't look forward to surgery and rehab but I do look forward to daily walking on normal knees.

I have many unanswered comments and emails and apologize for that. I’ll do my best to get back on track. Thanks for your patience.

Slippery Slope Micro Farm And CuGreen At The Farm City Fair

Who says city slickers can't get down and dirty? Hundreds of green-minded Brooklynites showed up on Sunday for the Farm City Fair at the Invisible Dog Art Center. A New York–ified take on a traditional county fair, Farm City was a block-long, in- and outdoors celebration of sustainable food and art as part of the French Institute's Farm City: Urban Agriculture exhibit.

via newyork.metromix.com

Global Micro Garden Systems

 

City dwellers around the world are making micro gardens (aka sub-irrigated planters SIPs) from recycled wooden pallets and other scrap lumber. You can find them on rooftops, balconies, small courtyards, alleyways, patios, wherever there is enough sun to grow food.

The UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) educates low-income people about how to make what they call "micro garden systems". Think of them as "enabling gardens" because that is what they are. These gardens enable people of all ages and incomes to grow fresh food in their often harsh urban environment.

Many of these urban growers end up knowing more about growing food than many professional horticulturists. The big question is why don't you know about them.

We will be talking a lot about sub-irrigated planter systems (SIPs) and micro garden systems at the Farm City Fair here in Brooklyn tomorrow. Come on by!

Frieda Lim owner of Slippery Slope Micro Farm will share personal experience with her Americanized versions of micro garden systems many of us know as SIPs.

via www.fao.org

While most of the soil-less culture systems require medium to high level investments, FAO has been working over the past years to develop and promote simple, low cost and easy to manage soil-less culture technology adapted for resources-poor urban families with no access to agricultural land. This technology  known as "micro garden systems" enables them to grow a broad range of vegetables and condiments on small areas like balconies, roof tops, and patios.