Category — How to

Gardener grows tangerines, lemons, figs, papaya, Moringa, passion fruit, pineapples, avocados, sweet potato greens and more exotic foods

By John Cueler
growingyourgreens.com
Nov. 23, 2011

John Cueler from (http://www.growingyourgreens.com) goes on a field trip to a viewer’s home in South Florida to see what’s growing there. In this episode you will learn what a couple are growing and eating in their edible garden. You will specifically learn about wild jungle peanuts, and many perennial tropical crops that can grow year-round in Florida. As well you will learn how to propagate mulberry/fig tree cuttings.

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A Guide By The San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance

By Booka Alon, Elan Segarra, Eli Zigas
A Guide By The San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance
November 2011
25 pages

From SPUR – San Francisco Planning and Research Assoc.

Starting a garden or farm in San Francisco just got a little bit easier. Pulling together the most recent changes to city laws, the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance recently released a guide to the regulations for growing and selling food within San Francisco.

The guide covers a host of topics including:

Finding land
Gardening on private versus public land
Water access
Selling what you grow
Specific sections on rooftop gardens, animal husbandry, and soil testing.

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John Jeavons has been the Director of the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Mini-Farming program for Ecology Action since 1972. He is the author of How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine. Photo by Amy Melious.

John Jeavons to give 3-Day Workshop in NYC, January 6-8, 2012

Bu Cindy Conner
Homeplace Earth
Nov 1, 2011

Excerpt:

When I was learning to garden back in the 70’s, I had read John’s book How to Grow More Vegetables (HTGMV) along with all the other organic gardening information available at the time. I gained skills and knowledge over the years, first growing food to keep my family healthy, then expanding as a market gardener, growing food for my community. Since I was the only organic grower most people knew, I would get a lot of questions. In fact, the cooperative extension office used to refer people to me.

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“City farm vegetables are fresh, nutritious and safe, grown in a responsible way”

Why are LEDs extremely suitable for city farms:

With LED lighting it is possible to provide exactly the wavelengths which are useful for growth and development of the crop. Contrary to the sun, traditional assimilation lighting and TL lighting, LED only omits one color of light. No energy is wasted with light spectra that are not used or less used by the plant. This means that LEDs provide exactly the colors which the plant needs for photosynthesis. Plants mainly need blue and red light for photosynthesis and far-red, a color not even visible to the human eye but visible to the plant.

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Audrey Silk grows 100 tobacco plants in her back yard

By zolofilms.com
2011

Audrey Silk, founder of New York City Clash (Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment) started growing tobacco in her back yard in Brooklyn three years ago as a protest against New York state’s increase in the cost of tobacco and the recent ban on smoking in public places. Today, she is growing 100 tobacco plants in her back yard and has quite a healthy yield of dry tobacco to make her own cigarettes. Zolo films visits her home to document her story and hear about the process of growing tobacco.

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“Saffron’s aroma is often described by connoisseurs as reminiscent of metallic honey with grassy or hay-like notes.” Wikipedia

At the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden.

Maria planted ‘Crocus sativus’ last Thanksgiving and now, a year later, the plants have bloomed. We look at the spice and its three vivid crimson stigmas used for cooking.

We asked Andrea Carlson, Executive Chef at nearby Bishop’s Restaurant, for some ideas on how she might use the spice.

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Forthcoming December 27, 2011

By Novella Carpenter, Willow Rosenthal
Publisher: Penguin
December 27, 2011
592 pages

From Ghost Town Farm blog – Novella Carpenter:
My new book is coming out December 27 (hmm, right around the baby coming)! Willow Rosenthal and I have been slaving on this giant how-to book for the past three years or something. It’s called “The Essential Urban Farmer”. It’s got everything a budding or experienced urban farmer might want to know about growing veggies and fruit, securing land, and raising livestock in the city.

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By Amy Pennington
Sasquatch Books (April 1, 2011)
192 pages

Grow squash on your patio, flowers in your window box, and pick blackberries from your parking strip. Apartment Gardening details how to start a garden in the heart of the city. From building your own planter box to sprouting seeds in jars on the counter, every small space is plantable. Beginning and experienced gardeners will discover how to save money on produce and impress friends with their newly-tenacious green thumbs.

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The string bikini tops worked best at the Vancouver Compost Garden

Sean and Maria built a small greenhouse this past spring at the Vancouver Compost Garden. The raised beds inside were filled with a soil blend that included leaves, various composts we had around the garden, and layers of ‘White Dragon’ compost made from our mid-scale electric composter that was fed food scraps from a local restaurant.

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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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Looking at the soil in a vacant lot

By Melissa Iverson M.Sc. (Soil Science)
University of British Columbia – Faculty of Lands and Food Systems
2010, 39 pages

Introduction – How to Use This Guide

Have you ever walked by that vacant lot near your home, work, or school, and thought “I would love to make this place a garden!” If so, then this guide is for you!

The purpose of this guide is to help you answer some of the big questions about the environmental quality of your site. Questions like:

How can I find out if the soil is contaminated?
Is the soil deep enough for my plants to have healthy root systems?
Are there enough nutrients in the soil?
Is the site too shady for a garden?

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How to build an MBrace raised bed from Art of the Garden on Vimeo.

