Frontpage – Page 61 – Urban Organic Gardener

November 9, 2015

Window Farming: A Do-It-Yourself Veggie Venture

Original post can be found at: NPR.org

The first window farm in Brooklyn, from the inside and from the outside.

Homegrown Harvest: Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray tend to Brooklyn’s first window farm. This form of urban agriculture is catching on in cities around the world, as downtown farmers go online to share techniques for growing greens indoors.

If you have a green thumb, a window and a serious Do-It-Yourself ethic, you too, can be a farmer … even in your downtown apartment building. Spring is here, and for urban dwellers with no access to soil, hydroponic gardening is a way to grow fresh veggies indoors.

“Window farming,” as it is called, is catching on in New York City and beyond. Window farmers use recycled 1.5 liter water bottles, clay pellets, plastic tubing and inexpensive fish tank air pumps to create their indoor gardens. There are now 4,000 registered users at windowfarms.org. Farmers are tending to their greens everywhere from the U.S. to Italy, Israel and Hong Kong.

A simple window farm system is a column of upside down water bottles, with plants growing out of holes cut into the sides. An air pump is used to circulate liquid nutrients.

WindowFarms

Last year in Brooklyn, N.Y., Britta Riley, 33, raised $27,000 for her window farms project through an online micro-donation web site. She’s a true Do-It-Yourselfer.

“I grew up on a ranch in Texas,” Riley says. “So we always had to hack together what we needed to fix fences and so forth.”

Riley’s project partner is Maya Nayak, 29, a professional gardener. Nayak has been growing herbs in her own window farm in her ground floor apartment. A sign in her window advertises windowfarms.org — and plenty of people have paused to check it out.

“We had to put up a curtain,” she explains, “because people come up and look. And you’re, like, ‘Wow, this is my living room.'”

The people staring in from the street see a window filled with vertical columns of plants. Vegetables and herbs grow with the help of sunlight and a little electricity — but no soil.

The window farms Web site provides instructions on how to put together a system that grows three plants. The materials will cost about $30 — and not all of them are traditional gardening supplies: water bottles, an aquarium air pump, air valve needles (like the kind you use to pump up a basketball), and a hanging system designed for displaying art.

Riley says that putting recycled consumer goods to use is an important part of the DIY ethic.

“We’re kind of showing that we can actually get really, really far using things that we already have available to us as consumers,” she says.

The simplest window farm system is a column of upside-down water bottles connected to one another. Plants grow out of holes cut into the sides. An air pump is used to circulate liquid nutrients that trickle down from the top of the column and make their way to the plant roots.

Window farms have been used to grow strawberries, cherry tomatoes and peppers. Riley’s favorite is bok choi.

“Buttercrunch lettuce grows great and lots of herbs,” Nayak says. “Anything leafy and green, essentially. You can’t grow carrots. I mean, you can’t grow root vegetables. Potatoes, garlic. Those things don’t work.”

Urban farmers use the Internet to exchange ideas for improving the window farms technology. It’s a process Riley calls “R&D-I-Y” or Research and Develop It Yourself. One window farmer figured out a way to silence the gurgling sounds these window farm systems make — and he shared his solution with the rest of the indoor gardening community.

“He just drilled a few holes into a vitamin bottle and stuck it over the end and all of a sudden it completely silenced the system,” Riley explains. “And then he posted that for everybody else and all of a sudden we have a new solution that’s cheap and that other people can replicate somewhere else.”

In the coming months, Riley and her colleagues will focus on how much energy it takes to run the air pumps and compact fluorescent light bulbs that are turned on when access to sunlight is a problem. Riley says that in addition to the environmental benefits of growing your own food at home, there are aesthetic wins as well.

“It’s just fun to have food growing in your own apartment,” Riley says. “Especially during the winter months you’ve got this lush bunch of green lettuce that’s growing in the window and kind of freshening the air in your apartment and it actually just looks pretty.”

And it’s about to get easier. For people who are excited about window farming but not so gung-ho about starting from scratch, Riley says her group will soon begin selling window farming kits.

November 7, 2015

Detroit Artist Buys House for $600, Builds Urban Farm

Original post can be found at: HuffingtonPost.com

When Kate Daughdrill moved to Detroit to go to graduate school, she had no idea she would plant roots there — both literally and figuratively. Her eastside home now exists on a multi-lot farm that has transformed her local neighborhood.

“When I bought this house it was in pretty bad shape,” the 30-year-old artist said of the property that cost her just $600. “It was just full of trash and old furniture, and all the electrical and most of the plumbing had been stripped.”

However, Daughdrill’s artistic skill and DIY home improvement sensibilities helped her see the potential in the space. “I’ve always worked creatively and artistically in ways that bring people together, so I knew that I wanted the house to be both an intimate space for me, but also a public space that could be shared.”

Initially the house was surrounded by three empty lots, which she wanted to farm. Her first summer there, Daughdrill invited some of her neighbors to garden and help cultivate the space. Now the urban farm has expanded to six lots, complete with a greenhouse. It has helped transform the people in her community, as well as Detroit itself.

“Home to me is a place to just be,” she said. “Home is also where my people are. We have a vision to make [the farm] a really beautiful healing space for the neighborhood.”

