Inside Urban Green

Lettuce Into Your Living Quarters!

Visitors look at the hydroculture lettuce and herbs grown only by LED lamps at a booth of Japanese company Synergytec during the Eco-Products 2009, Eco Style Fair, in Tokyo, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama) Editorial note: I searched but could not find a website for Synergytec and this system.

This setup is so cool. AP captioned the system as hydroculture (a passive method) when in fact it is more accurately a hydroponic system. However, that's beside the point. The significance of this photo for me is that it is set up on an InterMetro type rack just like the racks in the CuGreen plant lab.

A big difference is that the lighting is LED while mine is ordinary fluorescent. Fluorescent lighting is adequate for growing and maintaining most indoor plants (i.e. houseplants) but not for growing vegetables. This is a peek into the future of urban greenscaping in city apartments and homes. Bravo!

via armoks.com

Visitors look at the hydroculture lettuce and herbs grown only by LED lamps at a booth of Japanese company Synergytec during the Eco-Products 2009, Eco Style Fair, in Tokyo,

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.

LEDs Magazine - Plant growth gets the red light from Showa Denko

Are we going to lag behind in this technology too? Read Tom Friedman's "Have a Nice Day" column about Applied Materials and their overseas solar panel factories. There is no doubt that we will be growing vegetables in SIPs (sub-irrigated planters aka "self-watering") under LEDs in the future. The big question is who is going to make them?

via www.ledsmagazine.com

Plant growth gets the red light from Showa Denko

The Japanese LED maker has developed high-performance 660 nm chips that accelerate plant photosynthesis.

Showa Denko K.K., a Japan-based LED maker, has started selling samples of AlGaInP (aluminum gallium indium phosphide) LED chips that emit red light with wavelength of 660 nm. This, says the company, is the optimum light for accelerating the growth of plants.

Red light stimulates plants

Showa Denko has developed a new light-emitting layer and claims to have achieved an output of 11 mW at the drive current of 20 mA, which is believes to the world’s highest level for 660-nm LED chips to date.

In recent years, there has been widespread investigation of the growth of vegetables under conditions where various aspects of the environment are controlled, such as lighting, temperature, humidity, CO2 concentration and nourishment.

Nearly 30 facilities of this kind are already in operation in Japan. They ensure stabilized production regardless of season or location; they allow multiple harvests; and they do not need fungicides or insecticides because of the controlled environment. Read more...

SIP Salad Makers

These are the next steps for the recycled pop/soda bottle “SIP salad makers” shown in the portable potting tray. The seeds sprout under fluorescent shop lights hung on one of the shelves of a light garden rack. The clear plastic covers are 16-ounce deli containers that just happen to fit perfectly on top of the 2-liter soda bottle SIPS.

The light garden is an InterMetro style rolling rack from Costco (6’h x 4’w x 1 ½’ deep). InterMetro racks and copies are widely available. They are easy to move around and the shelves are adjustable in one-inch increments. The ordinary daylight fluorescent lights are on daily for 16 hours.

The next temporary home for the SIP salads is on my fire escape. Some of them will go into 5-gallon utility bucket SIPs. Others, containing basil and other leafy greens will grow on windowsills in the neighborhood including PS 102.   

Indoor Plant Lighting of the Future

Illustration: Simon Danaher in Wired Magazine 

The lighting design firm Office for Visual Interaction (OVI) won a streetlight design competition sponsored by the City of New York. This may be the LED powered streetlight of the future in the city. 

More than likely we will also be providing light for indoor plants using LED lamps like these in our homes and offices. Inadequate light is clearly the most significant limiting factor to expanding the use of plants in buildings.  

LED lighting along with better education about sub-irrigation will be of major help in the spread of urban greenscaping for both food production and environmental purposes. 

This is from the OVI website. 

In 2004, an international design competition was launched to create a new standard streetlight for the City of New York. Our design was selected after a two-stage competition process, and will add to the City’s existing catalogue of fixtures to light streets, sidewalks, and parks within the city’s five boroughs. 



