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Plant-Loving Millennials At Home And At Work
The Etsy headquarters in Dumbo, Brooklyn, for example, could easily be mistaken for an indoor botanical garden. Spanning nine floors and over 200,000 square feet, the office is home to more than 11,000 plants, including dozens of large-scale plant displays and living walls installed and maintained by Ms. Bullene and Greenery NYC.
Plant-Loving Millennials At Home And At Work
By CAROLINE BIGGS | MARCH 9, 2018
Credit Brad Dickson for The New York Times
When Summer Rayne Oakes’s roommate moved out of their apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, she was left with more than just a vacant bedroom.
“All of a sudden the apartment felt so cold and empty,” said Ms. Oakes, 33. “I needed to find a way to make the space feel warm and full of life again.”
Her solution? A fiddle leaf fig tree; the first of nearly 700 houseplants — spanning 400 species — that Ms. Oakes, founder of Homestead Brooklyn, would eventually buy for her 1,200-square-foot apartment.
Her indoor forest features everything from a subirrigated living wall in her bedroom, which is a wall of greenery that is essentially a self-watering planter with a built-in reservoir; a vertical garden made out of Mason jars mounted to the living-room wall with wooden boards and hose clamps; and a closet-turned-kitchen grow garden with edible plants (ranging from herbs and greens to pineapple plants and curry leaves).
“I didn’t set out to build a jungle,” Ms. Oakes said. “I just saw how much energy and life the plants brought to the space and kept going.”
It’s a sentiment that more and more young people seem to be echoing in their own apartments. Wellness-mindedmillennials, especially ones in large urban environments that lack natural greenery, are opting to fill their voids — both decorative and emotional — with houseplants.
“Millennials were responsible for 31 percent of houseplant sales in 2016,” according to Ian Baldwin, a business adviser for the gardening industry. The 2016 National Gardening survey found that of the six million Americans who took up gardening that year, five million were ages 18 to 34. “This group has more college debt and as a result, are renting homes instead of buying,” Mr. Baldwin said. “Houseplants are a low-cost way to have a green space at home.”
Summer Rayne Oakes has created a vertical garden in her dining room that is made out of Mason jars mounted to the wall with wooden boards and hose clamps.CreditBrad Dickson for The New York Times
Meanwhile, Greenery NYC, a botanic design company, has increased its clientele by 6,500 percent since it was founded in 2010; developers are finding ways to include gardens as an amenity for residents, and more people — like Ms. Oakes — are turning what little spare space they have in their apartments into indoor gardens.
“Our sales have doubled each year,” said Rebecca Bullene, the founder of Greenery NYC. “And I attribute that mostly to businesses that want to attract millennial talent and millennials themselves who want more nature in their lives.”
Inside her 1,800-square-foot apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Ms. Bullene, 37, cares for over a hundred plants. She has installed a green divider wall — a six-foot-by-six-foot steel shelving unit filled with a dozen wooden planter boxes and over 50 plants — that separates her living room from her in-home office, as well as a terrarium and several other large-scale plants, including an 11-foot-tall Ficus Audrey tree, to help break up the open layout of the space.
But for Ms. Bullene, the plants do more than help define the apartment; they make her home healthier, too. “Plants boost serotonin levels and dissolve volatile airborne chemicals,” she said. “They actually make healthier spaces for humans to inhabit.” She cited a 2010 study from Washington State University that breaks down the benefits of indoor plants, including cleaner air and lowered stress levels.
Along with her floor-to-ceiling plant divider wall in the living room, she also employed a combination of plants that release oxygen at night in her bedroom — including aloe vera and sansevieria — so that she and her husband can breathe cleaner air while they sleep.
Millennial-minded companies are also going to great lengths to integrate greenery into their offices.
The Etsy headquarters in Dumbo, Brooklyn, for example, could easily be mistaken for an indoor botanical garden. Spanning nine floors and over 200,000 square feet, the office is home to more than 11,000 plants, including dozens of large-scale plant displays and living walls installed and maintained by Ms. Bullene and Greenery NYC.
“Every employee has a sight line to greenery,” said Hilary Young, Etsy’s sustainability manager, who helps the company seek ways to conserve the environment. “It’s a beautiful space that inspires and boosts productivity.” Greenery NYC and the architects at Gensler worked closely to create a state-of-the-art rainwater-harvesting and irrigation system at Etsy’s headquarters, which is considered the largest commercial “living building” in the world. It allows all the office plants to be watered with recycled stormwater.
A line of cascading vines frames a conference room at the TED Talks headquarters in TriBeCa. CreditBrad Dickson for The New York Times
The roofs of the headquarters and a few of the neighboring buildings are outfitted with large gutters that collect and distribute rainwater to a 7,300-gallon cistern on the eighth floor of the Etsy building. From there, the water is dispersed through tubes to each floor of the building to water the plants.
“We wanted a space that bettered the lives of our employees,” Ms. Young said, “and that made a social and environmental impact outside of the office.”
And at the TED Talks headquarters in TriBeCa, Greenery NYC installed a series of unique plant displays throughout the two-floor office. Along with over 25 linear feet of boxed planters in the entrance lobby, the 50,000-square-foot office is filled with cascading vines, wall-mounted shelf planters, green dividers, and even desks outfitted with built-in planters, ensuring employees unlimited opportunities to take in a bit of nature throughout the workday.
“I love that when I look up from my work, all I see is green,” said Katie Hawley, 28, a senior editor at Etsy, who also keeps houseplants at home. “I feel happier just looking at them.”
With the increasing number of young people searching for access to greenery in their residences, real estate developers have also jumped on the trend.
At the ARC in Long Island City — a new 428-unit “industrial-inspired” luxury rental building developed by the Lightstone Group — residents have access to a 1,100-square-foot glass greenhouse, where they are free to plant and grow their own vegetables and herbs. “It’s been a tremendous selling point to prospective tenants,” said Scott Avram, senior vice president of development at Lightstone.
“One factor of my decision to rent in the ARC was the beautiful courtyard and greenhouse,” said Greg Garunov, 33. “There is something to having a green oasis at your fingertips in the steel city of New York.”
And over at the Margo, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, residents enjoy a living wall in the lobby as well as a rooftop garden with plots that tenants can adopt for their own gardens.
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“Wellness is a priority for our millennial-aged residents,” said Dave Maundrell, executive vice president of new developments for Brooklyn and Queens at Citi Habitats. “They’re willing to pay more for access to a green space.”
But for those young urbanites who don’t have the luxury of a communal garden or greenhouse, houseplants remain an affordable, and renter-friendly option.
For instance, Ms. Oakes has managed to make the bulk of her indoor garden self-regulating and, perhaps more impressively, removable.
Thanks to several DIY irrigation systems she hacked throughout her home, including two irrigation units she created using a 150-foot hose that connects to pipes under her kitchen sink, Ms. Oakes said she has to spend only about a half-hour a day tending to her plants.
And to avoid leaks to the apartment below, Ms. Oakes reinforced her bedroom wall with plywood and then added metal gutters to collect any excess water before hanging up her vertical garden.
Ms. Bullene, a renter, also took care to ensure that all of her subirrigated plant systems — even the self-regulating terrarium and self-watering plant wall — are removable.
“All of the plant systems can come with us if we ever move,” Ms. Bullene said. “It’s as easy as unplugging them and removing a couple of screws.”
Ms. Oakes said that even though plant care might seem like a whole lot of work, the effort is worth it.
“New York City is tough,” she said. “My plants gave me a sanctuary to come home to.”
Transforming Germany’s Cities Into Organic Food Gardens
Transforming Germany’s Cities Into Organic Food Gardens
2/22/201 | FreshPlaza
With ever more people living in urban centers, food security and quality is becoming a pressing issue. In Germany, cities are increasingly taking the production of organic products to a hyperlocal level.
As part of Biostädte (‘organic cities’), now Nuremberg joins a network of municipalities across Germany -including Munich, Bremen and Karlsruhe- working to make food production healthier and more sustainable.
In other cities like Berlin, Cologne and Kiel, urban and community-supported agriculture is introduced, which includes the greening of new buildings and the transformation of uncontaminated industrial land into community gardens. Their plans also foresee car-free, solar-powered districts where edible plants grow on and around buildings.
Citizens are being encouraged to cultivate useful crops, using public green areas in their neighborhoods to plant rows of potato plants or fruit trees. In doing so, they alleviate the municipal taxes, as this costs less than designing and maintaining the public green spaces.
According to an article by dw.com, these urban agricultural spaces are intended to become focal points where food is produced, processed and traded.
Peek Preview of Hubitus Urban Sustainability Hub in Israel
Peek Preview of Hubitus Urban Sustainability Hub in Israel
Hubitus at the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens will be a zero-energy hub with smart water and solar collection systems, built from recycled containers.
By Abigail Klein Leichman FEBRUARY 5, 2018
Hubitus - the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens Hub for Urban Sustainability. Simulation by Sharon Golan
The architectural plans are completed for Hubitus – the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens Hub for Urban Sustainability, and it’s easy to see why the co-founders are fielding inquiries from botanical gardens all over the US and Canada.
“We took the entrepreneurship hub model from the startup world and adapted it to the environmental world. This is something that has never been done before, definitely not at a botanical garden,” says co-founder and director Lior Gottesman.
She and co-founder Adi Bar-Yoseph have described Hubitus, a unique co-working space for environmental entrepreneurs, environmental artists and designers, urban planners, social activists, gardeners and urban farmers, at international conferences in Hawaii, Miami, San Diego and St. Louis.
Open classrooms at Hubitus – the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens Hub for Urban Sustainability. Simulation by Sharon Golan
Recently they accepted invitations from the heads of the Chicago Botanical Gardens and the UC Davis Botanical Gardens in California.
“We are invited to talk all over the world as botanical gardens rethink their social role,” Gottesman tells ISRAEL21c. “We’ve taken it to the next level by having change agents sitting in the garden. We’re the startup nation so it’s clear this innovation will come from here.”
Hubitus – the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens Hub for Urban Sustainability. Simulation by Sharon Golan
Hubitus already exists virtually for the past three years, providing courses, training, events and professional connections to 80 change agents. The hub also runs outreach programs including an initiative to establish sustainable gardens in preschools.
The physical space to house 30 Hubitus members was planned with the input of that community in coordination with Noam Austerlitz, a prominent Israeli “green” architect and lecturer at Tel Aviv University’s schools of architecture and environmental studies.
Office of Hubitus – the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens Hub for Urban Sustainability. Simulation by Sharon Golan
The zero-energy hub will generate as much renewable energy as it uses, aided by intelligent water collection and solar energy systems. “It will be built entirely of recycled containers using green construction techniques,” says Gottesman.
“In addition to the workspaces, our hub also will have classrooms, open spaces, rooftop gardens, green walls and more because our community needs places to prove and demonstrate concepts in areas such as beekeeping, hydroponics and vertical gardening.”
Closed classroom at Hubitus – the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens Hub for Urban Sustainability. Simulation by Sharon Golan
The grading of the site has started, with funding from Leichtag Foundation, and further fundraising is being conducted through JNF Australia and the Jerusalem Foundation. In addition to Austerlitz Architecture, the hub has engaged the services of Shlomo Aronson Architects for landscape design.
How A School Kitchen Garden Can Transform An Entire Community
2018
How A School Kitchen Garden Can Transform An Entire Community
A school initiative is encouraging whole multicultural communities to improve their relationship with food. (Sunshine North Primary School)
"They say food brings people together. What we’ve found is that this program has brought our community together."
By Yasmin Noone
29 JAN 2018
There’s a small kitchen garden situated in the cultural melting pot of Sunshine North in Melbourne’s west that’s changing the way the community interacts with food.
It’s not in a local park or in an expensive gardening centre tended to by masses of horticulturists.
No. This edible garden of influence – cared for by children, teachers and parents – is located on the grounds of the low-socioeconomic, multicultural Sunshine North Primary School.