November 4, 2015November 4, 2015

Working On An Allotment is GOOD For Your Health…and This is Why…

Original post can be found at: Express.co.uk

DO YOU want to know the secret to a long and happy life?

An allotment in England
Vegetables.

Not so much the eating of vegetables (though that certainly helps) but the growing of them.According to scientists from Essex and Westminster universities spending half an hour a week on an allotment results in an instant reduction in stress and fatigue, as well as boosting self-esteem, vigour and a general feeling of good health.They also found that allotment holders are less likely to be overweight, have more energy and are not so prone to anger, depression and anxiety.

In a study published in the Journal Of Public Health the authors say: “We found that fewer than 30 minutes of allotment gardening produces a measurable and beneficial health effect.”

None of this is news to anyone who has an allotment.

Whether it’s a pristine, award-winning mini farm producing perfect vegetables all year round, or a scrubby bit of dirt by the railway tracks yielding a bagful of runner beans and a couple of dozen potatoes every other autumn, the simple pleasures to be found on the plot go far beyond the act of actually growing anything.

My wife Heidi and I have had our allotment for 10 years.

When we moved to Oxford from London almost the first thing we did was join the waiting list for a plot in our local area of Osney.

Community garden sign

Community gardens and allotments are also a great vehicle to socialize with neighbors

Since then we have had good years and bad. We have had summers when the tomatoes have been so large, juicy and plentiful that we have even made our own ketchup, and winters when we have lost everything under three feet of filthy flood water.We have had marrows grow as big as my arm and whole rows of potatoes lost to blight.There have been onion harvests that have kept us going till Christmas and a year when every single squash was eaten by a family of rats that had moved into our shed.

But whatever comes of the crop, the hours spent on our little patch have never felt wasted.

As one of the old boys from a few plots down told us (following the infamous potato blight incident): “That’s the beauty of nature. Every year you get to try it all over again.”

Because it really isn’t just about growing vegetables.

Sure, the plentiful years are amazing: strawberries, raspberries and blackberries by the bucketful, great fistfuls of runner beans picked and eaten within the hour, fat courgettes, shining red onions, tomatoes that burst in your mouth… and, of course, the sheer miracle of digging up potatoes.

Of all the harvests that must be my favorite.

Vegetables grown in an allotment

The sense of achievement at having grown ones own food is unmatched

Every Good Friday you put a single potato in the ground – planting on that particular day being another pearl of ancient wisdom courtesy of the Osney allotment old boys and then come September, each one of them will have magically transformed into eight or so perfect new potatoes.Digging them up is like digging for treasure. But all of this just amounts to added value.The crop itself is a bonus.

Allotments aren’t mini farms.

They are retreats, sanctuaries and gyms.

And having an allotment isn’t just about growing a load of free food, they also give you your own personal trainer, therapist and priest.

As another wise man once said: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.”

In a world of super fast broadband and 4G connectivity, where smartphones, social media and always-on email access mean we are used to having everything not only faster but instantly, the sheer bloody stubbornness of Mother Nature’s timekeeping comes as a blessed relief.

A woman watering her plants in an allotment

Gardening is an oft-overlooked refuge from the fast-paced chaos of today’s world

You can’t hurry the seasons. If you want potatoes in September you are just going to have to wait until Good Friday to plant them – and then wait again another five months or so for the miracle to work. Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it

Sure, strawberries might be available in shops for 365 days a year but round here you have got about six weeks in June and July to pick them and that’s your lot for another 11 months.Getting angry with a runner bean will not make it grow any faster or bigger.Stressing about the rain will not stop it coming down.

Weeds are going to grow whether you like it or not and in a dry summer you are going to have to schlep down to the plot to water your plants every evening no matter how inconvenient it might be.

What does all this teach you?

Patience.

A sense of perspective.

The realization that, actually, most of the things that seem so important (delayed commuter trains, idiot co-workers, stupidly slow computers) don’t really matter at all – not when compared with nature.

Winter will come, spring will follow.

Some years will give glorious harvests, others will be a washout.

There is nothing you can do about it except start all over again next time.

A child watering plants on a garden lot

Another report in 2013 found gardeners far less likely to suffer from a heart attack or a stroke

If the natural cycle of an allotment teaches you to step back and consider the importance (or otherwise) of your worldly stresses, then a solid half an hour spent digging up weeds gives you another kind of lesson.There is a mindlessness to digging that is comparable with praying or chanting.The sheer repetitive dullness of it – shovel in, soil turned, weeds removed, repeat – provides a kind of zen… and after a while, if you don’t exactly attain nirvana, you at least find yourself beautifully switched off, removed from the world.

You are no longer the stressed commuter, unhappy worker, frustrated family man.

And when you have finished digging, blink, shake your head and return to the real world, you are left with a clear and tangible sense of achievement.

Here is a beautiful loamy bed of rich soil where once was a tangled patch of weeds.

And here (in another six months) shall be the best butternut squash you have ever tasted.

Hopefully.