Raised Garden Bed Brace System

The Raised Garden Bed Brace System consists of four steel corner braces – no hardware is needed. Decide on the dimensions of your raised bed, and have your lumber cut to size. The inside of each brace has a raised channel where you’ll slide your cut-to-size boards to form the four sides of the bed. This system allows you to customize your raised beds to any site and any size, up to 12 feet on each side.

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Vuelve Carolina in Valencia, Spain.

Vertical mini allotments: What grows up

By Harriot Lane Fox
The Telegraph
05 May 2011

Excerpts:

What could be more metro-horticultural than ushering your dinner guests out onto the balcony and inviting them to pick their perfect salad?

That’s almost what the Michelin-starred chef-patron of Vuelve Carolina in Valencia, Spain, is doing with this chic new restaurant. He has taken the green wall — an eco-cool way to soften new shopping centres, offices and Olympic villages, including London’s — and made it edible. Diners now enjoy garnishes grown right in front of them.

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The Complete Guide to Year-Round Organic Gardening in the Pacific Northwest

By Linda Gilkeson
New Society Publishers
April, 2011

Are you itching to start your own garden or grow more in the one you have, but feel that gardening is too challenging or time-consuming for your busy schedule? Would you like to enjoy fresh, home-grown produce every month of the year?

Backyard Bounty is like having your own Master Gardener to consult every step of the way. This encyclopedic reference demystifies gardening, bringing it back to the down-to-earth, environmentally practical activity that anyone can enjoy. Learn about:

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Monkey going after fruit at breakfast buffet. Photo by JakeChalkley.

“The snakes death of course was the signal for the most joyous chatterings and gambols.”

From a very old, undated, New York Times article

“The gentleman had a garden where he grew delicious fruit. The sacred monkeys easily scaled the walls and helped themselves. They were not content with simply eating, but amused themselves with throwing half-munched fruit at each other. To shoot these pests was out of the question, and to hit them with stones was impossible, as they easily dodged any missile that might be thrown at them.

An idea struck the Englishman one day, and he at once proceeded to carry it into effect with great success. He got a large basket of the largest potatoes that were to be found and had them boiled.

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Cold-hardy greens and even carrots are part of the Wegmans Organic Research Farm’s winter crops. Photo by Jeff Marini.

“A hoophouse can pay for itself in three years or less.”

By James Leach
Rochester City Newspaper
January 5, 2011

Excerpt:

Up on the hill above the Romanesco bed stand two unheated hoophouses. Over near the treeline stands another. Inside them, it’s not quite summer, but it feels and smells like early spring. In the houses closest to the Romanesco patch, densely packed rows of rainbow chard, arugula, and carrots are growing directly in the soil underneath cloth-like row covers that keep in the heat and most of the moisture. The chard and the arugula look like they will be ready to harvest in a few weeks, the carrots are the length of my pinky and intensely sweet because freezing temperatures cause carrots and other root vegetables to concentrate their sugars. All of these vegetables were slated to be harvested and on sale at the Wegmans flagship store in Pittsford before Christmas.

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Photo: OSU scientist Joe Kovach’s test site in Wooster, with his parking-lot plantings in the center and his polyculture plots on the lawn at the left.

Ohio State University Urban Farming Study

By Kurt Knebusch
Ohio State University Extension
Dec 22, 2010

Excerpt:

WOOSTER, Ohio — An old asphalt parking lot might not seem like a good place for a garden.

But in urban areas it can be. It tends to be cheap open land. And an Ohio State University expert on intensive small-scale horticulture has started a three-year study on what works best there.

Joe Kovach, who specializes in maximizing fruit and vegetable production in limited spaces, is comparing three ways to do it in empty, abandoned parking lots: in giant-sized pots and in raised beds on top of the blacktop, and in trenches cut right through it.

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A Guide to Growing Fruit, Vegetables and Spices from the Asian Subcontinent

By Sally Cunningham
Eco-Logic Books
2009

The author, Sally Cunningham, has been a professional organic gardener for nearly 30 years. She has been Deputy Head Gardener at the prestigious Ryton Organic Gardens and worked on a variety of projects from setting up Community Allotments to gardener at Belgrave Hall, a garden founded in 1500. Her work with the Plantcultures project (run jointly by Kew Botanical Gardens and Leicester Museums) gave her an opportunity to fulfill a lifelong ambition.

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Cobra.

Cobras and the Russel’s viper are responsible for the close to 20,000 yearly snake bite deaths in India. Many of these fatalities occur because of the Cobras’ appetite for rats. It’s not uncommon for the snakes to lay in wait for the rodents inside a home or a hut. If a human gets in the way the encounter usually proves fatal.

The Big Four are the four venomous snake species considered to be responsible for the greatest number of human deaths caused by snakebite in South Asia.

Indian cobra, Naja naja, probably the most famous of all Indian snakes.
Common krait, Bungarus caeruleus
Russell’s viper, Daboia russelii.
Saw-scaled viper, Echis carinatus.

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A garden on wheels designed by Christina Cho

By Rachel Johnson
From Green Harvard
“A Moveable Feast”
June 24, 2010

Excerpt:

A garden on wheels may soon be rolling up to your department or dorm, thanks to GSD student Christina Cho. The project, undertaken this spring with the support of an OFS Sustainability Grant, combines food, public art, and community gardening into a unique setting: the Mobile Ethnic Garden.

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