The kitchen garden at this school, operating as part of the nationwide Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, goes one step further than educating kids about plants and food.
It aims to help a very diverse group of students to read and write, and encourages parents - many of whom are newly arrived migrants - to integrate into Australian society.
“We are a very multicultural community,” Sunshine North Primary School principal, Ken Ryan, tells SBS Food.
“There are 300 children at the school and 35 different nationalities here. We have a very big Vietnamese community and the second largest community is from Burma.
“For many of our students, they start at our school at the beginning of their life in Australia. But the thing is, only one-in-10 students speak English at home. So the starting point for the children’s formal education when they come here is usually quite low.”
School kitchen gardens aren’t just about kids dipping their fingers in the soil.
The school, which became involved in the kitchen garden program around 11 years ago, has developed the program into something extra special. The teachers have integrated kitchen garden lessons into the school curriculum, which incorporates science, math, critical thinking and English.
The recipes are used to teach children and their parents basic reading, comprehension and maths, while science lessons are conducted in the garden.
Conversational English skills are practiced while children are eating their cooked lunch. As they sit together around a table – that they set – kids discuss the experience of cooking and chat about what the food tasted like.
Students from kindergarten through to Year six participate in gardening and cooking classes, utilizing 80 percent of school-grown produce as they prepare meals (with teacher supervision) in the school kitchen.
Community-wide benefits
The program has also helped parents from non-English speaking backgrounds who haven’t felt confident volunteering for academic-based activities at the school.
They get involved with Sunshine North Primary community by lending a hand in the garden.
“Everyone cooks and everyone eats, no matter what language you speak, so we engaged the parents in the garden and in the kitchen,” says Ryan
“Parents now come into the school and look after the garden or feed the chickens. The program is the result of a whole community effort.
“They say food brings people together. What we’ve found is that this program has brought our community together.”
aims to help a very diverse group of students to read and write, and encourages parents to integrate into Australian society.
A healthy lesson for all ages
Ryan explains that the kitchen garden – consisting of seasonal herbs, fruits and vegetables – is also teaching parents and children about health and wellbeing, and on the dangers of fast food in Western society.
“It used to kill me to watch some parents coming into the school, with a McDonald's meal for their child at 10 am which they wanted to be served to them for lunch at 1 pm, thinking they were doing the right thing.
“I thought, ‘we need to change the learning around Western food and how important food is in general in a child’s wellbeing’.
“We can now clearly see that at our school, this program helps both children and their parents to make good choices about their food.
“They are learning, [as a community] to grow their own food and understand that the food you grow yourself tastes different to the food you buy.”
1,630 kitchen gardens nationwide…and counting
Sunshine North Primary is only one of the many schools around Australia participating in the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation.
Since 2004, the program has been implemented in 1,630 primary schools, high schools and early learning centres nationwide. The program is among the most popular in primary schools – 1,065 primaries are involved – while 70 special schools and 237 early learning centres also participate.
The foundation reports that Victoria is by far its biggest supporter, with kitchen gardens now in almost 560 schools and centres across the state.
However, there are 48 kitchen gardens implemented in the Northern Territory, 59 in Tasmania, 71 in the ACT, 139 in South Australia, 213 in Queensland, 170 in WA and 377 in NSW.
It's also about teaching immigrant parents and children about health and wellbeing, and on the dangers of fast food in Western society.
Why kitchen gardens create good food habits
Rebecca Naylor, CEO of the Kitchen Garden Foundation and Program, attributes the program’s national popularity to its ethos – kitchen gardens teach children why eating well is important, what good food actually looks and tastes like, and where food comes from.
“Kids habits are formed early in life,” says Naylor.
“If we can build habits for kids early on, that help them engage with growing food, cooking that food, eating seasonal fresh delicious food and then sharing that with others, then their relationship with food will be different than if they were never exposed to that experience.”
Since 2004, the program has been implemented in 1630 primary schools, high schools and early learning centres nationwide.
Naylor explains that when kids are involved in the program their willingness to try new foods also increases.
“Many kids don’t necessarily know where food comes from so their experience of food is shopping in the supermarket – not putting a seed in the ground and growing a pumpkin or beetroot.
“We know, even for us as adults, many of us have a fairly distant relationship with our food. But if your experience of food, [early on] is going to school, putting a seed in the ground and watching it grow in an environment where you also learn maths, English and language, then you are more likely to want to try that purple dip with the beetroot you’ve grown, as opposed to not wanting to try a meal put in front of you that you have no association with.”
Evidence-based success
The program is reaping positive education, community engagement, health and wellbeing results. A national evaluation of the program, funded by the Department of Health and Ageing and conducted between 2011-2012 by University of Wollongong researchers, found it to be a positive learning experience for students. Over 97.5 per cent of teachers involved also thought it benefited their student’s learning.
An earlier university study, done from 2007-2009, discovered that the program encouraged students to make positive health behaviour changes. These changes, the research showed, were then transferred to their home and community environments.
The program is reaping positive education, community engagement, health and wellbeing results.
Barriers to access
The success of the kitchen gardens program begs one question: why doesn’t every school across Australia have a kitchen garden, run by this foundation or another?
Naylor says there’s often an assumption that schools might need a big space for a kitchen or garden to be involved. While this was once true, the program has been altered to adapt to the needs of any size school of any socio-economic standing.
“To be fair, it’s true to say that schools that have a lower socioeconomic make-up often find it harder to get a program like this up and running because they have less of an ability to draw on the school community for fundraising – for example.”
However, Sunshine North Primary School got one running.
“It all comes down to the vision and leadership at a school. There needs to be someone involved in the school who has the ability to see how a program like this can be used right across the school community and curriculum.”
Naylor also calls on state governments to exercise leadership and encourage all schools of the value of kitchen garden programs for children of all backgrounds and wealth status.
“We need governments to say that running a kitchen garden of this type in your school is what they want to see happening.
“It will give schools the permission they need to engage in the work that is required to set a program like this up.”
How do you provide tasty, delicious and high-quality meals, whilst keeping prices affordable? It’s a problem Shane Delia is facing both in his business and with his Feed the Mind project. The answer for Shane is to look for local solutions, and he enlists the help of Stephanie Alexander to supercharge the school garden as a means to provide healthy ingredients that don’t need to be ordered from the shop. Watch the episode on SBS On Demand here.
Shane Delia's Recipe For Life airs 8pm, Thursdays on SBS, then on SBS On-Demand. You can find the recipes and more features from the show here.
These 11 Easiest Vegetables to Grow Makes Gardening 10x Better
These 11 Easiest Vegetables to Grow Makes Gardening 10x Better
Posted on 2018-01-24 by Chris
What if I told you there are numerous easiest vegetables to grow that can make gardening 10X better and fun?
What’s more?
They require no special care or technical expertise.
You’d think there must be some hidden catch, right?
But there’s not. It’s absolutely true.
Today in this post, I’m going to walk you through 11 easiest vegetables to grow.
So, what makes some vegetables easier to grow than others? I’ve looked at four factors as follows;
1. The growing season – If a given vegetable has a short growing season, the growing becomes much easier.
2. Moisture requirement – as minimum as possible. Watering is a very difficult gardening task. Therefore, the little of it required the better.
3. Temperature – as flexible as possible.
4. Space – utilizes space efficiently.
Based on these four parameters, I’ve been able to come up with this list that can be used by both newbies as well as experienced gardeners.
Let’s jump in…
11 Easiest Vegetables to Grow
Potato
Potatoes are generally grown from seed potatoes – these are tubers specifically grown to be disease free and provide consistent and healthy plants. To be disease free, you should select the areas where seed potatoes are grown are with care.
Luckily, potatoes are so easy to grow, that gardeners end up with “accidental” potatoes every year!
Their growth is divided into five phases:
During the first phase, sprouts emerge from the seed potatoes and root growth begins.
During the second, photosynthesis begins as the plant develops leaves and branches.
In the third phase stolons develop from lower leaf axils on the stem and grow downwards into the ground and on these stolons new tubers develop as swellings of the stolon.
This phase is often (but not always) associated with flowering. Tuber formation halts when soil temperatures reach 27 °C; hence potatoes are considered a cool-season crop.
Tuber bulking occurs during the fourth phase, when the plant begins investing the majority of its resources in its newly formed tubers.
At this stage, several factors are critical to yield: optimal soil moisture and temperature, soil nutrient availability and balance, and resistance to pest attacks.
The final phase is maturation:
The plant canopy dies back, the tuber skins harden, and their sugars convert to starches – and then your potatoes are ready!
Read: 13 Easy to Grow Vertical Garden Plants
Lettuce
Generally grown as a hardy annual, lettuce is easily cultivated, although it requires relatively low temperatures to prevent it from flowering quickly.
Lettuce is one of the easiest vegetables to grow. It grows quick, is relatively convenient to harvest because you just have to simply snip the tops off the plants or select leaves as needed
It also takes up very little area. They are able to grow even in containers, possibly accompanied by flowers or tucked under taller plants.
Lettuces meant for the cutting of individual leaves are generally planted straight into the garden in thick rows.
Heading varieties of lettuces are commonly started in flats, then transplanted to individual spots, usually 20 to 36 cm (7.9 to 14.2 in) apart, in the garden after developing several leaves.
Lettuce spaced further apart receives more sunlight, which improves color and nutrient quantities in the leaves.
Lettuce grows best in full sun in loose, nitrogen-rich soils with a pH of between 6.0 and 6.8.
Heat generally prompts lettuce to bolt, with most varieties growing poorly above 24 °C; cool temperatures prompt better performance, with 16 to 18 °C being preferred and as low as 7 °C being tolerated.
Zucchini
Zucchini is very easy to cultivate in temperate climates. As such, it has a reputation among home gardeners for overwhelming production.
The part harvested as "zucchini" is the immature fruit, though the flowers, mature fruit, and leaves are eaten as well.
One good way to control overabundance is to harvest the flowers, which are an expensive delicacy in markets because of the difficulty in storing and transporting them.
The male flower is borne on the end of a stalk and is longer-lived.
While easy to grow, zucchini, like all squash, requires plentiful bees for pollination.
In areas of pollinator decline or high pesticide use, such as mosquito-spray districts, gardeners often experience fruit abortion, where the fruit begins to grow, then dries or rots.
This is due to an insufficient number of pollen grains delivered to the female flower. It can be corrected by hand pollination or by increasing the bee population.
Bok Choy
Bok choy (Brassica rapa) is also called Chinese cabbage.
This Chinese vegetable is a cool weather vegetable that grows best in spring and fall.
Growing bok choy is done from seed. Planting bok choy can be done by directly seeding the garden soil or by starting plants indoors until the weather is right for transplanting later.
Either way, when planting bok choy, germination occurs within seven to ten days.
Bok choy used to be limited to meals in Chinese restaurants, but these days you are just as likely to find it growing in backyard gardens.
It's a quick growing vegetable and there are a surprising number of varieties to try.
Takes relatively shorter time to mature. Depending on the variety and the weather, bok choy should be ready to harvest in 45 - 60 days.
eet
All beets grow best in fertile soil with a pH between 6.2 and 7.0. Water the prepared bed, and plant beet seeds half an inch deep and 2 inches apart, in rows spaced 12 inches apart.
Beet seeds germinate in five to 10 days if kept constantly moist. Repeated watering can cause some soils to crust on the surface, which can inhibit the emergence of seedlings.
Cover seeded rows with boards or burlap for a few days after planting to reduce surface crusting. This technique is also useful when planting beets for fall harvest in warm summer soil.
Just be sure to remove the covers as soon as the seedlings break the surface.
Scallion
Scallions grow so fast.
Actually, you can re-root scallions from the grocery store.
You may even have luck regrowing the ones you've used for cooking if you leave a couple of inches of stem attached to the roots.
You don't even have to plant them in the garden. Scallions will happily grow in a glass of water. When something is this ridiculously easy to grow, you might as well take every opportunity.