Which only leaves the allotment as personal trainer.Essex and Westminster universities also found that the weekly workout that having an allotment provides has a demonstrable effect on physical as well as mental health.And in 2013 another study reported in the British Journal Of Sports Medicine concluded that allotment gardeners were not only less fat but also had a lower risk of heart attacks and strokes.

It makes sense: digging, weeding, planting and harvesting are all a form of exercise.

And they are all done outside in the fresh air, soaking up vitamin D from the sun.

Plus, allotment holders tend to get their five-a-day. When you have a bumper crop of fresh, organic, home-grown fruit and vegetables on tap, why on earth wouldn’t you?

An activity that helps you live longer and live happier and every now and then also gives you the means to make your own ketchup?They should give allotments out on the NHS.Or as Jonathan Swift put it in Gulliver’s Travels: “And he {the king of Brobdingnag} gave it for his opinion, ‘That whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.

November 3, 2015November 3, 2015

Vertical Farms Across the World

Original post can be found at: Newsweek.com

With arable land becoming more and more sparse, and global populations continuing to rise, the only direction to grow our farms is up.

Vertical farming has its roots in disaster. In 2011, the tidal wave that caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster also destroyed most of the farmland near Sendai, a coastal area in the northern half of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. The Japanese government decided to jump-start a vertical farm building boom there in an effort to replace the lost land. Four years later, Japan boasts hundreds of vertical farms, greenhouses stacked high into multistory skyscrapers, where plants rotate daily to catch sunlight.

Since then, the idea has begun to spread across the globe. Singapore, Sweden, South Korea, Canada, China and the Netherlands all now boast skyscraper farms similar in concept to Japan’s. In the U.S., such farms have risen in Chicago, while Newark, New Jersey, and Jackson, Wyoming, both have contracts with private controlled-environment vendors to build their own. There are also many more on their way all over the world, with concepts and designs becoming more and more ambitious. There’s a fair chance that when you’re shopping the produce aisle of your local grocery in 2030, you’ll come across some greens grown in a tower that reaches up to the blue skies.

October 30, 2015October 30, 2015

The Halloween Turnip: An American History

Here’s a fun fact about Halloween you may not know about!

“Modern Halloween comes from the Irish festival Samhain, an occasion that marked the passage from the summer harvest season to the dark of winter. Tradition dictated huge bonfires be built in fields, and it was believed that fairy spirits lurked in the shadows. To distract these spirits from settling into houses and farms, people would carve rudimentary faces into large turnips, and set candles inside. The turnip lanterns would rest along roadways and next to gates, to both light the way for travelers and caution any passing fairies against invading.

“We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon, If it were not for pumpkins we should be undoon.” By Stephanie Butler

The celebration of Halloween in America didn’t take off until waves of immigrants from Ireland and Scotland arrived in the mid-1800s. Pumpkins are native to North America, so while it’s not known exactly when the first pumpkin was carved and lit, the first mention of pumpkins jack o’lanterns comes at around the same time. In 1866, the children’s magazine “Harper’s Young People” reported that “a great sacrifice of pumpkins” had been made that for that year’s Halloween celebrations. Pumpkin carving grew more and more popular as the years went on. By the 1920s, Halloween had been embraced throughout the United States. Parties and costumes became the norm, and “trick or treating” soon followed in the mid-1930s.

As pumpkin carving grew into a multi-million dollar industry, American farmers began to examine the specific types of pumpkins they grew, and bred new lines of squash specifically for carving. Massachusetts farmer John Howden developed the Howden pumpkin in the 1960s, and it is still the most popular carving pumpkin in America. However, the very things that make the Howden perfect for Halloween (thick stem, shallow ribs, thin flesh in relation to size) make it less than ideal for eating. Meanwhile, varieties like the Sugar Pie, Kabocha, and Carnival make for better eating, and are enjoying a renaissance at farmers’ markets and tables across the country.”

Have you ever carved turnips before?

October 28, 2015October 28, 2015

Behind the Walls of the Largest Indoor Farm in North America

Original post can be found at: www.psfk.com

Behind the Walls of the Largest Indoor Farm in North America

FarmedHere is the largest indoor vertical farm in the United States, with 90,000 square foot space that all follow an eco-, city- and resource-friendly technique.

FarmedHere, located in Chicago, raises its plants with a technique called aquaponics. Plants grow without soil, directly in water kept nutrient-rich by fish. Using the technique, the farm yields both fishes and plants for harvest.

Vertical farming takes its name from growing plants on top of each other, often on tall racks indoors. These rooms are climate-controlled to conditions that maximize the growth and yield of crop. A major advantage of vertical farming is the sips of water it needs. FarmedHere, for example, uses just 3 percent of water traditional farming methods might use. Because the farms are enclosed, pesticides are unnecessary while the LED lights make sure there is enough “sunlight” all-year round.

Their website reads:

FarmedHere® produce is grown indoors in urban facilities, away from the bugs, diseases, pesticides, and weather that impact most produce today.

Our vertical growing technology and local distribution methods reduce energy use, travel time and costs tremendously, making this model one of the most sustainable ways to guarantee access to fresh, healthy produce in city centers, in any season.

Local farming also means fresher produce. Their products travel only a few miles compared to the thousand-mile journeys most agricultural products make.

