Inside Urban Green International

You Cannot Over Water

Watch this video and hear the claim “you cannot over water”. The official EarthBox website says the same thing.

“With the overflow hole you can never over water, so always keep the reservoir filled.”

The true facts based on science:

“Self-watering” is a marketing hype term used only in the consumer market. It is used to describe a planter that provides water to plants using sub-irrigation based on capillary action.

It is a misleading and inaccurate term that has led to the widespread misuse of sub-irrigation planters.

If you constantly top off the water reservoir, you will most definitely over water the plant(s) in the "self-watering" planter.

Unlike animals, plants have no intelligence to start and stop drinking.

EarthBox (and many others) tell a “white lie” when they say you cannot over water. The unsaid caveat is this is likely only when the planter is located outside in full sunlight.

It’s Our Education Stupid

If we don't understand the difference between capillary action and osmosis, it's a symptom of an education problem. If we don’t understand that plants have no intelligence to start and stop “drinking” water, it's a symptom of an education problem. If we believe a clay pot and saucer is the best way to maintain plants in containers, it's a symptom of an education problem. If we think the term “self-watering” is synonymous with sub-irrigation, it's a symptom of an education problem.

I see these beliefs expressed every day of my blogging research on the web. They lead to an opinion that our level of science education in the field of gardening and horticulture is woefully weak. Is this an anomaly peculiar to the field of horticulture or is it symptomatic of our overall education?

David Brooks wrote an op-ed piece yesterday titled The Biggest Issue and benchmarked our education decline around 1975. I’ve been an eyewitness to much of this in the field of “ornamental” horticulture, which attracted high school students to land grant colleges by the thousands in the ‘70s.

L.E.D. There be Light

J.R. Krauza

Will the green home of the future have L.E.D lighting sufficient to maintain decorative plants or even better to grow edible plants?

This article from The New York Times is encouraging. Incidentally I read this article in context of how misinformed the Times reporters can be regarding the maintenance and growing of container plants. That is a subject that I'm qualified to critique professionally.

However, I simply don't know enough about L.E.D. lighting technology to analyze this article in detail. If you do, please comment for the benefit of other readers. Here are some reader reviews of the article.

There is obviously significant money betting on an L.E.D. future. Will the living plants sector of the “green” movement be a significant player? Only time will tell, but the past is not a good precursor of the future.

Hopefully, projects like the “Smart Home” in Chicago, will soon demonstrate the use of L.E.D. plant lighting along with sub-irrigated planters. It will certainly make these homes a lot greener.

How Green is Your Future Home?

See the cut Calla Lily

If you think a green home includes living indoor plants, guess again. Watch both of these videos about the Smart Home exhibition at The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

You will see that there are no plants visible in this version of a "smart" home. There is, however, a vase with a cut Calla Lily. Is this supposed to be an example of a sustainable green plant?

Note that both the Museum president and Smart Home architect have a living plant close by them.

As previously posted, an in-ground garden is a part of the Smart Home. In what appears to be an afterthought, there are EarthBoxes on the entrance stairs to the museum.

UPDATE 2009: It is really a smart home now. There are now EarthBoxes on the upper deck of the Smart Home. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I  believe this would not have happened without The Growing Connection, a UN organization stepping forward.

This Smart Home could have been a wonderful demonstration of 21st century edible and decorative greenscaping using modern sub-irrigation methods. The technology is here now but poorly understood.

Incidentally, I also noted that “high-tech” clay pots and saucers from Botanicalls are included in the exhibit inside the museum. How green is that? Hardly!

We have a long way to go.

Fire Escape Peppers Update

This is what the fire escape pepper plants look like today. This is how they looked a week ago. There are now a number of small peppers.

The plants are doing nicely but more sun would help. This is an east facing location so they're in shade in the afternoon. With the rain this past week, there hasn't been much need to add water to the reservoirs.

These plants require very little maintenance. Anyone can do this. You do not need to be a "gardener".

The U.N. Intervenes

You could stare at this photo for a long time and not realize that those are EarthBoxes on the left and right. This is the entrance to The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The Growing Connection, a United Nations organization donated the EarthBoxes for the recent Smart Home exhibit.

For some unknown reason, they weren’t included in the actual Smart Home which does have an in ground garden. Incidentally, it’s yet another “green home” with no sign of beneficial green plants inside.

Maybe it's appropriate for us to get some help from the U.N. right here in our own backyard. Many consider our urban agriculture methods on a par with the “third world”. If our gardening community won't join the 21st century on its own, perhaps it will with some aid from the U.N.

To get the EarthBoxes planted, they recruited some local master gardeners from the University of Illinois extension program. Squint a little. It could be Nicaragua.

