Posts from — April 2011

An E-book

By Sharon and Andrew Cooper
Queensland, Australia
3/31/2011

“The award winning horticulturists Sharon and Andrew Cooper from Queensland, Australia go public with their top secrets on how to easily grow a vegetable garden that provides maximum nutrition at a minimum price. Their newly released book, Our Vegetable Garden Secrets, is a simple, practical and complete source of information that provides all you need to know about preparing soil, caring for plants, protecting from disease and pests, and as a result, growing vegetables that are 40-60% more nutritious than their supermarket alternative.

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Kitchen Gardeners International asks new group of high-profile people for donations

“Two years ago, gardeners helped inspire the First Family to plant a garden at the White House. This year, we’re asking to a new group of high-profile people to support the garden cause.”

Q: What is this all about?

The Fork It Over Campaign seeks to strengthen the global homegrown movement by 1) raising awareness about food gardens and their many social and environmental benefits and 2) raising funds that will allow us to help more people around the world to grow their own healthy food.

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The Prince has turned his Château de la Bourdaisière in Touraine into a high-end destination with its National Conservatory of Tomatoes (650 varieties) and historical vegetable and medicinal gardens.

The Prince Gardener Louis Albert de Broglie
Monday, May 2 at 7pm, 2011
Part of a series “Art de Vivre: Gardens for Gourmets”
by the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF)

Founder of the luxury garden brand Le Prince Jardinier and owner of the renowned natural science institution Deyrolle, de Broglie will discuss the rise of garden tourism and biodiversity in 21st-century gardens. He will appear in conversation with Roger Doiron, head of Kitchen Gardeners International and a lead activist behind Michelle Obama’s kitchen garden at the White House. FIAF Members, $20, Non-Members $25.

Excerpt about the Prince:

The recent story of Louis Albert de Broglie is very much linked with his interaction with the Château de la Bourdaisière that he bought with his brother in 1991.

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Erica Lemieux turns the soil in a garden she is creating in a neighbour’s backyard. The garden is one of eight she has obtained access to by handing out flyers in her neighbourhood (High Park and Parkdale). Photo by Tara Walton, Toronto Star.

“I want to show urban farming can be a for-profit business.”

By Catherine Porter
Toronto Star
Apr 6, 2011

Excerpt:

Erica Lemieux’s farm is in a High Park backyard. Eight of them, to be precise. Cobbled together, that makes for a quarter-acre.

“The backyards here are just asking to be farmed,” she says, leading me around to the back of a giant house on High Park Ave. and down its long yard, where she is double-digging beds for her first crop of vegetables.

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Minneapolis/St. Paul.

“Folks are realizing that this isn’t a Democratic or Republican issue.”

By Madeleine Baran,
Minnesota Public Radio
April 7, 2011

Excerpt:

Minneapolis, Minn. — Farmers looking for land to grow food to sell may have another option.

A plan to expand urban agriculture in Minneapolis passed the city’s zoning and planning committee on Thursday, opening the door for farmers to turn vacant lots into commercial farms.

Minneapolis is already home to community gardens and farmers markets, but the city lacked definitions or regulations of land used to grow and sell food. Urban agriculture supporters said that made it impossible to get approval for innovative farming projects.

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My Garden Bag

At this time of year, our Compost Hotline in Vancouver receives lots of calls from residents who want to buy soil or compost for their gardens. We have to scramble to update our resource list so we can advise people about the various soil mixes that are on the market.

Most people who order a large quantity of soil will receive it as a pile dumped off the back of a truck. MyGardenBag.com is something different.

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Richmond Virginia community gardens.

City property to be developed into community gardens

March 29, 2011

Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ proposed ordinance of offering City property to non-profit organizations, civic associations, community groups, and other eligible entities to be developed into community gardens was unanimously approved by Richmond City Council last night. The new ordinance requires the creation of a permit process to enable certain parcels of City-owned real estate to be used for community gardens.

