Inside Urban Green

School Gardening » Send a Cow to NYC...Please!

Bag Gardens in a UK school from Send a Cow on Vimeo.

Quote, "Hum, I'll give it a chance!"  Cheers to the educators in this U.K. school.

Making a Bag Garden in Uganda from Send a Cow on Vimeo.

Send a Cow could do much good work here in New York City where we have a very small group of highly vocal but uncreative "three sisters farmers" who seem to know just one note on a scale of many notes. They play ad nauseum only in the key of "d for dirt." Apparently that is all they know...or want to know.

We would be much better off as a society if children were taught school gardening to honor all cultures and learn to play all the notes in the scale, in all keys.

These African style Bag Gardens are a great project for school kids to get stuck into. See how they did just that in a school in Bath, UK. Bag gardens are part of the African Gardens project run by charity Send a Cow. See SendaCow.org for more info and to buy a kit.

The high-quality version of these videos can be found on our Cabbages & Cowpats DVD. Order a copy here. (PDF Order Form)

New York City » Growing Fresh Food Growing Kids

Photos by leslie j. yerman photography

Thanks to the good work of Ying Guo a 24-year-old Community Healthcorps member (Americorps) working with Bronx Health REACH these kids will experience growing some fresh food in the Bronx.

All they needed was some space in the sun because she had the good sense to use EarthBox type portable micro gardens to create this kids garden. There was no need for tillable soil access.

Sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) like the EarthBox and DIY versions are an ideal way to introduce children to the wonders of growing some of their own food in a harsh city environment where there is lots of concrete and city soil that is often contaminated with toxic heavy metals such as lead.

Small children are particularly susceptible to lead poisoning and these self-contained EarthBox micro gardens will protect them from it. I am sure by now that the children have had what was likely their first taste of freshly harvested vegetables. Every child should have this experience early in life. more photos

via pilot.pandoprojects.org

WHY — While working with Bronx Health REACH in the South Bronx, it was not hard to recognize the environmental challenges to living a healthy lifestyle. Kids have access to fast food on every corner; fresh produce is hard to find. They grow up without understanding where food comes from, and many do not know what fresh produce tastes like.

WHAT — Our project Growing Gardens Growing Kids will help kids start a community garden in the South Bronx to increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables, provide hands-on learning so they understand where food comes from, and to teach them nutrition and healthy habits.

HOW — I will be developing a curriculum for Head Start supervisors to help pre-K children plant their own produce using EarthBoxes, a high-tech, low-maintenance growing system. Lesson plans will teach the children with where food comes from and about healthy eating.

 

Los Angeles » Two Dog Organic Nursery Features EarthBox Education

The market for catering to inexperienced, non-green thumb people who would like to grow some fresh food is enormous. This is particularly true in cities where food prices are rising and land is scarce. Most urbanites do not have space for in-ground gardening.

Many, however, do have space in the sun for portable sub-irrigated micro gardens like the EarthBox. It does not matter if the space is on a balcony, rooftop, or paved driveway.

Jo Anne Trigo in Los Angeles has tuned into this need and has created a home based business that is thriving. She is filling a need left vacant by traditional gardening, botanical and horticultural institutions stuck in an outdated paradigm. There will be many more businesses of this type in the future.

Jo Anne's enthusiam and positive attitude is infectious. Take a look.

via www.youtube.com

Over the course of sixteen months, Jo Anne Trigo went from planting her first EarthBox to becoming Los Angeles' only certified organic veggie nursery, offering bi-weekly EarthBox classes.

Idaho Junior H.S. » EarthBoxes Help Teach Science and Nutrition

You may pay a bit more for an EarthBox but you should feel good about doing it.

There is no company in the business of marketing sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) that does what EarthBox does through the efforts of their education department led by Molly Quinn Philbin.

Her group in partnership with The Growing Connection -TGC (a UN Organization) deserves far more recognition then it gets. All of the people involved in Molly's department and TGC make a very significant contribution to elevating the quality of public school plant science and nutrition.

It is a very serious omission that the White House garden and the so-called "People's Gardens" of the USDA do not include EarthBoxes as a standard alternative to in-ground growing. There are too many staffers in the USDA who did not read the memo announcing that we have become an urban society and will become more-so in the future.

Read more from the recent EarthBox newsletter.

Edmonton, Canada » Permaculture Program Teaches Students Sustainability Sensibly

Sheldon Showarth plants Kentucky Wonder beans in EarthBoxes in a physics lab. Jasper Place High School has a greenhouse project where they are developing a permaculture garden. Photographs by: Shaughn Butts, edmontonjournal.com

Rhiannon Arcand works on assembling the Aquaponic system in the greenhouse. The top tanks will be home to fish and the overflow will water plants.