Right now, FarmedHere raises certified organic basil, baby kale, baby cabbage and microgreens with up to 15 times as many crop cycles a year compared to traditional farming. Right now, FarmedHere is able to supply to around 80 retailers in Chicago.

PSFK has previously reported on vertical farming on the opposite side of the world. Most of which are in developed countries where abandoned tech megafactories are finding a new purpose in vertical farming. Another startup in Japan is planning to build a fully automated vertical farm.

FarmedHere

October 28, 2015

Kale on the streets of London

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Originally posted on the Food is Free Project, on Facebook.
Kale on the streets of London. Welcome to the new normal where #foodisfree

Plant a garden and share the harvest. Start a Food is Free Project in your community and start making ripples of change! Check out our PDF guide at http://foodisfreeproject.org/resources for some tips on getting started. Onward!

October 27, 2015October 27, 2015

Microgreens on a Macro Scale: Inside the ‘Disneyland of Vertical Farming’

Original post: http://www.alternet.org/food/inside-nations-largest-organic-vertical-farm

Chicago isn’t usually known as a farming hub, but did you know that Windy City residents are dining on organic produce such as basil, arugula, kale and microgreens right from their backyard?

FarmedHere, a 90,000-square-foot space in Bedford Park that opened in 2013, is not only the first organically-certified indoor vertical aquaponic farm in Illinois, it’s also the largest indoor farm in North America.

“Our produce is local, it’s healthy, it’s organic and our produce is sold 24 hours from harvest date to our retailers,” says former FarmedHere CEO and current chairman Mark Thomann in the video above.

FarmedHere’s two-story, windowless farming facility currently sits on the site of a formerly abandoned warehouse in the outskirts of Chicago.

A variety of plants grow on racks that are stacked on top of each other in a vertical farming system, as well as an aquaponics system, which combines tilapia (and the fish’s waste) and plants (which filter the waste) to grow food.

FarmedHere’s produce is grown in a sustainable environment where 97 percent of fresh water is reused and plants are grown without the use of herbicides or pesticides. The farm’s LED lighting system mimics outdoor conditions, meaning plants don’t need natural sunlight to grow.

According to PSFK, the company boasts “up to 15 times as many crop cycles a year compared to traditional farming” and supplies its harvest for approximately 80 retailers in Chicago.

The company says that total growing time is about 30 days, which is half the time of traditional farms.

“Our vertical growing technology and local distribution methods reduce energy use, travel time and costs tremendously, making this model one of the most sustainable ways to guarantee access to fresh, healthy produce in city centers, in any season,” the company, which launched in 2010, advertises on its website.

As EcoWatch has reported, indoor farms could help solve potential global food shortages and food deserts.

The global population is expected to reach a staggering 10 billion by 2056 and there is only so much arable land available. Climate change is only confounding the problem, as extreme weather events such as flooding, hurricanes and drought increase in frequency and intensity, and leave a damaging impact on agriculture.

The beauty of indoor farms, which are sprouting up from Japan to Jackson, Wyoming, is that the plants growing inside are immune to hot, cold or extreme weather.

If all goes according to plan, those of us outside of Illinois might get to enjoy FarmedHere’s year-round, fresh-grown produce a lot closer to home.

At the Indoor Ag-Con held earlier this month in New York, newly appointed FarmedHere CEO Matt Matros announced ambitions for 18 new indoor farms spread across the country that could provide local (meaning less than 200 miles) produce for up to 75 percent of the country’s population.

“We are not competing with each other, but with Central Valley agriculture” Matros said during his keynote speech.

“We want to create the Disneyland of vertical farming,” he said.

Matros told Chicago Tribune that he hopes to expand to 12 to 15 farms across the U.S. within five years and eventually have farms around the world.

“Everything about this business is good, and it solves a really big problem,” Matros told the publication. “We’re going to have nine billion people in the world by 2050. What are we going to feed them?”

October 23, 2015

Grow Fresh Vegetables This Winter With a DIY Vertical Garden

Original article can be found at: “WideOpenCountry.com”

If you’re craving your own fresh winter vegetables but don’t have the space for a garden, you’re in luck.

Here are a few ways you can create your own vertical garden.

You don’t need a lot of space for many winter plants. Though some plants, like broccoli and cauliflower, take a larger space and aren’t necessarily recommended for a vertical garden. However, spinach, lettuce and strawberries can be a great start to your newfound green thumb.

There are a number of items sold at garden centers to help plant your vertical garden. Some felt hangers, much like shoe hangers, can be purchased. Hang your garden in an area where it’ll get plenty of sunlight, but where the harsh winter winds won’t do damage. The advantage to this garden – move it when a freeze is coming.

You can “upcycle” almost anything into a vertical planter. Put on your creative gloves and turn your 2-liter or 20-ounce soda bottles into a planter. We know you have those in the recycle bin, so why not recycle them yourself.

As with any garden, you’ll need to follow the seed instructions. Some plants need more space. If you’re planing something like beets or carrots, you’ll need to allow for plenty of root space, so plan accordingly. If you’re looking for leafy vegetables, soda bottles will work perfectly. Plant one per bottle and the plant will regenerate throughout the winter months, providing you with weeks of fresh salads.

