Posts from — May 2011

Eco vision: founders Andy Merritt and Paul Smyth.

Down on Dalston’s farm

By Kieran Long
London Evening Standard
11 May 2011

Excerpt:

The main ground-floor room, where beds of salad plants bud, is most notable for two huge fish tanks at the front of the room, containing a multitude of tilapia fish. The fish are part of the produce of Farm: Shop but also play their part in an aquaponic system that naturally enriches the water with nutrients to feed all the plants in the room. No new water is fed into the system. The protein- and nitrate-rich water coming out of the tilapia tanks is filtered and then used to feed a series of plant beds, circulated around further tanks and finally pumped, now clean, back into the fish tanks. It’s quite astonishing, a closed system, on full view to the many curious members of the public who pop in to have a look. It’s a manipulated but natural ecology in a front room in Hackney.

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Tilling in preparation for fall crop planting, with the clubhouse in the background and one gardener dressed on his way to a funeral.

Community gardens are popping up quickly in a city once known as the most dangerous city in America.

By Robin Sheeves
Mother Nature Network
April 15, 2011

Excerpt:

Clean up and foundation work for the 100th community garden in the city of Camden, N.J., began yesterday. If you’re not familiar with the city of Camden, let me tell you, this is a big deal. I live about seven miles from Camden, but I might as well live a world away because my community is so different from Camden.

For years, Camden was known as the most dangerous city in America. It no longer holds that title, but it can proudly claim a different title, Fastest Growing Community Garden City.

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Good Ground Garden.

Thesis – Sacredness in the landscape

By Shawn C. James
Thesis 2011
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Landscape Architecture in Landscape Architecture in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011

Abstract:

Faith-based organizations throughout the United States are creating gardens with a variety of visions and results. Ten such gardens were present in Champaign and Urbana, IL in 2010. This phenomenon of faith-based gardening is designated as stewardship gardening within this thesis. While these gardens are recently conspicuous, they are certainly not new; disparate connotations of environmental stewardship have developed since the Garden of Eden. The contemporary call for environmental stewardship should acknowledge its historical implications with consideration of the boundaries between ecocentric and anthropocentric world views.

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Landshare UK has a community of more than 59,000 growers

Landshare Canada brings together people who have a passion for home-grown food, connecting those who have land to share with those who need land for cultivating food. The concept of Landshare began in the UK, launched through the River Cottage television program in 2009, and has since grown into a thriving community of more than 59,000 growers, sharers and helpers across the country. Now that Landshare is here in Canada, we welcome you to come and take part in this fantastic initiative.

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The green-fingered husband and wife, Ian and Barbara Pollard, work at the Abbey House Gardens in Wiltshire, England and tend to their plants completely starkers!

Ready the soil, plant seeds and take off your clothes

By Julie Washington,
The Plain Dealer
May 11, 2011,

Excerpt:

It was a perfect morning in Pat Brown’s back yard — temperature in the low 70s, no rain, sunny. She was itching to take off her clothes and start gardening.

You heard right.

“I do garden in the nude, and I enjoy it,” admitted Brown, 69, a master gardener living near Eugene, Ore.

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Queen Elizabeth High School is coming down, with plans for an urban garden to be planted on the land. Photo by Janek Lowe.

This year, Capital Health will turn the old Queen Elizabeth High School site into the Common Roots Urban Farm.

By Carsten Knox
The Coast
Apr 28, 2011

Excerpt:

It’s not every day a high school gets turned into a farm. But that’s what’s going on at the corner of Bell Road and Robie Street, where Queen Elizabeth High School once stood. Partners for Care, a registered not-for-profit charity that ventures to raise money for the city’s hospitals, had the idea to reclaim the school site, to be called the Common Roots Urban Farm.

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Video by BCIT Magazine, Liz Craig.

Nothing really brings together people like food – especially when that food is locally grown!

Article by Julia Smith
Dunbar Life
Feb. Apr. 2011

Excerpt:

My son gave me a sign he had hand-carved for Christmas. “Dog Gone Farm”, it reads, in jaunty red letters (inspired by our fence jumping dog). With the sign hung proudly on the front door, it was official. We were farmers. We grow fruits and vegetables, build soil, and raise chickens, which wouldn’t be unusual if it weren’t for the fact that we do all this in the middle of the city.

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A ray of light falls on a seedling as neighborhood children help plant crops at the Urban Garden at the Valencia Park Community Center sponsored by the LSU AgCenter and SPAR. Photo by Douglas Collier/The Times.

The produce from the farm will be sold to a local restaurant and at a green market

By Devin White
Shreveport Times
May 11, 2011

Excerpt:

There’s more than just okra, peas and squash growing at the Valencia Park Community Center in Shreveport. Young minds are growing the skills needed to nurture a dream that began with a small plot of land and will hopefully end up a source for fresh food.

LSU AgCenter in collaboration with Shreveport Public Assembly and Recreation planted the Valencia Park Farm last week, the first urban farm in Shreveport. The farm will be the site for an eight-week pilot program that teaches skills to 14- to 17-year-olds.

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“In the future, we predict plant factories will make their way to regular households as home electric appliances.”

By Ginny Mies
PCWorld
May 11, 2011

Excerpt:

The hardware–known as Plant Factories–are computer-controlled boxes that provide lighting, water temperature, air temperature, nutrients and oxygen gas to your plants. Each plant box has a blue LED light as well as red LED light, which, according to Farmbox, can be used to control the taste or the growth rate of your plant!

When your phone is hooked up to the Farmbox, the Farmbox app (which isn’t currently available in the Android App Market) will automatically document your basil’s growth data.

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Modern Culture student, Nina Wöhlk (right), helps a young volunteer to fill a raised garden bed with soil before planting some vegetables. Photo by Afton Halloran.

