The Farm is Merging With Food Retail Spaces

By: Sylvain Charlebois

July 13, 2021

Canadians have started to notice that grocers have begun to sell plants in miniature greenhouses.

We’ve seen gardens on rooftops, vertical farms close to stores and even some selling gardening equipment to gardeners who are shopping for food. The farm is essentially merging with the food retail spaces we roam as consumers. It’s quite interesting.

We’re slowly witnessing the rise of the ‘grow-cer.’

For years, customers accepted the myth that food just magically shows up at the grocery store. But COVID-19 got many of us to think differently about supply chains – how food is grown, produced, transported, packaged and retailed.

With the addition of new farmgate features for city dwellers, grocery stores are slowly becoming the gateway to an entire world most of us rarely see: farming.

Sobeys has provided one recent example of what’s going on. The second-largest grocer in Canada recently signed a partnership agreement with German-based Infarm to get greenhouses into many outlets across the country. Infarm units were installed last year in British Columbia and can now be found in many other locations across the country.

Infarm units enable Sobeys to offer fresh herbs and produce grown hydroponically, which requires 95 percent less water, 90 percent less transportation, and 75 percent less fertilizer than industrial agriculture. And no pesticides are used.

Available produce grown inside the store includes leafy greens, lettuce, kale, and herbs such as basil, cilantro, mint and parsley. Expansion plans include chili peppers, mushrooms, and tomatoes. The growing cycle for most of these averages five weeks.

While Sobeys doesn’t have to worry about infrastructure and extra capital to change a store’s allure, it can get rid of these miniature vertical farms if proven unpopular or unnecessary. That works well for Sobeys and the consumer.

But it’s not just Sobeys. Other grocers now have decent-sized vertical farms inside the store or close to them.

The gardening rate in Canada has gone up by more than 20 per cent since the start of the pandemic last year. For consumers, growing their own food was about pride and taking control of their supply chain in some way.

For many others, though, gardening remains a luxury due to the lack of space or time. Since a trip to the grocery store is inevitable for most of us, grocers are bringing the farm to the store so consumers can have both the farming and the retail experience at once.

Before COVID, farmers desperately tried to get closer to city dwellers so their work could be appreciated. Campaigns over the years brought mixed results. Farming is still largely misunderstood.

Debates on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the use of chemicals have also divided urban and rural communities. City dwellers have always respected farmers and the hard work they do. But many consumers who are/were looking for natural and organically-produced goods have grown leery of farming in general.

This has attracted the attention of environmental groups opposed to many farming practices.

Grocers are starting to realize that bridging two worlds under one roof can help elevate their roles as ambassadors to an entire supply chain. Farmers can’t be replaced, of course, and they can’t be in stores.

For years, we saw pictures of farmers on packages and posters. It was nice, but it wasn’t real. The hard work, and everything else that comes with farming, can only be properly conveyed when visiting a farm or working on one for a while.

The pictures likely won’t disappear from grocery stores but they don’t really tell the whole story.

The new grow-cer brings the imagery of farming in retail to a new level. Grabbing a living plant or produce off a living plant is certainly real and increasingly valuable for Canadians longing for local and freshness. It just can’t get more local than growing it in the grocery store.

COVID-19 eliminated many rules for grocers. Every business played a part. Grocers sold food, processors manufactured it, and restaurants provided ready-to-eat solutions. Lines between sectors were already becoming blurred before COVID, given the crossing of concepts and elimination of lines between sectors.

For example, some of us have heard of the ‘grocerant’ concept, which has embedded food service into grocery stores. Consumers can relax, enjoy food before, during or after their grocery shopping.

But COVID blew up the blurred lines.

Grocers are becoming brokers, connecting various functions of the supply chain. Farming connects with retail by way of new initiatives that we’re now seeing everywhere.

For example, restaurants are selling meal kits through grocers’ apps. Few saw that coming.

Food brokering for grocers is no doubt the next frontier of growth.

Whether it will last is unknown. But grocers are embracing the fact they have the privilege of interacting with consumers every day. That privilege, more than ever, comes with a responsibility to show consumers the true value of food by being knowledge brokers.

If that means growing more food in stores, so be it.

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is senior director of the agri-food analytics lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University.

Kimbal Musk’s Quest To Start One Million Gardens

MARCH 20, 2021

The tech veteran and restaurateur (and brother of Elon) has been preaching the ‘real food’ gospel for years — and his newest project may be his most ambitious yet

By ALEX MORRIS

Million Gardens Movement

On the day he almost died, Kimbal Musk had food on the brain. The internet startup whiz, restaurateur, and younger brother of Tesla’s Elon had just arrived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, from a 2010 TED conference where chef Jamie Oliver had spoken about the empowerment that could come from healthy eating. This was something Musk thought about a lot — food’s untapped potential, how he might be a disruptor in the culinary space — but beyond expanding his farm-to-table ethos along with his restaurant empire, Musk hadn’t yet cracked the code. Then he went sailing down a snowy slope on an inner tube going 35 miles an hour and flipped over, snapping his neck. The left side of his body was paralyzed. Doctors told the father of three that he was lucky: Surgery might bring movement back.

“I remember telling myself, ‘It’s all going to be fine,’ and then realizing that tears were streaming down the side of my face,” he says. “I was like, ‘Yeah, OK. I don’t really know what’s going on. I’m just going to, you know, let things go.’”

Musk, 48, eventually made a full recovery, but it involved spending two months on his back, which gave him plenty of time to think about the intersections of food, tech, and philanthropy. Since then, he has launched an initiative to put “learning gardens” in public schools across America (now at 632 schools and counting); courted Generation Z into the farming profession by converting shipping containers into high-tech, data-driven, year-round farms; spoken out vociferously against unethical farming practices and vociferously for the beauty and community of slow food; and this year, on the first day of spring, is kicking off a new campaign with Modern Farmer’s Frank Giustra to create one million at-home gardens in the coming year.

Aimed at reaching low-income families, the Million Gardens Movement was inspired by the pandemic, as both a desire to feel more connected to nature and food insecurity have been at the forefront of so many people’s lives. “We were getting a lot of inquiries about gardening from people that had never gardened before,” says Giustra. “People were looking to garden for a bunch of reasons: to supplement their budget, because there was a lot of financial hardship, to help grow food for other people, or just to cure the boredom that came with the lockdown. To keep people sane, literally keep people sane, they turned to gardening.”

The program offers free garden kits that can be grown indoors or outdoors and will be distributed through schools that Musk’s non-profit, Big Green, has already partnered with. It also offers free curriculum on how to get the garden growing and fresh seeds and materials for the changing growing seasons. “I grew up in the projects when I was young, in what we now call food deserts,” says EVE, one of the many celebrities who have teamed up with the organization to encourage people to pick up a free garden or to donate one. “What I love about this is that it’s not intimidating. Anyone can do this, no matter where you come from, no matter where you live. We are all able to grow something.”

Rolling Stone recently talked with Musk about the Million Gardens Movement, why shipping containers can grow the most perfect basil, and how he is channeling his family’s trademark disruptor drive to change America’s relationship with food.

How did you first get interested in food and then how did that grow into an interest in agricultural innovation?
I’ve always loved food. I started cooking for my family when I was 12, maybe even 11.

What was the first meal you made? Do you remember?
It’s actually funny. My mother is a wonderful person, great dietitian, but because she’s a dietitian, the food we ate was brown bread and yogurt or bean soup. I mean, as a kid, it drove me crazy. So I asked my mom, “If I could cook, could we get something else?” And so I went to the butcher, and I asked them, “How do you roast a chicken?” And he said, “Put it in a really hot oven for one hour.” And I was like, “Oh, how hot is hot?” He was like, “Make it as hot as your oven goes for one hour, and if it starts to burn, then just take it out.” And he gave me the chicken, and that was it. I’ve kept that recipe forever. 450, 500 degrees, one hour. That’s a great straight-up recipe.

And then my mother insisted on a vegetable, so I decided to do French fries, which was my funny way of convincing her that I’m doing a vegetable.

It is a vegetable.
I totally screwed up the French fries. I didn’t heat up the oil ahead of time, and if you don’t do that, the potatoes actually soak in the oil so you’re eating basically a sponge of oil. I made everyone throw up. But the roast chicken was delicious. Everyone loved that. And so I was encouraged to cook more. I cooked for my friends in university. I didn’t have any money, so I figured out how to cook for 40 cents a person. It was a Kraft dinner with weiner sausages. And if someone chipped in an extra dollar, I’d get actually real cheese instead of the powdered cheese.

Anyway, I studied business, and then went down to California to start a company with my brother building maps and door-to-door directions for the internet.

I read that you and your brother were sleeping in your office and showering at the YMCA and that sort of startup lifestyle made you appreciate food.
Yeah, that’s totally right. We only had enough money for rent for either an office or an apartment, so we rented an office. I had a little minibar fridge and put one of those portable cooktops above it, and that was our kitchen. But we also ate at Jack in the Box all the time because it was the only place that was open late. Ugh, 25 years later, I can still remember the items on that menu. It was just really, really not great — a huge inspiration to go focus on real food after that.

And I just did not like the lack of social connection. It’s a work-hard-go-to-sleep-and-work-hard-again culture with not much socializing in the way that I enjoy, which is eating food, eating together over a meal, talking about ideas. I kind of was suffocating a little bit.

It’s a Soylent culture.
Yeah, exactly. They actually want food to be a pill. So I kind of needed to leave. We ended up selling [our company] for a gazillion dollars when I was 27, and I had this sort of opportunity to do whatever I wanted. So I went to New York to enroll at the French Culinary Institute.

Was culinary school as brutal as people make it out to be?
Absolutely brutal. It was Full Metal Jacket, but cooking. They just totally break you down. They make sure you don’t have any faith in your own abilities — within a few months, you’re like, “I am a completely useless fool” — and then after that, they start building you up with the skills they want you to have. It was very, very hard on the ego. I managed to graduate, but I would say 70 percent of the people that start don’t finish — and you pay upfront.

I actually graduated just a few weeks before 9/11 and woke up to the sounds of the plane hitting the building. That’s how close we were. Fourteen days later, I started volunteering to feed the firefighters. We would do 16-hour days, every day — there was never a reason not to work because the alternative is you sit at home during the nightmare after 9/11, where no one was on the streets or anything. I started peeling potatoes and eventually got to the point where I would drive the food down to Ground Zero. The firefighters would come in completely gray in their face and gray in their eyes, covered in dust. And then they’d start eating, and you’d see the color come back in their face, the light in their eyes.

And you worked as a line cook after that?
Yeah, for Hugo Matheson, at his restaurant. He was the chef of a popular restaurant in Boulder, and I just wanted to learn. I was a line cook for $10 an hour for probably 18 months. And loved it. You know, it’s a submarine culture. And you get in there and everything you do in the moment is measured in the moment. It’s very much the opposite of [building] software.

You and Hugo eventually started a restaurant [The Kitchen] that practiced the farm-to-table thing before it was even really a term. Why was it so important to you to have local suppliers and organic methods? At that point, was it mainly about flavor, or was there a bigger ethic behind it?
For sure flavor was the driver. But I think that the thing that I resonated with more was the sense of this concept of community through food. You know, when I was feeding the firefighters, it was all about community. The fishermen would come and give us their fish, so we got the best fish you can imagine. The cooks were all volunteers. We were going through this really tough time. So for me, the community through food was what I loved about it.

[At The Kitchen], we literally had a basic rule to farmers saying we’ll buy whatever you grow. We said that if you can deliver by 4 p.m., then we will get it on the menu that evening.

