Inside Urban Green

Altaira » A Rooftop Rain Gutter Garden in Guadalajara

We can thank Jose Luis Castañeda in Guadalajara, Mexico for giving us a link to photos of his rooftop garden. He has done a great job using Larry Hall's rain gutter sub-irrigation system. His pristine white bucket planters in perfect alignment on the rain gutter reservoirs have a pleasing look even without decorative concealment.

If these were on my  patio, it wouldn't bother me at all to look at them. I also wouldn't be bothered by having to water them individually since the rain gutter float valve makes watering automatic.

Note in the bottom photo that he is also experimenting with sack planters on the rain gutter system. He also shows a bucket planter with side planting holes a la sack gardens. I'm not sure if it is irrigated on the rain gutter system.

I related to Jose's comment about the difficulty in changing embedded human habits. This is particularly true in home gardening when so many of its practices are based on folklore and family tradition often passed down from mother to daughter.  

Since January 2010 i've been teaching people in Guadalajara, Mexico about sub-irrigation and believe me, hasn't been easy. At first, people don't understand the system, later they do, but they keep skeptical, finally they don't put into practice what they have learned, maybe i'm not that good at teaching. What i mean is that is hard to remove the idea of top watering and drain holes, i'm guessing this paradigm is worldwide.

Take a look to this photo album https://picasaweb.google.com/116282453914033980750/AltairaSubIrrigatedRooftopVegetableGarden it's our sub-irrigated garden on a rooftop.

 

An Extension Program Gardening Guide That Ignores Modernity

Following is one of many examples demonstrating the failure of the USDA/Land Grant University Extension Program to provide consumers with up to date information about growing local food. See prior post.

A gardening article in a Canton, Illinois paper written by an Extension educator links to this Watch Your Garden Grow guide. The authors are Extension educators, one from Cook County including Chicago.

It is significant to note that the tutorial contains no usable information about sub-irrigation or any other modern method of growing local food. The ludicrous assumption appears to be that the word garden is synonymous with dirt or drain holes.

Following below is what the guide has to say about container gardening. Note the reference to "the earthbox". EarthBox, of course, is a trade name not a generic name.

Sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) like the EarthBox are self-contained. There is no water wasted due to drainage. Note what the tutorial has to say about drainage.

"All containers, whether plastic or clay must have drainage."

"Containers with no drainage will cause your vegetables to develop root rot."

I see statements like this in Extension guides all the time. It is factually incorrect. Anyone who knows about SIPs can easily prove it.

Those who grow in SIPs know that they produce very healthy plants free of root rot. If anything, they prevent root due to the combination water and oxygen reservoir.

What is particularly deplorable is that one of the authors is deeply involved in the use of SIPs at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It is one of the finest examples of hardscaped urban gardening in the country. There are more than 70 EarthBox type SIPs on the granite steps of the museum as well as the upper deck of the Smart Home exhibit.

Why isn't valuable information like this included in this gardening guide and many other Extension guides? This major question continues to go unanswered by the Extension program. The public deserves better.

via urbanext.illinois.edu

Containers

If you don't have space in your backyard or only have access to a sunny balcony or patio, you can still grow vegetables in containers. A container for vegetables can be as simple as a bushel basket lined with plastic, a hanging basket or a self contained growing unit like the earthbox.

All containers, whether plastic or clay must have drainage. Soil in containers will dry out quickly, so frequent watering is necessary. Containers with no drainage will cause your vegetables to develop root rot. Use a sterilized, soil less mix for your container garden. Soilless mixes are light and contain some organic matter. Fertilize with a slow-release vegetable garden fertilizer that is applied in the spring and will provide nutrients for your veggies throughout the growing season. Read more...

The 1920's Sub-irrigated Planter (SIP) Before the EarthBox

When I took the time to study the cutaway drawing of this sub-irrigated (called "self-watering") flower box from almost 90 years ago, I realized it was the same basic construction as the tote box sub-irrigated planter (SIP) below.

