Inside Urban Green

Gotham Greens Gets Some Attention From the New York Times

Photo Chang W. Lee/The New York Times » Butter lettuce from Gotham Greens, a new hydroponic garden in industrial Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

It was good to see the New York Times give some well-deserved coverage to this urban food production reality.

This is, after all, the largest city in America not the farm belt. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with the sounds of a small mob of fantasy farmers clanking their cowbells in the streets. This too shall pass. 

The butter lettuce is grown at Gotham Greens, a new hydroponic garden in industrial Greenpoint that turns romantic notions of farming on their head.

via www.nytimes.com

MICHAEL ANTHONY admires the butter lettuce he has been buying for the last month so much that he invented a salad for it. The $12 dish he serves at Gramercy Tavern in Manhattan is also made up of pickled eggplant, ricotta, pickled cherries and heirloom tomatoes, but the greens are the star, and for good reason.

Often picked only several hours before arriving at his kitchen, four miles from the farm, the lettuce could not be more fresh, or local. It has just about all a demanding chef could ask, except one thing: dirt clinging to its roots.

The butter lettuce is grown at Gotham Greens, a new hydroponic garden in industrial Greenpoint that turns romantic notions of farming on their head. In a $2 million greenhouse, baby plants emerge from seeds embedded in tiny sponges made of fibers spun from volcanic basalt.

Tired Old Drain Hole Dogma From the Gardening Industry

A link to this video was in my inbox yesterday. My reason for posting it is its timeliness. It is what I see in Wiltburg every day. The source of the video is GrowerTalks magazine. You could call it the road to Wiltburg. This is their YouTube description.

GrowerTalks magazine is the leading trade publication in the horticultural industry. Founded by George J. Ball in 1937, GrowerTalks covers the world of flower and plant production, while sister publication Green Profit covers the retail market.

What she is demonstrating in the video is yet another how-to about container gardening that is destined for failure. This is standard issue drain hole gardening from the US horticultural industry. The odds heavily favor these plants wilting in the summer heat of Wiltburg and meeting their end in a landfill or as compost.

Plant and water-wasting pots with drain holes might have been timely in 1905 when George J. Ball founded the company but not in this digital age of 2011.

A search of the Ball/GrowerTalks videos reveals that there is not even one about sub-irrigated planters known as SIPs. There is nothing about modernity and technology. Incidentally, the highest ranked of their many videos is 2,708 views, not a large audience by YouTube standards. 

Will the gardening industry ever wake up from its Rip Van Winkle sleep? It is clearly a time to talk about product sustainability rather than just pretty pictures that fade in the heat.

Lao Tzu - "Give a Man a Fish, Feed Him For a Day. Teach a Man to Fish, Feed Him For a Lifetime"

via www.youtube.com

Filmed during Ball's 2011 Customer Day on July 29th, Joan Mazat shows us how easy it is to create a beautiful combination container using a variety of flowers and foliage.

Welcome to Wiltburg, USA

Wiltburg is a fictional neighborhood that could be in any city in the USA. It is just down the road from Leadville. The names are fictional but the photos are real. They are from a site survey (started in 2008) of people’s efforts to grow edible plants in their yards using containers. The real neighborhood of the photos is Bay Ridge Brooklyn, where I live.

In Leadville, they grow plants in soil that is often contaminated with toxic heavy metals. In Wiltburg, they choose to grow their plants in often-undersized containers, just about all of them with traditional drain holes. The result is wilted and anorexic looking plants all over the neighborhood, particularly in the heat of summer.

Unfortunately, our horticultural education fails to deliver up-to-date information about a much more modern plant growing solution for both Wiltburg and Leadville. It would easily solve both the soil contamination and plant wilt problems that are so widespread in these communities.

It is rather amazing that news about micro gardening with sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) has yet to reach these people in spite of the fact that one of the oldest botanical gardens in America is nearby. The garden is apparently living in a time warp.

Traditional drain hole planters may be good for horticultural suppliers who thrive on consumption and non-sustainable products but not for consumers who value their time and money in a very difficult economy.

Inefficient drain hole planters waste water, plants, time and money. They are a paradox in the new world of greenness and sustainability. As many of the plants demonstrate, these pots and planters are the perfect opposite of green. It is hypocrisy to call growing plants this way a green practice.

The most striking result of the survey is to find very little use of sub-irrigated planters known as SIPs (aka erroneously as “self-watering”). There is no doubt that this will change as the public slowly becomes aware of the fact that there is a better and more green way to grow plants in the city.

Oxfam World Hunger Map

You will not find red hunger flags on the US, Canada, Europe and Australia on this map but it is naive to believe that what you see on the map will not impact all of us in some way before too long. We do not live on a separate planet. Witness the current world economy and the reduction of our prized AAA credit rating by S&P.

We also have far too many self-congratulatory urban agriculturists and fantasy farmers who think the ultimate local food solution is in dirt, drain holes and "horse power". I say think again.