Oh, wow.
We would get fiddlehead ferns at 4 p.m. and be trying to think, “OK, what can we do with this?” If you turn the food around that quickly, it really does show up in the flavor.

Food that had potentially been in the ground that morning.
Not potentially. Every day was working with the harvest of that day. We had 43 different farmers coming to the back door. It was awesome.

Let’s move ahead to the part of the story, after your accident, when you’re like, “All right, I’ve gotten this new lease on life and now what am I going to do with it?” Obviously, within the food space, there are a lot of choices you could have made. So how did you decide where to go from there?
So when I came out of that hospital, I resigned as CEO of my software company. I told my wife I wanted a divorce. The spiritual message I got was: Work with a way to connect kids to real food, to get kids to understand what real food is. And real food for me is food that you trust to nourish the body, trust to nourish the farmer, trust to nourish the planet. It’s very simple. Processed food would be the opposite of that. There’s no nourishment there. The farmer gets hosed and it’s terrible for the planet. So I [looked into] farm-oriented work and cooking-skills training. Turned out giving kids knives isn’t a good idea.

What? [laughter]
Yeah. Exactly. But the thing that came back to me was the value of a school garden. I actually was pretty frustrated with school gardens. I had been a philanthropic supporter of them for a few years and found them to be expensive, hard to maintain — a passionate parent would put it in, and then their kid would graduate, and it would become this mess in the corner of the schoolyard. So we [created] learning gardens. They’ve got a beautiful Fibonacci sequence layout. They’re made in a factory, but they have a natural look and feel. These are totally food-safe and can go on any school ground. They’re [wheelchair] accessible, easy to teach in, and built into the irrigation system of the school. We go in and we do 100 of them at a time. Pre-COVID we got to almost 700 schools in Denver, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Memphis, L.A.

How did you decide which cities to go into?
I believe this is useful anywhere, but what I found was low-income communities were the areas where you really needed it. Private schools or wealthier schools, they all have gardens — there’s not a private school out there that doesn’t embrace having a school garden. It’s actually the low-income schools that don’t have it. And that is also, coincidentally or not, where the obesity is. And so what I wanted to do is take what existed in private schools and put it into low-income schools and to do it in a way where it would be the most beautiful thing in the school. So instead of that sort of eyesore that was in the backyard, we said, “These have to be right next to the classroom, right next to the playground. You’re not allowed to build a fence around it. And if you don’t want to do that, great, we’ll just find another school. But these are the rules for learning garden.” And because we were doing 100 at a time, the districts would work with us, including maintenance and installation and curriculum and teacher training. Pre-COVID we were teaching almost 350,000 kids every school day.

And are there measurable effects?
Absolutely. Studies show that fifth grade in particular is the most effective grade. If you teach science in fifth grade to a kid, the exact same lesson in the garden versus in the classroom, you will get a 15-point increase on a 100-point score on their test scores.

And then if you teach kids 90 minutes a week in school, which is not hard to do because it’s beautiful and fun to be outside, you’ll double their intake of fruits and vegetables. Now they’re not eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, so the base is low, but you’re still doubling. The way I like to look at it is you’re really not trying to make them eat vegetables all the time — that’s too hard — you just try to change the course of their life by a few degrees; if you can do it by third, fourth, fifth grade, they’re going to be a different adult when they grow up. We’re not here to claim that what we do changes everything. We believe that the cafeteria needs to improve, that we need grocery stores to exist in these food deserts. There are many legs of the stool, but the school garden movement is a critical leg.

Are there any other technological innovations in this space that are really giving you hope?
I think there’s a lot of cool things going on around carbon capture with regenerative farming, because if you do farming correctly, you’ve become a wonderful carbon sink. And there needs to be an economy around it. So what is the value of a carbon credit? They’ve got value for that in Europe, but they haven’t valued it in America. So I think there’s a lot of government policy that needs to work there. But it’s a fascinating area to look at.

It’s interesting, the concept of bringing innovation to agriculture, which is—
So old school! Yeah, it’s fun. I do get frustrated that it doesn’t move fast enough. Then I’m reminded of how big this is and I’ve got my whole life to work on it. So I’m learning to embrace going a little slower. If you are in the software world, it’s more “move fast and break things,” and I think with food, it’s something in between.

Yeah, you don’t want to break the food chain.
No, people need to eat. Exactly.

And I know you’ve been advocating, too, for policies that help farmers shift to organic methods.
Yeah, I’ve been a supporter of that, but I really have pushed my energy now to work with young farmers of any kind. I’m not against organic at all. I love organic. But I’ve kind of said, “You know, we just need young farmers.” Real food doesn’t require it to be organic. If it’s a zucchini that happens to be grown conventionally, I’m still in favor of that.

It’s still a zucchini.
Right. That being said, organic is better. Farmers make more money on it. But it’s really about young farmers getting them into the business.

If you don’t mind, let me take one minute to just talk about [another initiative called] Square Roots. So there was a sort of a turning point in indoor farming technology around 2014, where you could really do quality food. Indoor farming’s been around forever, but the quality was really terrible. It would taste like water. No real flavor. But the technology of lighting really changed in 2014, and so by 2016 we said, “You know, there is a way here.” And what got me going was I really wanted to create this generation of young farmers. I love technology and I love food. And I think that if we bring the two together, we will get young people interested in farming again. And so we started out Square Roots as really a training entity.

And with Square Roots, you’re growing food in shipping containers? There’s no soil?
Yeah, we refine the nutrients [through the water]. We’ve gotten very, very thoughtful about what the nutrients are so that we can re-create as best we can the soil that they would get normally. The shipping containers, what’s beautiful about them is the fact that we can totally control the climate. For example, we have found that Genoa in Italy is where the best basil in the world is grown. It’s four weeks in June that are the best, and actually, 1997 was the best June. And so we re-create the climate of 1997 Genoa, Italy, in each of those containers to create the tastiest basil you can possibly imagine. Using data, we can monitor the growth and how they work. And every square meter of the air in there is exactly the same. That’s why containers are so valuable. Plants factories have to grow basil or cilantro or whatever all in the same climate. We get to grow arugula, basil, parsley, cilantro or whatever each in their own climate. For example, we’ve discovered that mint grows best in the Yucatan Peninsula — superhuman, grows like a weed, delicious. And we re-create that climate.

Square Roots Basil Farm in Brooklyn.

Square Roots

And the shipping containers, the idea for that was, “Let’s use things that we can recycle”?
Well, they are recycled. But no, it wasn’t that. It was actually climate control. They’re actually like refrigerators. We can drop that temperature in there to 40 degrees Fahrenheit for a particular growth cycle. If we have any pests, we don’t use pesticides, we have something called Mojave mode where we turn it into the Mojave Desert for four days. We bring the temperature up to 120 degrees, drop the humidity down to four percent and nothing can survive. That’s how we remove pests. No one else can do that unless you use these kind of containers. So it’s really a technology solution.

You’ve referred to food as being the new Internet. Do you still feel that way?
Oh, my god. Absolutely. It’s showing itself. Food is different to social media and so forth. It takes a long time to build up supply chains, get consistent growing. It’s not as fast-moving, but it is a much bigger business. Software is a $400 billion business. Food is an $18 trillion business. So the opportunity is much, much bigger in food than it is in software.

What are the top two or three things that really bother you about the industrial food system right now?
The processing of food. For some reason back in the ’70s, America just started to idolize processed food. And so what you have is a high-calorie hamburger, for example, that is nutritionally irrelevant. In other words, people were just not thinking about nutrition. And they used laboratories to adjust the flavor, chemicals to adjust the flavor, artificial ingredients. The result was a very high-calorie, highly processed kind of a Frankenstein burger that did please the pallet, but it made you feel awful afterwards.

The other one that is absolutely ludicrous is ethanol. Forty percent of our corn fields are growing ethanol. That’s 25 million acres of land that could be used to grow real food. People keep feeding us bullshit that we need to try and feed the world. We have so much food that we are turning 40 percent of it into ethanol. It takes a gallon of oil to make a gallon of ethanol. So it’s just a total boondoggle for the corn farmers and it’s terrible for the environment. In fact, it’s hilarious: It’s the only thing that both the oil industry and the environmentalists hate. Can you imagine there’s something that those two can agree on? And it’s ethanol.

Why the hell are we doing it?
It’s a subsidy for farmers. We do it because old people vote, and they control the farms, and they would all be devastated right now if the true demand of corn is what they had to deal with. And until a politician has the courage to make those hard decisions, we’re going to be stuck growing ethanol. Now, the good thing is we are all switching to electric cars, so ethanol is going to go away anyway. But for a while, the next five to 10 years, ethanol is going to be a part of what we do.

Let’s talk about the Million Gardens Movement. How did you get the idea that you wanted to do it?
Frank [Giustra] and his team pitched us on joining forces and doing the Million Gardens Movement. And we loved it. We thought it was a great idea. Because of Covid, we had been forced to pivot our model from the learning gardens because we couldn’t really teach people in the gardens anymore. And so we had done this trial of what we call little green gardens, which are round, beautiful sort of beige sacks, and you can come in and pick these up from a local school in your community. You can grow them on a windowsill as long as there’s some light. You can grow them indoors, which enables any city to be able to use them.

Say you get to a million gardens, are there any projections on what the environmental impact of that might be?
What we would be doing with these little green gardens is inspiring people to garden and empowering them to garden. The average garden generates about $600 to $700 worth of food a year. So it provides actual food to your family. You’re having a lower carbon footprint because you’re not shipping food around. It’s great for mental health. Think about Covid and how crazy we all are. This gets you out there. It connects you to your kids. Gardening is such a beautiful thing to do for yourself, for the community, for the environment.

It’s easy to think about what has been lost during this time, but I do like this idea of using COVID as an opportunity for change.
It’s obviously one of the worst things we’ve gone through as a society, but if we do this correctly, if we take this opportunity well, it could be one of the best things that’s happened to society — in a few years, we’ll look back and say, “OK, this was a good way to restart and focus more on climate change, focus more on gardening with your family, being connected to each other.” I think it has a lot of potential, as long as we take that potential and we leverage it. So the Million Gardens Movement is a part of that.

In This Article: covid-19, Elon Musk, food, gardening

SOUTH KOREA: Urban Farming Bonds Communities In Seoul

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Residents at Nowon Energy Zero housing complex in Nowon-gu, northeastern Seoul, tend small box gardens earlier this year. / Courtesy of Nowon-gu Office

By Lee Suh-yoon

Tucked away in a dark, damp corner of an underground parking lot in Nowon-gu, northeastern Seoul, mushrooms mature under fluorescent lights. 

The vertical farm is tended by residents who live right above it, in Sanggye Hyundai Apartment Complex. 

Together, the residents grow, share and sell the mushrooms, donating the profits to local charities and welfare centers.

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A community mushroom farm is located under Sanggye Hyundai Apartment Complex in Nowon-gu, northeastern Seoul. / Courtesy of Nowon-gu Office

About five kilometers south, residents of Nowon Energy Zero housing complex, known for its energy-efficient apartment and villa designs, come together to tend small box gardens. 

"People who live in the same apartment complexes don't really talk to each other these days," Park Geun-gu, an official from Nowon-gu Office, told The Korea Times recently. "Apart from providing safe locally grown produce, these urban farms help residents get to know each other better, strengthening community bonds."

To create an urban farm in their leftover spaces, usually snuggled between close-knit buildings or on a roof, residents can easily apply for financial and professional support from their local government offices. The city government and district offices fund 80 percent to 100 percent of the initial installation fees of accepted projects.

