Category — Articles

More mainstream news media are promoting home food production.

How does your backyard garden grow?

By David Colker, Los Angeles Times
September 14, 2008

Marta Teegen, who owns Homegrown, a Los Angeles-based garden consulting company, will come to your house and install a vegetable garden with your choice of plants. She generally puts in about four 4-by-6-foot raised beds.

The average cost — $2,000.

At that rate, and because this is Los Angeles, it’s no surprise that several of her clients are celebrities (whom she declined to name) with private chefs.

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All the way from Byron Bay, Australia, Lesley Bayliss describes an herb business she started for people with intellectual disabilities. Part of the program is funded by the herbs that clients grow. Sales are upwards of $50,000 per year, all grown on a half acre of land in an industrial area of town. Over 150 varieties of herbs for sale:

Bush Tucker
Lemon Myrtle (backhousia citriodora)
Davidsons Plum (davidsonia pruriens)

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Our Maria is not just a Bug Lady, she’s a ‘Mushroom Lady’ as well. Hidden amongst the large squash leaves in the Youth Garden are some wonderful edible mushrooms she started last spring. Maria shows us how she grew her King Stropharia - Garden Giants.

See this piece about Garden Giants. ‘Grow edible mushrooms in your vegetable garden!’ By Carolyn Herriot

Host-Pathogen interactions, Malaria Infection cell biology. See complete image here.

Published in Malaria Journal, 4 August 2008
By Eveline Klinkenberg, PJ McCall, Michael D Wilson, Felix P Amerasinghe and Martin J Donnelly

To investigate the impact of urban agriculture on malaria transmission risk in urban Accra larval and adult stage mosquito surveys, were performed.

There has been a resurgence of interest in the problem of urban malaria in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years. Urban malaria is likely to increase in importance as rapid urbanization will result in the majority of Africa’s population living in cities in the near future. It is commonly assumed that urbanization leads to a decrease in malaria prevalence because it results in fewer Anopheles breeding sites, reduced biting rates due to the higher ratio of humans to mosquitoes, better access to treatment and better (mosquito-proof) housing.

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Photo: Marg and Homer. Gnomes from the Inuvik Greenhouse Fall Fair gnome decorating contest.

People love to read about food gardening in the Canadian Arctic. We put up a web page for the Inuvik Community Greenhouse when it first went into operation back in 1998 and it is still a well-visited page. In 2002, coordinator Carrie Young wrote me to say, “I should tell you that I’ve had a lot of feedback from your site. Many people have found out about our project through it and contacted me.”

And the project continues to attract attention. The following Reuters’ story, ‘Raising vegetables under Canada’s midnight sun’ by Allan Dowd, September 4, 2008, paints the picture yet again.

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Illustration: Carin Goldberg in Wired magazine.

(You know urban agriculture has gone mainstream when it is written about in the premier high-tech magazine. Mike)

By Clive Thompson
Wired Magazine 08.18.08

But what I love most here is the potential for cultural transformation. Growing our own food again would reconnect us to this country’s languishing frontier spirit.

Once you realize how easy it is to make the concrete jungle bloom, it changes the way you see the world. Urban environments suddenly appear weirdly dead and wasteful. When I walk around New York City now, I see the usual empty lots and balconies and I think, Wait a minute. Why aren’t we growing food here? And here? And here?

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Photo: The RUAF partners meeting in Doorn, The Netherlands, for their annual meeting.

The RUAF (Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security) publishes this excellent magazine periodically. In their 19th issue, read stories about:

Cleaning, Greening and Feeding Cities; Local Initiatives in Recycling Waste for Urban Agriculture in Kampala, Uganda

Urban Agriculture in Msunduzi Municipality, South Africa

Solid Waste Recycling in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Making a business of waste management

Enhancing Local Knowledge in Urban Livestock Breeding in Bukavu, D.R. Congo

Innovations in Producer-Market Linkages: Urban field schools and organic markets in Lima

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Video: GROFUN (Growing Real Organic Food in Urban Neighbourhoods)

Want to grow your own organic fruit and veg but don’t have the time? Why not find a neighbour who longs to garden but doesn’t have the space? Tanis Taylor reports on the rise of garden-sharing schemes

By Tanis Taylor
The Guardian, September 4 2008

It was a small notice, in between the ads for child-minding and English lessons. “Free gardening. I will cultivate an abundant vegetable plot for you in your garden and we will share the produce 50/50.” Then a number.

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Note! 13 seconds black screen before video begins. Super 8 ‘experimental’ film showing Edinburgh allotments.

The history of Edinburgh’s allotment gardens is intricately interwoven with the history of the city’s development and expansion, beginning in the era when Edinburgh was little more than a large town surrounded by villages and open fields. An 1851 town plan shows ‘Patriotic Society Allotment Gardens’ in an undeveloped area west of the town centre.

The 1892 act obliged Scottish local authorities to provide allotments for the ‘labouring population’ if six or more ratepayers came forward to express an interest and a need.

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