It seem that there is a news item about the FARM:shop just about every day. The publicity and community involvement that this small urban agriculture project in London has generated is more than impressive.
If you are not familiar with it have a look at this Flickr photo set. It is a good place to start.
Projects like this should be in every city in America. Currently the topic of “urban agriculture” is dominated by a culture that seems only to worship digging in the dirt.
There are other more modern and productive ways to produce food in the city that are not tied to expensive and often-contaminated land. The FARM:shop is exploring them.
The project is obviously attracting the attention of London urbanites including horticulturists, urban activists, artists, designers and business people. We would do well to investigate the reasons for its success.
Click on the link above and you can zoom around this high-res photo of the Gold award winning B&Q garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. The garden is such a great melding of horticultural tradition and modernity. Oh, how I wish that I could have attended this fantastic show.
All of the plants produce edibles. The tower uses hydroponics. The structure to the left of the tower is the "insect hotel". Watch a video of school children constructing the individual "rooms" for the insects. If you sit at the glass dining table in front of the tower, you will see fish (tilapia) swimming below. Would you like fresh fish and salad for dinner?
Photo - Jodi Hilton for The New York Times -
Harvard Pilgrim in Massachusetts is one of many
companies that have started gardens as an economical way to encourage a
healthy work force.
Continuing on the subject of company gardens, this was an article in the NY Times about the subject. If the author of the article and the companies involved were more aware of the benefits of sub-irrigated planter systems (SIPs) this would be an entirely different article.
The article isn't necessarily negative about company gardens but it has a skeptical tone. There would be no skepticism if the gardens were all SIP gardens. If they were all SIP gardens, they could all be certified organic from day one, producing twice as much while using 80-90% less water. The gardens would also be much easier to maintain even by those who are physically limited.
The excerpt about the Google garden is a good clue that the NY Times writer simply doesn't get it. Incidentally, it would be nice to credit the name of the company as EarthBox instead of "earth box".
Dave Welner, CEO of Digital Color Imaging, left, Linda Tustin of Akron
and Kurt Weber of Canton, in the employee's urban vegetable garden
behind Digital Color Imaging in Akron, Ohio. (Paul Tople/Akron Beacon
Journal
What a neat employee fringe benefit this is. It's a superb idea but the execution is faulty. This should be a sub-irrigated planter system (SIPs) garden instead of a dirt garden.
It's foolish to grow in dirt that may be contaminated when the plants could be growing in a certified organic SIPs environment producing twice as much using 80-90% less water. It would also be much more user friendly for the employee gardeners. Anyone can learn to garden with SIPs. Part of it could even be an enabled garden.
There would many more company vegetable gardens if business owners and CEOs knew about the many benefits of SIPs. They don't because our education system is broken.
Okay, so they paved paradise to put up a parking lot as Joni Mitchell wrote back in the '70's. That doesn't mean that you can't have a vegetable garden on it.
The folks at Chicago's Progressive Talk Radio proved that you can. They did it with EarthBox sub-irrigated planters (SIPs). Good for them for still believing in the creative paradise of their minds.
Watch this video that few have seen. It features a Google chef and a local master gardener from Santa Clara County. Their presentation of the benefits of EarthBox gardening is persuasive.
If you have an open, inquiring mind, you will likely wonder as I do why the news about EarthBox gardening and sub-irrigation (aka self-watering) is virtually ignored by the mainstream media, USDA extension program agents and urban botanical institutions.
It is a testimony to our antiquated horticultural education that is stuck in an out-of-date dirt gardening paradigm inappropriate to urban living. It is quite amazing that we have so many academics with master’s degrees and doctorates that apparently do not understand the fundamentals of capillary action and plant physiology, no less urban living.
If you think I have some connection to EarthBox, you are mistaken. They just happen to have the most commercially visible product at this time. I have no connection whatsoever to EarthBox. My advocacy is simply about growing food and feeding people in the city using the most environmentally sound and productive methods available.
Anyone can easily prove the following for themselves, no institutional help required. Simply plant one or more SIP boxes or buckets this season and you will see with your own eyes.
Benefits of sub-irrigation planter (SIP) gardening including the EarthBox, Tomato Success Kit, Garden Patch Grow Box, EarthTainer and all other properly made DIY SIP planters. There is no patent on capillary action.
Increased production – SIP vegetable gardening will out-produce all other methods including in-ground and raised beds with drip irrigation.
Safe food production – Sub-irrigation box, bed and bucket planters will produce contaminant free food. Unlike dirt gardening in the city, there is no exposure to native soil contaminants.
Water conservation – All of the water (and nutrients) go directly to the plants. There is no wasteful drainage.
Portability – SIPs can be located anywhere there is adequate sunlight regardless of access to tillable land. Personal, neighborhood and community gardens can be located temporarily and easily moved when necessary.
Sustainability – SIPs and the soil mix in them is reusable season after season. Yes, there is an initial cost but they are not consumables. Currently, there are business plans based on a 7-year useful life. Time will tell whether this is an accurate useful life.
We desperately need other leaders from the fields of technology and science to speak out about modern methods of urban agriculture.
The causes of better science education and local food production would be well served if more professionals from outside the fields of gardening and horticulture would join the conversation.
This is a photo from a slideshow marking the one-year anniversary of the organic EarthBox Garden at Google. It continues to be a puzzle that Google gets it but most of our gardening institutions do not.
Maybe they haven't learned how to Google yet. If they did, they would know about the EarthBox along with the Tomato Success Kit, the Garden Patch Grow Box and many other homemade sub-irrigated planters.
Rebecca: The Growing Connection used EarthBoxes
in 3rd world countries where the soil is not viable to grow the produce
necessary to end hunger, disease, or provide proper nourishment.
[Rebecca gave an example where certain villages in Mexico with
bad soil, and whose residents could not grow leafy greens were given
Earth Boxes, and because of the vegetables it allowed them to grow,
were able to clear up their health issues!]
The EarthBox also allow us to grow on roof tops in the
Bronx, fire escapes in San Francisco, or on balconies or patios around the world.