Seoul is now home to a thriving network of community gardens. The number of urban farms increased six-fold in the last seven years, bringing the total area of such green spaces in Seoul to 170 hectares ― about the size of 238 football fields. 

Most are located in patches between apartments or on the roofs of schools and government buildings.

"We refer to these participating groups as urban farming communities," said Lee Byung-hun, a city official in charge of the urban farm projects. 

"The main focus of these projects is not supplying food; it's about the social experience the urban farms can bring to residents. We're also providing hands-on gardening experience and environmental education to children at urban farms set up next to kindergartens."

Last year, the city government started allocating a 5 million won ($4,400) annual budget to each district to solicit help from professionals who can give lectures and offer personalized gardening solutions ― ranging from raising soil productivity to using safe pesticides ― to urban farming communities. 

Called "farm clinics," these classes are currently held at 4,000 urban farm sites across 19 districts in Seoul. Last month, the city government announced plans to extend the classes to 7,000 sites.

Districts that lie along the green belt, like Gangdong-gu and Gwangjin-gu, can spare more green space for these community farms.

The land, usually located at the foot of a mountain or riverside, is divided up among residents in an open lottery system at the beginning of each spring.

"The competition for a plot of land at these community farms is very high: we get 10 to 15 times more applicants than the number of plots available, depending on the location," a Gwangjin-gu official said. "Residents usually grow lettuce or peppers, and some of the produce is donated to local welfare centers."

sylee@koreatimes.co.kr More articles by this reporter

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A community farm near the Han River in Gangdong-gu, eastern Seoul / Courtesy of Gangdong-gu Office

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A rooftop community garden in Seodaemun-gu, northwestern Seoul. / Courtesy of Seodaemun-gu Office

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Residents listen to a gardening instructor at an urban farm in Gwangjin-gu, eastern Seoul. / Courtesy of Gwangjin-gu Office

US: Pennsylvania - State Agriculture Secretary Tours 3 Urban Gardens In Erie

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By Christopher Millette
July 24, 2019

The visit by state Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding was part of Urban Agriculture Week activities in Pennsylvania

State and local officials toured urban gardens in Erie Wednesday as part of Urban Agriculture Week activities in Pennsylvania.

At the first stop, the student-maintained garden at Perry Elementary School, 955 W. 29th St., Erie, about 20 representatives from the Erie School District, Erie County government, local businesses and the state Department of Agriculture held a roundtable discussion about the effectiveness of the district’s urban gardens program, and urban gardening across the state in general.

Other planned tour stops included French Street Farms, at the corner of French and East 22nd streets, and the community garden run by the Sisters of St. Joseph Neighborhood Network, 425 W. 18th Street.

Russell Redding, state Secretary of Agriculture, began the tour at Perry Elementary School and noted the connection between locally-sourced food and economic development.

“It’s just important to celebrate what’s in Pennsylvania,” said Redding, who is touring urban agriculture sites across the state this week. “And a big part of that is our urban centers and what happens around food and agriculture.”

Redding also reminded roundtable participants about the state’s Urban Agriculture Infrastructure Grant program, which provides $500,000 in reimbursement grants to qualified applicants. The grants, which are part of the 2019 Pennsylvania Farm Bill, are meant to improve urban agriculture gardens and programs across the state.

Beginning Aug. 1, information about applying for the grant will be available on the state Department of Community and Economic Development website. The application deadline for the UAIG is Sept. 15.

Like all 15 of the Erie School District’s gardens, the Perry Elementary site is maintained by students. The 1,500 square-foot garden at Perry produces vegetables, herbs and flowers. Much of the produce goes home with Perry students, said Stephanie Ciner, an AmeriCorps Vista service member who helps maintain the district’s gardens. Ciner also said some of the gardens products are donated to the Emmaus Food Pantry on Erie’s east side.

One of the roundtable participants at Perry is taking an active part in the success of the garden.

Amanda Karns, 34, is a neighbor and works as a special projects coordinator at Harborcreek Youth Services in Harborcreek Township. She is coordinating a project with HYS clients, who are building and donating to the garden a set of rain barrel platforms.

Karns, who walked her daughter Charlie Karns, 1, around the garden during the discussion, is glad to be a part of the school’s garden program. “We’re really excited that this is here,” she said.

Christopher Millette can be reached at 870-1712 or by email. Follow him on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/ETNMillette.

All photos by: CHRISTOPHER MILLETTE/ERIE TIMES-NEWS

Verdeat Is Launching A Kickstarter For Its Hydroponic Garden System For The Home

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By Jennifer Marston

June 26, 2019

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Image via Verdeat.

Poznań, Poland-based company Verdeat announced this week it will launch a Kickstarter campaign in July for its modular vertical farm meant to fit inside apartments, offices, and other non-commercial spaces.

Like other indoor hydroponic grow systems, Verdeat is able to cultivate most plants without the use of soil, though unlike a lot of systems, the 35 cm cylindrical device will still accommodate soil in certain configurations. The modular trays that come with the device can be switched out based on what you’re trying to grow, whether seeds and sprouts, which get planted in a substrate (like coconut fiber), or a potted basil plant you nabbed at the grocery store.

The entire system is controlled by a smartphone app that takes the majority of the guesswork out of the growing process, from knowing how much water to give each type of plant to how to adjust the LEDs to produce the right amount of sun-like light. The user simply fills the grow tray, adds some nutrients, and starts the app, which, according to an email from Verdeat, can run the farm more or less autonomously, only requiring the user to add nutrients every one to three weeks depending on the plants. The company also claims that plants in the Verdeat system grow faster and ripen 40 percent sooner than traditionally grown herbs and vegetables. At the moment, Verdeat’s system can grow the usual selection of herbs and leafy greens found in most vertical farms, as well as strawberries, peppers, blueberries, and other fruits.

Once the Kickstarter campaign launches, backers will be able to choose from a small, medium, or large device, depending on their individual space requirements. Remember earlier this year when The Spoon looked at vertical farms that would fit into closet-sized apartments? Verdeat definitely fits that criteria. It’s also reminiscent of the self-watering, hydroponic farm-in-a-pillar Zooey Deschanel is currently selling via her startup Lettuce Grow, and of Seedo, whose self-contained, airtight farm looks like a mini fridge.

In fact, with the vertical farming market expected to be worth $9.96 billion by 2025, we’ll see many more of these at-home versions of the vertical farm surfacing alongside more industrial-sized, hyper-automated counterparts.

How Verdeat fares amid all this competition will depend largely on some factors the company hasn’t yet released, including the cost of each device unit, how widely available it will be (it’s manufactured in the EU), and how long backers will have to wait before they can actually get their hands on the device and start growing. If they get their hands on it: As we’ve seen with other crowdfunded hardware projects, there is always the possibility that the product might not make it to market as promised. But perhaps manufacturing right there in the EU, will make it easier for Verdeat to keep tabs on the process and avoid those pitfalls.

The Kickstarter campaign will launch at the very beginning of July.

Sustainable Sales Is Excited To Announce That GardenSoxx Are Now Available In Both Full Sized Rolls, One Foot Increments, and In Retail Packaging

Urban Gardening Made Simple

Sustainable Sales is very excited to announce that they are now selling GardenSoxx in both full sized rolls and one foot increments! And for easy resale, you can also purchase the GardenSoxx in retail packaging.

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With The Growth of Childhood Obesity, We believe The Best Way To Help Children To Be Healthy Is By Teaching Them To Garden in School.

GardenSoxx® is an innovative gardening system that combines our patented mesh technology with high-quality growing media. The mesh provides optimum drainage, aeration, and temperature to grow a healthier root system, and a more productive garden. Excess water can drain through the mesh while essential oxygen flows in. The additional air flow also helps to cool the root zone in hot weather, improving growth.

GardenSoxx are available both unfilled and pre-filled. Unfilled GardenSoxx can easily be filled with local bagged/bulk compost or bagged/bulk planting mix. We recommend using a composted media.

Pre-filled GardenSoxx use a locally-sourced composted Filtrexx® GrowingMedia™ made from recycled green waste. Our GrowingMedia is made from 100% composted green waste. Compost is an extremely nutrient-rich media that acts like a natural sponge to absorb a huge volume of water as compared to topsoil.

Years of product research have gone into making GardenSoxx® the best container for growing vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers. Filtrexx has designed, tested and manufactured GardenSoxx with Filtrexx GrowingMedia, a compost made from yard trimmings.

Our media is extremely nutrient rich and has specific characteristics that make more suitable as growing media versus a soil amendment.

Agricultural research shows that GardenSoxx can result in a healthier, more productive crop.     

For More Information Contact: Barb Wehmer     

  barb3wehmer@gmail.com               www.sustainablesales.net

(217) 653-2513     

Italy: Lidl Trials Its First Shop To Have An Urban Garden

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Spanish retailers follow the trend

A few weeks ago people were talking about the plans of El Corte Ingles to install a vertical garden in their store in Valladolid, now their focus is on Lidl, which has put into operation its first store in the world with an urban garden.

The discount company has opened this pioneer establishment in the Italian city of Turin. The store has 1,400 square meters of plant spaces on the roof of the building, which will be managed by Re.Te, a non-profit association that develops cooperation and social inclusion projects for people in need.

"Today we are not only here to inaugurate a new point of sale, but also to announce a unique project: the first Lidl store in the world, and there are already more than 10,500 of them, with a urban garden on the roof," stated the Regional director of Lidl Italy, Maurizio Cellini.

The urban garden will be administered in collaboration with other associations and will be entrusted to the inhabitants of the neighborhood, taking into account their income, work and personal situation.

"This is a story of which we are particularly proud and which expresses Lidl's willingness to meet the needs of the territory and to be part of a social inclusion project that will feature neighborhood families," added the director.

In this sense, the vice president of Re.Te, Luca Giliberti, stated that the urban garden would be administered in collaboration with other associations and would be entrusted to the inhabitants of the neighborhood, taking into account their income, work and personal situation.

The gardens will be used for awareness activities for school groups and labor reintegration, as well as to test agricultural techniques to combat the effects of climate change and support international agricultural projects in Latin America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa.

The new store offers an assortment of more than 2,000 items, 80% of which are manufactured in Italy. It is also equipped with photovoltaic panels to reduce energy needs.

In this way, Lidl joins the trend of developing vertical and urban projects in food distribution, especially at the international level. In fact, similar initiatives have already been launched by chains such as Carrefour, Auchan Retail, and Mercadona. Specialized retail has also started to implement projects of this type, just as Ikea has recently done in Sweden.

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Source: revistainforetail.com 

Publication date: 4/17/2019 

Farm Refreshed: UrbanKisaan

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Prabalika M. Borah

MARCH 19, 2019

Urban Kisaan seeks to revolutionise the concept of urban gardens with hydroponic farming methods

A chance meeting with a scientist led this accounts person to set up UrbanKisaan, a startup involved with farming. Vihari Kanukollu a Certified Management Accountant (CMA) who met Sairam, a scientist at a spiritual retreat, broached the topic of farming and water scarcity and concerns about the future of farming in a water-scarce world.

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“Dr Sairam invited me to his home. I accepted the offer. There I was spellbound and surprised at the same time when Sairam showed me his little experiment — a vertical hydroponic garden set up in his balcony that was thriving and had been providing him with a healthy yield for many months. Though I am a commerce graduate, I also closely looked at the food crisis we will be facing in the years to come and thinking what do we do. Social causes are close to my heart so I wasn’t ready to give up,” says Vihari.

