Inside Urban Green

Portable Micro Gardens » Elevated Sub-Irrigated Salad Bar

via www.re-nest.com
source: Instructables

This is a great idea for a sub-irrigated (aka erroneously as “self-watering”) micro garden that can grow fresh food just about anywhere in the city.

While it will not fit on a fire escape like my salad bar, it will fit on a balcony, rooftop, driveway, row house paved patio or other paved surface. It would fit in most of the spaces shown in this neighborhood site survey I did here in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

Elevated portable micro gardens like this will not only produce a ton of fresh vegetables but you will not strain your back growing them.

An elevated planter like has a second major benefit. The valuable space under it is available for storage. Remember that the sub-irrigated planters above are self-contained. There is no drainage to damage what is under them and if located on a balcony annoy the neighbors below with dripping water.

I would not make the tote box planters as described from the Instructables directions. It is an outdated method. These photos show a much simpler DIY tote box SIP made with recycled plastics, in this case ½ gallon milk containers. You could also make the water/oxygen reservoirs using inverted recycled nursery trays, or other recycled plastic food containers. The fill tube is made from recycled water bottles nested to fit.

The partial amount of soil is there to demonstrate the wicking system. Fill the SIP to the top before planting. The soil mix surrounding the reservoirs creates the wicks. It is a good idea to tamp the soil down with your fingers to improve the capillarity of the wicks. You do not need any yoghurt containers, pond baskets, PVC pipes, etc.

If I made this table I would hide the tote box SIPs. Draw curtains would be a simple way to do it and at the same time allow easy access to items stored below. Incidentally, the green tote shown was a Christmas item from a local dollar store. I do not like looking at blue or gray plastic boxes. I know…picky, picky.

There is more about this tote box SIP in a prior post that is also a Google Doc.

Google Docs » A Personal Urban Food Production System

Thanks to the GrowBarrel folks in Minneapolis this DIY information is now online as a Google Doc.

You do not need power tools and PVC to make these sub-irrigated planters (SIPs)

Do your friends a favor and pass the word.

Systems like the Valcent VertiCrop are the servers and mainframes of urban food production. Just as in the digital world, we also need distributed food production power brought to the people on a personal level.

Sub-irrigated (sub-aerated) planters (SIPs) like this one are the PCs and laptops of personal urban food production. You might also think of them as the iPads and iPhones of food.

There is no need to plug them into tillable earth. They are portable. All that is needed is a small space with sufficient sunlight, be it on a rooftop, balcony, driveway, paved patio or even a fire escape. They will produce more food per square foot than in-ground gardening while conserving water and valuable time. This is safe food production with no exposure to contaminated city soil.

New Improved Hanging Tomato Planter

via www.detnews.com

Unlike what I've read about other upside down tomato planters, this one from Gardener's Supply looks like a functional product. Note that it has a 1-gallon water reservoir at the top that feeds water via a capillary matting strip. I have not used one, but the engineering looks workable and the reviews are good.  It looks like a good product to meet the needs of city dwellers in particular.

I really admire employee owned Gardener's Supply for their long record of innovation. They continuously strive for better growing techniques. I don't know of another company like them. 

Check out the following video and see what you think.

Bucket SIP Entrepreneurship On Craigslist

A smart Portland gardener is selling sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) made from utility buckets on Craigslist. This is a well done graphic (click to enlarge). Check the ad for some excellent photos. It's a mini-website.

My only surprise it that I don't see more of this type of marketing. Ignorance of the subject on the part of horticultural institutions and retail businesses leaves the door wide open for individual entrepreneurship.

There are all kinds of small business opportunities in the field of urban food production using modern methods instead of dirt gardening or dumb drain hole planters.

via portland.craigslist.org (Note: This link will change as the ad changes - search Craigslist to find it.)

Self Watering Portland Planters For Sale - $15

A Garden Patch At Home Denied To Many

Photo: a customer submitted photo from the Garden Patch Grow Box website

There are millions upon millions of urbanites and suburbanites who do not have a backyard with access to dirt who could have a "garden patch" at home like this dad and daughter.

They could, if they knew about it. Sadly, most of them don’t thanks to a horticultural education system fixated on dirt gardening and pots with drain holes.

It is truly a national disgrace that this situation exists. It is even more reprehensible in that the majority of this information comes from taxpayer supported USDA Extension Programs and land grant institutions.

Here is just one of the hundreds of examples I find in my daily research. It is from the University of Illinois College of Agricultural Consumer and Environmental Sciences titled “Tips and tricks for container gardening”.

As is almost always the case, it contains the admonishment to be sure your container has a drain hole. There is not one word about “self-watering”, or more accurately sub-irrigated planters (SIPs).