Read: Small Space Gardening: 14 Mind Blowing Ideas (#7 is my favorite)
Onion
Onions are best cultivated in fertile soils that are well-drained.
Sandy loams are good as they are low in sulphur, while clayey soils usually have a high sulphur content and produce pungent bulbs. Onions require a high level of nutrients in the soil.
Phosphorus is often present in sufficient quantities, but may be applied before planting because of its low level of availability in cold soils.
Nitrogen and potash can be applied at regular intervals during the growing season, the last application of nitrogen being at least four weeks before harvesting.
Bulbing onions are day-length sensitive; their bulbs begin growing only after the number of daylight hours has surpassed some minimal quantity.
Most traditional European onions are referred to as "long-day" onions, producing bulbs only after 14 hours or more of daylight occurs.
Southern European and North African varieties are often known as "intermediate-day" types, requiring only 12–13 hours of daylight to stimulate bulb formation.
Finally, "short-day" onions, which have been developed in more recent times, are planted in mild-winter areas in the autumn and form bulbs in the early spring, and require only 11–12 hours of daylight to stimulate bulb formation.
Onions are a cool-weather crop and can be grown in USDA zones 3 to 9. Hot temperatures or other stressful conditions cause them to "bolt", meaning that a flower stem begins to grow.
Ginger
The easiest way to get started growing ginger root is to get a few fresh rhizomes of someone who does grow ginger, at the time when the plant re-shoots anyway (early spring).
Otherwise just buy some at the shops at that time.
Make sure you select fresh, plump rhizomes.
Look for pieces with well developed "eyes" or growth buds. (The buds look like little horns at the end of a piece or "finger")
Some people recommend to soak the rhizomes in water over night. That's not a bad idea, since shop bought ginger might have been treated with a growth retardant.
Pea
Choose an open, weed-free site in full sun. Grow peas in a moist, fertile, well-drained soil.
Try to dig plenty of well-rotted compost into the soil several weeks before sowing to improve soil fertility and help retain moisture.
It's best to avoid sowing peas on cold, wet soils as they tend to rot away. If space is at a premium then try growing peas in containers or patio bags.
Provide supports - Peas produce tendrils to help them climb upwards.
Erect wire netting, or push upright twiggy sticks into the ground along the length of each trench to provide your peas with supports to cling to.
Water regularly- Once pea plants start to flower it's best to water thoroughly once a week to encourage good pod development.
You can reduce water loss by applying a thick mulch of well-rotted manure or compost to lock moisture into the soil.
Radish
Radishes are a fast-growing, annual, cool-season crop. The seed germinates in three to four days in moist conditions with soil temperatures between 18 and 29 °C.
Best quality roots are obtained under moderate day lengths with air temperatures in the range 10 to 18 °C.
Under average conditions, the crop matures in 3–4 weeks, but in colder weather, 6–7 weeks may be required.
Radishes grow best in full sun in light, sandy loams, with a soil pH 6.5 to 7.0, but for late-season crops, a clayey-loam is ideal. Soils that bake dry and form a crust in dry weather are unsuitable and can impair germination.
Harvesting periods can be extended by making repeat plantings, spaced a week or two apart. In warmer climates, radishes are normally planted in the autumn.
The depth at which seeds are planted affects the size of the root, from 1 cm (0.4 in) deep recommended for small radishes to 4 cm (1.6 in) for large radishes.
During the growing period, the crop needs to be thinned and weeds controlled, and irrigation may be required.
Swiss chard
Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris) is an easy-to-grow, heat-resistant heirloom that does not bolt; it has a mild flavor.
Growing Swiss chard works best in rich, moist soil with a soil pH between 6.0 and 6.8. Plant about 12 to 18 inches apart in fertile soil, watering directly after planting.
Work nitrogen-rich amendments such as blood meal, cottonseed meal, feather meal, or composted manure into the ground before planting.
Other options include applying a timed-release vegetable food, such as 14-14-14, according to label directions, when planting and every couple of weeks during the growing season.
Like all vegetables, Swiss chard does best with a nice, even supply of water. Water regularly, applying 1 to 1.5 inches of water per week if it doesn’t rain.
You can measure the amount of water with a rain gauge in the garden.
Apply organic mulch such as compost, finely ground leaves, wheat straw, or finely ground bark to keep the soil cool and moist and to keep down weeds.
Mulching will also help keep the plant leaves clean, reducing the risk of disease.
Read: The Complete Guide to Organic Gardening with Zero Skills
Kale
Kale is a leafy vegetable in the Brassica or Cole crop family.
It is usually grouped into the "Cooking Greens" category with collards, mustard and Swiss chard, but it is actually more of a non-heading cabbage, although much easier to grow than cabbage.
The leaves grow from a central stem that elongates as it grows. Kale is a powerhouse of nutrients and can be used as young, tender leaves or fully grown.
Kale can be grown as a cut and come again vegetable, so a few plants may be all you need.
The plants can be quite ornamental, with leaves that can be curly or tagged, purple or shades of green. It is considered a cool season vegetables and can handle some frost, when mature.
Carrot
Carrots are grown from seed and can take up to four months (120 days) to mature, but most cultivars mature within 70 to 80 days under the right conditions.
They grow best in full sun but tolerate some shade.
The optimum temperature is 16 to 21 °C. The ideal soil is deep, loose and well-drained, sandy or loamy, with a pH of 6.3 to 6.8.
Fertilizer should be applied according to soil type because the crop requires low levels of nitrogen, moderate phosphate and high potash.
Rich or rocky soils should be avoided, as these will cause the roots to become hairy and/or misshapen. Irrigation is applied when needed to keep the soil moist.
After sprouting, the crop is eventually thinned to a spacing of 8 to 10 cm (3 to 4 in) and weeded to prevent competition beneath the soil.
Conclusion
You’ve just read about some of the easiest vegetables to grow.1
Now all you have to do is choose one, give it a try and before you know it, you’ll become an expert in even growing the complex ones.
Just take the first step.
New Haven Farms To Expand Healthful Garden Program
New Haven Farms To Expand Healthful Garden Program
By Esteban L. Hernandez
Published 3:53 pm, Sunday, January 14, 2018
hoto: Credit: New Haven Farms
NEW HAVEN—New Haven Farms will expand its popular incubator program this spring to include 25 additional families who will manage their own garden plot and have access to fresh produce.
New Haven Farms Executive Director Russell Moore said the program has grown every year since it launched in 2015. Two new incubator sites will be placed in Fair Haven on Stevens Street, near Shelter and Clay streets, and on Davenport Avenue in the Hill neighborhood.
Fair Haven’s site will support 15 families, while the Hill is expected to serve 10. The program currently has 50 families, a majority of whom are low-income residents.
Families first participate in a wellness program operated jointly by Fair Haven Community Health Center and NHF before joining the incubator program, which provides them a plot of land to build their own vegetable garden. The goal of the wellness program is to assist people in developing more healthful eating choices to address possible health concerns. The incubator garden allows participants to continue healthful habits learned through the wellness program.
“The significance of it is not just 25 families,” Moore said. “It’s that their family members will benefit from fresh produce.”
NHF works in partnership with the New Haven Land Trust and the Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Foundation to fund the incubator program.
Moore recently visited the Fair Haven site. At the moment, it looks barren, with what he suspected were dead collard greens near the entrance. But the site will eventually be home to 15 additional families using the land, once seeding begins in March and the season starts in May.
New Haven Farms manager Jacqueline Maisonpierre, who helped to develop the incubator garden program in 2015, said the program fits well into NHF’s mission to, “promote health and community development through urban agriculture.”
The program has just about a 100 percent retention rate, though two families have moved out of the city, Maisonpierre said.
Moore said between the seven gardens, which together comprise just about one acre, New Haven Farms produced 18,000 pounds of produce. Providing produce for 50 families means more than 200 people receive help.
“We’re really getting people to change, to make large behavioral shifts in their lives so that they can live a healthier life and reduce their dependence on medication,” Maisonpierre said.
The incubator gardens teach families “that they have the powers to change their own health outcomes,” Maisonpierre said.
New Haven Land Trust Executive Director Justin Elicker said the trust supports 52 community gardens in New Haven. Elicker said NHF’s program teaches citizens how to be more healthy.
“This partnership was a great fit for both organizations,” Elicker said. “Graduates of the wellness programs have an ability to continue their connection to the community that they developed.”
Last fall, an NHF site near Ferry Street was the site of a robbery that left a seasonal worker injured. The man who was attacked is still working for NHF; Moore said the attack seemed to make his commitment to the organization even stronger.
The attack prompted a community meeting and increased police patrol. Added safety measures, including lights, were installed on a nearby post, and have helped with security, Moore said. He was happy with both the community and local law enforcement response to the incident.
“It was galvanizing,” Moore said.
The response seems to reflect what Moore said is another important effect from their gardening programs, which is people learning by example.
“One shining example can have a ripple effect throughout the community,” Moore said.
Reach Esteban L. Hernandez at 203-680-9901
Northeast Organic Farmers Coming Together at Rutgers This January
Northeast Organic Farmers Coming Together at Rutgers This January
By ADRIAN HYDE
January 17, 2018 at 11:35 AM
More than 50 workshops on food, farming, and gardening will be offered at the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey (NOFA-NJ) Winter Conference at the Rutgers University Douglass Student Center, 100 George Street, New Brunswick.
The sessions run Jan. 27 and 27, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. They'll include five tracks: crops, livestock, gardening, policy and urban farming.
Anyone interested in learning about local, organic and sustainable food, permaculture and related policy issues is invited to attend.
The theme of this year’s conference is “Regenerating Our Communities, Restoring Our Land,” and nationally-recognized speakers are coming in from all over the country. This year’s keynote is Mark Shepard author of Restoration Agriculture, which explains his approach to permaculture, as practiced at his New Forest Farm in Wisconsin.
In his work, Shepard makes the “whys and hows” of permaculture compelling and accessible, including its ability to sequester gigantic amounts of atmospheric carbon. He also explains clearly the tradeoffs between annual and perennial crops.
Don Huber, PhD, will speak in a double-session about his research on the harms of glyphosate, the world’s most ubiquitous pesticide. Along with the content of his presentations, Huber provides copious references to scholarly and scientific work on the subject.
Dan Kittredge, lifelong farmer and founder of the Bionutrient Food Association, will reveal his organization’s efforts to democratize testing for food quality in a completely open-source framework.
For several years, Kittredge has been a leader in efforts to produce more nutrient-dense, high-quality foods, and early successes in the BFA’s food testing strategy suggest exciting possibilities.
In addition to Mark Shepard, other nationally-recognized, expert permaculturists will be speaking, both individually and on the “PermaPanel.” There will be something for everyone, from topics of general interest to specific practices for experienced farmers.
For more information, please visit nofanj.org or contact NOFA-NJ at 908-371-1111.
Kimbal Musk Doubles Down On School Garden Effort
Learning gardens provide access to nutritious food and serve as educational tools at underserved schools. Photo courtesy of the Kitchen
Kimbal Musk Doubles Down On School Garden Effort
The Colorado 100 Fund is a $2.5 million effort toward creating 100 learning gardens in Colorado by 2020.
BY DALIAH SINGER | JANUARY 3, 2018
In 2011, Kimbal Musk, co-founder of the Kitchen (and brother of tech giant Elon Musk), decided it wasn’t enough serving real, local food at his family of restaurants. So he launched the Kitchen Community nonprofit with the goal of “empower[ing] kids and their families to build real food communities from the ground up.”
In practice, what that means is creating learning gardens—a garden as an outdoor classroom—in underserved, low-income schools across the country. Since the first opened in Denver in 2011, 450 learning gardens have been built across the country. Colorado, though, has begun lagging behind. The state currently has 55 learning gardens; Chicago has 150. But that will soon change: Musk recently announced theColorado 100 Fund, a $2.5 million initiative to increase the number of Centennial State learning gardens to 100 (in other words, adding 45 more) by the end of 2020. “We built our first [learning garden] in Denver,” says Courtney Walsh, Musk’s communications director. “We need to look at our own backyard…to really impact change.”