Together with Sairam, a biotechnology scientist, and Srinivas Chaganti who has done Masters in Computer Science Vihari gave birth to UrbanKisaan. This two-year-old startup has emerged among the top 100 social entrepreneurs in India as per Action For India (AFI) forum; it is one of the top 8 startups to be featured by Discovery India for its documentary series Planet Healers to be aired on March 29.

Their farm in Mahbubnagar, about 80 kilometres from the city, doubles up UrbanKisaan’s research area. The leased out land gives a peek into the future of farming the world over. “Especially because it conserves water,” adds Vihari.

Soil free but nutrient-rich Vihari vouches their startup grows pesticide-free produce in a vertical hydroponic environment. Hydroponics is a method of growing terrestrial plants without soil, by using mineral nutrient solutions in water. Though the farms grow plants in water, they use 95% less water. UrbanKisaan manages everything from the seeds to its proprietary, “farm-controlling software system and also empowers people to grow their own safe, fresh and high-quality food,” shares Vihari.

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What spurred Urbankissan

Sairam developed the nutrient solution for their start up. “As you all know Hydroponic farming is a soil-less farming technique that replaces soil with nutrient solution; so it can be used to grow crops indoors. With timely nutrition and light, these plants do not need pesticides. Hydroponic farms are ideal for the urban environment and can give city dwellers access to fresh produce every day right from their own kitchen or rooftop,” explains Vihari. You can grow almost anything — vegetables and berries, greens, herbs, cauliflower as well as peppers — provided you have the right potting techniques and nutrient mix.

Ensuring food safety UrbanKisaan is different from other Hydroponic farms in the way that they are developing this farming technique for urban homes that have less space. “Before getting down to start the farm and research center, we used Dr Sairam’s hydroponic home set up as the prototype and sold home kits to raise the money. Our home kits sell between ₹ 15000 to ₹ 50000, depending on how big a vertical hydroponic garden you want,” says Vihari.

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At the farm, my attention goes to the over-grown plants. Have they been over-fed I asked, “No they are seed-bearing plants we grow for seed saving for our nursery,” says Vihari.

If you are still sceptical, “Come see our farm that double up as a store, in Jubilee Hills,” smiles Vihari.

Their store in Jubilee Hills opens in the first week of April.

Video: Australian Gardener Harvests Over 400 Kilos of Food From Her Gardens

Kat Lavers describes her approach to gardening, including vertical and biointensive growing, and how important it is – and possible! – for city dwellers to be food resilient in the face of natural, financial and social crises.

Happen Films
Feb 22, 2019
(Must see film. Mike)

Excerpt:

In response to space constraints, Kat trades homegrown persimmons for an annual supply of pumpkins, and buys a bag of potatoes every year. Almost all other herbs, veg and fruit are grown onsite. Gifting and swapping with family and friends adds extra variety to the diet. The garden emphasizes highly productive, resilient fruit trees and perennial vegetables like wild rocket, perennial leeks and bunching onions that thrive with minimal maintenance.

In 2018 the site recorded 428 kg of fresh produce, a figure which the household believes could ultimately grow to around 500kg when the full design is implemented. About half this produce is from the 20m² kitchen garden (30m² including paths).

The garden is maintained with approximately half a day each week, though this is unevenly distributed throughout the season. Surplus is preserved using bottling, drying, freezing and fermenting to supply the kitchen during the leaner months.

A covey of Japanese quails provides the household with eggs and occasional meat. The small aviary has trigger feeders and waterers for easy maintenance, as well as a deep litter floor of thick wood chips and autumn leaves that eventually breaks down into compost for the kitchen garden.

Read the complete article here. 

Introduction To Upside Down Gardening

Gardening, with the aim of providing your own food, has experienced a resurgence over the last few years.

More and more of us are looking for ways to reduce our food bills, decrease our carbon footprint, and eat healthier.

Those with gardens or access to an allotment find it easier to grow their own food, but what about those of us who live in apartments?

Apartment dwellers have much less space to work with and this obstacle stops many budding gardeners in their tracks.

That is why we were excited to learn about upside down gardening, it grants everyone the opportunity to grow their own vegetables regardless of available space.

Here’s what the experts at Fantastic Gardeners advise in order to get yourself up to speed with an upside-down garden.

Upside-down gardening - definition

Upside down gardening is growing plants in pots suspended from the ceiling.

This style of gardening started to gain popularity in 1998 when gardener Kathi Lael Morris showed that it is possible to grow tomatoes and peppers in hanging pots.

Many traditional gardeners viewed this style of gardening as a fad with little chance of being widely adopted.

Unsurprisingly, people with no garden space quickly realised the benefits of this method and how they were no longer excluded from being able to grow their own food.

What plants can you grow upside down?

Most plants can be grown upside down, but those which benefit the most include:

• Tomatoes;

• Peppers;

• Eggplants;

• Cucumbers;

• Squash;

• Beans;

• Various herbs.

If you want to get the most out of your available space, you can consider planting herbs at the top of the hanging pots instead of planting them separately.

Benefits of upside down gardening

Upside down gardening presents benefits to those with gardens as well as those without, however, the advantages are more apparent in urban environments.

• Pests – As the plants don’t come into contact with the ground there is a much, much smaller chance that they will be affected by pests such as aphids.

• Space – This is the biggest benefit offered by upside down gardening, you don’t need a garden or a lot of space.

• Rot/disease resistance – Another advantage of the plant not touching the ground is that the roots, stems, and fruit are less susceptible to rotting or contracting a disease.

• Staking – Since the plants grow downwards you don’t need to stake them to optimise growth.

• Weeding – Growing plants traditionally requires a lot of time and attention, most of which is taken up by the need to weed.

What you need to get started?

Upside-down gardening of tomato

Creating your personal hanging garden of Babylon does require some supplies and a little bit of work, but it will be worth it when you can eat hand grown produce.

​What you need:

• A strong hook

• Strong string or metal wire

• A 7.5cm (six inch) circle of foam or sponge

• Lightweight soil or compost

• A large bucket

• A sharp knife

• A marker pen

• A tray to catch water

• A young plant

When you have collected your supplies simply follow the steps below:

1. Find the sunniest area of your home and mark the ceiling where the pots will be,

2. Install the hook,

3. Now turn your bucket upside down and draw a 5cm (2 inches) circle in the centre,

4. Using the knife, carefully cut around the circle to make a hole,

5. Turn the bucket back around and make three evenly spaced holes roughly 2.5cm (1 inch) down from the lip of the bucket,

6. Tie the string or metal wire through each hole to make three loops that are the same size,

7. Cut a 1.75cm (half an inch) hole in the middle of the sponge (or foam) then cut a line running from the hole to the outside,

8. Place the bucket on its side and carefully thread the roots through the hole in the bottom, make sure the plant is on the outside of the bucket,

9. Secure the plant by placing the sponge (or foam) around the base of the plant inside the bucket,

10. Have someone hold the bucket off of the ground and add soil until it is roughly half full,

11. Water until the soil is moist,

12. Add more soil until the bucket is roughly three quarters full,

13. Hang the bucket,

14. Place the water catcher beneath the bucket,

15. Water the plant again until the new soil is also moist.

The great thing about using buckets instead of large plant pots is that you can decorate the buckets.

Take this opportunity to release your inner artist and introduce some bright colours or funky designs to your home.

Decorating the buckets and creating a hanging kitchen garden is an enjoyable, learning activity for teaching children about where food comes from as well as how to care for plants.

​Caring for an upside down garden

Looking after your new hanging garden is quite easy since you don’t have to worry about weeds or pests. All you need to do is:

• Remove any dead or dying leaves;

• Water the plants daily during hot, dry periods;

• Water every other day during the rest of the year;

• Harvest any ripe fruit and vegetables.

So there it is your guide on how to grow a hanging kitchen garden. With this style of urban gardening, you’ll be eating home-grown fruit and veg in no time, regardless of whether you have a garden or not.

This is a guest post provided by Fantastic Gardeners, a garden maintenance and landscaping company, based in London and Manchester, United Kingdom.

This Toronto Skyscraper Is Covered With 450 Trees

BY EILLIE ANZILOTTI

Toronto has long been serious about its urban canopy. The Ontario city is already home to around 10 million trees, which cover around 26% of the city. The current mayor, John Tory, wants to grow that to 40%.

Brisbin Brook Beynon, a local architecture firm, is already giving the city a leg up on that goal, albeit in an unconventional way: a 27-story residential building that will be covered with around 450 trees, growing on its balconies and roofs. This “vertical forest,” as BBB terms it, takes inspiration from the Bosco Verticale–residential towers in Milan that went up in 2014 with as many as 11,000 plants lining the sides. Since then, copycat buildings have been built in cities like Nanjing and in Taiwan–designed to combat pollution and prove that green space does not need to be limited to the ground. This latest iteration could open as early as later next year.

[Image: Brisbin Brook Beynon]

For Brian Brisbin, principal at BBB, bringing the vertical forest concept to Toronto aligned perfectly with the mayor’s goals for increasing tree coverage. And when he began researching the concept by studying the Bosco Verticale, he realized that all of the technology that enabled the Milanese building to function originated in Canada and North America. “That felt fairly profound,” Brisbin says.

And it also, Brisbin says, made bringing the concept to Toronto feel much more feasible. “We have a lot of depth of specialty in this area in Toronto, with horticultural and agricultural universities and research facilities,” he says, “and we’ve brought a lot of together to take a very science-based approach to developing this project.”

The team behind BBB’s vertical forest includes experts like Robert Wright, the dean of the faculty of forestry at University of Toronto, researchers from the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, which researches the viability of tree species in urban areas, and Vanden Bussche Irrigation, which develops horticultural technology. Together, the team has developed a specialized system to monitor and irrigate all 450 trees. Currently, the trees are growing offsite at a nursery managed by PAO Horticultural outside of the city. Planted in their own portable woven stainless steel planters, the trees–half conifers, half deciduous–will eventually be scattered evenly across the building’s exterior terrace surfaces. A monitored system integrated into the building will connect with all of the planters to track key metrics for each of the trees–amount of water, nutrient density, and external conditions like wind strength.

[Image: Brisbin Brook Beynon]

“We have this saying that there’s no management without metrics,” Wright says. Part of the strategy for the building is to hire a dedicated maintenance team, who will navigate throughout the many balconies, caring for the trees. Especially as Toronto faces extreme weather variability–dipping down as low as –22 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter and up to the 90s in the summer–having a team on hand to monitor the trees’ metrics and ensure their health will be key. This, Wright says, is a crucial task across the whole city of Toronto’s urban forestry efforts, but the height of the vertical forest compounds the urgency. “It’s one thing if a branch drops 20 feet to the ground, and quite another for one to drop 200 feet off a balcony,” he says.

While covering buildings in trees will not alone help cities like Toronto achieve their urban canopy goals, projects like these certainly deliver benefits to the surrounding area (though they also have some critics), like cleaner air and more space for birds and pollinator species, which will in turn assist more mainstream green infrastructure projects. Toronto, for instance, has made strides to increase the presence of green roofs of city buildings, and projects like the vertical forest could act, Brisbin says, “as a sustainable microclimate between these horizontal green spaces on roofs and on the ground” and direct pollinator species between the two.

Because projects like this are still new, the price tag for living in the building will be steep, Brisbin says. While final prices for the units are not yet set, as the vertical forest is still in the process of gaining approval from the city, tenants and buyers will have to pay a premium to fund the maintenance team that will keep the greenery alive and thriving. “And it involves a lot of science, data, and research to develop,” Brisbin says. The team is conscious of the fact that the high cost of living in the vertical forest perpetuates an unfortunate and longstanding urban divide: Areas where poorer residents live often lack good green infrastructure, whereas wealthier residents tend to live on tree-lined streets. “But what we’re hoping is that once we develop the system and the partnership with the farms that are growing the trees, all of that will be available directly to any other project, whether it be public housing or private development,” he adds.