There is not enough clean land and "horsepower" in cities to feed our ever-growing urban population by dirt farming alone. More viable solutions to problems of hunger and obesity are much more likely to come from science, technology and better education.

Lao Tzu - "Give a Man a Fish, Feed Him For a Day. Teach a Man to Fish, Feed Him For a Lifetime"

From the Oxfam website:

After decades of progress, the number of people without enough to eat has reversed course and is increasing. It could soon top one billion. That's more than one in seven people going to bed hungry. Today. In the 21st century.

In the last year, international food prices have reached record peaks. In many countries, high food prices have contributed to unrest, instability, violence and increasing inequality and poverty. While volatile food prices impact everyone, the impacts vary across the globe with the poorest and most vulnerable people often getting the shortest end of the stick.

To shed more light on the impacts of food price spikes, Oxfam has created an interactive map of Food Price Volatility Pressure Points. This map shows the impacts of price spikes in some of the countries where food prices have complicated the lives of poor people and offers a chance to take action on to help address price volatility.

The map shows are areas that are highly vulnerable to price spikes, countries that have had extreme weather events contribute to global price hikes and places that have seen price spikes contribute to violence or unrest that has shaken the foundation of global stability. While this map alone does not tell the full story of how price spikes have impacted our world, it offers a global snapshot to give us a better understanding of what is happening in communities near and far.

An EarthBox SIP Garden Blog

If you are new to the concept of portable micro gardens using sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) it is helpful to see what others have done.

Note that the planters are in a backgard on top of gravel. They could be on concrete in any city in the USA.

Lisa-Marie is blogging about the progress of her EarthBox SIP garden. She comments about both the successes and minor setbacks she has encountered. Take a look.

via blog.lisa-marie.net

Global Buckets » Less is More

Grant and Max Buster did a very good job of presenting the "simple SIP" design on their website.

Incidentally, if you are wondering about their use of the Miesian "Less is more" as a page title, they probably have heard a lot of this jargon; their father is an architect.

I wonder if either or both of them are considering a career in architecture. Their experience would be most valuable to the profession. Most architects get little or no training about horticulture. These young men already know more about modern but simple urban food production methods than most practicing horticulturists, including those in the USDA extension program.

Their question below about the durability of recycled food containers and inverted nursery flats is likely one that many people have. The ultimate answer to the question should not be theoretical; it should be based on user experience.

Recognize that I do not currently have an outdoor test garden. Finding space for a SIP test and demonstration garden is at the top of my prioity list. 

These are my beliefs supported by beta testing and my many years of prior knowledge and experiences. I believe the recycled plastics in the “simple SIP” will hold up longer than what might be apparent.

Unlike traditional drain hole planters, there is no force of water creating downward pressure. The system should be relatively stress free. With that said, we need to keep in mind that plant roots are extremely powerful. This factor needs evaluation from actual experience. Will the plant roots mangle the recycled plastics? 

Have you had hands on experience with the “simple SiP” that you can share? It would be most helpful to us all.

One question about this system is the durability of the milk containers and the inverted nursery trays. How will they stand up through a growing season?

The designer, Mr. Hyland, requests that if you do try this design to please send feedback on your results. Once again, his website is Inside Urban Green.

via www.globalbuckets.org

 

Archimedes Partners with the Buster Brothers

Dr. Bell's Archimedes screwpump garden made me think of the Buster brothers in Colorado. If you are not familiar with their work, their videos are a good introduction.

Grant and Max made 8 well done instructional videos that are on YouTube and their website is GlobalBuckets.org. This one demonstrates auto-irrigation of the bucket SIPs using some Archimedes principles.

It has been 2 years since their last video and they have evidently moved on with their lives. They are likely in college. They made a very significant contribution to the field of urban food production and the country desperately needs many thousands more like them.

Unfortunately, I see little or no sign that our horticultural and botanical institutions are motivated to produce them. The conversation is all about dirt and drain holes rather than science and technology.

via www.youtube.com

Solar Powered Screwpump Meets Capillary Action

This is a community garden plot unlike any you will likely see anywhere else in the world. It is the creation of Dr. Duncan Bell, soon to retire from his job as head of Biomedical Engineering at Pfizer/Wyeth.

Rube Goldberg would be proud of his garden and I say that as a compliment. This is how it works. That is a homemade water screwpump on the right. It is attributed to Archimedes in the time of the ancients. Rather than a human powered handle or electric motor to turn his DIY screw pump, Dr. Bell powers it with a solar panel.



The water screw lifts water from the tote box reservoirs up on to a watertight capillary mat bench. He used cotton towels in place of commercial capillary matting to move the water up into the planters. In any case, it is a simple sub-irrigation system modeled after many like it used in commercial greenhouse growing. 

As is typical with sub-irrigation, the plants look very healthy. Dr. Bell’s “autogarden” would be a buzz-creating addition to a consumer demonstration garden. Perhaps we can make that happen.

Read more at nyackbackyard.blogspot.com