Instructions

Purchase or recycle your containers and locate an area to grow your garden.
Be sure you poke small holes in your container (and put something under them if on your porch) so that the plants will have plenty of drainage. If you’re purchasing a store-bought container, you’ll most likely be able to skip this step.
Buy garden soil and fill your containers with a good organic soil.
You can sow the seeds indoors in small eggshells (yes, just another way to recycle) while you’re preparing your masterpieces. Once you have the vertical garden container purchased or made, you can transfer young seedlings into the containers.
Even if you have enough room out back, vertical gardens can be a fun addition to any home. Many of these options maximize your water and minimize your overall work. So, who’s ready to garden?

October 20, 2015October 20, 2015

Millenials Have a Love for Urban Gardening

Original post can be found at: Realtytoday.com

Millennials are most likely to garden in urban areas compared older generations, national survey says.

Although facing a lot of hardships, millennials seem to be coping with the trials through resourcefulness, creativity, practicality and tightening of the belt.

Millennials have been turning the tables from coming up with innovative approaches to frugal living and making the small spaces work. This younger generation is seen to be the most adaptive to change.

The Birth of Urban Gardens

Millennials love the urban life. This is not a question. This is why instead of living in the suburbs where they have a lot of space to themselves, they’d rather take on the frugal living, not just economically but on the space they live in, of the urban setting.

Urban “burbs” are a ‘small city’ within suburbs. They are a walkable community with shopping and social sites just around the corner from the homes.

With the growth of urban burbs in the US comes the budding number of urban gardens, as well.

According to The Home Depot’s national gardening survey conducted in Fall 2015, millennials are twice as likely to garden in urban settings than non-millennial city dwellers. Roughly 17% of millennials in Western US claim to be practicing urban gardening. According to the survey, 35% of millennials nationwide have a yearning to learn about techniques of urban gardening.

Urban gardening can be the usual pots on the windowsill that is planted with herbs. It can also take in some alternative forms such as shared garden plots in community spaces or between two or more residences, rooftop gardening, vertical gardening, hanging gardens and other creative means of making use of the limited space.

Although being dubbed as the most selfish generation, it is still remarkable that millennials are able to face the challenges that they are facing. It is also notable that the generation that has inherited technology and processed food is making ends meet to be able to grow some of the ingredients of the food they prepare in considerably small spaces. Urban gardening is indeed possible.

Do you have an urban garden? How’s it coming, so far?

October 17, 2015

This Robot-Run Indoor Farm Can Grow 10 Million Heads Of Lettuce A Year

Original post can be found at: http://www.fastcoexist.com/

This massive Japanese vegetable factory saves water and energy—along with human labor.When a sprawling new “vegetable factory” opens near Kyoto, Japan in 2017, it will be the first farm with no farmers. Robots will plant lettuce seeds, transplant them, raise the vegetables, and automatically carry the fully-grown lettuce heads to a packing line, where they can get ready to be sent to local grocery stores.

In a single day, the farm can harvest 30,000 heads of lettuce. On a traditional farm, a field of the same size can grow about 26,000 plants—but only harvest two or four crops a season.

Spread, the Japanese company planning the factory, opened its first indoor farm in 2006, and already supplies lettuce to 2,000 stores around Tokyo. But it saw the opportunity to make its process even more efficient. It sees the new farm as a model for the future of farming.

“There are several reasons vegetable factories will be needed in the future in order to create a sustainable society,” says Kiyoka Morita from Spread. Like other indoor farms, Spread’s new factory uses far less water than traditional agriculture; the factory’s new technology also allows them to recycle 98% of that water. Because the factory is sealed, there’s no need for pesticides or herbicides. The ultra-efficient lighting system can run on renewable energy. Japan imports about 60% of its food each year, but the factory can supply it locally.

As climate change increases extreme weather like drought and floods, the fully sealed environment can grow a much more reliable supply of produce. The factory automatically controls temperature, humidity, the level of carbon dioxide, and light to optimize growth.

Those things are true of other vertical farms, but the fact that the process is now fully automated also makes it cheap. Compared to Spread’s current factory, the new one will cut labor costs by 50%, so the company can sell lettuce at a lower price (now, it sells for the same cost as regular lettuce from the field).

The new system also protects the food from contamination from pesky humans. “Full automation also reduces the crops’ exposure to human contact during cultivation, further reducing the risk of contamination, and increasing the hygienic levels in the area,” Morita says.

It isn’t easy to automate every step of the process, and Spread is still tweaking some of the steps, like planting the seeds. And the equipment had to be designed to carefully handle the plants, something that was a little hard for robotic arms to do. “It’s challenging to make sure that the machines all run quickly and efficiently without damaging the delicate vegetables,” she says.

The new farm will begin construction in early 2016, and the company is hoping to start building similar vegetable factories around the world.

[All Photos: via Spread]

October 16, 2015October 16, 2015

$5000 fine hanging over the heads of a Norman Park couple – all because of what they’ve done with their veggie patch

Original post can be found at: http://blogs.abc.net.au

13 October 2015 , 9:17 AM by Spencer Howson

Left: Kay and John’s nature strip community veggie patch. Image by Terri Begley/612 ABC Brisbane.