There is a fill pipe, connected to reservoir pipes at the bottom. The soil between the pipes acts as the wick. I'm not sure about the need for gravel. The only thing missing (or not mentioned) is an overflow drain hole. Note the mention of an "air supply".

How is that we have these SIPs from around a century ago and we still have millions of new and potential gardeners who know nothing about them. Even experienced gardeners think the EarthBox was the invention that started SIP growing. As archival information demonstrates, this is obviously not true.

Is there any doubt that we have a horticultural education problem when millions of people are brainwashed to believe that you must have a pot with drain holes to grow plants? Or, that a raised bed needs to connect to the ground below for drainage.

When are we going to demand that institutions like the USDA Extension Program fix the problem by modernizing their consumer education? In my view, it is simply a matter of getting these educators to tell the truth about what they already know.

Cyclopedia of American Horticulture 1900 - Liberty Hyde Bailey includes the latest information about sub-irrigated planters 

Popular Mechanics July 1924

A Personal Urban Food Production System - The Laptop of Fresh Food

Sub-irrigated Raised Beds in Dallas Teaching Children and Saving Water

It was most interesting to find this story and video about a school garden with sub-irrigated raised beds (widely known as SIPs) in Dallas. It was great to see that the beds are sub-irrigated and that they're named as such.

These beds are sub-irrigated thanks to the work of U.S. Army Veteran Edgar Hercila. He anticipates the system will save about 90-percent of the water used in traditional growing. Other than the beds having reservoirs and fill pipes, there are no other details about the SIP bed construction.

I'm wondering if Edgar has any business ideas about this. There certainly is an opportunity to make a living using modern methods of urban food growing.

It is a wide-open field with great potential. Thanks to a lack of institutional education about sub-irrigation, there are an uncountable number of top-watered raised beds wasting tons of water across the country.

There is an obvious need for practitioners, but the greatest need is for qualified educators. It isn't enough to know how to make utility buckets into sub-irrigated planters (SIPs). It's really quite simple.

Qualified educators also need to be well grounded in plant science and the academic fundamentals of horticulture. It isn't enough to have only anecdotal gardening or farm work experience.

via dfw.cbslocal.com

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – Moss Haven Elementary School in Dallas is celebrating its history by unveiling a series of sub-irrigation systems that will form a new educational program about agriculture and the environment.

The school campus sits on land that used to be the Moss Ranch Farm. Friday the Moss Haven administrators, teachers, students and staff showed off 17 agriculture plots that will be ‘assigned’ to each classroom.

The program called Bring Back the Farm was funded with a grant.

“I think it is a good idea to let all the students know about plans and growth and more about life science,” said Moss Haven student Brittany Hoag. Read more...

Controlled Tile Drainage and Sub-irrigation

As a reader has pointed out, I should have used a better article to illustrate that field tiling is used for both drainage and sub-irrigation. I had downloaded several on the subject at the same time from agriculture.com.

It does not change the context of the post however. We have two systems for horticultural education, one for professionals and a dumbed down version for consumers. The use of the words sub-irrigation (professionals) and "self-watering" (consumers) is a prime indicator of this split.

Sub-irrigation is used productively in commercial agriculture in both greenhouses and fields. The same benefits of water conservation, higher productivity and labor savings are also available to individuals who use sub-irrigation. Why isn't this information widely publicized to all of us as consumers and amateur gardeners?

This controlled drainage system can also be used to subirrigate a field. By pumping water from a pond or well back into the buried pipes, water can be pushed back toward plant roots. “Our research in subirrigation mode used only 25% as much water as an overhead irrigation system would use,” says Nelson.

via www.agriculture.com

At the University of Missouri Greenley Memorial Research Center near Novelty in northeast Missouri, they've been testing a tile drainage system that controls the flow of water during the course of a season. This isn't like most tile drainage systems. With a gate at the discharge point, this system controls the flow of water rather than draining wide open year-round.

System managers can let water drain in the spring to dry out the soil for planting, then they can close a gate in the discharge pipe in the summer to back water up to the root zone of thirsty corn or soybeans. The gates can be opened again in the fall for harvest, then closed again in the winter to limit leaching and to conserve fertilizer.