Kimbal Musk (right) and a student at a Kitchen Community learning garden in Los Angeles in 2015. Photo by Patrick T. Fallon for the Kitchen Community
According to the 2017 Kids Count report from the Colorado Children’s Campaign (CCC), 16 percent of Colorado children experienced food insecurity—“their access to adequate food was limited by lack of money and other resources”—between 2013 and 2015. In addition, many high-poverty neighborhoods are located in food deserts, meaning they have limited access to affordable and nutritious foods. That’s one of the reasons the CCC says, “…children growing up in low-income or food-insecure families are likely to…have challenges getting the nutrients they need for proper growth and development.”
School gardens can help reverse those concerns by exposing children to fruits and vegetables, teaching them where their food comes from, and encouraging healthy lifelong eating habits. At an elementary school, students might count the plants and learn their names. In middle and high school, the gardens become the foundation for a science class or a lesson in entrepreneurship (how to run a farm stand, for instance).
To accomplish the 100-garden goal, Musk formed a Leadership Circle comprised of prominent Coloradans who support his efforts to improve children’s health. Among them is Robin Luff, who also serves on the board of the Kitchen Community. “We’re there to talk about the importance of real food, of changing behaviors. We all believe that can happen when we have a really strong effort in a city,” Luff says. “It’s useful, and it’s lasting.”
Schools submit applications for learning gardens, and the district has to approve the Kitchen Community’s efforts. The nonprofit has already worked with the Denver Public Schools and the Poudre School District and will continue to do so; it expects to add some gardens in Jefferson County as part of the Colorado 100.
“One of the challenges in Colorado versus some of the other inner cities we’re working with is that we have this gorgeous landscape we look at every day,” Luff says, “and it’s really hard to imagine that some kids have never played in a stream or with sticks. [Determining how to] make a lasting impression in Denver is really important.”
One hundred learning gardens is a big enough number to convince people (the legislature, school boards) to pay more attention to the issue. “It becomes an ecosystem about learning about food,” Walsh says. “If you have 100, then you’re able to truly impact the community…and reach kids at all age levels.”
But don’t expect this work to stop once Musk and team reach 100. ”Kimbal’s overarching national goal is to build 1,000 learning gardens to ostensibly impact a million children,“ Walsh says. We have no doubt he’ll get there.
DALIAH SINGER, 5280 CONTRIBUTOR
Daliah Singer is an award-winning writer and editor based in Denver. You can find more of her work at daliahsinger.com.
Urban Farming: Lessons From Growing Power
Across the country, supporters grieved the loss of Growing Power, of its example, and of the hope it offered for scaling up urban farming as a sustainable model
Urban Farming: Lessons From Growing Power
By: MARY TURCK | December 30, 2017
Just a year ago, an article in Medium touted Will Allen as “the Godfather of Urban Farming, Who’s Breeding the Next Generation of People to Feed the World.” Allen, who started urban farming in Milwaukee in 1993, then moved on to Chicago, ended up with his Growing Power organization involved in urban farming projects around the world. Along the way, Allen won a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2008 and was named one of Time Magazine’s 2010 Time 100.
Allen’s vision and his non-profit corporations focused on reimagining and rebuilding a food system in cities. Among its ambitious projects:
- aquaponic systems growing fish, watercress, and wheatgrass;
- rebuilding soil through composting and vermiculture, including a collection of supermarket wastes and use of red worm composting to turn them into soil;
- increasing productivity with intensive cultivation of food plants on small plots of land;
- sparking a passion for farming in urban youth and teaching them job skills to land jobs in the sustainable farming and food system;
- growing mass quantities of high-quality food and delivering it to people living in inner cities;
- modeling urban farming as a real and sustainable option for people around the world.
Then, in November 2017, Growing Power crashed. After years of running deficits and with more than half a million dollars in legal judgments against the organization, Allen resigned and the organization closed its doors.
New Urban Farming Organizations Sprouting
Across the country, supporters grieved the loss of Growing Power, of its example, and of the hope it offered for scaling up urban farming as a sustainable model. But the end of Growing Power does not mean the end of urban farming, not any more than a hard frost means the end of a garden. Instead, new plants have already begun to sprout.
In Milwaukee, Green Veterans Wisconsin plans to buy Growing Power’s shuttered headquarters, reclaiming it as “an urban farm school, co-op for small farmers and trauma resolution center.” Its mission: “to regenerate men and women who have served in the military for green jobs and green living.”
In Chicago, the Growing Power team has spun off into a new Urban Growers Collective, with a mission of “creating healing spaces through art and innovation rooted within the foundation of growing food.”
Less than a month after the end of Growing Power, it’s too soon to predict outcomes for either initiative, but they are only two of the seeds now growing.
Across the country, urban farming initiatives take multiple forms. Some focus more on producing nutritious, organic food, some more on the powerful therapeutic possibilities of connecting youth with growing, some on building community while feeding community, and some on creating a profitable business model.
Three Minnesota examples show combine focus on food, youth, and community:
Youth Farm MN, established in 1995 in Minneapolis, aims “to create an urban environment where youth could flourish physically, socially, and emotionally as they mature into young adults. Youth were the focus and food was the conduit.” After more than 20 years, Youth Farm engages more than 800 young people and works to build and feed community in five specific Minneapolis and St. Paul neighborhoods.
Youth in the Dirt Group take pride in harvesting produce that they have grown themselves.
The Dirt Group’s motto is “Learning to Grow, Growing to Learn.” Its focus is on giving youth “an opportunity to experience social inclusion by being part of a safe, cohesive, structured group. Students feel pride and ownership in their collective efforts growing food together as they learn, practice, and master important life and social skills and make a difference in their communities by donating food they have grown to local food shelves and other such community organizations.” Its gardens are located in urban (Minneapolis, MN), small town, and rural settings.
The MNyou Youth Garden operates in the Minnesota city of Willmar (population about 20,000) on a plot of land and greenhouse provided by a local college. Its purpose is “to have minority youth, ages 15 to 24, research how to grow and maintain highly sought after vegetables then put that research to work. During their time in the project, the youth will develop entrepreneurial skills from working closely with mentors in local businesses on how to sell and market their products. They will also learn transferable job skills from experienced volunteers while receiving a minimum wage.”
Home-made signs mark the Dirt Group’s herb garden, and plots tended by small groups.
Connecting food, farming, youth, and community works for non-profit organizations that do not need to make urban farming turn a profit. Some other urban farming initiatives rely on heavy infusions of grants and donations or on rent-free use of city-owned or vacant lots. Profitability – or economic sustainability, in the progressive parlance – remains the most difficult problem for any kind of farming, urban or rural, small-scale or larger.
Money, or the lack of money, led to Growing Power’s demise. Does the blame lie with the high cost of organic food production? Or with the exponential growth of Growing Power, beyond the scale that could be effectively managed? Whatever the cause of its eventual dissolution, Growing Power gave a powerful inspiration to others to engage in agriculture that places a higher value on food and community than on profit. The seeds Will Allen planted will continue to flourish long after Growing Power’s end.
The Dangers of Urban Gardens
The problem is almost everything else: in the midst of the horticultural fever people have forgotten that urban agriculture has challenges that seriously compromise the food security of its crops. If we do not take this problem seriously, we will find ourselves promoting tasty, ecological toxins.
The Dangers of Urban Gardens
In recent years, every city worth its salt that has had a system of urban gardens. It's a very good idea: an almost perfect combination of green spaces, community activities and food education.
The problem is almost everything else: in the midst of the horticultural fever people have forgotten that urban agriculture has challenges that seriously compromise the food security of its crops. If we do not take this problem seriously, we will find ourselves promoting tasty, ecological toxins.
The dangers of urban gardens
A few years ago, the United States experienced a controversy that illustrates the problems and dangers that urban gardens can entail. Ryan Kuck, the director of Greengrow, an urban farm located in the industrial zone of Philadelphia since the eighties, said that his two newborn twins had high levels of lead in their blood due to the consumption of fruits and vegetables from their own garden.
Lead, for example, is especially harmful to children. In high concentrations it can have a very damaging effect on the nervous system and can cause mental retardation, developmental disorders or behavioral problems. According to the World Health Organization, in reality, there are no known safe levels of lead for children or adults: almost any concentration has detrimental effects on a lot of systems and parts of the body.
As Kuck himself acknowledged, "I was worried, but not surprised." The use of land in urban areas constantly changes with the city's cycles and development. A clear example is lead: for decades millions of cars used leaded fuels, thousands of buildings were painted with lead paint. Of course the soil of the cities is contaminated! There is pollution in the environment!
In addition, the plants we use in horticulture have the property of accumulating potentially toxic elements and compounds, such as heavy metals or derivatives of the use of hydrocarbons.
"The perfect salad"
That is, we are putting 'accumulators' of toxins in a contaminated soil. According to Andres Rodriguez, people are blindly planting gardens because of the urban gardens are fashionable. That is to say, they are installing the gardens without analyzing if the conditions of the land are suitable for cultivation (and, later, consumption).
According to Rodríguez, who investigates lead pollution in urban soils, despite their pedagogical and leisure potential, most urban gardens are a completely unnecessary ecological risk. They are also a sanitary risk. The scientific research that has been carried out on the subject supports it.
Natural = safe
The foods that enters the 'food circuit' is very controlled but there are few controls on the fruits and vegetables that we can find in urban gardens. It's paradoxical that the search for healthier foods has led us to producing food without any controls, cultivating it in contaminated lands and putting the health of those who consume it at risk.
These are not theories, the analyses that have been carried out in urban gardens in Madrid, as Rodriguez pointed out, are clear: land is not safe. Nothing justifies continuing with the projects to expand them if there are no minimum guarantees of security.
In addition, the data is so worrying that it seems inadvisable that the urban gardens movement should claim food security as one of its central ideas. It would be a pity if one of the most successful movements of community dynamism in recent years was lost due to health problems.
Source: magnet.xakata.com
Publication date: 11/22/2017
Sky High Veggies? Urban Farming Grows in Unexpected Places
CalSTRS Executive Chef Conrad Caguimbal offers a salad with roasted vegetables from the pension fund’s edible garden featured every day in the CalSTRS cafeteria in West Sacramento. Renée C. Byer rbyer@sacbee.com
Sky High Veggies? Urban Farming Grows in Unexpected Places
BY DEBBIE ARRINGTON | darrington@sacbee.com
OCTOBER 13, 2017 2:00 PM
Fresh vegetables and herbs, harvested steps away from the kitchen; that’s a chef’s dream.
In the Farm-to-Fork Capital, it’s also a sign that a business has thoroughly bought into an ethos of sustainability. Grow tomatoes at your doorstep – or on your roof – and patrons know those veggies are as local as they can get. So do employees who like to know their food source is just outside their windows.
Popping up throughout California are statement-making gardens full of food. That includes the landscaping at the front entrance of West Sacramento’s CalSTRS building, home to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System.
“Most people grow landscaping as an afterthought,” said Lara Hermanson, the gardener/farmer behind Farmscape, which created the CalSTRS “Waterfront Gardens.” “They put in some shrubs and lawn, then forget about it. Food is much more interesting.
Farmscape, the largest urban farming company on the West Coast, has created more than 700 edible gardens in unexpected places.
“We do anything from a couple of raised beds to giant rooftop projects,” said Hermanson, who started growing food as landscaping for wealthy families in Malibu who wanted “kitchen gardens” without the gardening part.
As part of its contracts, Farmscape provides regular maintenance as well as original plans and setup. Packages start at $79 a week for 125 square feet; consultations start at $90 an hour. That’s expensive for a residential vegetable garden, but more reasonable for business or public projects – especially for such high-profile landscaping such as at the entrance of a major building.