Your veggie patch is constantly attacked by possums – so you try something different.

You move everything outside your fence – onto the nature strip – and for whatever reason, the possums leave everything alone.

You invite everyone in the street to enjoy the fruits of your labour and for years, everyone’s happy. Even though you know you’re not really meant to be planting anything on the footpath.

Then, in 2015, someone complains to council and suddenly you’re facing a $5000 fine.

Terri Begley is live at Kay and John Davidson’s place in Norman Park and BCC’s Parks, Environment and Sustainability Chair Cr Matthew Bourke is on the phone:

Download audio

Statement from Brisbane City Council 10.52am:

Council has completed its review of a complaint received about a verge garden planting at Norman Park and the plantings will be retained with a small change. Council must conduct an investigation and notify residents when a complaint is made against them. The priority is to always allow pedestrian safety and to ensure no impacts to underground public utility services. In this case, the commonsense solution is for the garden to remain with a small change to the garden edge to remove a trip hazard. Council is conducting a review of its current practices with the view of creating a new guideline to make it easier for residents to undertake garden plantings outside their fencelines.

Postscript Wednesday 6.35am – Cr Bourke explains the statement here:

Download audio

Kay says: “That is AWESOME news Spencer. Thank you!!! It would not have been possible without the fabulous community support and in particular your broadcast. The power of media!!! I am really pleased that common sense did in fact prevail. The development of guidelines for verge gardeners is a positive move forward. This certainly has been a great outcome-thanks again Spencer and please thank Matthew for me.”

October 15, 2015October 15, 2015

Grow. Fish. Cook. Meet Nathan the Bartender/Gardener!

How did you get started with your blog?

It started 3 years ago. I was just showing some of my food and veggie pics to one of my coworkers

and he was like wow those are some awesome pics. He asked had I heard of Instagram, said it was like Facebook but photo based. Im not a ‘Facebooker’ so I was immediately intrigued. Signed up that night, he taught me the whole hashtag thing, woke up the next morning and had a new follower from Brazil. Im from Washington DC and now connecting with someone from Brazil from just a posted photo….too cool.

Did you start your blog when you started your transition to live this life style? Have you always been this way?

No. I’ve always loved food, love to cooked, create, etc. I did change my username once I delved deeper into the gardening/farming world. My first name was @slangin_tails I am a Bartender, I slang cocktails! It was about 2 years ago when I came up with @grow_fish_cook that’s what I love to do…grow…fish…and cook!

What sparked your passion?

It was a friendly competition between a buddy of mine about 7 years ago. At the time tomatoes in the supermarket were tainted with Salmonella. We were like, WTF??? He said he was going to start growing his own tomatoes, went to Home Depot and he bought 4 plants, containers & soil. A week later, I went to his house, the plants had tripled in size, I was shocked, then I went and bought double what he had purchased! The following week The Washington Post featured an article in the Food section all about Heirloom Tomatoes, I had only thought tomatoes were red. Nope! Recommended literature from article was ‘The Heirloom Tomato’ by Amy Goldman, I purchased that book and I have been infected ever since.

It’s so funny because now I wouldn’t ever dare think about purchasing a plant from Home Depot!

What are some of the other things you would like to have other people understand about living a healthier and self-sufficient life style?

That it is very simple. Growing is simple. Dirt, seed, sunlight, water. We are such a ‘I want/need what I want NOW society’ – I’m just gonna go buy so called “organic” produce from the store for $5 a pound and think I’m living that lifestyle. Are you informed? Do you really know what’s allowed to be in your “organic” produce? Growing yourself gives you the choice on what nutrients you choose to provide and they’re so cool. Compost, Compost Tea, Seaweed or Fish Emulsions, planting cover crops in the fall, no Salmonella!

What tips and tricks could you share with other people?

Love your plants. They are going to love you back. Provide the absolute best for them and they will produce. When I harvest it’s like a sped up version of raising children and seeing them off to college!

Grow from seed. Be informed. Pull your suckers ’til your fingers are black.

Have you ever made mistakes or failed doing something?

Nope. Never. OF COURSE I HAVE! The second year of growing for me I learned a lot. I went from 8 plants the year before to over 40. I started everything from seed that year, planted in ground and containers. Everything started great until about a month after planting in the containers I noticed they weren’t doing great, starting to wilt, discolor, etc. I thought I had created the perfect environment for them. I got online typed in symptoms and that’s when I discovered Aphids. It was too late, I had a complete infestation of thousands of the little juice sucking pricks. I lost 90% of the container plants and half of plants in ground. I was crushed having started everything from seed 12 weeks prior. I learned, never had another Aphid problem, yay for Spiders & Ladybugs! On a side-note, I make mistakes every year, its gonna happen. I’m never satisfied with my knowledge always trying to learn more.

How did you overcome any obstacles?

The internet is just awesome. So many garden forums, blogs, posts out there and people are willing to help.

It’s also a lot of trial and error so take notes.

Have you ever dealt with a person who disregards your life style?

Ummm…no.