Imagining The Impossible: The Futuristic Designs of Vincent Callebaut

Adam Williams

July 24th, 2018

New Atlas takes a look at Vincent Callebaut's most interesting architectural designs (Credit: Vincent Callebaut Architectures)

Sometimes outlandish, often fantastical, but always compelling, Vincent Callebaut's projects range from realizable ideas like towers covered in greenery to conceptual works depicting a near-future in which architecture, technology, and nature are blended to make cities a more pleasant – and sustainable – place to live.

The Belgian architect heads his firm Vincent Callebaut Architectures in Paris, France. Over the years he has developed a recognizable design language that draws inspiration from nature and makes liberal use of honeycomb patterns and complex geometry. He seems poised for greater prominence now though, as at least two of his projects are due to be built in the next few years.

Let's take a look at some of his most interesting designs.

5 Farming Bridges

Now that the so-called Islamic State has been expelled from Mosul, Iraq, the reconstruction of the city can begin. The 5 Farming Bridges proposal involves rebuilding a like number of bridges destroyed during the fighting and using them as residential units and urban farms. Existing rubble would be used as building material, with flying drones and spider-like robots doing the actual construction.

Manta Ray

The Manta Ray proposal envisions a manta ray-shaped ferry terminal in Seoul, South Korea. The remarkable-looking building would float in place to deal with seasonal flooding and sport a huge roof covered with a solar power array, along with a wind turbine farm. Biodegradable waste and high-tech water turbines would transform the river's kinetic energy into power too – all of which would allow the ferry terminal to power itself and send a surplus to Seoul.

2050 Paris Smart City

Created for a competition seeking ideas to turn the City of Light into a City of Green in the coming decades, 2050 Paris Smart City calls for 15 new sustainable towers to be built on the rooftops of existing buildings on the city's famous Rue De Rivoli. The towers would feature residential units and sport dragonfly-shaped solar panels on their facade, providing all required electricity for the project.

Nautilus Eco-Resort

The Nautilus Eco-Resort is a paradise imagined for the Philippines that would allow well-heeled tourists to vacation without polluting the planet (excepting on the flight there, presumably). The whole thing would be arranged into a shape inspired by the Fibonacci sequence and include a dozen spiral hotel towers that rotate to follow the sun. Nearby, a like number of sea snail-shaped buildings would include exhibition spaces and hotels, while at its center would be a large timber building covered with vegetable gardens and orchards.

Tour & Taxis

Callebaut's Tour & Taxis sees the Belgian architect propose a return to his home country to transform a former industrial area in Brussels into a vibrant sustainable community. The area would comprise three ski jump-shaped high-rises that would be topped by solar panels and covered in greenery. Other notable elements include wind turbines, rainwater harvesting, and the production of fruit and vegetables.

Hyperions

Hyperions consists of a cluster of connected timber towers in New Delhi, India, that are named after, and take design cues from, the world's tallest living tree. It will boast extensive greenery and enable occupants to grow their own vegetables on balconies, as well as the facades, the rooftops, and in specialized greenhouses. The interior is taken up by apartments, student housing, and office space, and it will all be powered by solar panels. According to Callebaut, this one is going to be built and is due to be completed by 2022.

Agora Garden Tower

It can be difficult to imagine how exactly all these renders would translate into brick and mortar buildings, but Taipei's Agora Garden Tower shows the way. Sporting a twisting form inspired by DNA's double helix shape, the building twists 4.5 degrees each floor, turning a total of 90 degrees in all. Once completed, it'll feature 23,000 trees, as well as a rainwater capture system and solar power.

How Georgia O’Keeffe’s Garden Keeps Growing, Three Decades After Her Death

August 14, 2018, Casey Lesser

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Georgia O’Keeffe

From the River – Pale, 1959

While traveling in rural New Mexico in the 1930s, Georgia O’Keeffe first set her sights on a forlorn property perched remotely on a plateau in Abiquiú, New Mexico. In 1940, she’d buy a home at Ghost Ranch, a short drive away, but it left something to be desired. “I was living and painting at Ghost Ranch, but I kept returning to Abiquiú to look around,” O’Keeffe told Architectural Digest in 1981. “The garden pleased me enormously.”

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"Georgia O'Keeffe" at Tate Modern, London

Maria Chabot, Georgia O’Keeffe in the Abiquiú Garden, 1944. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

O’Keeffe, who is known to have been an extremely healthy eater, had wanted a garden to grow her own produce. She’d expressed frustrations that, while living in Ghost Ranch, by the time she got home from the nearest market (either in Española or Santa Fe), her lettuces would be wilted. So, in 1945, when she purchased the Abiquiú property—a ruin that had belonged to the Catholic archdiocese of Santa Fe—she hired help to repair the buildings and turn them into a home and studio, but also to till the land and plant a garden. She’d later hire a gardener, a local named Estiben Suazo; under his supervision, it flourished. Over the next four decades (until O’Keeffe died in 1986), the garden would be a source of fresh produce and year-round preserves, but also joy and solace—and it still is today.

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Abiquiú House Gardens Outside of Kitchen, 2010. Photo by Paul Hester and Lisa Hardaway. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Indeed, the garden is one of the highlights of a visit to the Abiquiú home and studio, which has been overseen by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum since 2006, and is accessible to the public via guided tours. (Hers is among a long tradition of gardens created by artists for inspiration and enjoyment.) With its original layout and adobe irrigation ditch, the garden sits across a series of terraces over nearly an acre of land beside the house. It bears everything from lilacs and day lillies, to kale and chard, to the fruits of a small orchard of apricot, peach, pear, and apple trees. Though it’s not all the same as what grew in O’Keeffe’s time, her former gardener still has a presence: Suazo taught his grandchildren how to care for the Abiquiú garden and the grounds, which they continue to do.

“[Suazo’s] work in the garden was meticulous.…He knew exactly what Ms. O’Keeffe wanted, and what she liked or disliked,” explained Agapita Lopez, Suazo’s granddaughter who was a private aid and secretary for O’Keeffe beginning in 1974, and is now the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s director of historic properties. “But Ms. O’Keeffe herself would say that they sometimes would get into a battle when it came to planting the garden,” she added with a laugh.

“She would say he had a mind of his own, and he wanted to do things his way,” Lopez continued. “Whatever they did, they must’ve compromised, because the gardens were always lush and fertile, and yielded a lot of produce.” Harvests from the garden would become O’Keeffe’s vegetable-rich salads, soups, and other dishes. “She was, I would say, into organic gardening before it was the norm,” Lopez offered, adding that the artist was not, however, a vegetarian.

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Abiquiú Garden Ditch from the Room Looking South and West, 2010. Photo by Paul Hester and Lisa Hardaway. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Beginning in the early 1970s, O’Keeffe began hiring Lopez’s brothers to help Suazo with the garden; later, they’d be hired full-time and taught how to care for the garden to the artist’s liking. Decades later, in 2006, when the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum took over the Abiquiú property and decided to bring the garden back to its former glory, the Lopez family was essential to the process.

“They had the knowledge,” Lopez explained, referring to her brothers Margarito, who is now the gardener, and Belarmino, who is the construction and maintenance specialist. “Of course there’s always new ways of doing things, but we also want to maintain some of the old history of how things were done when Georgia O’Keeffe was at her house, to maintain the authenticity and her aesthetic. It’s a very contemplative place.” That history includes watering the plants through the original flood irrigation system, where the area is flooded “almost like a rice paddy,” Lopez explained, so that even the deepest soil absorbs the moisture.

“Ms. O’Keeffe herself would start her vegetable garden as early as February, planting her peas,” Lopez explained, “and we follow basically the same procedure she did, but the things that are grown in the garden today may not necessarily have been around at the time that she was still here with us.” Among the crops there today are tomatoes, squash, corn, beans, kale, eggplant, berries, and herbs. But the growing season starts later, to coincide with a dynamic summer internship program—a collaboration between the museum and the Santa Fe Botanical Garden—that brings students from local high schools to the garden to help with planting and harvesting the produce. (The two institutions also teamed up with two local high schools to create a livestream of the garden online.)

This summer, a dozen students worked with Margarito to learn the ins-and-outs of organic gardening, and about O’Keeffe herself. “She didn’t like to use pesticides, and that’s exactly what the students are learning now,” Lopez offered; they’re working on natural repellents to keep critters from eating the tomatoes, squash, and zucchini. At the end of the season, the students harvest the garden and take home their share; the rest is delivered to a local food bank.

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Abiquiú Garden Project Interns, 2016. Photo by Micaela Butts. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Lopez suggested that the artist’s interest in the garden traces back to her upbringing on a farm in Wisconsin, as well as the summers she spent in Lake George with her partner Alfred Stieglitz (there are photographs of her there, pruning fruit trees). Though she did get her hands dirty from time to time (as photographs verify), O’Keeffe was enamored with the way the garden nourished her. Later in life, as she lost her vision due to macular degeneration, she had a small path built into the center of the garden so that she wouldn’t accidentally tread on the plants, and could walk out and enjoy it alone.

“She liked seeing things grow and coming out of the ground,” Lopez explained. “She liked to bring the outdoors in.”

Inside the Abiquiú house today, various potted plants are the ones that belonged to O’Keeffe—including a geranium and an aloe plant in the kitchen, a fern in the dining room, and an iron plant in the sitting room. “Those were here when she was still alive,” Lopez reflected. “They’re part of her and part of her history. They’re as important as everything else.”

Casey Lesser is Artsy’s Creativity Editor.

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These Low-Tech Indoor Gardens Bring Vegetables To Your Kitchen

• 06.29.18
• WORLD CHANGING IDEAS

These Low-Tech Indoor Gardens Bring Vegetables To Your Kitchen

Aggressively Organic wants to improve diets (and fight food insecurity) by making growing your own produce as simple as possible.

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[Photo: Aggressively Organic]

BY ADELE PETERS

While some indoor farming companies operate in sprawling buildings–like Aerofarms, with a 70,000-square foot, tech-filled farm inside a former steel millin Newark, New Jersey–a small startup called Aggressively Organic is focused on increasing indoor farming one square foot at a time. The startup wants to make small kitchen gardens affordable enough to be accessible to everyone, growing kale or tomatoes that can begin to address food insecurity.

The company’s new kits, which will begin shipping to customers in August, come with seeds that someone can plant in a small pod made from coconut coir, a byproduct of making coconut water. After the plants sprout up, the pods get moved to small cardboard containers under lights that come with the system. The company claims that after the initial setup, the system holds in water well enough that it won’t need to be watered again for at least a month. It’s low-tech, unlike some similar systems with sensors that measure soil moisture and automatically water themselves.

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[Photo: Aggressively Organic]

“Typically hydroponic systems require pumps and air filters,” says Partlow. “Ours does not. It requires none of that. So that’s how you keep the cost down.” A set of nine hexagonal planters, which nestle together to save space on a counter or bookcase, along with all of the assorted parts of the system and 72 refills of the growth medium and seeds, is currently on pre-order at a sale price of $139; once the plants begin growing, they can be harvested continuously for months.