Businesses may want to grow edible landscaping, but have no clue how to do it, Hermanson noted. Farmscape takes care of everything from planning to planting to harvest. Adding color and beauty, seasonal flowers, herbs and ornamental plants are mixed in with the vegetables, so the beds appear manicured and attractive year round.
Besides looking good, these gardens have an immediate dividend: Fresh organic food.
“That’s what people love,” Hermanson said.
Farmscape’s most famous “farms” are on top of Levi’s Stadium, the Santa Clara home to the 49ers, and under the scoreboard at the Giants’ AT&T Park in San Francisco.
Featuring espaliered fruit trees as well as annual vegetables, the Giants’ garden had a better summer than the team.
“Produce from that garden is used in three little cafes (at the ballpark) that feature wood-fired pizza including gluten-free options,” Hermanson said. “They also offer vegan options for folks who don’t do baseball food.”
A short throw from the bullpen, hydroponic towers sprout berries and greens used in ballpark smoothies and salads.
“It’s kind of an idea garden,” Hermanson said. “During games, 40,000 people can see how good it looks and think about growing food, too.”
Dubbed “Faithful Farm,” the rooftop garden at Levi’s Stadium supplies fresh produce to the venue’s food service. It looks like a typical vegetable garden – except the soil is only 6 to 9 inches deep and it sits nine stories above the ground.
“We had a crazy good summer at Levi’s,” Hermanson said. “We harvested 5,000 pounds of food from a 6,000-square-foot space. We had a thousand pounds of just melons! We grew so many peppers, we harvested 100 pounds a week.”
Among the challenges of farming on the roof: It gets really windy (but so does AT&T Park) and it’s less protected from rain and sun.
“Everything is more intense on the roof,” Hermanson said. “We had trouble with all that rain (last winter). The little lettuce just rot; it wouldn’t grow. On Christmas Eve, we had another huge storm. And the wind!
“(In summer and early fall), it gets so hot up there, everything just gets cooked,” she added. “But we’re getting to know what works up there.”
On the banks of the Sacramento River, the CalSTRS garden is much more hospitable. Originally planted two years ago, it has 10 raised beds plus more than a dozen fruit trees. It’s also been prolific; this summer, it produced 2-1/2 pounds of food per square inch.
Executive chef Conrad Caguimbal, who oversees CalSTRS’s busy cafe, enjoys growing vegetables and herbs for cafe meals. Open to the public, the cafe serves about 700 meals a day.
“I love the fact I can actually harvest my own produce, take it to the cafe and create something delicious,” Caguimbal said, “and I never get my hands dirty.”
Each week day, he creates an “Earth Bowl,” featuring fresh selections from the garden that sits just outside the cafe’s patio. Using veggies picked that morning, a recent bowl mixed together kale, zucchini and caramelized carrots with barley for a vegan entree.
“A lot of people get excited when we harvest,” he said. “They’ve been watching those tomatoes and squash grow, too.”
CalSTRS chose edible landscaping because it fits with its overall sustainability initiative, explained Madeline O’Connell, the facility’s environmental sustainability specialist. For example, the LEED-certified building recycles 40 tons of organic waste per month to make energy. (That includes waste from the garden.)
“We also use the garden for educational events,” O’Connell said. “After all, we serve teachers.”
Hermanson loves the CalSTRS garden, in part because of its location. It welcomes the building’s 1,100 workers as well as visitors and passersby.
“It’s really fun,” Hermanson said. “It’s right on the river walk. People take lunchtime rambles and stop by the garden. When we’re out there, we get a lot of questions. Is this real? Where does the produce go? (Visitors) interact – and that’s exactly the idea.”
Debbie Arrington: 916-321-1075, @debarrington
Conrad Caguimbal, executive chef at CalSTRS in West Sacramento, builds a salad from vegetables he gathered in the agency’s new edible garden. It’s on the daily menu at the CalSTRS cafeteria. Renée C. Byer rbyer@sacbee.com
Farm Bill Discontent: Urban Ag Supporters want Changes
Danielle Marvit is production manager for Garden Dreams Urban Farm and Nursery in Pittsburgh. She has serious concerns about conventional agriculture. Here, she talks with journalists during the recent annual convention of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Pittsburgh. (Jonathan Knutson/Agweek)
Farm Bill Discontent: Urban Ag Supporters want Changes
By Jonathan Knutson / Agweek Staff Writer on Oct 16, 2017
PITTSBURGH — Sonia Finn, Danielle Marvit and Raqueeb Bey are passionate about agriculture. And they believe U.S. farming practices are dangerously off course and need to be corrected, starting with the 2018 farm bill.
"The farm bill isn't right for agriculture. People need to get involved and work to change it," Finn said.
Finn is chef and owner of Dinette restaurant in Pittsburgh. Marvit is production manager of Garden Dreams Urban Farm and Nursery in Pittsburgh. Bey is project director of Black Urban Gardeners and Farmers of Pittsburgh Co-op, or BUGS-FPC, as the group calls itself.
They spoke with Agweek Oct. 4 at Garden Dreams Urban Farm and Nursery during the annual convention of the Society of Environmental Journalists. The event included a day-long session on the farm bill and urban agriculture; Finn, Marvit and Bey were among the presenters.
Though some in mainstream agriculture are skeptical of urban ag, attention is growing for the concept. U.S. local food sales totaled at least $12 billion in 2014, up from $5 billion in 2008, and experts anticipate the figure to reach $20 billion by 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Urban ag consists of "backyard, rooftop and balcony gardening, community gardening in vacant lots and parks, roadside urban fringe agriculture and livestock grazing in open space," according to USDA.
Urban ag has at least one powerful champion.
Michigan's Debbie Stabenow, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee and a key player in U.S. ag policy, last year introduced the Urban Agriculture Act of 2016. The proposal — at least some of which she hopes will be included in the 2018 farm bill — would increase research funding for urban ag, provide more access for urban farmers to USDA loans and risk management programs, and boost the development of urban farming cooperatives, among other things.
Get involved
Finn has both professional and personal interest in promoting urban ag; she grows much of the produce used by Dinette on the restaurant's roof and relies on local farms for as many ingredients as possible.
She's also determined to transform the farm bill, the centerpiece of federal food and agricultural policy. She's gone to Washington, D.C., repeatedly to lobby for her beliefs.
She insists that the existing farm bill — and mainstream ag in general — is tailored to the wants and needs of powerful corporate interests, not what's best for the overwhelming majority of Americans.
"Most people just don't understand how important the farm bill is," Finn said.
Marvit, for her part, is critical of much of America's conventionally raised food.
"It's not real food," she said.
The quarter-acre Garden Dreams Urban Garden and Nursery, established about a decade ago, seeks to promote urban ag, giving neighborhood residents more and healthier food options. It also wants to help community residents learn more about gardening and give them a peaceful place to visit.
The organic operation specializes in tomatoes, raising more than 70 varieties of tomato seedlings. It also has peppers, eggplant, flowers and other fruits and vegetables.
Local control
Bey stressed that urban agriculture gives residents of local neighborhoods greater influence over both their food supply and their lives in general.
"Neighborhoods need more control over what happens to them," Bey said.
Her own Pittsburgh neighborhood has been without a grocery store for decades, forcing its residents to travel several miles by bus to buy food, she said.
BUGS-FPC is establishing a 31,000-square-foot urban farm that will use hoop houses, also known as high tunnels, to grow food to sell at its farm stand and its farmers market, at restaurants and at a community cooperative grocery that it wants to open.
Though interest in, and awareness of, healthy food is growing, supporters of urban ag and local foods need to focus on improving the farm bill and making it friendlier to consumers, Finn said.
"It's just so important we do it," she said.
USDA's "urban agriculture toolkit" is a good starting place to learn more about urban ag:www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/urban-agriculture-toolkit.pdf.
Vertical Forests Are Returning Nature To Cities, One Skyscraper At A Time
Who on Earth decides to plant a forest on the side of skyscrapers? Architects, that’s who. Two bold designers working on opposite ends of the planet are actively designing farms, gardens and forests designed to live on massive residential buildings.
Vertical Forests Are Returning Nature To Cities, One Skyscraper At A Time
By Clayton Moore — Posted on September 23, 2017 1:00 pm
Stefano Borei Architett Vertial Forest
Who on Earth decides to plant a forest on the side of skyscrapers? Architects, that’s who. Two bold designers working on opposite ends of the planet are actively designing farms, gardens and forests designed to live on massive residential buildings. Far from simply putting a few houseplants in the office, these ambitious designs are meant to clean the air, reduce energy use to net zero, and maximize food production and quality of life.
LIFE IS SWEET IN THESE “VERTICAL FORESTS” IN MILAN, ITALY
One of these projects is already complete. The Bosco Verticale (“Vertical Forest” in Italian) is a dual skyscraper project designed by Stefano Boeri that is covered in more than 21,000 plants—a level of greenery equivalent to more than five acres of forest spread over more than 1,200 square meters.
The project has just been named one of the best tall buildings in the world. It’s a completely green design that even supports its own moderate ecosystem, including more than 20 species of birds. The massive amount of vegetation helps reduce Singapore’s moderate pollution and carbon dioxide, cleaning up the air. The plant life also diminishes noise, boosts oxygen in the air, and helps regulate the temperatures between the two towers. Internally, a complex irrigation system directs “used” water back onto the forested terraces to sustain the vegetation and reduce waste.
It’s a level of greenery equivalent to more than five acres of forest.
“Vertical Forest is a model for a sustainable residential building, a project for metropolitan reforestation contributing to the regeneration of the environment and urban biodiversity without the implication of expanding the city upon the territory,” Boeri noted on his website. “It is a model for vertical densification of nature within the city. Vertical Forest increases biodiversity, so it becomes both a magnet for and a symbol of the spontaneous re-colonization of the city by vegetation and by animal life.”
The concept earned his firm second place in the 2014 Emporis Skyscraper Award, beating out more than 120 competitors including The Leadenhall Building in the United Kingdom, the KKR Tower in Malaysia, and the Burj Mohammed Bin Rashid Tower in Abu Dhabi. Only the WangJing SOHO triple skyscraper in Beijing bested the Boeri design, awarded for “its excellent energy efficiency and its distinctive design, which gives the complex a harmonious and organic momentum.”
But this completed design isn’t the only plant-accented project on Boeri’s plate; he has a portfolio of potential and ongoing projects around the world that use urbanized plant life to make the world better for the people who live and work in his buildings.
Boeri has announced plans for two Vertical Forest projects in Nanjing, China, as well as “Liuzhou Forest City,” in mainland China, the Wonderwoods residential tower in the Netherlands, and the sprawling Guizhou Mountain Forest Hotel in Southern China. His new “Tower of Cedars” in Lausanne, Switzerland is a 36-story tower that features nearly 20,000 plants and 100 trees to protect residents from pollution and dust.
“All these projects together are important for us,” Boeri told Mashable recently. “It’s very important to completely change how these new cities are developing. Urban forestation is one of the biggest issues for me in that context. That means parks, it means gardens, but it also means having buildings with trees.”
DESIGNING THE URBAN SKYFARM
Developing concurrently is one of the most dramatic building projects in the world. The Urban Skyfarm, designed by Brooklyn-based Aprilli Design Studio and to be located in Seoul, South Korea, will house nearly 25 acres of space for growing trees, tomatoes, and other sustainable crops.
The prototype building is modeled after the iconic design of a tree, with the “root,” “trunk,” “leaves,” and “branches” components to house different aspects of the sustainable farming operation.
The “trunk” of the Urban Skyfarm will contain an indoor hydroponic farm, while the “roots” provide a wide, environmentally friendly space for farmer’s markets and public events. On top of the tower, turbines provide enough power to fuel the building operations and farming spaces in a net-zero environment. The building will also capture rainwater and filter it through a synthetic wetland before returning it as fresh water to a nearby river.
The space could efficiently host more than 5,000 fruit trees.