“Our research and other research show up to a 75% reduction in the nitrate load in drain water with this type of managed drainage,” says Kelly Nelson, a research agronomist at the Greeley Center, who operates this drainage system. Read more...

Another Rain Gutter System From Larry Hall on YouTube

The last sub-irrigated rain gutter garden we saw was on the houseboat dock of Larry Hall's brother Steve. This one from Brad in Phoenix is a bit more conventional.

Brad has a 30 gallon water supply tank feeding 3 sections of rain gutter SIPs. The number of utility bucket SIPs is not stated but I'm guessing there are somewhere in the range of 25-30 buckets. As you can see, they are nicely arranged around the patio of what looks to be a suburban home.

He does a nice job of explaining his system of valves in the system that auto irrigates the leveled planters. The plumbing is really quite simple: certainly much easier for the average do-it-your-selfer than aquaponics.

In my view, the potential for systems of this type is enormous. Thanks to inventor Larrry and people like Brad we can see these systems taking shape around the country.

via www.youtube.com

What's in a Name? Modern Day Ag Tile is Plastic, Self-watering is Sub-irrigation

Tiling has been the way of life in the south central Minnesota region for as long as Pat Duncanson can remember. Many county outles were put in about 100 years ago and has been a tradition that has had a direct impact on the value of farmland.

“It is the culture we grew up with,” Duncanson says. “Drainage and tiling are important parts of crop production.”

via www.agriculture.com

I wonder how many home and community gardeners would know that sub-irrigation called "tiling" (not to be confused with tilling) is used for both drainage and irrigation in professional field farming. Long time readers of this blog might know from prior posts here and here.

Further, how would anyone outside of farming know that tile used in field agriculture is plastic rather than ceramic? Tile in farmspeak is the same corrugated perforated plastic pipe used to irrigate and aerate the plants in the first sub-irrigated raised beds here in Brooklyn.

Incidentally, it is the same sub-irrigation method used more than 100 years ago in greenhouse agriculture. Back then, it was “real” ceramic clay tile.

From Cyclopedia of American Horticulture 1904

Why does this matter to the public at large? It matters because it has a significant impact on the quality of public education about modern methods of growing plants, edible plants in particular. Ergo, it has a significant impact on the quality of urban agriculture and the availability of high quality locally produced fresh food.

The public gets a steady drumbeat of propaganda from institutions like the USDA Extension Program about arcane drench and drain plant watering methods but little or nothing about sub-irrigation. Even then, the highly misleading term "self-watering" is used.

What is most egregious is that the same professional educators who know about agricultural sub-irrigation use the unprofessional term "self-watering" when communicating with consumers.

Who would know that "self-watering" and tiling both mean sub-irrigation? Consumers might search on the words "self-watering" but are highly unlikely to ever search the word "tiling" when looking for information about growing fresh food.

A personal experience with a very well-known school garden here in Brooklyn illustrates the point about the word tiling and sub-irrigation. The school garden was built over a former parking lot that was broken up and topsoil trucked in. Now for some reason there is a very significant drainage problem. The school garden manager struggles to overcome it with marginal results. The quality of the plants is significantly below average.

The problem with this school garden is not unique. It exhibits the very same problems that farmers have faced and solved with tiling (sub-irrigation and drainage).

Duncanson says there is a direct relationship between nitrogen use and drainage. Tiling has allowed Duncanson to manage nitrogen more precisely.

“If we go into a farm that isn’t well drained, we have experienced higher nitrogen losses some years. Any mobile nitrogen is lost through denitrification,” he says. “If a farm is tiled, we can fine-tune the nitrogen rates.” Duncanson says they use a lower rate of nitrogen applied to tiled farms.

If the school garden manger knew about tiling and sub-irrigation the school garden would likely double production while saving water and reducing labor time in coping with the drainage problem.

