Category — Environment

Global warming is hitting not just home, but garden. The color-coded map of planting zones often seen on the back of seed packets is being updated by the government, illustrating a hotter 21st century.

By Seth Borenstein
AP Science Writer
January 25, 2012

Excerpt:

It’s the first time since 1990 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has revised the official guide for the nation’s 80 million gardeners, and much has changed. Nearly entire states, such as Ohio, Nebraska and Texas, are in warmer zones.

The new guide, unveiled Wednesday at the National Arboretum, arrives just as many home gardeners are receiving their seed catalogs and dreaming of lush flower beds in the spring.

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Roadside vegetable market, Nr. Kampala, Uganda. Photo by Mike Gadd.

Trial at five contaminated urban agriculture sites in Kampala City, Uganda

By G. Nabulo, C.R. Black, J. Craigon, S.D. Young
School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham
Online: 28 December 2011.
Environmental Pollution
Volume 162, March 2012, Pages 389-398

Abstract

Concentrations of potentially toxic elements were measured in soils and five contrasting tropical leafy vegetables grown in a replicated field trial at five contaminated urban agriculture sites in Kampala City, Uganda. Soil contamination at each site could be tentatively ascribed to known waste disposal practices. There was considerable variation in metal uptake between vegetable types. Washing leafy vegetables reduced chromium and lead concentrations but exogenous contamination of leaves also depended on vegetable type, withGynandropsis gynandraL. showing a marked tendency to accumulate Pb and Cr.

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Display from City Slickers urban farm in Oakland.

Under no circumstances should a project proponent take any action that would put the health of urban farmers or the consumers of their produce at risk.

By Markus B. Niebanck
Brownfield Renewal
Markus B. Niebanck, PG is an environmental consultant and Brownfield practitioner working out of Oakland, California.

Excerpt:

Protective alternatives were considered and implemented, and included:

Excavation of shallow soil from property line to property line and the transportation of excavated material to an off-property facility (landfill) for disposal. This is the alternative often recommended by service providers or regulatory agencies that rely on the common residential-standard cookbook approach to site preparation. This approach is often prohibitively expensive.

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Breaking New Ground

By Nevin Cohen And Kubi Ackerman
New York Times (Mark Bittman)
November 21,

Excerpts:

New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently funded three new urban agriculture projects: a rooftop garden at a settlement house, a vegetable garden near the Gowanus Canal and a commercial rooftop farm atop a Brooklyn Navy Yard building. These projects are part of an innovative green infrastructure program to turn impervious roofs, vacant lots and streets into spaces that soak up the rain and prevent water pollution. Supporting urban farms and gardens as a means of keeping our waterways clean is an excellent idea, and should be dramatically scaled up.

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Urban farms could put a substantial amount of fresh produce on our tables without the long journeys.

By Fabian Schmidt
DW-World.De
14.11.2011

Excerpt:

Volkmar Keuter of the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology in the German town of Oberhausen says cities are full of unused potential to grow food.

“You might have some kind of production going on underneath a roof. Certain industrial installations that produce heat could be used as a greenhouse in winter,” he told Deutsche Welle.

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Entrance to Shaftesbury Park Allotments, Newport.

Hazardous substances, including lead, were found by investigators.

By thehortchannel.tv
September 28, 2011

An allotments Newport (Wales) where lead was found in the soil could be closed for good from December.

Shaftesbury Park Allotment holders were told by Newport council last month it would close the site after hazardous substances, including lead, were found by investigators.

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Interim Guidelines for Safe Gardening Practices

United States Environmental Protection Agency
Summer 2011
22 pages

This report presents a process and set of recommendations for developing agricultural reuse projects on sites with an environmental history. Potential gardeners, state environmental agencies and regulators can use this process to determine how to address the risks inherent to redeveloping brownfields for agricultural reuses while being protective of human health.

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Lead Affecting East Bay Urban Gardens

Elizabeth Cook reports.

More and more people are turning their backyards into gardens. But in some East Bay neighborhoods, lead in the soil is becoming a concern.

Much like eating greens provides essential nutrients, so does seeing and being around green

By Frances E. (Ming) Kuo, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Director, Landscape and Human Health Laboratory University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2010

Excerpt from the Executive Summary

This monograph presents an overview of what scientists have discovered about the relationship between nature and human health, focusing on the most compelling findings. It focuses on three classic indicators of health drawn from animal research. Studies of laboratory and zoo animals, as well as animals in the wild living in degraded and fragmented habitat tells us that organisms living in unfit habitats undergo social, psychological, and physical breakdown. The scientific study of what Richard Louv has coined “nature deficit disorder” in people mirrors the animal research on unfit habitats. When we compare people with more versus less ready access to parks and other green environments, we find that they exhibit differences in well-being and functioning in each of the three trademark domains: social, psychological, and physical health.

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“We need to ask more questions of our food supply, both urban and rural.”

By Eli Zigas
Grist
13 Sept 2011

Excerpt:

As someone who works on urban agricultural policy, I’m often asked, “Is city-grown food safe?” The question comes from aspiring urban gardeners and concerned eaters alike. And it seems to stem from both a fear of the known and a fear of the unknown.

First, the fear of the known: Common urban contaminants include lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals leaked into soil from old paint, leaded gasoline, modern car exhaust, and industrial land-use.

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Photos by Sushil Thapa.