“With the support of hydroponic farming technology, the space could efficiently host more than 5,000 fruit trees,” architects Steve Lee and Soon Yun Park recently told Fast Company. “Vertical farming is more than an issue of economical feasibility, since it can provide more trees than average urban parks, helping resolve urban environmental issues such as air pollution, water run-off and heat island effects, and bringing back balance to the urban ecology.”
Despite a location in crowded Seoul, the Urban Skyfarm will act as a living machine by producing renewable energy and giving residents improved air quality. Reproducing the biological structure of a tree gives the design certain advantages because it is light in weight but houses enough space to host a diverse range of farming activities. The design is also intended to reduce heat buildup, rain runoff, and carbon dioxide.
The architects believe that their design can support hundreds of environmental projects and experiments and serve as a future model as to how buildings are designed, built, and used.
“We hope the Urban Skyfarm can become part of the discussions as a prototype proposal,” Lee and Park said. “Vertical farming really is not only a great solution to future food shortage problems but a great strategy to address many environmental problems resulting from urbanization.
BUILDING GARDENS IN THE SKY
Boeri and Aprilli are the furthest along in these wild, green experiments, but there are plenty of other firms thinking about how arboreal and greenery-inspired designs can help make life better and more sustainable for residents and tenants around the world.
In Southeast Asia, Vo Trang Nghia Architects are building a huge complex in Ho Cho Minh City that will feature a 90,000-square-foot facility with a rooftop garden. The firm is also working with FPT University to build a tree-lined campus that will raise an elevated forest over the 14-square-mile site.
One Central Park in Sydney features massive creeping vines that climb the building’s face as well as nearly 200 native plant species.
Back on western shores, the Rolex corporation recently broke ground on its new Dallas-based headquarters, which features landscaped terraces and a tree-lined rooftop event space. The elegant design by architect Kengo Kuma was inspired by Japanese castles.
Under construction in Los Angeles is 670 Mesquit, a 2.6 million-square-foot mixed-use project that features two massive cubes that feature landscaped terraces. This is Danish architect Bjarke Ingels’ first project in Los Angeles.
Other architects are pushing the envelope of what’s possible. Harmonia 57 is a building in Brazil designed by Triptyque that actually “breathes and sweats,” according to the designers. Plants embedded in porous concrete structures are watered with a mist that makes the building look like it’s returning to nature.
All this added greenery is a pleasant distraction from the densification of urban environments, but these designers are also redefining what it means to live in an urban landscape—and providing a fresh chance to build sustainable urban environments that help cut down on pollution while they simultaneously generate energy, biodiversity, and a breath of fresh air.
How Does the Hamptons Garden Grow? With a Lot of Paid Help
The hardest-worked muscles may be in the hand writing the checks: These lavish, made-to-order gardens can cost as much as $100,000, said Alec Gunn, a Manhattan landscape architect whose firm designs high-end residential, commercial and public-works projects throughout the country.
How Does the Hamptons Garden Grow? With a Lot of Paid Help
The vegetable garden of Alexandra Munroe and her husband, Robert Rosenkranz, in East Hampton, N.Y., is sheltered from the ocean winds by dunes covered with Rosa rugosa.
DANIEL GONZALEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
By STACEY STOWE
SEPTEMBER 5, 2017
EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. — The rigors of vegetable gardening, for most people, are humble and gritty: planting, weeding, dirtying knees, working up a sweat and maybe straining a back muscle or two.
But here on the gilded acres of Long Island’s East End, a different skill set often applies: hiring a landscape architect to design the garden, a gardener and crew to plant and pamper the beds, and sometimes even a chef to figure out what to do with the bushels of fresh produce. All that’s left is to pick the vegetables — though employees frequently do that, too.
The hardest-worked muscles may be in the hand writing the checks: These lavish, made-to-order gardens can cost as much as $100,000, said Alec Gunn, a Manhattan landscape architect whose firm designs high-end residential, commercial and public-works projects throughout the country.
The gardens that the chef Kevin Penner manages for a three-home compound in Bridgehampton, have a formal parterre design with gravel paths separating geometric planting beds, lined with trimmed boxwoods and filled with vegetables, flowers and herbs.
DANIEL GONZALEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
“And it is not the plants that are driving the cost,” Mr. Gunn said. One 2015 project of his in Southampton with a six-figure price tag includes an underground irrigation system, a potting shed, an orchard and a meadow for a cutting garden. Many gardens require expensive hedges or other barriers to protect them from ocean winds and the ubiquitous deer.
The bespoke vegetable garden, these days almost always organic, has become a particular object of desire in the Hamptons. More clients have commissioned elaborate gardens this summer than ever before, say members of the support staffs who toil on them.
“I put in 10 by July,” said Charles R. Dayton, the owner of an East Hampton landscaping company whose ancestors have owned and worked land here since 1640. “I get a kick out of it.”
About 500 farms remain on the fertile East End, even as more mansions crop up each summer on former potato fields. And the kitchen garden has been a tradition on Long Island estates since the 19th century. But today, growing your own produce is a much different enterprise on what has become some of the world’s most expensive real estate.
Two landscape architects said clients this summer had asked that their vegetables be picked, packaged and put on the Hampton Jitney for use in city kitchens. (The cost, $25 to $50 a parcel, is often more than for a passenger.) One gardener, Charlene Babinski, said she had installed a “juicing garden” for her client’s favorite liquid diets.
Then there are the hostess gifts and holiday honey for guests. “One client asked me to make 27 baskets of vegetables to give to her friends,” said Paul Hamilton, a Montauk farmer who plants and maintains seven luxe gardens.
Preserved vegetables from the garden of Carole Olshan and her husband, Morton, in East Hampton.
DANIEL GONZALEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
What’s driving the gardening bug among the affluent, gardeners say, is their clients’ focus on “self-care” — a curious phrase for a pursuit that requires so much help. Mr. Gunn said the impulse includes a “moral component.”
“There’s so much wealth,” he said. “It’s ‘Let’s take something I’ve been fortunate to have and put it back into the environment. I want to do something to reduce what I’m taking.’ ”
Christopher LaGuardia, a landscape architect based in Water Mill who designs raised beds with black locust wood for vegetables and herbs, said his clients were interested in reducing their carbon footprint by producing vegetables that don’t need to be trucked in. “Plus, they are contributing to biodiversity, pollinators,” he said. “We discourage the big lawn.”
Cabbage growing in a garden designed and tended by Paul Hamilton in East Hampton.
DANIEL GONZALEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
But others liken the professionally tended garden to a vintage car or a Hinckley yacht — yet another means of flaunting wealth.
“I think people have just run out of status symbols,” said Steven Gaines, whose 1998 book, “Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons,”tracked the peregrinations of its richest and most colorful residents. In the years since the book was published, said Mr. Gaines, who lives in Wainscott, in East Hampton, “it’s all gotten more intense — the competition has taken over in all sorts of peculiar ways.”
“God has given you too much money when you have someone else tend your vegetable garden,” he said.
FOR ALEXANDRA MUNROE, the senior curator of Asian art at the Guggenheim Museum, the roughly 5,000-square-foot vegetable garden — she calls it the Farm — just outside the 1928 neo-Palladian home she shares with her husband, Robert Rosenkranz, is “the center of the meal.”
“We feast here,” Ms. Munroe said, gesturing toward the flower-fringed vegetable garden nestled on a rise overlooking Georgica Jetty, on West End Road in East Hampton. In addition to a pool and tennis court, the property includes a billiards terrace and croquet green; a hedge of Rosa rugosa protects the garden from winds.
Mr. Hamilton plants, weeds, hand-waters and harvests the vegetable garden, while four other gardeners work on the remainder of the five-acre property, which has perennial beds, a meadow and woodland gardens designed by Ms. Munroe, who hosts self-guided tours.
Broccoli in Ms. Munroe’s East Hampton garden.
DANIEL GONZALEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
She is known to get her hands dirty. But when she arrives at the house for the weekend, there is often a basket brimming with the garden’s harvest, arranged by Mr. Hamilton or the estate manager, Robert Deets.
“There is no greater thing than eating produce that’s still warm from the sun that has never seen a refrigerator,” Ms. Munroe said.
Iris Keitel, a retired music industry executive who lives in Manhattan and on Meadow Lane in Westhampton Beach, tore up her Har-Tru tennis court two years ago and hired the organic gardener Suzanne P. Ruggles to plant alliums, Green Zebra tomatoes and a cornucopia of vegetables. Ms. Ruggles does most of the work, but Ms. Keitel picks her own vegetables.
“My friends and I come here to play,” Ms. Keitel said, standing next to a patch of blooming cardoons that resembled a Dr. Seuss creation. Ms. Keitel, who had a bat house and a bee pollinator installed near the former center court, cooks recipes like cucumber gazpacho, rainbow radishes with butter, and zucchini fritters with those friends.
At the home of Carole Olshan and her husband, Morton, trumpet vines form an arch over a bench in kitchen garden of their private chef, John Hamilton.
DANIEL GONZALEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
At the ivy-draped Further Lane home of Carole Olshan and her husband, Morton, Ms. Olshan said friends like to tour the vegetable garden designed and maintained by Mr. Hamilton and set off by a picket fence on meticulously landscaped grounds.
She said Mr. Hamilton had expanded her botanical knowledge. “We can’t call them weeds,” she said with a chuckle. “They’re native plants.”
The family chef, John Hamilton (no relation to Paul), creates meals around the seasonal offerings that Paul Hamilton brings in from the garden. A recent lunch included golden and Chioggia beets, sliced cucumbers and wasabi caviar. “I told Paul to cut the kale — so sick of it,” Ms. Olshan said.
A multicolored carpet of baby salad greens in the kitchen garden of the chef John Hamilton, at the Olshans’ home.
DANIEL GONZALEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Kevin Penner, a personal chef who headed the kitchens at Cittanuova and the 1770 House in East Hampton, manages 36 raised-bed gardens and berry bushes at a contemporary, three-home compound on Meadowlark Lane in Bridgehampton. The variety of heirloom vegetables and exotic herbs — from the buckler leaf sorrel he includes in salmon dishes to the La Ratte potatoes he uses to replicate Joël Robuchon’s potato purée — reflects Mr. Penner’s childhood on an Iowa farm and three decades as a professional cook.
“I have control over the quality of the product with this garden,” he said. “You can get lots of heirloom products, but, if you put it on a rail car the week before you get it, it’s not the same.”
Squash growing in geometric planting beds bordered by trimmed boxwood hedges in this vegetable garden in Bridgehampton.
DANIEL GONZALEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
At his waterfront estate on Oregon Road in Cutchogue, on the North Fork, a hedge fund manager stocks a cold cellar and freezer with fingerling potatoes or sauces of Brandywine tomatoes from a large vegetable garden.
The manager, who asked that his name not be used because his fund forbids employees to speak to the news media, buys his stock from Sang Lee Farms in Peconic. He plants and harvests his crop himself and with William Lee, an owner of Sang Lee; other gardeners weed.
“I came out this morning, grabbed some shishito peppers and an onion for an omelet,” the manager said. “So convenient.”
Blackberries in a caged berry garden in Bridgehampton.
DANIEL GONZALEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
One thing it is not is cost effective. “It’s a bad trade,” he said, chuckling, referring to his vegetable garden and orchard, designed by the landscape architect Stacy Paetzel, who recommended South Bay quartzite for the steps leading to the knoll-top garden and installed galvanized hardware cloth for the cedar fencing. A potting shed will include a soapstone sink and Moroccan tiles, and a raw concrete dining table will sit under a black cherry tree.
AT LEAST ONE VEGETABLE GARDEN of a high-profile Hampton resident is modest. The TV journalist Katie Couric grows a few plants each of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and potatoes in a 10-by-20-foot area facing the tennis court at her East Hampton home. She plants and harvests the patch herself, with the help of her landscaper.
At her East Hampton home, the TV journalist Katie Couric has a modest vegetable garden where, with some help, she grows tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, lettuces and herbs for use in her kitchen.
