Inside Urban Green

An Edible Garden of Eden in the California Desert

If this looks to you like a mirage (or a Photoshopped photo) you're not alone. I could hardly believe my eyes when I opened the following video of a sub-irrigated rain gutter garden. Well, it's not a mirage and this "edible Garden of Eden" is located somewhere in the California desert. It looks a bit like a lunar landscape.

If you're wondering about the structure, it makes the garden safe from desert animals. Wait until you see what's inside. I'm sure the local animals salivate when they see the green feast beyond their reach.

It baffles me that all of the rain gutter SIP gardens I've looked at are in the country or suburbs. I've seen none in the city where lush, productive gardens like this are precious assets. It seems that gardeners outside our cities are better able to think on their own and garden outside the box so to speak.

The only urban rain gutter garden I know of in NYC is the one we built on the PS 133 Urban Green Campus. If anyone has information about an urban sub-irrigated rain gutter garden please share it with us.

via www.youtube.com

This video does a good job of showing the piping and connections. As you will see, it is really quite simple.

via www.youtube.com

A Sub-irrigated Rain Gutter Garden Worth Crowing About

This video shows a sub-irrigated rain gutter garden set up by a gardner named Nikki Counts back in May of this year. The planters are recycled kitty litter buckets mounted on vinyl rain gutters following the creative idea of Larry Hall in Minnesota.

Now have a look at her garden in June. What a fabulous vegetable garden this is.

Note that Nikki has not installed float valves and tubing for auto-irrigation yet. She simply adds water to the rain gutters each morning with a hose.

via www.youtube.com

 

2012 SIP Gardening Updates From Johanne Daoust in Toronto

Johanne Daoust 2012 Rooftop SIP Garden
Sack Sip

Johanne Daoust in Toronto has new photos of her 2012 rooftop garden on Flickr. She converted her entire garden to sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) in 2011.

Johanne is a true SIP innovator.  She shows a number of new ideas in this Flickr photo set. One of them is a "sack SIP" (photo left).

via www.flickr.com

Cloth Wicks in Rain Gutter SIP Gardens

At PS 133 we used cloth wicks to convert existing planters to sub-irrigation on the rain gutter system. The material is polyester. It can be batting or felt. This material is sustainable. It will not rot.

Some people use cotton (ex. old t-shirts) to make sub-irrigation wicks. I would not recommend it. Cotton will decompose fairly quickly and render the SIP useless.

The wick is a critical component of a sub-irrigated planter (SIP). Why risk it not working to save a few cents?

How to Make a Ferrocement Planter

These videos show how to make ferrocement (aka ferrocrete) water tanks but the methods could be adapted to making planters. Since they are watertight it would be easy to install sub-irrigation plumbing with no need for a liner. See this post about the Welcome Home Community Garden.

A Progressive Community Garden Greening Its Block

It was a pleasure to participate in an all-day event at the Welcome Home Community Garden on Halsey Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn recently. This is just the second year for this garden founded largely by the dedication of Violaine Haeringer who owns a home on the block.

One person cannot make a community garden alone. It takes a group effort to be successful. That said, it was a pleasure to see the energy and enthusiasm of the neighbors that day. There was a blend of young and old along with a mix of new and long-time residents. I enjoyed their hospitality, energy, and look forward to visiting again this summer. It will be a pleasure to help in any way I can.


Recycled food containers form the water & oxygen reservoirs. Recycled water bottles (not shown) form the fill tube entering one of the reservoirs (black cap). The soil between the reservoirs forms the wick system. See how to.

One of the day’s events was a workshop on installing sub-irrigation “plumbing” in six large planters that are now installed on the public sidewalk space along the block. These planters along with the cleaning and mulching of tree pits are a significant step in the greenscaping of the block. A resident will maintain the planter where each of them is located. Thanks to sub-irrigation, this will be an easy job.  

Another unique element of this community garden is the ferrocement (aka ferrocrete) planters along the front fence. Violaine learned about them in a permaculture workshop in New Zealand.

Making planters like these obviously takes some time and practice but appears to be within the skill set of the average do-it-yourselfer. I like the freeform, artistic characteristics of these planters. Even better, they can be made watertight and ready for sub-irrigation plumbing with no need to install a liner.

I’m looking forward to learning how to make these planters. They could become a popular urban greenscaping amenity. All it takes is public awareness and education. Let the workshops begin!

Rain Gutter Gardens Update

This is the latest update of the sub-irrigated rain gutter garden on a boat dock in Nashville. It belongs to Larry Hall's brother Steve. This could be anyone's deck, patio, rooftop or back yard garden.

It is also an ideal method for making school gardens on paved surfaces. Following are work-in-progress photos of the rain gutter garden we are building at PS 133 here in Brooklyn. The garden project is coordinated by Frieda Lim of Slippery Slope Farm in Gowanus.

This application of the rain gutter system is to support the installation of existing planters with traditional drain holes.  There is a polyester fabric wick installed through the drain hole of each planter. It wicks water from the rain gutter reservoir below. Float valves will be installed to automate the irrigation of the planters. There will also likely be a rainwater harvesting system attached to one of the building's rain gutters.

Note that this two-track rain gutter system accomodates very large planters. There are also window boxes installed between them. The ultimate planting design is yet to be finalized. This photo will at least give you an idea of the basic planting configuration.

Stay tuned. There is much more to this garden and there will soon be many more photos to see as I upload them to Flickr.

via www.youtube.com

New Sub-irrigated Window Box Planters at Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Cayleb Long, BBG Curator, Frieda Lim, planters designer and Ashley Gamel, BBG Curator (and coffee trees caretaker)

Frieda Lim and I helped install four new custom made window box planters at Brooklyn Botanic Garden last week. All of them are sub-irrigated and one of them has a special feature.

It has a viewing window so that kids of all ages can see exactly what is going on inside the planter. Growth of the root systems and status of the water & oxygen reservoirs is in clear view. This photo doesn't do it justice because the light was wrong. The last picture in this Flickr photo set will give you a better idea of the visibility through the window.

There will be more photos of this installation showing all of them planted.

Sherri's Rain Gutter Garden

Sherri did a nice job of posting her first video showing the set up of her Larry Hall rain gutter garden. Hopefully she will post more videos so that we can see the progress of her starter plants over the summer. We of course expect big things.

via www.youtube.com

First Coffee Beans

It isn't time to plug in the coffee grinder yet, but here is an encouraging sign. These are the first coffee beans on the trees in their new home at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

The surprise is that they are beans produced from flowers grown in my apartment lab. We noticed them when we were moving the trees.

It's going to be interesting to see what level of bean production we attain in the BBG greenhouse. An adequate water and oxygen supply is assured by the sub-irrigated planters (SIPs). Now, it's just a question of adequate light.