It is good to see permaculture and plastics occupying the same space in an article about plant science and growing food plants.

A goodly number of "urban farming" activists I have encountered here in New York have managed to distort the meaning of the permaculture concept.

Many have a cult-like fervor on the level of religious zealotry about gardening in the ground only. In their often sanctimonious view, the only acceptable way to grow food is in the dirt, never mind that urban soil is often contaminated with toxic heavy metals. Also never mind that most urbanite in-ground gardening is less productive and uses more water.

Netherlands » A Future Farm in a Sunless, Rainless Room Indoors

Important urban food production research is going on in the Netherlands and elsewhere around the world.

Meanwhile in New York City, we are dumping dirt in a park to lead school kids down a garden path to nowhere.

Instead of science and technology we have leaders like our parks commissioner and others who preach a curriculum of "get your hands dirty" as if this was some holy endeavor.

New York has the means to be a leader in urban food production. Instead, we have a highly vocal but relatively small mob of farmer wannabees trying to make the Big Apple into a fantasy farm.

This is simply the wrong place and the wrong time.

via www.npr.org

DEN BOSCH, Netherlands April 11, 2011, 09:05 am ET

Farming is moving indoors, where the sun never shines, where rainfall is irrelevant and where the climate is always right.

The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with meticulously controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in a New York high-rise, a Siberian bunker, or a sprawling complex in the Saudi desert.

A Misguided Vegetable Gardening Guide From the Extension Program

This following is just one example of a gardening guide with not one word about the possibility of urban soil contamination, the need for a toxic metal soil test or the safe and productive option of growing in portable micro gardens (aka sub-irrigated planters - SIPs).

It is a publication of the U. of Illinois extension program. There are hundreds of outdated vegetable gardening guides like this on the web. It is particularly deplorable when public funds are used to publish incomplete information like this.

via web.extension.illinois.edu

Collective Roots « An Intelligent and Safe Urban Gardening Solution

Collective Roots is a non-profit located in East Palo Alto, California that advocates local food production.

They have discovered the safe and productive benefits of portable micro gardens (aka sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) like the EarthBox.

One good example of safe gardening is the nearby Google headquarters (aka Googleplex) garden. It is a joint project of Google and The Growing Connection, a UN organization. They chose to plant the garden in EarthBoxes, one of many portable micro garden options.

With safety as the primary goal, the first intelligent step is to have your soil tested for toxic metals contamination before growing any edible plants in the ground.

NYTimes » Pay Teachers More

Finland, the home country of my parents, was selected recently as the number one country in the world. 

Part of the reason is their education system.

They pick teachers from the top third of their college classes and then pay them well. We do pretty much the opposite and it shows.

Since moving back to NYC in 2007, I have much first hand experience with public school science teachers, urban agriculture, foodie movement and horticulture educators. The level of science education in this demographic is not very good to put it mildly. Simple principals of physics like capillary action and osmosis are akin to rocket science.

Unless we change our education priorities, the U.S. will not likely regain the top of the world status it had when I was a young man.

Until a few decades ago, employment discrimination perversely strengthened our teaching force. Brilliant women became elementary school teachers, because better jobs weren’t open to them. It was profoundly unfair, but the discrimination did benefit America’s children.

These days, brilliant women become surgeons and investment bankers — and 47 percent of America’s kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers come from the bottom one-third of their college classes (as measured by SAT scores). The figure is from a study by McKinsey & Company, “Closing the Talent Gap.”

via www.nytimes.com

Alberta, Canada » Earthbox Kids Project

These kids in Alberta will learn a lot more about growing plants and producing food with their EarthBoxes than if they grow in traditional in-ground gardening.

Thanks to a lack of leadership and education here in NYC we have well-intentioned school principals and parents who think they need to dig up school yards to have a kids garden. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Read the following article and you will see that Alberta gets it. They started over 12 EarthBox type portable school micro gardens (aka sub-irrigated planters -SIPs) last year and are adding 30 more gardens this year.

These portable and productive gardens can be used outdoors and indoors the year-round regardless of weather. They will produce more food per square foot than in-ground gardens, save water and teach plant science up-close and personal.

What is your school doing this year? Jack-hammer, roto-tiller or a smart and portable kids garden?

via gfsa.wordpress.com

In 2009 Alberta Agriculture with Growing Forward funds started the EarthBox® Kids project. An EarthBox® is a scientifically engineered gardening kit which comes with a specialized aeration screen and watering system allowing for excellent yields with less water, less fertilizer and less work. This system works perfect for the school setting for both outdoor and indoor growing.