DANIEL GONZALEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Cooking the vegetables for her daughters and sharing the bounty with friends, she said, is “a real treat for me.”
“Sometimes I bring produce to friends because I hate the idea of it not being used,” she said, adding with a laugh, “but I don’t do canning — that’s not my jam.”
If there is a gardener with star quality here, it may well be Paul Hamilton. The seven vegetable gardens he plants and maintains help supplement his other pursuits: playing guitar in a gypsy jazz band, surfing, and farming two acres that supply his clients and a stand in the Springs section of East Hampton, not far from Jackson Pollock’s former home.
The garden consultant Paul Hamilton and his son Walker with a day’s bounty, including squash, beets, carrots, kale, peppers and broccoli, all harvested from Ms. Munroe’s oceanside vegetable garden.
DANIEL GONZALEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Mr. Hamilton, 57, who looks a little like James Taylor, is something of a guru for his wealthy clients, but he has a low-key style. He works barefoot, sometimes in an unbuttoned, well-worn shirt, sometimes with the help of his two sons and stepdaughter. There’s a palpable difference between his bohemian bearing and his bejeweled clients. But he accepts it pragmatically.
“Look, this is the economy out here,” he said. “These projects, these houses, are how most of us make a living.” With the blessing of those who hire him, he delivers surplus produce from their gardens to the East Hampton Senior Center.
Teaching the next generation to appreciate growing one’s own food is important for Ms. Babinski, a professional gardener whose family began operating a farm stand in Water Mill in the early 1970s.
“When a child pulls up a carrot from under the ground for the first time, you can’t beat that smile,” she said.
But Ms. Babinski said she had seen the initial excitement of a vegetable garden fade for some clients.
“They lose interest, though, after they’re planted,” she said. “It’s the same thing with the chickens. They say, ‘I have to have chickens, so I can tell my friends,’ but they end up giving the eggs to the help.”
Lawn Island Farms: Babylon Couple Turns Yards Into Crops
Lawn Island Farms: Babylon Couple Turns Yards Into Crops
Jim and Rosette Adams of Babylon are on a mission to bring locally grown food to Long Islanders tables, by growing it in their front yards.
The Adams’ fledgling company, Lawn Island Farms, has been growing produce and selling it to farmer’s markets and local businesses for about a year, but their unique approach has attracted national media attention. They tout the health benefits of locally grown vegetables.
“Unfortunately too many people don’t even realize how corrupted or compromised [their produce is],” Jim said, noting cancer-causing pesticides as one of the most pressing concerns related to factory farming.
Jim got the idea for the company after he met his wife, Rosette, in her home country of Uganda 10 years ago. There, he came to appreciate how she grew up in a culture of self-sustained farming.
“She has the experience from growing up in Uganda and I got to see, kind of, the world through her eyes when she came here and that changed me a lot,” Jim said.
This fresh perspective also alerted Jim to the perils of not knowing exactly where our food is coming from and how it’s being produced. After reading The Urban Farmer, he was inspired to begin farming locally. The book details how people can convert their property into a sustainable and profitable food source.
“There are over 40 million acres of lawn in North America,” the book’s website states. “In their current form, these unproductive expanses of grass represent a significant financial and environmental cost. However, viewed through a different lens, they can also be seen as a tremendous source of opportunity.”
Jim and Rosette brought this idea to Jack Jack’s Coffee House in Babylon, where owners Mike Sparacino and Vanessa Viola pointed them to a community farm behind St. Peter’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church, effectively giving them the idea to launch Lawn Island Farms.
The Adams’ then hung a sign in that same coffee shop asking for anyone with enough land to let them convert their lawns into crops, which led them to Bay Shore resident Cassandra Trimarco.
For the price of $30 of produce a week as well as free landscaping, Ms. Trimarco allowed the Adams’ to transform the front lawn of her Hyman Avenue home into a miniature farm. The reactions of the community were varied, with some neighbors complaining that the lawn was now an eyesore.
“We did get, in the beginning, a lot of gossip going around,” Jim said of the initial controversy surrounding the converted lawn. But that attention was what would eventually raise their profile.
“That’s when CBS News and Fox came by,” he recalled. “That was the story, because it was controversial.”
Currently, the Adams’ hyper-local farming endeavor consists of the land behind St. Peter’s and Trimarco’s yard, with the produce being sold to the Bay Shore Farmer’s Market and the Sayville Farmer’s Market, as well as Henley’s Village Tavern in Bay Shore, Empowering Goods in Lindenhurst, as well as Jack Jack’s, where it all began.
Jim and Rosette have also begun to take a more tech savvy approach to their business. Lawn Island Farms can now be found on the Farmzie app, which seeks to create a network of small farmers and increase small farm sustainability. Users can connect to Lawn Island and buy produce directly from them. They also offer restaurants a grow-to-order option in order to better suit their specific needs.
Lawn Island Farms’ approach to local farming has garnered interest from people all over the island, with inquiries coming in from Patchogue, Port Jeff, Middle Island, Wading River and elsewhere. But at the moment, the Adams’ simply can’t meet the demand on their own.
“My plate is full, I’ve gotten a lot of offers which is amazing, but I hardly have time to even go look at them,” Jim said of the outpouring of requests they’ve received. That’s why they want others to take action and begin growing food on their own.
“I want more people to do it, because it’s not just about us and our business,” he said. “It’s about local food for the people.”
To learn more about converting your lawn into a sustainable food source check out the website of Jim and Rosette’s friend Linda Borghi, Farm-A-Yard.com
Glasgow’s Community Gardens: Sustainable Communities of Care
Glasgow’s Community Gardens: Sustainable Communities of Care
Community gardens are not yet embedded in place or institutions – their immediate future is precarious in many cases.
Dr John Crossan
Professor Deirdre Shaw
Professor Andrew Cumbers
Professor Robert McMaste
University of Glasgow 2015
Excerpt:
The potential for community gardening is high in old industrial cities where the loss of manufacturing industry has resulted in vast areas of unused spaces. Glasgow is a particularly pertinent case with 1300 hectares of vacant and derelict land, representing 4% of its total land area and comprising 925 individual sites. As a result over 60% of Glasgow City’s population lives within 500 metres, and over 90% within 1000 metres, of a derelict site. This is important when considering issues of social and environmental justice, as most of the vacant and derelict land can be found in the most deprived areas of the city, thus, disproportionately affecting the poorest citizens (see Map 1).
These communities “are already suffering from higher than expected rates of many diseases, do not enjoy long life expectancy, and have to bear the stress of poverty and other forms of deprivation” (Maantay 2012). As well as brownfield sites Glasgow’s community gardens are located on underused public and private green spaces. These include grassed areas, city meadows and locations within existing public parks.
A number of funding initiatives in recent years have made community gardening projects more accessible to Glasgow’s residents. Funding initiatives are geared towards a variety of outcomes. These include: initiatives aimed at ‘grassroots’ regeneration of derelict and underused city spaces; initiatives concerned with environmental sustainability, such as increasing biodiversity in the urban environment and increasing carbon catchment areas through tree planting and local food growing projects. Also pertinent to community gardens are a number of initiatives aimed at promoting healthy eating and “green-exercise”. The main organisations funding community gardens in Glasgow are listed in Table 1.
See paper.
Hydroponics – Future of Urban Food | CV Prakash | TEDxPESITBSC
Hydroponics – Future of Urban Food | CV Prakash | TEDxPESITBSC
Posted on August 16, 2017 by adminlfad
Simplified Hydroponics – Who Can Grow?
Where can you grow?
Why?
Grow Local, Eat Local.
Lt. Cdr CV Prakash is a former underwater weapons specialist of the elite Submarine arm of the Indian Navy.
Upon retirement CV learnt Hydroponics from the best of growers in Australia and is a pioneer in the field of Hydroponics in India. A hands-on Grower, Food Park designer, Auditor & Trainer in Hydroponics, CV’s “Pet Bharo Project” is credited for India’s first commercial hydroponically grown strawberries, spinach and herbs.
He is credited for building India’s first state-of-the-art Hydroponics Greenhouse and is one of the most widely read academic paper authors. His mission is clear- to bring simple yet sustainable technology that can help almost everybody grow clean, residue free, nutritious food. The best part about his technology being that it has very little entry barriers and reaches the poorest of the poor.
He believes that “it’s not enough to just have know how, but one must do how and show how”.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
Posted in Hydroponics · Tagged English, Food, Gardening, Global issues, Health, india, plants, TEDxTalks
At A Chicago Embassy Suites, Sky Garden Is As Local As It Gets
At A Chicago Embassy Suites, Sky Garden Is As Local As It Gets
Tuesday August 8th, 2017 - 9:00AM
Sky Garden at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Chicago Downtown Magnificent Mile
CHICAGO—The hotel industry has embraced the farm-to-table movement, so much so, it’s no longer a novel idea but a practical way to source fresh ingredients locally and strengthen the guest’s connection to the land. From an onsite rooftop garden to a vertical hydroponic farm, it’s as local as local food gets.
The Embassy Suites by Hilton Chicago Downtown Magnificent Mile is taking the concept a step further by getting the food up close and personal with guests. The 455-all-suite hotel has turned its atrium into a greenhouse of sorts, to herald the arrival of its new Sky Garden and herb collection. Care to pinch a sprig of mint as you wheel your bags through the atrium? The hotel calls it a “direct to fork” approach.
“We have an amazing atrium with loads of natural light; it is one of the most striking features of the hotel. We were crafting a marketing message that would take that into account in our guest interactions," said Mike Rogers, director of sales & marketing for the hotel. Simultaneously, General Manager Konstantine Drosos attended a meeting on repurposing vacant buildings for urban farming. "When we put our heads together, we realized these were complementary concepts and could become something of an urban greenhouse, creating an opportunity for our guests to interact with a green space 365 days a year,” Rogers said. “Coinciding with our discussions on our greenhouse idea, we happened to be working with a client who does exactly this sort of thing—DIRTT Environmental Solutions. We approached them about feasibility, took a walk around their showroom and it took off from there.”
The Sky Garden was built by DIRTT Environmental Solutions, a provider specializing in prefabricated interior design components. DIRTT stands for “Do It Right This Time.” The company puts a strong focus on supporting the environment and people, as much as functional design, noted Rogers. The construction was customized to the hotel’s needs and specs and contains largely modular components, providing opportunities to evolve the space to keep it relevant.
“We wanted the Sky Garden to be a touchpoint, something for everyone to celebrate as they see fit rather than forcing it on our guests. For our chefs, this means herb-centric banquet menus and herb-focused enhancements to our cooked-to-order breakfast and evening reception,” he said. “While seasonality influences the primary components of our menus, the herbs themselves can be a consistent component adapted seasonally. For example, rosemary and watermelon agua fresca in summer can give way to rosemary biscuits in the winter.”
Unlike outdoor gardens, which are seasonal in many climates, the indoor Sky Garden promises to be a year round opportunity to engage with guests.
“There are two distinct trends that influenced this project. First, micro-sourcing is everywhere. We wanted to try to cut out the middle man and instead of farm-to-table, came up with a way to connect direct-to-fork across multiple touchpoints that fit within the Embassy Suites Brand Pillars. This presented opportunities with both our evening reception and our cooked-to-order breakfast,” he said. “Second, while there is an almost instinctual desire to eat 'al fresco,' the other trend we were keying on is the rooftop garden. In Chicago, these gardens are prevalent, but are also often inaccessible to guests and only in bloom for part of the year. The Sky Garden allows us to repurpose the atrium in a way that keeps it activated 365 days a year—come rain, snow, sleet or shine.”
Training associates how to share the Sky Garden with guests varies by department, with each group getting involved in a way that helps to connect the dots. Team gatherings were hosted in the atrium for sales, catering, concierge and culinary teams to ensure operational teams were involved and experienced the herbs, food and beverage. “To help take that story home—literally—and make it part of people’s lives, we gave out basil seeds to our housekeeping team. Our mantra to our clients and colleagues is to ‘cultivate your senses,’” Rogers said.