In creating a streetlight that will become a new classic, we asked ourselves, “What is the light source of the future?” Hi-flux LEDs emerged as an outstanding solution. With their small size, low wattage, intensity, and extremely long life of over 50,000 hours, LEDs are preeminent as an energy efficient, minimal-maintenance source. 



Rethinking the aesthetic potential of LED technology was a driving force for the streetlight’s elegant form. In contrast to the bulky cobra-heads associated with high-pressure sodium lamps, the streetlight takes on a slim, elongated profile enabled by the tiny size of its light source, which does not require a hefty decorative enclosure. Instead, the thin arc of the luminaire itself provides the necessary surface area for housing and cooling the LEDs. The revolutionary aesthetic of the streetlight is specifically derived from the requirements and possibilities of LED technology.

Via: Inhabitat

Indoor LIght Gardens

These light gardens are from a post on Apartment Therapy. It's good to see a post on this valuable subject. Unfortunately there is little or no information about a better solution. 

My recommendation is none of the above. Buy an InterMetro style adjustable rack. You can buy a 4’ wide, 6’ tall, 18” deep rack with 5 shelves and 4 casters for about $100 at Costco. Seville Classics is an importer of these racks. Have a look at their shelving customizer.

The shelves are adjustable in 1” increments to provide the ultimate in versatility as your plant sizes change over time. 

Further, when you use sub-irrigated planters, there is no need for drainage. You do not need messy trays under the plants. 

L.E.D. There be Light

J.R. Krauza

Will the green home of the future have L.E.D lighting sufficient to maintain decorative plants or even better to grow edible plants?

This article from The New York Times is encouraging. Incidentally I read this article in context of how misinformed the Times reporters can be regarding the maintenance and growing of container plants. That is a subject that I'm qualified to critique professionally.

However, I simply don't know enough about L.E.D. lighting technology to analyze this article in detail. If you do, please comment for the benefit of other readers. Here are some reader reviews of the article.

There is obviously significant money betting on an L.E.D. future. Will the living plants sector of the “green” movement be a significant player? Only time will tell, but the past is not a good precursor of the future.

Hopefully, projects like the “Smart Home” in Chicago, will soon demonstrate the use of L.E.D. plant lighting along with sub-irrigated planters. It will certainly make these homes a lot greener.

Vertical Farm

Okay, so it's not a real "vertical farm". Think of it as an embryonic vertical farm. We need to start some where other than the outdated clay pots and saucers inside many of our homes and offices. They were only modern in the time of the ancients.

This is one of the Inside Plants Science Mini-Labs that is now in my Brooklyn apartment. This is what should be (but isn't) in the science lab of every school in America. If it were, we would be a lot further along in science education. We would be a lot further along a path to more local food production. As it is, due to a lack of up-to-date information most of us are still crawling in a horticultural kindergarten.

What you’re looking at is an investment of under $100 for a 4’x6’ InterMetro style rolling rack (Costco) with 1” increment adjustable shelves. It currently has two shop lights with room for more. This one is chrome but you can find them in black and white powder coat finishes.

Do I hear objections to fluorescent lighting? If so, put the garden in your office, a spare room or a bedroom if it bothers you to have it in your living area. With a timer, it can come on at night when you’re asleep. Use a little creativity. The result will be well worth it.

I’ve gotten very used to this garden and would miss its presence. It provides a cheery view when the weather outside is winter bleak. I lived with ten of these racks in my home back in San Diego. They soon will be rolling into some Brooklyn school rooms helping to teach modern plant science.

Commercial light gardens of this type cost much more. Those from Gardener’s Supply and the National Gardening Association will likely cost you over $700 delivered. Neither of them does any more than what you see above. Incidentally, note that there are no drainage trays, saucers or catch pans. None are needed when using sub-irrigation.

The small Ficus trees growing in expanded clay pebbles were rescued from temporary storage in the middle school science lab. The recycled pop bottle planters and propagators produced the results you see here and here.