In Kathmandu Valley, there are more than 500 brick kilns

By Sushil Thapa
Kathmandu, Nepal
ag.sushilthapa@gmail.com
Aug 22, 2011

The urban and peri-urban agriculture in Nepal covers a wide range of activities resulting in production, processing, preservation, marketing and consumption of food. It also provides livelihood opportunities for the urban population. It has been estimated that this sector contributes around 23 per cent of the supply of fresh vegetables in Kathmandu, capital city of Nepal. Despite this fact, in the recent years, the number of brick kilns has been increased hampering the urban food production and deficiently polluting the environment. In Kathmandu Valley, there are more than 500 brick kilns occupying thousands of hectares of cultivable land.

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Watch the video here.

Fears about food safety have prompted some young Chinese professionals to try growing their own

By Martin Patience
BBC News, Beijing
Aug 3, 2011

Excerpt:

Juggling their iPhones with spades, a group of young professionals are getting their hands dirty – digging vegetables.

During the week, they are teachers, PR consultants, and computer programmers. But at the weekend, these city slickers return to the soil.

“We’re worried about food safety,” says He Liying, explaining why they grow vegetables.

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Volunteers from City Slicker Farms helped install raised beds in Laura Blakeney’s yard to avoid contaminated soil. Photo by Nate Seltenrich.

Urban farming has become hugely popular in the East Bay, but lead and other heavy metals in the soil pose potential health risks. Meanwhile, there’s little consensus on what to do about it.

By Nate Seltenrich
East Bay Express
Aug 3, 2011

Excerpt:

These are the dilemmas that cities and urban gardeners now face. Yet organizations like City Slicker Farms are working hard to develop safe, practical solutions to soil contamination. Since 2005 the organization has set up 170 backyard gardens, including about 140 in West Oakland, all at no cost to the recipients. The initial step is always a soil test. While few lots exhibit truly dangerous levels, most are elevated and require some form of remediation — typically, covering the soil with mulch and growing vegetables in raised beds.

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Carver Community Garden on 124th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues in Harlem.

That is a gift the garden gives to all who pass it, even if they never set foot inside its gates.

By Sarah Goodyear
Grist
19 July, 2011

Excerpt:

I emerged from the subway at 125th St. and Lexington Ave. into the most oppressive kind of urban summer scene. Heat billowed off the asphalt and concrete. Exhaust fumes stung my eyes and throat. Car engines roared. Horns blared. The sun beat down on the thronged sidewalk. It felt like I was being pressed into the pavement.

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Vriksha Nursery Blog
July 10, 2011

Excerpt:

Looking outside the windows of outbound trains in Mumbai have always been disturbing hoards of slum dwellers all along the track mooning you, open gutters heaps of garbage, swines, rats … and nestled among all this are the farms that produce roughly 40% of Mumbai’s spinach, fenugreek, coriander and other local greens. Plants like radishes, bananas, paddy are also cultivated on these farms.

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Photo © Maria Keating.

At City Farmer’s Compost Demonstration Garden 2150 Maple Street, Vancouver BC.

2011 Classes
Instructor: Maria Keating, City Farmer’s own Bug Lady

Adults:
Learn how to safely deal with insects in your backyard. This two-hour garden seminar includes; insect identification and lifecycles, attracting native pollinators, predators and butterflies to your garden, hands-on pest control methods and how to make, use and take home handy tools of the insect trade. Turn over a new leaf and see what the macro world is doing in the city and in your own backyard!

Adult Classes: $20 per person
Friday June 17 – 1pm – 3pm or Saturday July 23 – 10am -12pm
(space is limited to 10 people per class – please contact the Compost Hotline (604) 736-2250 for availability)

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Winter cover crops contribute to healthy gardens.

A Horticulture Project at Cornell University

Our goals are:

To document the roles of community gardens in providing healthy food, green space, and environmental education, in order to build support for community gardening in urban policy and planning.

To develop environmentally friendly vegetable gardening practices like cover cropping, with and for urban gardeners.

To enhance educational programs in urban gardening by incorporating collaborative, discovery-based learning methods that increases gardeners’ understanding of ecology.

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Greenpeace radiation team experts Teule and Westwood check crops for contamination at a garden in Fukushima City.

The problem for Fukushima’s fishermen and farmers – and indeed, for many more people both inside and outside Japan – is that little is known what these contamination levels mean for food safety.

By Krista Mahr
Time Magazine blog
Apr 22, 2011

Excerpts:

By a road leading out of Iwaki, two elderly women sit on the ground in a verdant vegetable garden, eating dried fruit and enjoying one of the first warm days of spring. Behind them, a row of cherry trees is in bloom; in front of them, well-groomed rows of leafy napa cabbage and daikon soak up the sun. “We’re throwing everything away. We don’t even eat it ourselves.” says one of the women, a farmer wearing a green bonnet who declines to give her name but gamely admits she clocks in somewhere over 70.

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Audrey Silk, with Bingo, estimates she will save thousands of dollars by processing her own cigarettes. Photo by Chang W. Lee/The New York Times.

Ms. Silk, a retired police officer grows her own tobacco and dries the leaves in her basement.

By Manny Fernandez
New York Times
February 24, 2011

Excerpt:

The cigarettes Audrey Silk used to smoke — Parliament Lights — are made at a factory in Richmond, Va. The cigarettes she smokes these days are made and grown in Brooklyn, at her house.

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A few of the steps urban farmers can take to protect the health and quality of our urban watershed

By Daniel Dermitzel
Mother Earth News
4/13/2011

Excerpt:

The growing popularity of urban agriculture presents an opportunity to reduce the amount of water and pollutants entering our combined sewer systems. Urban farmers and our community as a whole have much to gain from implementing a few simple techniques to reduce runoff and pollution of our urban watershed. Our productive urban landscapes (i.e., farms and gardens) have the potential to be more environmentally friendly than the many chemically treated lawns and unproductive green spaces we currently see throughout our city.

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