Unfortunately, the information is poorly understood in the urban gardening community where much of the education is based largely on experiential, anecdotal and folkloric knowledge rather than professional, peer-reviewed and science-based academic information.

Future Farmers of America (FFA) » Students Doing Good Work

Kevin Pieper/The Baxter Bulletin

It is really good to see these young people involved in a project like this. It is particularly significant that they are getting some hands-on experience with alternate ways to "farm" other than in the ground.

EarthBox sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) are an excellent way to reach out to their community to help solve problems of hunger, nutrition and obesity. In my view FFA deserves much more recognition than it gets in big cities like New York.

Read more about the Future Farmers of America. This is their national website.

via www.baxterbulletin.com

COTTER — More than 60 Cotter Future Farmers of America club members are joining together on a project to help local families fight hunger.

Student teacher Carley Calico, an agriculture education student at Southern Arkansas University, is doing her student teaching at Cotter High School.

Before she started, she contacted Cotter agriculture teacher Brandy Hughes about potentially applying for one of 140 “Food For All” grants distributed by the national FFA organization. Read more...

South Korea Researching Vertical Farming for Food Security

The 21st century may be remembered as the era that horticulture discovered a new dimension. No, that’s not meant to be metaphorical. It is the fact that horticulture discovered that in addition to horizontal there is another physical dimension called vertical.

The media world has gone gaga over vertical gardens (aka living walls, green walls) and gardens in tall buildings, known widely as vertical gardens.

The new direction for plant roots is up along with the daily hyperbole about vertical gardens. Back in my days in the then called data processing industry we used to call unproven software “vaporware”. You might say that there is a lot of vapor in vertical greenhouse air and be both metaphorical and literal.

In that context, it was most refreshing to watch this video from South Korea and hear rational and pragmatic forecasts about the future of vertical edible urban agriculture in buildings.

The field has obviously attracted serious attention from both governmental and entrepreneurial organizations around the world. I have no doubt that the power of money and technology will lead to solutions that respect energy consumption and sustainability. It will just take some time.

via www.voanews.com

The Rural Development Administration has built a prototype of a vertical farm - experimenting with urban agriculture - 30-kilometers south of the capital Seoul, in Suwon, South Korea, April 2012.

The World Health Organization warns that overpopulation and a lack of arable land contribute to global food insecurity. So scientists are developing new farming technology to offset potential food shortages. Researchers in South Korea are experimenting with vertical farms; gardens that go straight up, instead of spreading out.

Agriculture in high-rise buildings is the dream of some scientists and architects around the globe. But it soon could be reality. Read more...

 

More News From BrightFarms

BrightFarms has announced business relationships with two regional supermarket chains, Best Yet (New York) and McCaffreys (New Jersey).

Announcements like these plus the announcement of the future "world's largest rooftop farm" in Brooklyn indicate a bright future for BrightFarms.

It will be interesting to see if other year-round hydroponic (Controlled Environment Agriculture - CEA) businesses such as Gotham Greens (Brooklyn) and Lufa Farms (Montreal) pursue larger scale, multi-location expansion.

via www.prnewswire.com

It was announced today that Best Yet Market is the first supermarket in the nation to carry BrightFarms local produce. BrightFarms is making local produce available to supermarkets 365-days per year through partnerships with innovative grocers like Best Yet. Best Yet's Manhattan location is carrying BrightFarms' Baby Spinach, Baby Arugula and Spring Mix, which are grown in Huntington, New York. Read more...

via www.buckslocalnews.com

LOWER MAKEFIELD – BrightFarms, a company that designs and builds hydroponic greenhouses, will enter into contract negotiations with the township following a Wednesday night approval by the board of supervisors.

The 4-1 vote, which came as a shock to some members of the public, prompted township solicitor Jeff Garton to begin negotiations with the New York State firm so they can build a greenhouse in the township, particularly on an undetermined plot of land on the Patterson Farm.

In December, BrightFarms approached the township with plans to construct a 50,000-square-foot, glass nursery that will harvest produce and crops and be sold locally, specifically to McCaffrey’s Supermarkets. Read more...