Students and local community spent the weekend turning unused urban space into an experimental garden

By Afton Halloran
University of Copenhagen Post
May 8, 2011

Excerpt:

An empty and abandoned city lot in the Copenhagen suburb of Amager may not sound that appealing to most. However, through the eyes of locals, like humanities students Majken Hviid, Nina Wöhlk, and Henriette Noermark, it is a place of huge potential.

Urban agriculture, the reclaiming of vacant city locations for farming, has come to Copenhagen. The city thereby follows a global trend, with rooftop vegetable gardens in New York and legislation recently passed in Canada re-allowing chickens in your back yard.

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Managing Director, Leah McPherson and trainee at Cultivate London’s first site.

McPherson is aiming to sell twenty to forty thousand pots and bags of herbs as well as helping ten young people into employment.

By Rhiannon James
The City Planter
May 11th, 2011

Excerpt:

Most people are drawn to farming by the thought of lush, green fields rolling away into the distance, rich soil and fresh country air, but not Leah McPherson. For her, there’s nothing like an empty bit of London tarmac to whet her appetite for cultivation.

But then, McPherson is no ordinary farmer. She’s the Managing Director of Cultivate London, a new social enterprise which is on a mission to convert vacant city land into flourishing urban herb farms, which will supply Londoners with locally-grown produce whilst also giving unemployed young people the opportunity to build a career in gardening.

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Borris Miles is a successful entrepreneur and businessman, owning and operating the third largest (and most successful) African-American independent insurance agency in the United States.

Democrat Borris Miles

HB2994
Relating to the creation, operation, and funding of the urban farm microenterprise support program.

HB2995
Relating to an exemption for urban farms from payment for wastewater service.

HB2996
Relating to the creation of the Texas Urban Agricultural Innovation Authority.

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Jim Hanson, Katherine Alaimo, and Kristen McIvor outside the Capitol. Photo by Caron E. Gala Bijl.

May 9, 2011 Event

By Caron E. Gala Bijl
Senior Science Policy Associate
American Society of Agronomy
Crop Science Society of America
Soil Science Society of America

The American Society for Nutrition (ASN), Soil Science Society of America (SSSA), and the Council on Food, Agricultural & Resource Economics (C-FARE) sponsored Bringing Urban Agriculture to Life, on Monday, May 9.

The briefing highlighted the role of urban agriculture and community gardening in addressing urban food security and human health issues. The panel of experts included:

Dr. Katherine Alaimo: Associate Professor, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI

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Balcony Farms Sprout In City

By Neeno Pandora
The Urban Times
May 9 201

Excerpt:

Scares about food safety and the high cost of organics in Shanghai are prompting some city residents to grow their own veggies that are clean, safe, cheap and fresh. Yao Minji visits balcony farmers.

Kevin Liu will have stir-fried green onions with scrambled eggs for dinner tonight, since the leeks he planted last spring on his windowsill are ready to be harvested.

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“Envisioning one option for truly sustainable agriculture.”

“Polydome is a revolutionary approach to commercial agriculture that offers the possibility of net-zero-impact greenhouse food production. It produces high yields of over 50 different crops, while also sustainably incorporating chicken, bees, and fish. The increased variety and productivity of the system means that even a small Polydome greenhouse can provide a diverse food supply for a large population. Using Polydome, even New York City could provide the majority of its own food supply using available roof space.

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A Bioneer excerpt from Fields of Plenty: A Farmer’s Journey For Real Food And The People Who Grow It

By Michael Ableman
Chronicle Books 2005
256 pages

Excerpt from Bioneers’ blog

In the shadow of Cabrini-Green, two 1-acre plots of land are protected with 10-foot-high chain-link-and-concertina fences. A closer look reveals that one of the plots boasts forty varieties of heirloom tomatoes. Striped German, Green Zebra, Black Russian, and the rest of Ken Dunn’s tomato plants grow in the composted remains of apple- and cherry-pie filling, and the uneaten arugula salads and filet mignon from local high-end restaurants.

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Novella Carpenter set up her West Oakland farm eight years ago and was facing a shutdown until she could pay a permit fee. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle.

Animals are likely to be the most contentious issue because neighbors tend to be more bothered by bleating, honking, clucking and crowing.

By Matthai Kuruvila,
San Francisco Chronicle
May 9, 2011

Excerpt:

It has been a tough row to hoe, but urban farming impresario Novella Carpenter appears to be on her way to legally growing chard and raising animals in Oakland.

The novelist enlisted readers of her blog to help pay the roughly $2,500 for a conditional use permit, the only way the city will allow her to continue running her horticultural haven, Ghost Town Farm.

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Available September 20, 2011

By Mark Gorgolewski, June Komisar, Joe Nasr
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: The Monacelli

Carrot City is a collection of ideas, both conceptual and realized, that use design to enable sustainable food production, helping to reintroduce urban agriculture to our cities. Focusing on the need and desire to grow food within the city to supply food from local sources, the contributions of architecture, landscape design, and urban design are explored.

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The idea being that eaters deserve the “highest-quality produce.”

By Joey Kulkin
Journal Register News Network
May 07, 2011

Excerpt:

YARDLEY — The Yardley Inn is hyper-localizing its menu by hyper-importing the peas and peppers and tomatoes and thyme from only 75 feet away: garden to the kitchen, vine to your mouth.

“You can’t get any more local than this,” landscaper Carson Meeder said Monday at the new riverside kitchen garden across the street from the Yardley Inn, as three aggies were busy building 20 white-oak boxes to be filled with the best of the best, from the seeds to the soil to a river-fed sprinkler system.

Across the asphalt of Route 32 is the Yardley Inn kitchen, manned by Executive Chef Eben Copple.

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