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)

TEDxManhattan Leads the Way About Lead and Good Food

This is a screen shot from the TEDxManattan “Changing the Way We Eat” event held this past Saturday in New York and live streamed to a large audience on the web. The speaker is Paul Lightfoot, CEO of BrightFarms the company that is developing a business installing hydroponic greenhouses on supermarket roofs.

Dollars to donuts Paul did not know that he was standing by a hydroponic lettuce grower in the shape of the TEDx logo. It is also likely that few in the audience did either until the end of the program when this video was shown. Then the lettuce was out of the logo so to speak! Have a look and Tweet away.

The video is also on Vimeo.

Contoured Plant Based Plastic Bottles Coming From Pepsi. But What About SIPs?

The sub-irrigated planter (SIP) to the left was made from a 3-liter diet Pepsi bottle (see prior post also see how to make them). While it is good news about a new and greener Pepsi bottle, it looks like the days of straight-sided 2 and 3-liter soda bottles are numbered. That is not good news for making soda bottle SIPs.

Coke has already gone curvy. As you can see, a Spider plant is growing in a curvy SIP but it is more difficult to make and not nearly as flexible in design options. From the picture of the new contoured Pepsi bottle above it looks like the same thing will be true for Pepsi SIPs.

Contouring adds strength and perhaps some visual appeal but it is not so green. It may seem a utopian idea but there is real value in making soda bottles straight-sided. Are you thinking Don Quixote rides again? 

Recycling is good but upcycling or repurposing is even better. Soda bottle SIPs are an unintended secondary product of significant value to society.

Having grown plants in them for many years, I believe it could be justified to make them as a primary product. I’ve learned more about growing plants and plant science from soda bottle SIPs than any other information source.

Clear soda bottle SIPs should be helping to grow plants inside every school in the world. They would quickly demonstrate how easy it is to grow plants using sub-irrigation as compared to tricky-to-learn drench and drain watering in traditional pots with drain holes.

Clear SIPs teach recycling, water conservation, some basic plant science as well as an introduction to edible plant growing. What could be more important than learning some simple science along with self-sufficiency about feeding oneself? Learning how to use sub-irrigation on a personal level is a survival skill.

So, my message is to save all the straight sided soda bottles you can find and turn them into SIPs. What a great recycling project this would be for every school in America.

Know that growing edible plants with sub-irrigation is scalable from windowsills to backyards and school yards, to rooftops and balconies to commercial farms. It is not well known by the public that sub-irrigation is widely used in greenhouse growing around the world. It is even employed in field farming in some parts of the U.S.

Why then is it not taught in the public school system? Why are consumer horticulture institutions such as urban botanic gardens not teaching it? Many millions of children who are destined for lives of obesity or hunger deserve better.

via:crispgreen.com

Using plant-based, fully renewable resources, the company plans to manufacture a beverage container with a significantly reduced carbon footprint.

For years, scientists and inventors have offered up futuristic alternatives to the resource-intensive plastic packaging clogging up our landfills and recycling bins. And for just as many years, practical environmentalists have said that these designs are all well and good, but until the day they're used in mainstream commercial production, their impact will be minuscule.

It appears that day may not be as far away as we thought.

This is National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week ... Oct 23-29, 2011

Click icon

Thanks to a post on the Root Simple blog (formerly known as Homegrown Evolution), I learned that this is National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week.

I have been diligently researching this subject over the past year. My finding demonstrates what I view as malfeasance on the part of NYC horticultural institutions and the USDA Extension program in failing to adequately alert the public to the widespread urban gardening problem of toxic metals soil contamination, lead in particular.

There is one clear message. For the safety of you and your children, do not grow edible plants in urban soil without first having the soil tested for toxic metals contamination.

Stay tuned. There is much more to come in a series of posts on the subject that will continue through the coming week. This is clearly a topic that deserves your Tweets and Facebook postings.

via www.rootsimple.com

It's been one hell of a week. First we find out, via a soil test, that our backyard may have high levels of lead and zinc. We'll write a lot more about this once I confirm the results--I've sent in another sample to a different lab. And my doctor has agreed to give me a blood test. Whatever the results, I want to help get out the word about this serious issue--ironically, next week is National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week.

Meet Rachela the EarthBox Elf

With all of my medical stuff recently I have definitely needed an attitude adjustment. You never know where it's going to come from. Mine was in the form of Rachela the EarthBox Elf. The photo was in my inbox this morning.

This young farmer cutie is the daughter of one of my earliest readers. Avi Solomon has been a supporter and advocate since way back when before Rachela arrived on the scene. Avi was then living in Israel.

