Inside Urban Green

My So-Called Wife

On the lighter side after Friedman. I came of age with family in the 1950's. Many laughs while reading this. So who gets to plow the "victory garden?"

via www.nytimes.com

I am stricken with the peculiar curse of being a 21st-century woman who makes more than the man she’s living with — first with a husband for 13 years and now with a new partner. It’s an increasingly common situation, according to a recent Pew study that found that the proportion of American marriages in which the wife makes more money rose to 22 percent in 2007 from 4 percent in 1970.

Woolly Pockets: A Modular Living Wall System

It is becoming increasingly clear that Patrick Blanc has spawned a new branch of greenscaping both indoors and out. Woolly and Wally Pockets are a good example of a new product and business using a variation of his felt pocket living wall technique.

In my opinion this unitized version has great potential. I like the fact that you can start small and incrementally expand as you learn from experience.

Most new products like this are initially a bit pricey for the mass market, but that will change as this concept becomes more popular and imitators emerge. As we have seen with do-it-yourself EarthBox clones this method appears to have significant DIY potential.

Source: www.youtube.com Website: woollypocket.com

Rick's Ultra-Fresh Rooftop Garden Salsa

Many of you know Rick Bayless as a celebrity chef featured on PBS. His Frontera Grill is a Chicago favorite. He is also a favorite chef of Barack and Michelle Obama.

You may not know that he is also a rooftop gardener. When you order the "Rooftop Salsa" at the Frontera Grill, you will know that it is ultra-fresh. It came from the EarthBox garden on the roof just a short time before your order.

Incidentally, note near the end of the video that his EarthBoxes are refilled by an automatic irrigation system connected to the building water supply.

It is not widely known how low maintenance sub-irrigated planter (SIP) gardens are. The many hours of work involved in creating and maintaining an in-ground garden are a rude awakening for many Victory Garden newbies. Their new dirt garden is often their first and last garden

Dirt gardening is a great hobby if you have the time and motivation, but SIP gardening gives you even greater fresh food production while spending a lot less time.

Prior posts about Rick's rooftop garden.

Victory Gardening Canning

Alfred Eisenstadt/ Getty Images

This is a part of WWII Victory Gardening that doesn't get much publicity in all the nostalgic hoopla going on currently. 

It is called canning but the cans are glass jars called Mason jars after the inventor. I can well remember my mother doing this. Memories of the eating are dim however. I was not in love with my mother's cooking. 

Understanding the seasonal nature of personal food production here in New York, I've wondered how many people know about or practice canning. Do people take the time to do this in our fast paced society? 

A post on Treehugger reminded me about canning and preserving. Have a look. 

Gardening From the Past

Watch 1940 Kids Learn to Food Garden in How to Videos  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

This movie is like a trip back in a time for me. The dialogue is really a hoot. Was this the pilot for Father Knows Best?  

In 1940, I was about the age of the boy in this film. It brings back memories of the Victory Garden we planted in our yard on Long Island during World War II. 

After all these years I can still remember my foot on the spade turning over the lawn grass in the back yard. I also remember hoeing, planting seeds and pulling weeds. 

What I remember most, however, is eating the just picked fresh vegetables…peas, radishes, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes. Those are the really good memories that all kids should be making today. 

Meet Victory Garden Ralph

This is Ralph Dow who lives and grows vegetables in his "victory garden" in Redmond, Washington. 

Yes those are raised beds to his left but inside his greenhouse to his right there are sub-irrigated (gray) EarthBoxes too. 

If you're interested in personal or family food production, my best advice is to find someone like Ralph in your neighborhood and make a friend. You'll obviously learn the pros and cons of raised beds versus sub-irrigated grow boxes. Forget about finding the gardeners who are fixated on drain hole gardening. You'll likely learn nothing new. 

In his greenhouses, he’s planted several varieties of tomatoes and eggplants. Dow used EarthBoxes (self-watering garden containers), which are raised up on wood pallets in the greenhouse.

Realities of a Victory Garden

Having helped make a Victory Garden as a young boy, this video brought back a lot of good memories. It also reminded me of how much work it takes to grow a vegetable garden in turned earth. There's a lot more work than meets the eye. 

Now having experience growing vegetables in sub-irrigated planters, I would think twice about starting a garden in the ground even if I had access to it.  

1943 Rooftop Victory Garden

About 35 miles east of here in 1943 I was also tilling soil in a Victory Garden on Long Island. I remember picking fresh vegetables right off the vine like it was yesterday.

How many inner city kids today know the taste of fresh tomatoes, peppers and peas? More of them would if we did a better job of educating the urban public about the benefits of sub-irrigated grow boxes.

Via: Rooftop Gardening Source

White Picket Fences

While our paper of record finds it necessary to eliminate about 100 newsroom jobs it’s resident gardener is writing purple prose about white picket fences and kitchen gardens. 

It would do the paper good if all of its writers were in touch with the real urban world where the only thing outside the kitchen is an alley.

Here we have a fourteen hundred word article about vegetable gardening with not one of them about sub-irrigated (aka self-watering) grow boxes. Here we have lots of “fantasy farmer” idealism and not one word about a way for just about anyone living in the city to grow some vegetables. 

With sub-irrigated vegetable boxes, you don’t need a yard; you don’t need to join a gardener or farmers group. All you need is a small space in the city with enough sunlight.

You’ll also find out that you can grow more produce per square foot in a sub-irrigated veggie box than you can in turned over ground. Further, while you’re doing it you’ll save a significant amount of water.

We could do (make that eat) much better without all the empty rhetoric and be a lot greener by using some simple growing technology that’s been around for decades.

Incidentally, I’m not out of touch with dirt gardening. It seems like only yesterday that my young foot was on a spade turning over the back yard to make a Victory Garden. I know the taste of fresh vegetables right off the vine. City kids should know that taste too.

Times have changed. Maybe it’s time for fantasy farmers to tune in to the realities of the modern urban world.