It’s not uncommon for a staff member to tear off pieces of mint or basil to highlight the smell and experience of the Sky Garden, which is there to activate all of the senses during a visit.
“We discourage actually eating the herbs directly, as they have not been washed or treated for consumption,” he said. “The fixture is permanent and we strategically located the herbs in the top two rows of the wall to ensure our younger guests wouldn’t be too tempted to get into things.”
A courtyard of faux bamboo in the hotel’s atrium has been turned into a real garden, but the story branches out in many directions from there.
“Whether it is the F&B experience onsite, a recipe to take home, or the DIY herb planters we hand out to our VIPs as gifts, there are so many ways to continue the story,” he said. “Philosophically, I have always felt herbs and the hospitality industry are a natural fit; the same way herbs enhance a dish, the right hotel team enhances people’s special moments, be it a wedding, vacation, key business meeting or any number of things. The Sky Garden is the embodiment of what we do at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Chicago Downtown Magnificent Mile.”
—Corris Little
Grow, Eat, and Learn With Urban Roots
Grow, Eat, and Learn With Urban Roots
Want to learn more?
If interested in getting involved with Urban Roots, visit their website at urbanrootsgr.org or stop by their office and farm at 1316 Madison Ave SE Grand Rapids, MI 49507.
Megan Sarnacki
8/11/17 02:40pm - LOCAL LIFE
Founder and Executive Director of Urban Roots, Levi Gardner, shares his thoughts on what urban farming means to him and how the community can get involved.
/Urban Roots
/Urban Roots
As Founder and Executive Director of Urban Roots, what does an average day on the job look like?
/Urban Roots
I try to start most of my days with yoga if I can and then I have breakfast. I used to skip over those things and now I find that if I don’t do them in that order, my day doesn’t work out very well. After that, there’s no such thing as an average day. I could be spending some time with my staff imagining or executing programs or meeting with members of my board. Today, I will be working at two different gardens teaching classes and workshops. The thing that I love the most about being an executive director is I feel like the conductor of a symphony and all of the various pieces are playing together and the goal is harmony. So, whether that’s working on something that’s short term or seeing into what the long term goals are or developing or envisioning strategy, I get to do that and set the things in motion. Now, since it’s summer, I get to play as well so it’s a lot time growing, thinking, imagining, dreaming, teaching, and eating.
What is your favorite part about working for Urban Roots?
Because the job is taxing, it takes a lot from me and from my family. Through our mobile classroom program or occasionally here, we just have really beautiful moments of the simple things like weeding, watering, cultivation, or pruning, the things that got me started in all of this. Last week, we sifted our first batch of compost from our bike powered compost service and it was just beautiful. It’s those moments where I actually get to touch, taste, or see the things that we are doing and not just be at a desk. I did this because I didn’t want a desk job, but I still found myself relegated at a desk sometimes. So, any of the time where I can be doing the human work is the most fulfilling for me.
How did your compost collection service come about?
This neighborhood, this community, and this land has been subjected to what's called disinvestment, which means resources being pulled out. When we define resources we don’t only mean dollars, we mean intellectual capital, experiential capital, social capital, and natural capital, which can be in the form of soil fertility. One of the questions was how do we get more resources here while simultaneously addressing a problem and a need people have which is where do I throw my organic matter because just going to the trash and being burnt in the incinerator feels like a huge waste of resources. We looked at two different problems and thought there’s actually an opportunity here for us to collect and capture resources that we can compost. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s just gorgeous and most people on their home scale wouldn’t be able to make that happen. We pick up compost once a week, and since launching the program in April we’re at about 4,500 pounds of waste. Our goal for 2018 is 100,000 pounds of waste. That’s what we really want to get to and thus far, the responses have been amazing for people to spend $4 to $5 a week to have their compost go to something that is not the trash and build soil fertility at an urban farm while teaching people. That’s success all the way around.
Why do you hold free, farm fresh dinners at your open houses?
When you say the words farm to table, often that means it’s a very elitist, exclusive club. There’s some amazing farm to table restaurants in town that we love, and they charge a good amount because they are worth it and they value their employees and farmers. Unfortunately, farm to table sometimes doesn’t mean everybody is invited. To invite our community whether that be volunteers, donors, literal neighborhood members, and collaborators to an event and do something as simple and benign, but also something as transformational as share a meal felt like a really good idea so we do three of them a year. Our next one is coming up Friday, August 25th, and it’s just a chance for people to go share a meal together. The last one we had 80 or so people come in, and again eating a meal is this thing we all do all the time and yet we feel as if it can be transformational on how we think about place, economy, soil and food. They’ve been beautiful and we’ve loved doing them.
What other activities can people do at the open houses?
One of the things we’ve invited people to do is to just walk around, learn, see, and visualize. We have a very specific way of doing things and we’re constantly learning, but we want to invite people into growing, eating, and learning together. The meals are a specific time to eat together, but we also want to invite people to grow and learn together so every question from “What does compost look like? What is soil fertility? What is interplanting? What are the appropriate planting and harvesting dates for x, y, z crop?” There’s so much of what we call ecological literacy or agricultural literacy, which is the same way people can be literate to read a book, a person can be literate to read a farm, and we want to invite people into not tilling up land, but rather harvesting them as spring greens and throwing them in a salad because they are absolutely delicious and they pop up anywhere there is cultivated ground. Those are the sorts of things that are beautiful and wonderful to learn together as a community, and we define community really broadly to mean anyone that grows, eats, or learns together with us.
Do many people come to your open houses asking how to start their own garden?
Yeah, oh all the time! To be honest, there are very few people who don’t want a garden. It’s deeply ingrained in the human experience to want to touch and taste things that are real, whether it be wine that is connected to the vineyard, a salad, or even eating an artisanal bread and knowing that has a story connected to wheat which has a story connected to a farm. We all want that, very few people want to eat something out of a box that has no story. We want to grow those things too. Somebody can tell you the value of a carrot is 25 cents, but to the kid who planted the seed, watered it, cultivated it, and harvested it that thing is worth a hundred dollars because it’s the most amazing thing ever. I say a hundred dollars only cause that’s as abstract to the kid as the value of growing the carrot because he or she knows that it’s valuable. A lot of people want to learn and we’re continuing to learn as well. It's been incredibly valuable and we want to grow and learn with our community.
How can people get involved at Urban Roots?
You know, there’s always something. We have group service learning where we have groups come out for a workshop or a work experience and then share a meal together. We have volunteers here all the time, whether it's hilling potatoes, repairing bio-boxes, or preparing land for a shed. One of the things that is beautiful about cultivation is that it’s in perpetuity. You’re always cultivating as opposed to construction where you build a thing and it's mostly done other than tweaks. Cultivation is constantly happening because nature is constantly emerging new things. There is always something to be done here and there’s always a way to learn more.
Why should groups come to Urban Roots for service learning?
The idea of service learning is a popular one that’s starting has emerged in the academic community, which says volunteerism is a one sided thing, it’s not a transactional relationship. What we’re understanding now is that actually everything is the opportunity to be able to serve and learn so it’s mutually beneficial. In ecological terms, we would say its symbiotic that there's a symbiosis, a relationship between the two things. Sometimes people will say, “Hey, we want to volunteer,” but we’ll say, “Actually, you don’t just want to volunteer because you don’t just want to give yourself. You want a mutually beneficial relationship, which means you invest in something and you have something invested into you.” That’s the most beautiful relationship. I was reading a book on happiness that said this research coming out of Harvard said that people don’t want to be underpaid or overpaid relationally. They want equitable payment and equitable relationships. People come here and they get to give us a small donation to cover the time and cost and like I said, a tour where they learn some things, a work experience where they can contribute to something, and then a meal. That’s a great experience to learn more about themselves, their humanity, and the earth and to contribute to something good.
What do you think the future holds for urban farms?
Cultivation, which is the ongoing working of the land, is a constantly unfolding process. There's something in ecology called dynamic stability, which seems like a contradiction in terms cause stability feels like it means something is not moving and dynamic means it's changing. An urban farm can contribute to the tapestry of dynamic stability for any metropolitan region, which means things are always changing, evolving, and moving, but hopefully a growth towards redemption, reconciliation, restoration of ourselves and other humans, of ourselves and the earth, and of ourselves and our food, sun, soil, and water. My hope for Urban Roots is that we can contribute to a Grand Rapids that is a thriving one and not just thriving for certain people and certain areas, but thriving for all people. It is our human right to have healthy water, healthy soil, healthy air, safe homes, and community joy, and whatever way an urban farm like Urban Roots can contribute to the tapestry we want to be a part of that. Thich Nhat Hanh, zen Buddhist monk, has an excerpt where he says that the garbage and the rose interare. When you are creating garbage, you can see the rose in it, and when you are growing the rose, you can see the garbage in it. He’s obviously talking about compost and organic matter, and literally last week I had a group of students where I held up what used to be banana peels, coffee grounds, and food scraps and put it on a carrot that in four weeks from now I will be eating. You’ve never seen the growth of something that is going to sustain your body in your trash in that way. As humans, we are incredibly complex and so much of industrialism has pushed us away from our humanity, rather than reconcile us with the things that make us humans, and my hope is that Urban Roots and urban farming in general can restore the beauty that is our humanity.
As a community farm, market, and education center, there is always something happening at Urban Roots. On August 17th, there will be a “Compost You Can Really Do” workshop from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m., where you can learn all about how to decrease your waste. Three times a year, Urban Roots also hosts open houses where everyone is invited to learn more about the organization and share a free meal together. The next open house will be on August 25th from 4:00 - 8:00 p.m. and is kid and family friendly. On September 20th, Urban Roots will hold its first fundraising event on the farm. For $50, there will be a five-course meal made by Jeremy Paquin, the head chef from Grove, and it is a chance to gather together as a community and support Urban Roots.
About: Megan Sarnacki (Megan Sarnacki)
Megan is a student at Aquinas College studying Communications. She enjoys writing and learning about all aspects of entertainment, media, and culture.
Nine Tours Offered At The 20th Annual Detroit Tour of Urban Farms And Gardens
Nine Tours Offered At The 20th Annual Detroit Tour of Urban Farms And Gardens
MONDAY, JULY 24, 2017 | Plum Street Farm | MARVIN SHAOUNI
Detroit has an impressive number of urban farms -- over 1,500 according to Keep Growing Detroit -- a number that has grown significantly in recent years. But the the urban farm "movement" has been alive in the city for some time, as demonstrated by the fact that the 20th Annual Detroit Tour of Urban Gardens and Farms takes place August 2.
Presented by Keep Growing Detroit, patrons can take one of nine bus and bike tours organized by theme and location. For example, a west side bus tour, called "Making Institutional Change," will swing by D-Town Farm, Detroit Public School's Charles R. Drew Transition Center, and Knagg's Creek Farm to demonstrate "how farms are inspiring systemic changes in our community."
Other tours will highlight black-led farms, farms with a focus on youth development, the history of urban farming in Detroit, and more.
All the tours will begin in Eastern Market at 6:00 p.m. and last approximately two hours. Afterwards, there will be a reception with local produce cooked by local chefs.
Keep Growing Detroit, an urban agriculture organization dedicated to food sovereignty in Detroit, hopes to not only showcase these farms, but educate attendees about Detroit's food system.
"We demand healthy, green, affordable, fair, and culturally appropriate food that is grown and made by Detroiters for Detroiters," writes the organization in a press release. "Transforming our broken food system begins with ensuring there are places to grow food in every neighborhood in the city. Places where residents can dig their hands in the soil to cultivate a healthy relationship to food, learn healthy habits from family and neighbors, and nurture an economically viable city where residents are strong and thrive."
The 20th Annual Detroit Tour of Urban Gardens and Farms takes place August 2 at 6:00 p.m. Purchase tickets at the Eventbrite page.