What are some of your greatest rewards with a lifestyle such as the one you live?

The freshest most delicious food you could ever imagine. I’ve been featured on quite a few sites, sold produce to some of the top restaurants in my area, received great compliments. But nothing is more rewarding then creating your own meal from everything you caught and grew. In the summer I go fishing out in the Atlantic Ocean, return home with my catch and stroll through my plot and pick whatever I want to pair with my fish. This is how people back in the day provided for themselves, that is often over looked.

Follow @Grow.Fish.Cook. on Instagram!

October 13, 2015October 13, 2015

Urban Farms Are Sprouting Up Like Weeds!

Original post can be found at: Inquisitr
If your town isn’t on board with urban gardens, they are living in the past, because urban gardens are sprouting up all over the nation as people search for more sustainability and more control over what they put in their mouths.

Farmland is scarce and costly, according to WGBH News, which featured an article on urban farms. Courtney Hennessy and John Stoddard were two urban farmers interviewed for the article. Instead of plowing the fields, they tend produce on a rooftop in Boston.

“We literally biked around looking at big buildings,” Hennessy, owner of Higher Ground Farm, said while harvesting arugala on the roof above the Boston Design Center in the Seaport District to sell to restaurants. Their rooftop farm is so new it’s only breaking even right now, so the couple kept their other jobs. Both Hennessy and Stoddard believe that urban farming businesses have no where to go but up, because growing city populations are increasingly wanting to know where their food comes from.

“There’s a lot of really amazing urban agriculture going on in this country, but all of it’s through nonprofits and grant funding,” Hennessy explained. “And we’re determined to see if we can do this as a for-profit company. Can you live and work in a city and still be a farmer, I guess, would be the thing we’re trying to figure out.”

Catherine Bertini, a former executive director of the United Nation’s World Food Programme, says that she doesn’t believe that urban farms will have a very big impact on the food stem.

“I’d like to be proven wrong, but it’s not going to change the world because it’s the big-volume farms that can do that,” Bertini said. “And until these small projects become very large, they’re not going to have a big impact.”

It’s not just rooftops, urban farmers are using their front yards, their back yards, and even their closets to grow food in. Grove Labs is a startup company that is encouraging people to grow their own produce from cabinets right inside their homes. Jamie Byron and Gabe Blanchet, MIT graduates, started Grove Labs and fully believe that home-grown food is the wave of the future.

“In the future we see people being able to grow lots of things in their home and maybe have an entire room that’s dedicated to growing,” Byron said.

“The reality with a new technology like this is we want to make sure it’s beautiful and works really well,” Blanchet said of the indoor mini-farms. They’re a few thousand dollars, but the pair is committed to changing the way food is brought to the table. “And so the price point isn’t — we didn’t just go for the bare minimum we could scrape by with. So for those who are really price sensitive, we plan to release do-it-yourself plants so people can build their own ecosystem.”

Byron and Blanchet’s opinion on the food demands of the future are contrary to Catherine Bertini’s opinion. The MIT graduates believe that the newer generation of adults don’t want to repeat the mistakes of past generations.

The newer generations, Byron and Blanchet say, will want to stay connected to their food sources.

“Besides providing a green space for customers and crew members, it will help us become even more sustainable,” Brian Holtman, JetBlue’s manager of concession programs, explained. Food scraps from the restaurants there will become compost for the urban farm. Meanwhile, a rotunda garden at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport supplies nearby restaurants with beans, peppers, leafy greens, and herbs from 26 aeroponic growing towers. O’Hare has even utilized landscaping goats, sheep, llamas, and burros to clear “dense scrub vegetation,” according to a Take Part article.

Whether the agriculture leaders of the country want to believe it or not, a farming revolution is happening. Urban farms are found everywhere from high rise buildings to street dividers. Many urban farmers are using vertical farming techniques. After all, for decades, we’ve heard threats that there isn’t enough farmland to feed the nation, so innovative sustainable folks went vertical instead. The new designs allow for larger yields and better control over crops. Traditional farming ends up with a 50-50 risk of crop loss, according to Food World News.

Not only do urban farms let people feel good about what they are eating, urban farms’ green benefits also reduce the number of delivery trucks, cuts back on fuel needs, and promote cleaner air. Besides, with urban farming, food can go from farm to table in less than a day. Food from urban farms maintain their fresh-picked taste, because they’re actually fresh, not artificially ripened or preserved.

October 7, 2015October 7, 2015

It’s an unexpected romance: Real Estate Developers and Urban Farmers

Source: citylab.com

The roof garden on the Stack House Apartments in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood. (Michael Walmsley/Vulcan Real Estate) — The roof garden on the Stack House Apartments in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. (Michael Walmsley/Vulcan Real Estate)

At the Stack House Apartments in Seattle’s now-trendy South Lake Union neighborhood, residents can walk out onto a terrace and pluck a tomato right off the vine.

In the South Bronx, an 8,000-square-foot hydroponic greenhouse atop an affordable housing development is creating jobs and food for the residents below—along with cooler summers and warmer winters.

And in Somerville, Massachusetts, Assembly Row, a still-under-construction mixed-use development, features a small garden that serves several local restaurants and is a learning site for area employees.