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[Photo: Aggressively Organic]

“We harvest off of a head of lettuce for three months or kale for us six months to a year,” says Partlow. (When leaves are taken off the plant, rather than cutting off the whole plant, the plant keeps growing.) Like an outdoor vegetable garden, it’s cheaper to use than buying organic produce at a grocery store, but because it’s inside, it can be used year-round in any climate. It’s also easier to maintain, uses less water, and doesn’t require the use of pesticides. The company believes that a network of its indoor gardens throughout households would also make the food system more resilient; rather than growing lettuce in drought-prone Arizona and California, where nearly all of it is grown today, it could be grown in the kitchens where it’s eaten.

Partlow aims to make the systems available to everyone, particularly those who are food insecure, though even a price of $139 may be out of reach of someone who relies on food stamps. The company is working on a new service model that would supply customers with a six-pack of plants that are already ready for harvest, and let them exchange the plants as many as 24 times a month, for a cost of around $50, which could be paid either in installments or through SNAP, the government food assistance program.

Growing food at home could also improve nutrition–both because fruits and vegetables lose nutrients as they spend time in long supply chains and because simply having kale visible on your counter may mean you eat more of it.

“What we found is that if it’s available and you don’t have to go to the store to get it, our diets start to resemble more of what our natural diets as human beings have always been, which is we graze,” says Partlow. “Our habits actually change… you eat more vegetables than you would now because it’s available. It takes less time to plant, grow and maintain these things than it takes most people to get dressed and get ready to go to the grocery store and find a parking spot.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world's largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley.

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Is it Really Safe To Eat Food Grown In Urban Gardens?

Is It Really Safe To Eat Food Grown In Urban Gardens?

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© Gunmanphoto/Shutterstock

I wanted to start a vegetable garden in my backyard. But my yard is in Brooklyn, a land of street garbage, truck exhaust, and stray cats. So I decided to figure it out: Was it really safe to grow food there? I had no idea that the rabbit hole I burrowed in urban gardens would lead to dead cows in Georgia, a global contamination meeting in Sweden, and the strange price we pay to make sure kids don’t catch on fire.

I started by calling Murray McBride, a professor at Cornell University who researches contamination, to find out if city gardens are really safe. According to McBride, I should be worried about one main thing:

“We found lead to be the biggest problem,” he told me. “There can be high concentrations of lead even in the garden beds.”

Making things with this toxic metal is a bit passé, but lead doesn’t go away. The lead painted in houses and used in gasoline and industry is still floating around in dust and landing in backgrounds. But there’s a twist: plants don’t generally take this lead up through their roots.

“It’s not in the lettuce. It’s in the dirt that may stick to the lettuce,” another scientist named Sally Brown would tell me later. So I should use compost and wash my plants before eating them, McBride explained. I had my answer. Or so I thought.

“So I should just buy compost at the gardening store?” I asked.

“Well … a lot of soil in those stores isn’t well regulated,” McBride told me. “Don't trust topsoil. And make sure you’re not buying sewer sludge.”

“… What?”

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© Devan King/The Nature Conservancy

McBride told me that sanitation plants take sewage sludge, clean it up a bit, and sell it as fertilizer. One popular brand of fertilizer, for instance, is sewer sludge from Milwaukee that’s sold around the country. These “biosolids,” as they’re called, can have pharmaceuticals, lead, toxic metals, and fire retardants in them. Safe amounts … maybe.

Hundreds of people who live near places where farmers dump biosolids have complained that the biosolids made them sick. Andy McElmurray, a dairy farmer in Georgia, fertilized his fields with biosolids. He grew hay in the fields and fed it to his cattle. Hundreds of cows got sick and died. McElmurray said the biosolids must have been tainted with industrial waste from nearby factories, poisoning the cows. He argued his case in court … and won.

“The administrative record contains evidence that senior EPA officials took extraordinary steps to quash scientific dissent, and any questioning of the EPA's biosolids program,” the court ruled.

I officially wanted to know more. Are these biosolids really that dangerous?

“You should talk to Robert Hale about it,” McBride told me. “He’s one of the world experts on a lot of these chemicals.”

So I called Hale, an environmental chemistry professor at the College of William & Mary who researches pollution.

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USDA/Public Domain

Hale told me that he’s analyzed biosolids and found all kinds of contaminants.

“They found flame retardants in this stuff in 2000,” he said. “And they’re still in there.” These chemicals are used to make stuff not catch on fire, and a lot of people are worried about their health and environmental effects. The EPA says they may cause learning disorders, thyroid disorders, and cancer.

And this stuff isn’t just in gardens. Most biosolids are spread over farmland. In fact, about half the sewage sludge in the country is applied to farmland (though generally farmland used to grown stuff like soybeans for fuel and animal chow rather than human food). Hale has even found flame retardants in Antarctica.

“Is that … a problem?” I asked. “Are biosolids safe?”

“That’s kind of the six million dollar question,” he answered. Nobody’s done enough research to know for sure how these chemicals affect people, or how many chemicals is too many. It wasn't really the answer I was hoping for.

“Should I be worried?” I asked. “Should the government step in?”

“The government is part of this,” Hale answered.

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© From water to trees to bees, there are a lot of natural elements that go into making our food that aren't listed on nutrition labels. PHOTO: Chris Helzer/TNC

The governnment actually makes a lot of these biosolids; they sell them and give them to farmers. “We’ve got this viewpoint in this country that things are safe until proven dangerous,” he added.

Hale says that other countries are more concerned. He once gave a talk in Sweden where experts from around the world met to discuss contamination. They were banning a particular flame retardant.

“They were congratulating themselves on how they solved the problem on a global basis,” Hale said. “I stood up and said, “Uh guys? All you have to do is look at the production statistics. We use 95 percent of it in North America, and we’re still using it.” A few jaws in the audience dropped.

I wasn’t concerned about urban gardens anymore. Instead, I was feeling the weight of yet another massive global problem settling onto my shoulders. Did I really have to live in a contaminated world now?

Still, something itched. This all seemed so extreme and, I don’t know, oddly cinematic. Was the situation really so dire? Was there something oddly familiar about this storyline? And would it make for a good Mr. Robot meets Farmville style show?

I wanted to talk to another expert before I made up my mind. So I called up Sally Brown, a University of Washington professor who, you guessed it, also researches this stuff.

We chatted about urban gardens as I wondered how I’d bring up biosolids. Fortunately, she started telling me about a great urban gardening program in Washington and mentioned that it used biosolids.

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to sound too excited. “I heard biosolids are dangerous.”

“They’re not,” she said flatly. “People always think they are, but they’re not.”

I wasn’t convinced.

“I talked to Robert Hale,” I said.

“He’s made a lot of his fame and fortune by telling people they’re going to die if they eat biosolids,” she said. “You can make a name for yourself screaming the sky is falling.”

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© K Martinko

Brown didn’t exactly disagree with Hale’s research. She told me that, yes, there are flame retardants and other chemicals in sewage sludge, but the levels are kept low (Hale isn't so sure about that), they aren’t going into the plants, and nobody really knows if they can make people sick. Besides, the chemicals in sewage come mostly … from our houses.

“They’re in our TVs, they’re in our furniture, they’re in our laptops,” she said. “They used to be in kids’ pajamas. The concentration of this stuff in dust in your home is much higher than in biosolids.”

Brown pointed out that if your kid chews on his flame retardant pajamas, he’s getting exposed to “several million times” more of the stuff than is in biosolids. Hale actually told me something similar: a couple decades ago, a study found that flame retardants in Swedish women’s breast milk have been increasing exponentially over a ten year period. Then someone tested American women.

“The levels were ten times higher,” Hale said. The flame retardants probably came from indoor dust. Hale agrees that there are generally more of these contaminates inside than in biosolids; he's just worried about them everywhere.

I was not feeling particularly reassured.

“Wait, so should I be worried about all these chemicals in my house?” I asked Brown.

“It’s really, really hard to say,” she answered. “Just because chemicals are there doesn’t mean they can hurt you.” Besides, even if these chemicals are questionable, they might be worth the risk.

“It’s much better to have a kid exposed to flame retardants than for the kid to catch on fire,” Brown said.

So there you have it: We’re putting sewage with flame retardants, toxic metals, and other surprise stuff in it over our gardens and farmland. But that’s largely because sewage comes from the buildings we live and work in, which have even more of these chemicals in them. And the jury’s still out on whether these chemicals in these amounts are dangerous contaminates or harmless specks of dust. Or somewhere in between. But hey, at least we don’t paint our walls with lead anymore.

On the bright side, the scientists all seemed to agree on one thing: As long as I use compost and wash my vegetables, I can totally start an urban garden.

The Rise Of The Agrihood: Farmscape Helps Companies And Communities Grow Their Own

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The Rise Of The Agrihood: Farmscape Helps Companies And Communities Grow Their Own

Georgina Wilson-Powell

17 April 2018

Imagine, you come home from work, head out into the garden and pick your salad for supper. Or how about swinging past the neighbourhood urban farm at the weekend and pick some fruit for Sunday lunch.

Farmscape, California’s largest urban farm venture, has been building these kind of options for city-slickers and companies for over 10 years, but recently interest has exploded.

Let’s talk agrihoods.

An agrihood is a farm experience in the middle of a city. Think an urban farm meets a suburban community centre. It’s the new definition of a mixed use development, instead of a shared tennis court, there’s an orchard and growing space. 

“In America, when they started building stuff, the standard was to have everybody have a ton of lawn. Everyone has a front and back lawn, despite the fact that doesn’t really work. It works in certain environments; it definitely doesn’t work in California,” explains Lara Hermanson, the Principal at Farmscape.

Farmscape manage over 700 projects across California, of all shapes and sizes

“Then there would be a pool, a health club and a community centre that no one would really use and the homeowners’ association would be paying for that in perpetuity. What we propose is instead of building around that, is build the development around a farm where the residents, when they pay for the landscaping, also get fresh food.”

As we want to reduce our food miles and guarantee quality of our fresh produce, agrihoods have shot up in popularity. In 2014, Farmscape worked on one such project, it now has 10 on the go.

“They’re very easy to get through city councils and there’s a lot of positive feedback from neighbours about them. It looks a lot prettier and more pastoral than big walls and very, almost corporate-looking landscaping. They’re a big hit,” says Hermanson.

This growing boom also coincides with a wider desire to be surrounded by more nature in our cities and a rise in a more plant based diet. An agrihood helps tick all those boxes.

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“A lot of work is done for us by the weather, by the soil”

How it works

Farmscape don’t just manage agrihoods for forward thinking tech bros in Silicon Valley. 

Their clients range from residential growers looking for help to create a versatile, permaculture inspired back garden or tiny veg beds on rooftop gardens, to restaurant gardens and enormous plots of commercial land – Farmscape installed and now manage an edible garden at the Levi’s Stadium in LA for instance. They advise, build and manage the spaces or help you manage it, so that everyone gets consistent, colourful, Californian food.

They have over 700 projects across California, growing food for Fortune 500 companies, Michelin-starred chefs and World Series champions. Farmscape have it down to a fine art and won’t accept every new location as a potential growing space.

“We say no to as many projects as we say yes to, because we know they won’t be very viable. We don’t want to give somebody a garden where they’re going to have to be constantly fighting nature. For instance, if you have a bunch of 40ft trees encircling your very small backyard, we’re not going to take your project on, because the trees are habitat for birds and wildlife, the tree roots will invade the garden and cast a lot of shade,” says Hermanson.

While keen gardeners are inundated with online information about how and when to grow crops, there’s nothing like having a local expert on hand and Farmscape hold clients’ hands so they become confident in how to grow their own fruit and veg.

