Inside Urban Green

Video: Misha’s EarthBox Garden

Misha gives us a short tour of her EarthBox garden. It isn't in her backyard. It's on her concrete driveway. It could be anywhere there is adequate sunlight, be it a balcony, rooftop, patio or deck. 

Read the comments too.

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A short tour of my Earthbox with the plants at a 1month stage. you will see: Ichiban Eggplant Patty Pan squash Tomatoes: Sweet100, yellow pear, purple cherokee, and celebrity. Bell Peppers, yellow, orange, purple, big boy, red and green.

Everett M. Dirksen Middle School Goes Green With EarthBoxes

Click here to see the video on Facebook.

Props to CBS EcoMedia for giving the Everett M. Dirksen Middle School an EcoZone Green My School award that included an EarthBox Garden. The Rosa Parks Elementary School in San Francisco was also a Green My School winner.

These EarthBox sub-irrigated planter (SIP) school gardens should get much more publicity than they do. They offer a much better way to create school gardens rather than breaking up concrete to make in-ground gardens.

SIP gardens are much more versatile than land locked gardens. Their portability allows them to roll inside the school during the winter where they become part of the science program. SIPs are year round gardens rather than just warm season. They can also roll home if the school chooses to have an outreach program over the summer recess.

In most cases dirt gardens are an unnecessary waste of money, particularly with the state budget crises we are currently enduring across the country.

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The Green Team from Everett M. Dirksen Middle School in Calumet City, IL made this slideshow/video to document their experiences with their EarthBox garden.

PS 107 Sunshine Garden: EarthBoxes And Custom Planter Boxes

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This is part of the “Sunshine Garden” at PS 107 in Park Slope Brooklyn. It is an interesting story of how EarthBoxes became a part of this concrete jungle garden. PS 107 is much like the contest winning Rosa Parks Elementary school garden in San Francisco. Like so many city schools across the country, it’s all about cement.

There was no intent originally to create the garden with EarthBoxes. It was originally designed for wood planter boxes. The school found the money for custom planter boxes and they were actually built. You can see one of them on the right.

As often happens in city schools, unexpected construction intervened. As happened at PS 102 in Bay Ridge, scaffolding needed to be erected, in this case for window replacement. This had a major impact on the “built-in” planter box garden. The solution was the acquisition of portable, productive EarthBox sub-irrigated planters (SIPs).

News From Garden State Urban Farms

It's great to see Garden State Urban Farms (formerly Brick City Urban Farms) moving ahead with their business. They now have a hydroponic greenhouse in addition to their extensive EarthBox sub-irrigated planter (SIP) resources. I'm looking forward to visiting before the summer is over.

via www.gardenstateurbanfarms.com

The power is connected and the water is on! We’re very excited to post these first few photos from our very first greenhouse in Orange, NJ. We have some basil in currently, with plenty more herbs and greens propagating. Stay tuned.

via www.gardenstateurbanfarms.com

While our focus was working towards getting the greenhouse operational, we also planted in our Earthboxes on the greenhouse lot in Orange, NJ and in the Central Ward in Newark. Take a look!

Rosa Parks Elementary Gets Greened With EarthBoxes

CBS EcoMedia (click and watch this video too) gets a big cheer from me for picking a school like Rosa Parks Elementary in San Francisco as its Green My School contest winner.

I see far too many public schools in higher income neighborhoods with trendy dirt gardens getting much more recognition than they deserve. Designer gardens cost far more money than they are worth and add little to the educational content of the school. 



Why waste significant money breaking up paved surfaces when it is not necessary. Misguided parent activists and school principals should be called to task for their folly.

Plants in sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) like the EarthBox will grow anywhere there is enough sun. Add water and kids and you have a highly productive edible garden. In fact, it will be more productive than in-ground growing. Kids will also learn some good science and water conservation while experiencing the joy of eating fresh vegetables.

What you see here in this video is representative of city schools all across the country. Schools with lots of paved surfaces and courtyards like Rosa Parks are generic here in Brooklyn and the rest of the New York boroughs.

Thanks primarily to The Growing Connection (a UN organization) we have a significant number of schools with EarthBox SIP gardens like the one at Rosa Parks School. However, the local media, foodie bloggers and horticulture community ignores them. There is little or no news coverage for anything other than dirt gardening. Is this ignorance or personal bias?  

