Inside Urban Green

The Saturday Feature: She Turned Her Roof Into A Farm! - NYPOST.com

It was great to see the New York Post cover Gary Buiso's fine article about Frieda Lim's Slippery Slope Rooftop Micro-farm.

A tree may indeed grow in Brooklyn — but Frieda Lim is using her Gowanus rooftop to grow lemon verbena, echinacia, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and other delicious produce.

via www.nypost.com

Youth Run Urban Farm Opens In Newburgh

Questions?

• Is there any type of barrier at the bottom of these raised beds?
• Was a soil contamination test done on this lot? What were the results?

From the entire list of organizations listed at the bottom, is there even one person who has expertise on the subject of sub-irrigated planter systems (SIPs)?

Is there even one person who knows that the productivity of these beds could be doubled while using in the range of 90% less water by simply sub-irrigating? There will also be no water seepage into the ground.

There is trouble in river city my friends. When are we going to wake up from our Rip Van Winkle sleep?

Come to the introductory SIP seminar on Thursday and you will leave knowing more about modern methods of growing food and foliage in the city then the vast majority of our supposedly professional horticulturists.

via www.midhudsonnews.com

NEWBURGH, NEW YORK – It’s called la Vida Garden, a youth run urban farm at 59 Chambers Street in Newburgh.

The once garbage strewn lot has been transformed into an organic farm and cultural center by inner city youth. It now is filled with seven organically grown beds of tomatoes, eggplants, arugula, basil, mescaline mix, hot and sweet peppers, peaches and cherries, raspberries, grapes, flowers and herbs.

Arizona Master Gardeners: Sustainable Gardening Focus Of Annual Conference

I have over 1,200 RSS subscriptions in my Google Reader and readily concede that it is way over populated. Even without an RSS reader however, I could stay productive with the short list of search strings on my Google News page. 

One of the most active strings is "urban agriculture" OR "urban farming". These search words describe a current media buzz. Of all the topics I research this is the one that most reveals the low quality of our horticultural education system.

The news articles reveal that we have politicians all over the country who are following political pressure from dirt farming and gardening activists who obviously know little about modern urban food production techniques. Thanks to our antiquated education, all they know are traditional methods of plowing and tilling. The politicians unfortunately know even less. It is a classic case of the blind leading the blind.

I’ll get to the point of this post. One of the vaunted and highly publicized educational assets of the USDA Extension Program is the so-called Master Gardener program. The reach of USDA propaganda is highly leveraged through this army of unpaid gardeners.

However, the quality of the education they deliver is highly questionable. This article demonstrates it. It is about the Annual Arizona Highlands Garden Conference coming up in August. It is a meeting of Arizona Master Gardeners at a casino/golf course resort.

The article states that the primary focus of the conference is quote, “Reaping the rewards of enriching our soil and using our water wisely”. That certainly makes sense since Arizona is a desert state. Knowing this, read the extensive article that details the speakers and subjects. There is not one word about highly productive, water-saving sub-irrigated planter systems (SIPs).

Further there is a link to the local Master Gardener program website. As usual, I did some basic site searching and found thin gruel on the subject of sub-irrigation or the inappropriate but commonly used term “self-watering”. A further search for educational information about the popular EarthBox turned up even less.

The USDA Extension and Master Gardener programs are clearly living in some prior century. Who knows which one. Oh well, it’s only taxpayer money we’re wasting. We can print some more. We can't print water though.

via www.azdailysun.com

Reaping the rewards of enriching our soil and using our water wisely along will be the focus of the 11th Annual Arizona Highlands Garden Conference, Aug. 27-28, at the Mazatzal Casino in Payson. The conference, titled "Sustainable Gardening for Homes and Communities," will feature outstanding speakers, tours and workshops.

Slippery Slope Rooftop Micro Farm In The News

                                        Community Newspaper Group / Gary Buiso

It was nice to see Frieda Lim's Slippery Slope Rooftop Micro Farm here in Brooklyn get some news coverage in the local media.

It is one of the most progressive and unique rooftop gardens in the New York metro area. We will no doubt see it in the news again. Incidentally, Frieda will be with us at the SIP Seminar next Thursday. We already have an interesting group registered. Be sure to attend if you live nearby. 

via www.brooklynpaper.com

A tree may indeed grow in Brooklyn — but Frieda Lim is using her Gowanus rooftop to grow lemon verbena, echinacia, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and other delicious produce.

More than that, Lim is aiming to lend a helping hoe to other budding farmers who want to raise crops a few stories above the pavement.

Lim’s Slippery Slope Farm — it is technically in Gowanus but on the edge of Park Slope — will offer design solutions, product development ideas along with solutions for combating aphids and spider mites.

Her method relies on the work of urban food activist and Bay Ridge resident Bob Hyland, whose blog, insideurbangreen.org, advocates sub-irrigation planters as a more efficient and modern way to grow food.

The system is different from traditional gardening, which relies on top-down watering, and instead uses a growing environment that can be any box or container as long as it is outfitted with a water and aeration reservoir at the bottom.

Tomato Farm On A Deck

Anyone, anywhere could be producing fresh tomatoes in a kitchen garden like this. All you need is enough sunlight and the desire to do it. These happen to be Garden Patch Grow Box sub-irrigated planters (SIPs). They could just as well be EarthBoxes, Tomato Success Kits or homemade SIPs.

SIPs produce more fresh vegetables per square foot than any other method (including in-ground growing) while saving water and time. Plus, you will have no worry about contaminated soil if you live in the city.

Sub-irrigated planter systems are the ecologically sound and smart way to grow food whether you live in the city, suburbs or even if you live in the country.

Sub-irrigated Planters: No More Fungus Gnats

Use sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) and you will never be troubled by fungus gnats. With measured sub-irrigation, the soil surface is always dry and the gnats have no moist soil necessary to propagate their larvae. You can forget all the nonsense about yellow sticky traps, diatomaceous earth and pesticides. You will also have healthier plants in the process.

via www.guardian.co.uk

Those pesky little flies that hover around the base of your houseplants or plague your greenhouse are sciarid flies. Now before I tell you how to get rid of them, I think it's only fair to point out that they are an important group of pollinators, spreading mushroom spores and pollen around.

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.

via sport.i-mix.info

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.

via www.facebook.com

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

via www.facebook.com

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!