He is a technical writer par excellence and may yet convince me to self-publish a book about portable micro gardens and sub-irrigated planter systems (SIPs).

Come to New York Rachella. EarthBox needs you. We need you!

Hold it...we have a late breaking report from dad.

This is two year old Rachela's second season growing tomatoes. She simply ate them last season but this year she was actively involved in all the stages of planting and growing  the tomatoes in the Earthbox SIP.

She's very punctual about watering the SIP, knows not to pick the green ones, and blesses the plants with a daily prayer "to make tomato feel better". We also watched the bee visit the tomato flowers.

Rachela also shares her harvest with her classmates at weekly "tomato picking picnics". Nobody's said no to eating them yet. Using the Sun Gold Cherry Tomato allows us to share the bounty without worrying about running out of ripe, sweet tomatoes.

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.

 

Illinois » Farming Concrete...Here Kitty, Kitty

It struck me that this sub-irrigated portable mini garden made from recycled kitty litter buckets had a colorful and playful quality and thought it would make a neat kids garden.

We have thousands of schools across the country that do not have school gardens. What they do have in abundance however is concrete, kids, and art and science teachers.

Working with sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) like these who knows the creative designs that would come out of the minds of art and science teachers working together? These SIPs are science based but in my view have play dough and finger paint qualities.

We could easily have very low cost but highly productive school gardens like this in every public, private and day care school in America. They would go a long way in solving our obesity, poor nutrition and hunger problems.

Sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) also teach some good science and simple technology. In my experience, there is as much or more STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in gardens created from SIPs than there is in traditional dirt gardening. These DIY SIPs also teach recycling, and respect for the environment by saving water and eliminating runoff.

To enhance plant science learning, it would be an easy matter to make clear walls on one side of some of the planters so that students could see the root system and capillary action at work. This could be done quite easily with clear Plexiglas and an adhesive like Goop. Drug store type hydrogen peroxide would take care of any algae growth.

Another advantage of portable micro gardens is that the SIP components can go home with kids over the summer. A rules-based SIP “adoption” program solves the problem of summer recess maintenance and provides even more student learning opportunity. Kids can learn valuable personal self-sufficiency skills by growing food at home during summer vacation.

What we need to make this happen are mainstream parents who are not dirt gardening ideologues to speak up. Currently we have too many misguided school administrators, teachers and gardening parents who think that “garden” and “growing” are synonyms for dirt.

Many of them are hooked into thinking that grandiose greenhouse projects costing as much as $2 million dollars are necessary. For example, think Edible Schoolyards and Alice Waters. Expensive projects like these are a superfluous luxury in a down economy, with rising food prices and so many people unemployed.

The real culprit behind this dilemma is our broken horticultural education system led largely by the USDA Extension Program and urban botanical gardens. I rarely find progressive information about modern food production methods from any of these institutions. Their comfort zone seems to be from a prior century when we were a rural society and all we knew was dirt farming and gardening.

Those days are gone. We will continue to become increasingly urbanized with an even greater need for technology based food production. It is time to move forward not backwards to a bygone time of Victory Gardens in the dirt. 

Finally, if your kids school won't support a garden like this make one at home. It's easy to do. If you have questions, I'll be happy to help. Comment or email me at urbangreenscaper [AT] gmail.com

Lao Tzu - "Give a Man a Fish, Feed Him For a Day. Teach a Man to Fish, Feed Him For a Lifetime"

This morning I shot a quick video showing how well my tomatoes and peppers are doing in this years batch of self watering containers. Near the end of the video I show how easy it is to fill the water reservoir that does NOT require a PVC or copper tube in order to add more water.

via www.mammablogga.com

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.

The Little School That Could » A School and Community Edible Garden of the Future

The artist applies some finishing touches.

If you have heard the term "farming concrete”, it is now a reality with no jack-hammer required. A new edible portable micro garden (with sub-irrigated planters aka SIPs) is officially opening tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 at PS 39 in Brooklyn. Just like kids, these little gardens can find their way into small spaces anywhere, even on driveways, balconies and rooftops.

I call PS 39 the "little school that could". It may be small, but the community of people who made this garden happen thinks big. It also took some big thinking and open mindedness by school principal Anita de Paz. We need many more school principals like her all across the country.

It is much too early in the Brooklyn gardening season for there to be vegetables to pick but the garden is already a work of art worth seeing. Even if you cannot make the opening tomorrow, stop by at any time and have a look. The garden is located in the front yard of PS 39 at the corner of 6th Avenue and 8th Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn.

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.