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Californians love their tomatoes, heritage crops and micro greens says Hermanson

Getting growing

“There’s no better place in the world for growing food," says Hermanson. "There’s a reason Napa and Sonoma are famous food areas and why restaurants in San Francisco are so good. A lot of work is done for us by the weather, by the soil. Our climate is so fantastic."

Farmscape help clients grow salad greens, tomatoes, tiny root crops like radishes and colourful carrots – anything that will grow in small raised bed.

“Everyone’s favourite is tomatoes. Tomatoes are the big year-in, year-out,” says Hermanson.

The service also advises on heritage crops, which have grown in popularity over the last few years. These crops are a little more finicky about where and when they grow so they advise mixing a few heritage crops with more ‘work-horse’ crops.

"Similarly, we have some regular green beans and some heirloom beans, so you get some interesting ones but you’re still going to get enough so you feel like you’ve got your money’s worth," she says.

With a huge rise in plant based eating – another California food trend that’s gone global – Farmscape’s managed plots slot in perfectly for time-poor, health-conscious, eco-aware Californians who want to know their food is local.

“Our ethos is very much wrapped up in plant-based diets and that’s the principle people want to pass onto their children. This sort of backyard growing focuses on seasonal ingredients and helping plant-based diets,” she says.

So time you want to explore the 'hoods of LA or San Francisco, head down to an agri-hood and find the green soul of California.

South Bronx Social Entrepreneur Henry Obispo Creates a Green Revolution and Sustainable Design, in Collaboration With Suny Farmingdale Students, for BORN JUICE

South Bronx Social Entrepreneur Henry Obispo Creates a Green Revolution and Sustainable Design, in Collaboration With Suny Farmingdale Students, for BORN JUICE

Born Juice is a plant-based Eatery and Juice bar coming this Summer

April 14, 2018  |  Source: Born Juice

South Bronx Social Entrepreneur Henry Obispo creates a Green Revolution and sustainable design, in collaboration with Suny Farmingdale Students, for BORN JUICE

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Mr. Henry Obispo

Volodymyr Zadorozhnyy (satorial studios)

NEW YORK, April 14, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Henry Obispo, a social entrepreneur who has set his future in building the first ever cold-pressed juice bar and plant-based eatery in the Bronx, NY with the help of SUNY Farmingdale Department of Urban Horticulture and Design.

Raised in the Bronx and born in the Dominican Republic, Henry Obispo is a product of a rich cultural topography, a community organizer, and an activist. 

Mr. Obispo wanted to take it upon himself to find solutions to the oppressive realities around health in his community, considered one of the largest food deserts and the poorest congressional district in the United States.

After implementing a grant from the USDA, where Mr. Obispo looked for solutions to the food desert realities, access to food became a focal point and an obsession for Henry to create solutions for those social ills. The passion that Mr. Obispo has for his community has prompted Mr. Obispo to dream big and start a business which will benefit everyone in the Bronx.

The 14 students led by Professor Stevie Famulari of Farmingdale Department of Urban Horticulture and Design started designing the space which can be found at 2500 Third Avenue in Mott Haven. Each of the students will design and develop a green concept integrating green technology to promote sustainability.

This space will soon become "Born Juice", a juice bar & Plant-based eatery in the Bronx, which will serve fresh pressed juices, smoothies, vegan bowls, and express casual healthy foods. We all know that juices cleanse the body and is a temporary break from eating solid foods. Fresh juices from fruits and vegetables nourishes the body and is another way of detox which can recharge, rejuvenate and renew the system. The Bronx community has been missing this very important factor in their daily lives. Mr. Obispo has seen this ongoing situation for decades and decided to fill in the blanks.

Mr. Obispo focuses on creating a hyperlocal system, where food is grown and harvested by local youth, used and produced in food served to the community by a local workforce, in the quest to reverse many of the health disparities in one of the largest food deserts in the country.

Mr. Obispo states, "We want a model where you have sustainability, and not just in the food. Everything will be from local gardens, local farmers, and hydroponics, and there will be sustainability in the interior designs, too.”

Born Juice is a revolutionary project because of its zero-carbon footprint model. Born Juice is expected to incorporate green technology in the form of hydroponic gardens to grow the food, which is later harvested for their cold-pressed juices and food.

This project will educate the local youth about urban farming and hyper-local systems to empower the local population riddled with health disparities and awaken them to a new green reality, operating in their own neighborhood.

To learn more about the Born Juice project, please visit: http://www.bornjuice.com/

Contact Info:
Contact Name: Henry Obispo
Born Juice
2500 3rd Ave, Bronx
NY10454
www.bornjuice.com
info@bornjuice.com
Instagram: @bornjuice

Canada: A Garden On Every Corner

Canada: A Garden On Every Corner

Linked by Michael Levenston

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Broadway and MacDonald.

In Vancouver, British Columbia, one social enterprise looks to make the most of unused urban space by converting empty lots into temporary community gardens.

By Chris Reid
Vancouver Community Garden Builders
Mar 27, 2018

There used to be a gas station at the corner of Cambie and 16th Avenue in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood. Today the site hosts 100 raised garden beds and provides growing space for roughly the same number of gardeners, many of whom are families living in nearby apartments and condominiums.

The project is the result of a partnership between Wesgroup, a local developer, and Vancouver Community Garden Builders, a local social enterprise. Together the pair opened six new gardens in 2017, which equals 600 new garden beds. In total, VCGB manages eight projects with close to 800 beds or 16,000 square feet of urban growing space.

In a city like Vancouver, where wait lists for permanent community gardens can reach into the hundreds, projects like the one at Cambie and 16th are a useful stopgap providing much needed opportunities for city dwellers to learn about and participate in their own food security. A single garden bed produces around 10 pounds of yield in a year; multiply that by 100 and you’ve got a supermarket aisle full of locally grown, organic veggies.

The benefits of urban agriculture are well documented and innumerable. Beyond the nutritious food they grow, community gardens have been linked to increased social wellbeing in neighbourhoods, reduced crime rates and even less public litter. For many, they offer a retreat from the hectic, concrete urban landscape, and a simple way to recharge.

Cambie and 16th.

The results can be seen all across the city. Where once people came to fill up their tanks, green thumbs are now planting their first seeds of the year, hoping for an early spring. To learn more about the temporary community gardens.

4th and Macdonald Temporary Community Garden
Broadway and Victoria Temporary Community Garden
Dunbar and 39th Temporary Community Garden
Broadway and Alma Temporary Community Garden
Oak and 41st Temporary Community Garden
Cambie and 16th Temporary Community Garden

Visit www.communitygardenbuilders.com

When Farm-to-Table Comes To Your Own Front Yard

When Farm-to-Table Comes To Your Own Front Yard

By JENN HARRIS

MAR 14, 2018

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Kevin Meehan, chef-owner of Kali restaurant on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, in an urban garden located in the front yard of a home near his restaurant. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

"We're a farm-to-table restaurant."

Sound familiar? These words are part of the repertoire of greetings uttered by countless servers in Los Angeles and beyond.

If you've been paying attention, the term farm-to-table, which refers to the idea of showcasing farm produce on your menu — and was coined by this paper's own restaurant critic Jonathan Gold in a 2000 Gourmet article — is nothing new. In fact, it's been used to describe just about every notable restaurant opening in the last decade.

Garden-on-the-neighbor's-front-lawn-to-table? Now that's something a little different.

After operating a roaming pop-up dinner party series called Kali Dining, chef Kevin Meehan, who grew up in Long Island, N.Y., and has cooked at the Los Angeles restaurants L'Orangerie, Bastide and Citrine, opened Kali restaurant on Melrose Avenue in 2016. A little more than a year ago, he started knocking on the doors of the squat Craftsman houses that surround the Larchmont restaurant, determined to find a neighbor who would let him grow a garden on their front lawn.

"I decided to get weird," says Meehan on a recent afternoon, dressed in crisp chef's whites and a blue apron. "It's my dream as a chef to have a farm like Blue Hill at Stone Barns, but that's not going to happen in L.A. So I knocked on this one door and asked if I could beautify the front yard with a garden. The guy who answered was like, 'Nah, not interested, weirdo.' So I kept going."

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Kevin Meehan waters the plants in an urban garden located in the front yard of a home near his restaurant. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Meehan's luck changed on his sixth try, when he came to a dark gray, single-story house with white trim, bars on the windows and a white Mercedes in the driveway. "The guy who owns it just said, 'Hell yeah,'" says Meehan. "He wants no money. He won't even take money for the water. So I beautified his front yard. Boom."

What was a square lawn covered in drought-ridden grass is now a sprawling grid of nine 12-foot by 3-foot garden beds made of beautiful California redwood, collectively filled with about $1,500-worth of soil. It's like a small oasis, smack dab in the middle of the block.

Rosemary sprigs threaten to overtake one of the beds while red sorrel, mustard frills and arugula fill another. Oregano and Cuban oregano grow next to each other alongside a patch of salad burnet. The box full of dinosaur kale looks like it could supply bowls of salad at the restaurant for weeks. There's a section full of thyme, and just across a small walkway: sage, parsley and nasturtiums. And this is just the beginning.

And all that produce accentuates just about every dish on the menu: kale salad with crème fraîche; charred Hass avocado surrounded by garden greens; a burrata salad studded with mustard frills; yellowtail crudo zapped with peppery nasturtiums; cavatelli pasta served in a ring of crispy arugula.

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Violas grow in an urban garden located in the front yard of a home near Kali restaurant in Los Angeles. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Meehan gets what he plants from Jimmy Williams and his son Logan, who together run Logan's Garden. The father-and-son duo sell plants and fertilizer mix at the Sunday Hollywood and Wednesday Santa Monica farmers markets. They advise Meehan on the garden, encourage certain plants and give him tips on how to keep them thriving.

"I worked out this deal with them so they give me everything for free and we do a food trade," says Meehan. "They come in once a week for dinner and a bottle of wine and they give me $400 worth of stuff to plant."

In addition to venturing out into the neighborhood, Meehan asked the woman who runs a book binding shop next to the restaurant if he could put a garden bed outside her back door. The shop's owner, Charlene Matthews, said yes, and this is where Meehan mostly grows herbs and some arugula, in a single garden bed just steps from the restaurant.

"It's nice because it looks really good and I guess I steal a bit of arugula," says Matthews. "I was happy when they said they wanted to put the garden bed in. There should be gardens like this in more places."

Meehan's plan is to take over more front yards in the neighborhood, and he says he's not opposed to foraging in the area, deriving inspiration from his surroundings.

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Kevin Meehan plants mustard frills in an urban garden located in the front yard of a home near his restaurant. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

"I look at my commute from Culver City as one supermarket that's just waiting to get tapped into," says Meehan as he points out a lemon tree in a neighbor's backyard. "I tell my chefs when they park their cars to keep a lookout."

In the two years, he's been in this location, Meehan has picked lemons from that neighbor, loquats from another nearby house, cactus fruit from the house directly behind the restaurant — he uses it to make sorbet — and pink peppercorns from a nearby tree.

"I constantly put feelers out there on social media to see if people have fruit trees," says Meehan. "I tell them to bring them through, even if they aren't perfect, because we can make jams — and we'll hook them up with a free meal."

You could say the garden is a fluid extension of the chef's obsession with getting to the root of things — the building blocks that form his every dish.

A walk through the chef's kitchen reveals no less than 10 slow cookers full of black garlic, some of which have been fermenting for weeks. He'll turn that garlic into his own umami powder, which he uses to season dishes, dust plates of crudo and coat his fried chicken sandwiches. In the back of the kitchen, Meehan makes his own butter. He uses the buttermilk to make his own crème fraîche and bread. Jars of pickles line one wall of the small kitchen. And he makes his own yogurt too.