2008 National Urban Design Award

These are three photos of "Making the Edible Campus" an award winning project at McGill University in Montreal. It was done in partnership with The Rooftop Garden Project, also an award winner.

Why is it that we have nothing like this in all of the United States? 

From the jury comments:

Amongst the interesting “fragments” submitted from across the country, the jury appreciated the social foundations and community/volunteer involvement as well as the sustainable urban objectives of this scheme. With simple, direct layouts it aims to employ underused corners and spaces within the public realm to grow produce linked to a food collection and meal delivery system, creating a sustainable prototype that could potentially be expanded to other university campuses and across the city.

Click on the first photo and it will take you to more photos showing the beauty, practicality and community involvement associated with this outstanding project.

Would You Like to be a Fishing Tutor Instead?

Trevor Paque at work in San Francisco in a garden his company planted in a client's backyard. (Peter DaSilva for The New York Times)

Here we have a new green collar job according to the New York Times. This green collar service takes care of vegetable gardens for wealthy clients who don’t want to get their hands dirty.

Read on and learn how to become a green collar savant to everyone rather than a garden servant just to the wealthy. Nothing wrong with that but perhaps you aspire to something more.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime....Lao Tzu

A far better green collar job would be to show urbanites of all income levels how to grow vegetables without turning earth.

All they need is six hours of full sun on a rooftop, balcony, fire escape or paved drive. There is no need for the heavy work of turning earth. Anyone regardless of age or physical ability can grow their own food in sub-irrigated grow boxes such as the EarthBox, Tomato Success Kit or a home made version.

Starting today, I’m offering to teach anyone here in New York City how to practice 21st century urban agriculture with proven sub-irrigation methods. You can then teach others and I'll help you do that.

With the recent emphasis on local food production, this could be the start of a new green collar career. Watch this video. It could change your life. 

You will not find these techniques taught anywhere that I know of in NYC, including our venerable botanic gardens.

If this isn't for you, tell your friends. It’s free as long as I can manage it.

Contact me at urbangreenscaper [AT] gmail.com

Source: The New York Times

Three Month Old Ficus Tree

This Ficus benjamina (Weeping Fig) with Ficus pumila (Creeping Fig) growing at the base was propagated from cuttings about 3 months ago. It’s now growing in a 3-liter recycled (repurposed) pop/soda bottle planter. The media is a mixture of 50-50 coir and expanded clay pebbles. Find step-by-step instructions for making recycled pop bottle planters here.

I read that growers in the Netherlands are testing the coir, expanded clay pebble mix. That’s good enough for me. I'll test it and see if there are any consumer benefits.

Cuttings are rooted (100% coir) in pop bottle propagators (shelf on left). This takes less than a month. The propagating hoods are removed and the plants are potted up in a 50-50 coir and Fafard potting soil mixture (shelf on the right). Plants on the right end of the shelf are growing in expanded clay pebbles.

Ask yourself why the cooperative extension program educators (and other gardening sites) are not teaching pop bottle recycling and these methods across the country. What they teach instead is analogous to finger painting, it’s that primitive.

Anyone can do what you see here. Use the same methods for decorative or edible plants. For example, various kinds of peppers are growing on the fire escape through the window (photo on the left - enlarged). The plants were started in pop bottle planters. I noticed today that there are a number of tiny peppers on the plants. Photos to come.

Smart Pots at Public Farm 1

You may have wondered how they water the vegetables on the Public Farm 1 at P.S.1. The plants are installed in what the manufacturer calls “smart pots”.

This is a bit of horticultural hype considering that the “smart” relates only to a quality of the fabric used to make the bag (not really a pot). Without going into the horticultural nitty-gritty, the fabric prevents roots from growing in a circular pattern and girdling the tree. These are really meant as tree planters you see.

The benefit of these bags at Public Farm 1 is they provided a means of offsite growing and ease of transport to the site. They really have no other specific value in this project since these are one-season vegetables, not trees.

You can see in the top photo that there is an ordinary drip system installed. Collected rainwater is fed to the plants this way. There are more photos of the planters here.

I understand why the architects and consultants used the system they did. The shortfall is that it is not relevant to urbanites interested in growing vegetables in the city.

Urbanites are not likely to use these so-called “smart pots”. They just aren’t practical for city patios, pavements, balconies and rooftops.

From a public education viewpoint, it would have been better to sub-irrigate these vegetables as is done in EarthBoxes and home made sub-irrigated grow boxes. This method is perfect for urban agriculture on a small one-box scale to gardens with many boxes.

Using sub-irrigated planting, Public Farm 1 would be a leading edge demonstration garden of 21st century urban vegetable growing on a very personal level.