“This program allows the City to offer its residents something with immeasurable value – the opportunity to grow healthy food in their own neighborhoods,” said Mayor Jones. “This in turn creates a cycle of healthy behavior throughout the community. Neighbors will not only become healthier through the foods they eat, they will also get to know each other, strengthening community ties. Children will get to see where food comes from and be more excited about eating a healthy diet. Residents will take back vacant lots from possible criminal behavior and businesses will want to locate to these vibrant, safe, healthy neighborhoods.”

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Nokia – HK Honey from The Silentlights on Vimeo.

Hong Kong honey

Directed by Kiku Ohe.
Produced by Exit Films as part of Nokia’s E7 Success Redefined campaign.
(Brilliant video. Mike)

Hong Kong is home to more than 7 million people. Amongst the high rise apartments, product designer Michael Leung founder of HK Honey, has created his own space bringing nature back into the metropolis one box at a time.

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The 3,000 square meter greenhouse atop the roof of Lufa Farms.

Lufa Farms is already set to open another greenhouse on a city rooftop, five times larger than the original.

Excerpt:

By Geraldine Woessner (AFP)
RTE News
April 6, 2011

MONTREAL — A Montreal company is eagerly awaiting a crop of tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs grown in a vast greenhouse perched on top of an office building, and billed as the world’s first rooftop garden farm.

“Our vision is a city of rooftop farms,” says the Lufa Farms website of the gardens nestled above the Canadian metropolis, as it mourns the loss of good farm land due to commercial development and urban sprawl.

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“You’ve been awarded a Best of Green Award in our Food & Health category!”

See the award page here.

Mr & Mrs Vinegar. Illustration by Arthur Rackham. From the book ‘English Fairy Tales’, first published 1918.

I have often heard the pleasant sound of the spade even by moonlight.

By George Johnson
The Cottage Gardener
Volume 4, London
1850

Excerpt:

There is some spare time for labourers, in the long days when work is over, that might be profitably spent in cultivating vegetables; and this makes it sad to see idle men and boys lounging in a village street, having nothing to occupy their evening hours. The allotments, indeed, where they exist at all, employ many who frequently toil on them till it is quite dark; and I have often heard the pleasant sound of the spade even by moonlight. But still, in a populous village there are a great number who really have no ground to till, except, perhaps, an atom of damp earth behind their dwellings. It would be a work of ‘rational’, doubly-beneficial charity – a means of doing unspeakable good – to let, or rent for the purpose of letting, to the poor pieces of land near every village; so that as many as possible, if not all the cottagers, should have a portion of ground to cultivate. Industrious characters would thus be materially assisted in providing for their families, and men of lazy habits ‘might’ be encouraged to amend.

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Garden melody: Michael Leapman tests out some tunes on his seedlings. Photo: Carla Molden.

Do veg thrive on Verdi, will flowers blossom if they hear Handel? As The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra release a CD to encourage growth in the garden, Michael Leapman finds out if plants really do love the sound of music.

By Michael Leapman
The Telegraph
05 Apr 2011

Excerpt:

In 2003 some more serious South Korean researchers undertook a large project concentrating on two staples of the oriental diet, cucumber and Chinese cabbage. They played to them what they described as “green” sounds, combining classical music with noises that the plants might be expected to encounter in real life, such as bird calls and rushing water. They discovered that the effect of sound waves was to make the cabbages absorb more oxygen than those that had been raised in silence, with a consequently beneficial effect on their protein levels; but they appeared to have no effect on the cucumbers.

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Merry Farming Kit

By Michael Keferl
Japan Trends
April 4, 2011

The project’s Merry Farming Kit is a mini urban gardening kit that uses plastic bottle caps as planters for bean sprouts. All that’s included are seeds and a compressed piece of soil that fits perfectly into a cap from a PET bottle. It’s a simple idea combining agriculture with recycling, but could be a good idea for brands to take up themselves to promote ecology for packaging after use.

See more here.

The great thing about our model is that you can get a great amount of food with doing a small amount of work.

By Buffalo Rising
Apr 4, 2011

Excerpt:

BRO interview with Jessica Lang of Cold Spring Cooperative Farm:

BRO: When was the farm started?

Jessica: The farm was started in Spring of 2009.