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Chef Kevin Meehan inside the kitchen of his restaurant, Kali. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Back in the garden, Meehan places a pizza box on the dirt next to one of the beds, kneels down on top of it, rolls up his sleeves, and prepares to switch out some of the lettuces.

Meehan persuaded another neighbor to let him use his front lawn. And at some point, he's hoping all the neighbors will say yes.

"There are so many benefits to this, and it helps me keep my cooks engaged and happy," says Meehan. "There's a real connection to the food and you don't want to waste anything because you can see what it took to grow it."

On his way back to the restaurant from the garden, Meehan spies a man a few houses down, who is out front watering his lawn. The chef quickly rushes over to him.

"Want to get weird?" Meehan asks.

Local chefs with dedicated gardens

Nyesha Arrington of Native restaurant in Santa Monica works with the Cook's Garden on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice. Gardener Geri Miller turned a vacant lot into the garden in 2013, and runs it with her team from Home Grown Edible Landscapes. Arrington is currently getting nasturtium and passion fruit from the garden. The Cook's Garden also works with Antonia Lofaso of Scopa Italian Roots, the Tasting Kitchen, Tender Greens, Wes Avila of Guerrilla Tacos, Michael Fiorelli of Love & Salt and Bruce Kalman of Union Restaurant.

Tony Esnault of Church & State and Spring restaurants, both in downtown L.A., works with the Community Garden on Industrial Street in the Arts District, located between Mateo and Mill streets. Residents of the Biscuit Lofts, where Church & State is located, launched the small garden (four garden beds) in 2009. Esnault's mother-in-law Shamsi Katebi maintains Esnault's two beds in the garden, as well as some planter boxes outside the restaurant's kitchen door. She also grows herbs in the flower pots that surround the restaurant's patio. At the community garden, Katebi is growing kale, Swiss chard, fennel, nasturtium, borage, lemon verbena, parsley, basil and cilantro. And in the planter boxes, she's growing herbs and edible flowers.

Gary Menes of Le Comptoir in Koreatown turned the front, back and side yards at his mother's Long Beach house into a garden last year. He grows everything in 1- and 5-gallon pots using compost and organic fertilizer. Menes says he purchases most of his seeds from Bakers Creek in Missouri, and is currently growing a market's-worth of produce including cipollini onions, four kinds of radishes, sprouting broccoli, two kinds of cauliflower, fava beans, English peas, potatoes, eggplant, garlic chives and more.

Timothy Hollingsworth of Otium in downtown L.A. worked with LA Urban Farms to plant a garden on the rooftop of his restaurant a couple of weeks before it opened in late 2015. There are 24 vertical pods on the rooftop used to grow sage, lettuce, kale, fennel fronds, borage, arugula, mustard frills, mustard greens and more. The restaurant chefs maintain the garden on a daily basis but the pods are on an automated system that waters the plants. And a team from LA Urban Farms comes out to check on the garden weekly.

Niki Nakayama of n/naka and her wife and sous chef Carole Lida-Nakayama planted a garden at their home in Los Angeles in 2006. Farmscape, an Eagle Rock-based company that helps manage gardens, maintains the garden, which grows on the front yard of the house. The Nakayamas grow Japanese vegetables including cucumbers, eggplant and herbs such as shiso for the restaurant.

Fernando Darin at Ray's & Stark Bar at LACMA recently rearranged the onsite garden, which was started at the restaurant in 2014. In the seven raised beds, Darin is growing arugula, mustard greens, sorrel, cilantro and edible flowers. The restaurant also has a compost program that turns organic food waste into soil used in the garden.

Arthur Gonzalez of Roe Seafood and Panxa Cocina works with Sasha Kanno, owner and operator of Farm Lot 59 in Long Beach to grow produce for his restaurants. Kanno created the 6-acre farm in 2010. She and Gonzalez are currently growing fennel, carrots, huacatay, lavender, kale, serrano peppers, jalapeño peppers and tomatoes for the restaurants.

info@kalirestaurant.com

Jenn.Harris@latimes.com

@Jenn_Harris_

Return Of The Good Life: The New Craze For Front Garden Allotments

Return Of The Good Life: The New Craze For Front Garden Allotments

Karin Goodwin

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Mandatory Credit: Photo by REX/Shutterstock (5532309a).MODEL RELEASED Smiling woman gardening in vegetable patch.VARIOUS.

FORGET neatly trimmed hedges, tidy rows of begonias and well-tended lawns. An increasing number of 21st-century growers in Scotland claim it's time to rebel against the short back and sides approach traditionally taken to front gardening in towns and cities and start making use of them as practical – but beautiful – allotments for growing fruit and veg.

With growing space at a premium – especially in cities – and waiting lists of nearly ten years for allotments in Glasgow and Edinburgh, there is a growing trend to turn front gardens into "quirky and fun" allotments allowing keen gardeners to grow edible plants that look good and feed the family.

Mat Coward, an independent garden writer whose new book is titled Eat Your Front Garden, said that it was time to throw off the "bourgeois" credentials of tidiness and conformity. While front garden vegetable growing might trigger images of the Good Life – the 1970s BBC sitcom about Tom and Barbara Good's attempt at self-sufficiency – or bring to mind Second World War Dig for Victory campaigns, Coward said he and others were advocating a modern approach to making the best use of available growing space.

"The idea of “respectable” changes with every generation," said Coward. "Perhaps your grandparents would walk by a front garden of millimeter-trimmed, bright green lawn, surrounded by precisely equidistant bedding plants, and nod with approval. You, on the other hand, might walk by a front garden clearly arranged to attract bees and birds, and similarly feel 'this householder adheres to the current consensus view of good values'."

He claimed that a combination of our society's reliance on cars, combined with austerity policies forcing longer working hours meant many time-poor families opted to pave their front gardens as a low maintenance option. Coward said there was a growing feeling that growing your own fruit and veg in your front garden was a "small way of repairing the environment".

There is, however, a worry that turning your front garden into an allotment might upset neighbors and make growers the talk of the street if a potato patch suddenly appeared where a lawn once was. However, Coward said: "My book puts forward the idea of the 'Invisible Allotment'." He has collected a list of more than 30 plants which can be grown for food which don't look like crops, including Caucasian spinach and bamboo. "Sometimes they are edibles in their countries of origin which we’ve adopted as ornamentals, some of them are traditionally used as edibles, but you wouldn’t know it by looking. My main criterion is that these are plants you can grow openly out front without anyone raising an eyebrow."

He claimed other reasons for not wanting your front garden to look like an allotment include fear that your produce will be pinched and being forbidden to grow vegetables by landlords if renting. "It fools both the busybodies and the burglars," he added.

Abi Mordin, founder, and director of Propagate, Glasgow-based growers collective, said:"It's quirky and it's fun. It's amazing what you can grow in a small space especially if you use permaculture methods such as polycultures [where you grow multiple crops in the same space] rather than growing in traditional rows." Other techniques to make the most of a small space include stacking up raised beds or containers or creating "micro forest" gardens, which are the conditions provided by forest "layers".

She admitted that while front garden growing did not provide enough space for people to be self-sufficient – it is estimated about an acre is needed – it could make grow-your-own more visible and popularise the trend. "Most people in the workshops that I run have no ideas what you can grow in this country, which is considerable. So at the very least, this opens people's eyes to what is possible."

Paula McCabe, the urban grower at the Concrete Garden, a community garden in Possil in Glasgow, claimed she had seen a huge increase in enthusiasm for garden growing through the projects she runs. She said: "Most people who come along tell us it has a real impact on their wellbeing. People make new friends, get fresh air, fresh produce, exercise, connection to nature, new skills, knowledge, and confidence. It's so therapeutic for so many reasons.

"Whilst there's so much that can be done in small urban spaces it can be hard to know where to start and people can be put off by the idea that it will take a big investment of time or money. Sometimes all people need is a little inspiration and guidance. We run a short course about container gardening in small spaces and on a budget to help folk turn unlikely spaces into attractive and productive growing spaces.

"It's absolutely possible to use the unlikeliest of spaces for food growing. All you need is an area that gets some sunlight and something to grow in."

She advised using raised beds and containers to make sure of good quality compost and topsoil, with simple "crops" like 'cut and come again' salad leaves perfect for window boxes. Veg crates can be repurposed to grow leafy greens and baby vegs such as carrots, beetroot or turnip, she added, while using a trellis to grow peas and beans vertically also helps make the most of a very small space. However, she and others warned against gardening near a busy road. "It would be wise to have a barrier from pollution," she added.

FIVE PLANTS FOR YOUR FRONT GARDEN

Here are Mat Coward's tips for plants for your front garden allotment that won't have the curtains twitching.

1. Chinese yam: with large, nutritious tubers it also produces scented flowers which give it the alternative common name of Cinnamon Vine.

2. Sunflower: the buds can be steamed and served with butter, like artichokes.

3. Bamboo: get a variety bred specially for production of bamboo shoots, as seen in Chinese takeaways, which are also amongst the most ornamental bamboos.

4. Caucasian spinach: used as an ornamental climber in the 19th century, now becoming better known for its edible greens and spring shoots.

5. Fuchsia: the epitome of front garden respectability but with juicy, sweet fruits and edible flowers.

FIVE TOP TIPS FOR FRONT GARDEN ALLOTMENTS

1. Window boxes filled with strawberries can look pretty and a provide summer fruit on the cheap. Ask community gardens if they have plants to spare.

2. Create a kitchen garden by growing fruit and veg together in raised or stacked beds. Edible flowers like Calendula and Nasturtiums look pretty and are a natural pest deterrent.

3. Make a herb spiral - it's an efficient way to grow lots of herbs in a small space and creates an attractive visual feature.

4. If you've got the space fruit trees like plums are a great option for combining good looks with practicality.

5. Plant bee friendly flowers like lavender and buddleia to attract wildlife to your garden and help pollinate fruit.

MOVES TO TACKLE 10 YEAR ALLOTMENT WAITING LISTS

NEW guidance due to be published in coming weeks will put a duty on local authorities to make better provision for growing spaces including allotments as part of the Community Empowerment Act, according to campaigners.

Campaigner Judy Wilkinson, a member of both the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society and the Glasgow Allotments Forum, said that with waits of up to almost a decade on the most desirable allotments, the guidance was welcome news for those demanding improved access to growing spaces.

Under the guidance, which has yet to be enacted, local authorities will have to ensure waiting lists on allotments are no longer than five years and do not exceed 50 percent of the number of available plots. It is claimed that better use could be made of derelict land in urban areas to help meet demand for community growing spaces.

"The Community Empowerment Act will hopefully put pressure on local authorities [to improve access]," said Wilkinson. "It's going to be important for us to work in partnership with local authorities.

"Allotments are holistic growing space. They are about growing food but also about health and well being. It can be an escape place, it's about the individual, about family and about community. Lots of community gardeners spend a lot of their time there particularly in the summer and spring months."

She also said the change would help those in flats and high rises who don't have gardens.

But Abi Mordin, founder, and director of community growing organization Propagate claimed that it was necessary to do more than simply increase access to allotments in order to tackle the need for a local and sustainable growing strategy.

She is currently working with 25 local growers who are hoping to make use of the Community Empowerment Act to create urban market garden plots on derelict land in Glasgow. Propagate has already identified 15 local cafes and businesses keen to make use of their produce. "It ties in with land reform and asset transfer," she added. "It also feeds into the national movement of [creating] sustainable food cities. We are working collectively with local communities to create local economies."

hello@propagate.org.uk