This is a portable micro farm on an industrial scale. The first floor is a recycled shipping container that houses an aquaculture fish farm. The upper story greenhouse houses the hydroponic vegetable growing that is an integral part of an aquaponics system. A food production unit like this can go anywhere in the city and if necessary move to a new location. It will be interesting to see how this concept evolves. Why aren't we innovating like this here in NYC?
Urban Farming Takes Root in Europe By Julio Godoy* Tomatoes and lettuce growing in the Rostlaube "container farm". Credit:Courtesy of MalzfabrikBERLIN, Jul 21, 2011 (Tierramérica)
BERLIN, Jul 21 (IPS) - (Excerpt) The Prinzessinnengarten is one of many organic agriculture projects flourishing in numerous cities across Europe. In Berlin itself, another initiative organised by Urban Farmers, a group based in Zurich, Switzerland, uses aquaponics, which combines traditional aquaculture or fish farming with hydroponics, the cultivation of vegetables in water. The result is a sustainable food production system that reduces both water consumption and waste.
The two activities are combined in the Rostlaube or "container farm", in which vegetables are grown in a greenhouse mounted on top of an old industrial container converted into a fish farming tank.
"Our goal is to help people remember that we can produce food using the smallest possible amount of chemical substances, without fertilisers or pesticides or antibiotics," UrbanFarmers director Roman Gaus told Tierramérica.
This impressive array of fresh vegetables is from a garden using EarthBox type sub-irrigation planters (SIPs). Photos of the garden are on Facebook.
Two things struck me when looking at the photos. One is that even using SIPs, there is a variation in the quality of the plants I see in my research. Some people simply do a better job of growing regardless of the method. My guess is that it involves time spent, attention given and regional climate differences.
The second observation is that the majority of SIP garden photos I see are of gardens in suburban and rural areas. That is just the opposite of what I would expect considering the benefits of SIPs in cities where tillable land is scarce, expensive and often contaminated.
My belief is that people with backyards are much more used to growing food than city dwellers. Many of these more experienced gardeners have quickly understood the benefits of SIPs and have adopted them.
I also observe the lack of education about SIPs here in NYC and other US cities I have studied. Education is clearly the missing ingredient holding back the use of modern methods such as SIPs.
I am currently doing a walking tour site survey of my neighborhood and photographing people’s efforts to grow some edible plants. It is a very sad story. Stay tuned.
This video provides a good insight into Lufa Farms, a new hydroponic rooftop farming business in Montreal. It is similar to Gotham Greens here in Brooklyn.
It is possible that Lufa Farms will expand their business into the New York market. I hope that they do. There is plenty of room here for two or more good competitors. We, the consumers will be the beneficiaries. That's what free enterprise is all about.
VIDEO: It boasts tomatoes, cucumbers, lemons and other organic edibles, but the commercial garden that has sprung up in Montreal is like no other -- since it's located up in the air. The greenhouse sit on the rooftop of a massive office building, and offers a model of farming that takes "green" architecture to a new level. Duration: 02:07
These are photos of the original beta test sub-irrigated raised bed. It was a home run. The plants grew as if they were in plant heaven.
Most unfortunately, these planters were located in a demonstration garden at a garden center that went out of business. This raised bed and more were lost. There was a magnificent display of a range of sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) from window boxes to DIY tote box SIPs to EarthBoxes. You can see them in this Flickr photo set.
My objective now is to find a new home for one or more demonstration gardens like the one that was lost. They will be a major benefit to the community.
For starters, the three raised bed kits that I bought will replicate this raised bed. Notice the step stair arrangement of the bed in the photo. The three kits (4' x 4' x 7") from Home Depot will recreate this bed design. The kits are stackable. Two will be stacked to created a 4' x 4' x 14" next to a single 4' x 4' x 7" to form a 4' x 8' sub-irrigated planter bed.
Shallow rooted greens will grow in the low section and plants like tomatoes and peppers in the high section. The productivity will be awesome and it is just the beginning. All we need is the first location.
See how the sub-irrigation was made after the jump.
This is the rooftop garden of Johanne Daoust in Toronto. In my view, it is a first-class example of both urban food productivity and creative applied research. Johanne is a woman with a will.
My regret is that she is not here in New York. Thanks to the Internet however her work and her spirit is available to us. This Flickr photo set is a good place to start.