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The club intends to provide as many green spaces as possible for NYU students

By Yingying Yu
Washington Square News
April 3, 2011

Exceprt:

Right behind the Citibank on LaGuardia Place and West Third Street is a small space in Washington Square Village dedicated to growing squash, peppers, cucumbers and Brussels sprouts — all tended by environmentally conscious NYU students.

The Community Agriculture Club, a recent recipient of the President’s Service Award, was the original brainchild of Gallatin alumni Zoe Abram and Rachel Greenspan. The club went on hiatus in 2009. Current president and CAS senior Christine Johnson said she decided to revive CommunityAg after hearing Jeremy Friedman speak during one of her sustainability class lectures. Friedman helped her get the club up and running again with the help of dedicated executive board members.

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Documentary film in theatres spring 2011

“Of the 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees.”

What Are the Bees Telling Us? is a profound, alternative look at the global bee crisis from Taggart Siegel, director of THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN. Taking us on a journey through the catastrophic disappearance of bees and the mysterious world of the beehive, this engaging and ultimately uplifting film weaves an unusual and dramatic story of the heartfelt struggles of beekeepers, scientists and philosophers from around the world including Michael Pollan, Gunther Hauk and Vandana Shiva. Together they reveal both the problems and the solutions in renewing a culture in balance with nature.

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Pastor Megan Rohrer helps plant vegetables in the Urban Farming community garden near San Francisco Civic Center. “Gardens are some of the most self-care devices that we have,” Rohrer said. “It gets you kind of rooted to the environment.” Photo by Joe Rosato Jr.

“Our legislation would place San Francisco at the forefront of urban agriculture policies nationwide.”

By: Brent Begin
Sf Examiner Staff Writer
Mar 28, 2011

The Board of Supervisors is one step closer to turning the phrase “down on the farm” on its ear.

“Urban agriculture” legislation sponsored by Mayor Ed Lee and Board of Supervisors President David Chiu would update zoning regulations to explicitly permit gardens in all areas of The City and allow for the sale of produce from those gardens.

The legislation breezed through the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee on Monday.

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Green revolution Gynaecologist Deepali Prabhat and entrepreneur Vipul Sanghvi prepare compost soil at Maharashtra Nature Park. Photo by Vikas Munipalle.

Across Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru, a movement is taking roots: citydwellers growing food on terraces, balconies and wall spaces.

By Sunaina Kumar
Tehelka Magazine
Apr 2, 2011

Excerpt:

There is nothing unusual about the Bandra street — cramped, grimy, choked by traffic — that Adrienne Thadani lives in. Up above, though, on the terrace of Thadani’s building, the cheerily painted walls offer the perfect setting to her rooftop garden. Here grow crisp lettuce, cucumber, spinach, okra and ripe red cherry tomatoes. The fresh fruits and vegetables here look sprightly, as if a testimony to the audacity of hope.

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Circular Symbiosis – tower provides healthy environment for livestock

By Lee dongjin, Park Jinkyu, Lee Jeongwoo
South Korea
Via Evolo
March 30, 2011

“In the last few years we have seen many projects for vertical agriculture but the Circular Symbiosis Tower is the first skyscraper that proposes a vertical farm for actual livestock. The main concept is to create a new habitat to raise cattle within the city. The skyscraper consists of spiraling platforms or grass fields where cows will be free to roam.

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1er Lugar Concurso Nacional Proyectos de Título Arquitectura Caliente 2010

Architect: Pierina Benvenuto Giorgetti
Placement: North Lawndale, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Institution: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

El proyecto consiste en una topografía cultivable, resultado de la intervencion de una vía elevada del ferrocarril en desuso en la ciudad de Chicago. Se propone la reutilizacion de esta infraestructura como un corredor verde productivo, posibilitando la ubicación de áreas de capacitación, producción, educación y una red de espacios públicos, jardines, plazas y huertos frutales abiertos a la comunidad. De esta manera, el proyecto re interpreta y enriquece el programa de un centro de agricultura urbana transformándolo en un parque urbano productivo.

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