New Stories From 'Urban Agriculture Notes'
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Bulb Farming

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Teruo Miyagawa’s bulbs.

Growing out of incandescent light bulbs

Teruo Miyagawa
At Tokai University
Faculty of Challenge Center

Teruo made these himself in response to Toshiba halting production of the incandescent bulb after 120 years. His concern is the number of these bulbs that will end up in the garbage.

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April 25, 2010   No Comments

Manga farming

manga

Using old manga as a growing medium for vegetables

Tokyo-based artist Koshi Kawachi recently demonstrated his “Manga Farming” technique — which uses old manga as a growing medium for vegetables — by cultivating a crop of radish sprouts in an installation at the Matsuzakaya department store in Nagoya.

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April 25, 2010   No Comments

New Book – Manual of Low/No-Space Agriculture – Family Business Gardens

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Manual of Low/No-Space Agriculture

Book by Dr. Thilak T. Ranasinghe
Dr. Thilak T. Ranasinghe, Former Director of Agriculture, Western Province, Sri Lanka
Review in the Sunday Times – Sri Lanka
April 25, 2010

It is predicted that the world population will rise to ten billion by 2050. At present, some 15 million square kilometres or around one-tenth of total land area of the earth is used for farming. In October, 2009, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany along with their colleagues from Sweden noted that global agricultural production could increase by around one-fifth by adopting better management practices, especially water management.

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April 25, 2010   No Comments

Village community fruit & vegetable-growing co-operative in England named Grace and Flavour

graceWonderful set of photos showing the clearing of the land for the garden here.

East and West Horsley are small villages in Surrey, England.

Notes from the head gardener – Pete
Grace and Flavour
April 2010

Well, our first major activity in the Community Garden on 26th and 27th March saw some sadness and some success.

Our success? Well 51 people, age range teens to seventies, spent 292.5 hours over the two days and we planted 175 International Kidney seed potatoes (25 sq m) by 5:30 pm on 27th. (They are really Jersey Royals but we can’t call them that unless they have been grown on Jersey ). That doesn’t sound a lot does it? Well let me tell you what we had to do to achieve this modest planting.

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April 25, 2010   No Comments

Former President Bill Clinton highlights a network of sustainable urban gardens in earthquake-ravaged Haiti

clintonUniversity of Miami student Camille Kremer, right, and Florida International University student Ann Marie Warmenhoven are honored by Clinton. “You really do have the power to change the world, and you don’t have to be wealthy to do it,” Clinton told an audience of more than 5,200 people, most of them students, who had gathered at the arena for the opening plenary address of his Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) meeting.

Rasin Lavil Bay Lavi (Urban Roots Give Life) Haiti

Clinton used the Commitment to Action to honour two students to inspire the audience. Urban Roots Give Life, a project of Camille Kremer and Ann Marie Warmenhoven, will establish sustainable urban gardens in Shada, Cap-Hatien, providing a source of local, homegrown food for a nation that imports half of the food it consumes despite having fertile soil.

Their project is especially important to Cap-Hatien, Clinton said, because the region has experienced a massive influx of internal refugees who fled Port-au-Prince in search of better living conditions after the quake destroyed much of the capital’s infrastructure.

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April 25, 2010   3 Comments