What is even more amazing is that the Extension Program educator who wrote the article was recognized for her wisdom in solving a kids gardening project problem back in 2007. What was her solution? EarthBoxes! Does she now have a case of amnesia? You can read the article here.

Is the lack of progressive information from these institutions ignorance or is it public policy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture? Either answer is unacceptable but in my view the latter would be the more egregious of the two. 

EarthBox Balcony Magic

Flickr member PandaMagic has performed some balcony gardening magic with EarthBoxes. This photo of a fresh picked Ambrosia cantaloupe was uploaded to Flickr just today. See a very informative photo set on Flickr that documents progress over the 2009 summer. It's quite amazing. 

The question remains. Why aren't more urbanites performing their own balcony magic with sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) like the EarthBox? 

EarthBox Fall Balcony Garden in Chicago

Lettuce and beets in EarthBox photo by Jaime Zaplatosch

This EarthBox on a balcony in Chicago is from an August 5, 2009 Examiner article titled Start your cool-season crops from seed now.

This weekend is threatening temperatures in the 90s, it is true. But, August and September are when you want to plant those vegetables that will do well again in the fall's (expected) cool temperatures and lesser amounts of sunlight. These vegetables include spinach, lettuce, broccoli, kale, and collards. Read more...

I'm a bit late in getting it done but I have been sprouting a variety of greens and late season vegetables in pop/soda bottle planters. The seeds are sprouted under fluorescent shop lights in my apartment. I then move them to the fire escape prior to planting some of them in utility bucket sub-irrigation planters (SIPs). This will also be a test to see if the greens in the pop/soda bottle planters will produce leaves under fluorescent lights during the coming fall season.

Photos will follow later this week. Stay tuned.

Ottawa SIP Balcony Garden in the Sky

This SIP balcony garden is on the 20th floor of an Ottawa, Ontario hi-rise. The garden belongs to Lamersize and Z who have done a great job of blogging about their balcony gardening success with homemade sub-irrigation planters (SIPs, aka self-watering).

Scan through their blog and you will see many more photos.

You do not need to self-identify as a gardener, horticulturist or green thumb to produce fresh vegetables like these in the city or anywhere else. You simply need to know some very basic information about light requirements and how to manage the soil moisture in the SIPs. It's so easy a young child can do it.

It may be repetitive to point out that our horticultural and botanical institutions are remiss in providing information about these modern methods, but it bears repeating. Repetition works in our search engine age. The objective is to reach the mainstream media and the millions of urbanites who are not gardeners but would like to produce some of their own fresh food.

The next thing I need to do is Twitter.

Chicago SIP Balcony Tomato Success

These sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) are Tomato Success Kits from Gardener's Supply. You can see the bountiful success that a city dweller had this summer growing fresh tomatoes on a high-rise balcony. The balcony happens to be in Chicago and the photos are from Laura White’s blog, The White House.

Have I bragged about my tomatoes yet? I’m actually quite impressed with myself – in addition to adding fresh tomato to just about every meal since mid-August, I have 8 dinner portions of spaghetti sauce and 12 quart size bags of crushed tomatoes in the freezer already, with the last batch due to be picked and prepared on Friday.

Not bad for three plants grown in tubs on a balcony in the city. Read more...

We should acknowledge bloggers like Laura for doing what our horticultural and botanic institutions are currently not doing. There are hundreds of blog posts like this in my pending file. My objective is to post all of them. It will be an awesome database of SIP validation. It already is.

Just click on these categories (right hand column) D.I.Y Sub-irrigation, EarthBox, EarthTainer, Garden Patch Grow Box, Sub-irrigated Buckets, Sub-irrigated Grow Box and Tomato Success Kit for starters. The positive evidence is overwhelming and yet our botanic gardens are nowhere to be seen on the subject.

There is no question that essentially all SIPs work if you know how to use them. It takes a minimal amount of education. Our botanic and horticultural institutions however are stuck in some prior century and preach only drain-hole and dirt gardening.

It appears that change will only come when these institutions are forced to face reality. The blogosphere and then the mainstream media will in due time force them to do what they should be doing now. Were they private businesses they would not survive with this type of retrogressive behavior. 

EarthBox Tomatoes: Oh Susanna!

Photo with permission. Click to enlarge

Check out these tomatoes in Susanna's Earthbox. It's great that she uploaded photos to Flickr. 

This sub-irrigated (aka self-watering) planter could be anywhere in the country on a balcony, small patio, rooftop or any other paved surface with six or more hours of direct sun. No tilled earth necessary. 

EarthBox prior posts.