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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
More kids in America could be eating fresh tomatoes off the vine if we had better education and leadership about modern methods of growing food in the city.
These tomatoes grew in a Garden Patch GrowBox sub-irrigated planter last summer. I'm sure they will again this coming growing season. He is fortunate to be the child of progressive parents.
ScienceDaily (Mar. 7, 2011) — Eating more tomatoes and tomato products can make people healthier and decrease the risk of conditions such as cancer, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease, according to a review article the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine (published by SAGE).
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.
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.
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).
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.