What you see above is a prototype of one or more demonstration gardens that could be growing here in NYC. It will take some funding but not megabucks. I have no doubt that the money will follow the projects value.
Following is some quick background on Johanne’s micro farm. This is her third season and she only recently converted her planters to sub-irrigation. She is obviously a first-class do-it-yourselfer. Her micro farm now has a variety of sub-irrigated planters including sub-irrigated raised beds. Most of her planters are DIY but she also does product testing of commercially available planters such as Lechuza and Biotop.
If you are a new gardener wouldn’t you like to stroll through a project like this and ask questions? Wouldn't you like to attend a workshop at a demonstration site like this, sample some of the fresh food and perhaps take home a SIP you made yourself?
What you see here can easily become a reality. All it takes is the will to do it.
In the spring I converted well over 50 pots and 5 raised beds into sub- irrigation planters.
I did not change my pots I used what I had by lining them with plastic and then inserting the home made SIP systems I constructed. I based the design of my systems on information that I found on Bob Hyland's excellent blog.
www.insideurbangreen.org/
The sub irrigation system is remarkable and the growth of the vegetables in both the pots and raised beds incredible. I highly recommend it.
Three of these raised bed kits from Home Depot should be at my door today. They will eventually find a home as sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) somewhere here in Brooklyn.
The goal is to make them the "cornerstones" of one or more micro garden demonstration sites. There will be many more SIP cornerstones of different types added to this program. This is just a start. You might think of them as starter plants or the seeds of horticultural modernity.
Please contact me if you are interested in learning more about collaborating on this program. Email urbangreenscaper [at] gmail.com
If you have a potential site, it must be available for public viewing. I am not interested in personal property projects.
The sad story to report is that we do not have even one institution here In New York offering education or demonstration of modern methods of growing food in the city. All they teach is dirt gardening. One-dimensional education like this is no better than an unbalanced diet of fast food. Education should include a full menu of options, not just one based on ideology.
We desperately need public demonstration sites so that New Yorkers can see the value of these systems with their own eyes. The plants will speak for themselves.
Uncommon Ground, whose rooftop garden has been in the urban agriculture spotlight many times, is the site of a new restaurant with a unique sidewalk garden.
Who would know that there are 47 EarthBoxes helping to form this sidewalk dining space? The EarthBox sub-irrigated planters (SIPs aka "self-watering") are concealed inside decorative planters.
This type of installation is similar to the PS 39 school garden here in Brooklyn. In this case, the planters were made from recycled wood pallets and the SIPs from tote boxes.
We are likely to see more and more of this type of installation in the future. The SIPs are more appropriate to be a plumbing system hidden behind a more decorative facade just as is done in a home kitchen or bath.
The source of the information is E.A.T., a Chicago organization I will blog more about in a future post. The E.A.T organization acronym stands for education, agriculture and technology. It was good to find it. We need more organizations like it that recognize the role of technology in the field of urban food production.
This video from Cooking Up a Story is right on target except for one thing and you probably know what it is. Of course, these salad bowls should be sub-irrigated planters (SIPs). They will be far more productive and built-in water reservoirs will significantly reduce the risk of drying out.
Small planters like these salad bowls are high risk for fatal desiccation. I see wilted plants in drain hole planters all over my neighborhood here in Brooklyn. There are wilted plants everywhere. It is a sorry sight in the heat of the summer.
The video reminds me of an old expression in my sales career and it is; “every disadvantage, an advantage”. It’s about flipping negatives into positives. There is a small business opportunity here created by the ultra conservative mindset of the garden center industry.
A SIP salad bowl business could be a home based business or one that is associated with an existing retail business such as a florist or hardware store. It would not take much of an investment to start a business like this. It could be a door-to-door business run by high school teenagers or college students.
They're "farming concrete" here in Jersey City. When growing in sub-irrigated portable micro gardens like these EarthBoxes, this lot could just as well be blacktop or concrete.
This isn't about farmer wanabee hipsters and yuppies, it's about growing fresh food and fresh new outlooks for people living in very difficult environments. Where is the leadership to make this happen in all concrete jungle neighborhoods across America?
This blogger chronicled the amazing growth of two tomato plants with a number of photos starting on May 23, 2011. See the day 2 photo after the jump.
Note that the sub-irrigated portable micro garden (an EarthBox in this case) is sitting on concrete. It could just as well be on concrete in any city in America. All it takes to do this is sunlight and significantly more enlightened education than we currently have.