I do not know of one local institution including our vaunted botanic gardens that offers a class or course on the subject of modern food production methods like SIPs. If you want to talk about food injustice, start here.

CBS EcoZone Green My School Contest

Sub-irrigateed Planters (SIPs): A Backyard Tomato Garden Or Business

Here is a look at our tomatoes in EarthBoxes this spring, well, almost summer

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It would be interesting to know the fresh vegetable production (and street value) of this back yard garden, excuse me farm. What we see here could well be a family small business selling both vegetables and ready-to-grow sub-irrigated planter (SIP) gardens. Read about someone already doing it. 

Think about all the unemployed teenagers and college students we have in America who could produce some significant fresh food and income over a summer if they knew how. 

The key is education about modern methods of urban food production that does not require tilling scarce and often-contaminated land. Currently this information is not available and that is a national disgrace. Third world countries get better information (micro gardening for example) from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) than we do.

The USDA is not funded or mandated to teach you as an urban or suburban citizen how to grow your own food using the most modern productive methods. It is funded by tax dollars and supported by lobbyists whose sole interest is in promoting corporate agriculture. That does not include you.

Instead of modern up to date consumer information, the USDA through its Extension and Master Gardener programs spreads outdated information about dirt and drain hole gardening. Sadly, urban foodie and dirt hugger bloggers and writers drink their cool-aid and spit it out all over the Internet. The blind end up leading the blind.

Almost every day I see photos like this one about job training. Well intentioned perhaps but dumb and dumber. Working in a MacDonald's or Starbuck's is probably a better job than this. The expression "dirt cheap" isn't just about the dirt; it's also about dirt-cheap jobs that lead nowhere. 

PS 102 SIPs Are Home For The Summer Recess

Bob Patterson of The Growing Connection (TGC) conducting an EarthBox workshop for parents and teachers of PS102.

Thanks to The Growing Connection (TGC) (part of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization - FAO) and the Center for Urban Greenscaping (CuGreen) there are 25 sub-irrigated planters (EarthBoxes and utility bucket SIPs) helping to grow some fresh food for local Brooklynites this summer. In the process, they are demonstrating the superior productivity, ease of use and water conserving benefits of SIPs.

The SIPs home base is the PS 102 garden but due to limited access over the summer recess, it is not the best place to be. That is why the SIPs are growing fresh vegetables at the homes of parents and teachers over the summer.

Children who live at these homes will know more about modern urban gardening methods by the end of summer than most adults. The sad commentary is that there is no New York educational institution teaching about the subject. In my view, there are people who should be reprimanded or even lose jobs over this social injustice.

As any reader of this blog can easily discover, sub-irrigated planter systems are a successful reality of urban food production across the country. Our educational system seems to be either not tuned in or there are people who are practicing obstructionism for some reason known only to them

The Brooklyn Eagle published an article about the PS 102 garden recently.

via www.brooklyneagle.com

Help From ‘CuGreen’ Founder

Local neighborhood resident and gardening landscaper (edit urban greenscaper) Bob Hyland has been immensely helpful, said Sheri. “The Center for Urban Greenscaping (CuGreen) that I founded last year was instrumental in helping make this a modern garden with the donation of a sub-irrigated planters (SIP) system and significant pro-bono consulting help,” explained Hyland.

A Vegetable Paradise In A Parking Lot

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.

via chicagosprogressivetalk.com

A Recent Quote From Two Dog Organic Nursery In L.A.

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We now have 19 EarthBoxes growing at the Home Nursery...a veritable farm in the heart of the city!

The easiest, most productive container gardening known to man!

website: Two Dog Organic Nursery
prior post: EarthBoxes To Go From Two Dog Organic Nursery

SIP Furniture: A Peek Into The Future

via www.metrovegetable.com

Who would recognize that these plants are growing in EarthBox sub-irrigated planters (SIPs)? A company named Metro Vegetable is making fine-furniture planters that hide them. It is located in North Carolina, a traditional furniture manufacturing center of the U.S. that has been hard hit by Asian competition (especially China).

Note that this is the same design concept used by Cabbage Patch Garden a business started by a carpenter in Minneapolis. The difference is that Cabbage Patch Garden is marketing them as edible gardens rather than just furniture.