Environmentally conscious construction and building systems are old news at this point, but building-integrated food production is a relatively new, though growing, area of focus. And it’s led to a bit of a strange bedfellows situation: As both urban agriculture and real estate boom in a number of U.S. cities, real estate developers are looking to small-scale local growers to augment their plans. At the same time, food activists are beginning to recognize how even luxury builders can advance their cause.

Henry Gordon-Smith, who advises schools, builders and cities as they roll out vertical farming projects, says he now receives up to 10 calls a week from builders and architects inquiring about such technologies or, increasingly, seeking experienced growers.

A rendering of Sebastian Mariscal Studio’s forthcoming Mission Hill project in Boston, a mixed-use development that will incorporate a rooftop community roof garden and solar farm. (Courtesy SMS)

“The building has to be productive,” he says. “All of that creates better occupants, and better citizens. Food is the next frontier in this.”

Instead of seeing Boston’s building boom as a threat to her urban farming business, Jessie Banhazl, founder and CEO of the Somerville-based Green City Growers, looks at new development as a positive. She started out installing terra firma gardens in backyards and public spaces, but says much of her work of late has been meeting with major developers and architects to build rooftop and grade-level farms into their plans from the conception stage.

“It’s really important that developers understand the value of this, and that they can provide amenities and lots of value to their property by having a rooftop farm,” she says. “There’s so many different applications where the tenants would value having food growing on the property.”

Indeed, many of these developments view urban agriculture as an added amenity for tenants, similar to a gym or a media lounge. As a perk for tenants like Google and Akamai, commercial property management company Boston Properties asked Green City Growers to initiate a garden and education program at its Kendall Center building in Cambridge. Another firm, Beacon Capital Partners, collaborated with a local beekeeper to put beehives in a number of its Boston buildings, which allows building managers to bring little jars of honey to their tenants, providing a “rare opportunity for a landlord to come by when they don’t need something,” says Noah Wilson-Rich of Best Bees.

Across the country in Seattle, the same is true for a number of newer residential developments. Vulcan Real Estate, run by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, has included rooftop community gardens in many of its recent projects. At the 24-story Martin apartment building downtown, residents chose to tend their rooftop gardens themselves, while the terrace garden at the Stack House Apartments in South Lake Union is maintained by Colin McCrate and a team of farmers from Seattle Urban Farm Company. McCrate and Vulcan are now working together on another, larger residential development, and they say gardens appeal to a younger generation of Seattleites who carry with them “a more holistic environmentalism.”

“A lot of our residents wished that they had some green space to tend rather than just a shoebox in the window,” says Brandon Morgan, development manager at Vulcan. “It’s also a visual amenity, as part of our landscaping, it’s sort of a centerpiece on that roof deck. And it also encourages healthy living by basically providing residents with greens, if they want it, for consumption.”

Food activists are starting to see the long-term benefits of integrating agriculture into existing or new infrastructure, says Holly Fowler of Northbound Ventures, who facilitated the yearlong urban agriculture visioning process on behalf of the City of Boston that ended this summer. “Typically, the land that is slated for housing,” she says, “agriculture is not going to be competing with that land. Period. The end.” When conversation at meetings turned to combining development and agriculture, Holly says, “reactions were always, ‘we should do more of this.’”

This is not to say concerns do not exist among the urban food justice crowd. Chief among them is the fear that access to an urban garden is an amenity available only to those who can afford it, says Andrea Dwyer, executive director of Seattle Tilth, a large nonprofit with a variety of urban agriculture projects throughout the city. And after the initial luster of that new bed of veggies at the apartment complex or office wears off, she adds, what will become of the project then?

“I do worry that some of these trendier developments, that while it’s a fad, people will incorporate it, but it will fade and they’ll do the equivalent of asphalting over it and turn it into something else,” she says. “In order for urban food production to have staying power, there has to be a real commitment and dedication to it from all perspectives—from people who are developing the buildings, the planning departments, the politicians.”

Read the full article here: http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/10/the-newest-odd-couple-real-estate-developers-and-urban-farmers/409060/

October 4, 2015

Could triple-decker floating farms address future food issues?

Each Smart Floating Farm would be a triple-decker barge, featuring a fish farm, hydroponic garden and rooftop solar panels (Credit: Smart Floating Farms)

With the world’s population expected to hit 9.1 billion by 2050, coupled with the growing effects of climate change on our ability to grow crops, a company out of Barcelona has proposed a solution to feeding the future world. Forward Thinking Architecture’s triple-decker Smart Floating Farms would feature 2.2 million square feet (2.04 sq km) of fish farm, hydroponic garden, and rooftop solar panels to power a floating barge, which could be anchored to the beds of oceans, lakes or rivers. The company estimates that each of its floating farms could produce about 8 tons (7.3 tonnes) of vegetables and 1.7 tons (1.5 tonnes) of fish per year.

The floating farms are intended to provide a solution that can keep up with food production levels that will have to increase by 70 percent globally, and 100 percent in developing nations, to feed more than 9 billion mouths. With so many people, arable land would be stretched to its growing capacity (we’re currently using 80 percent), while fresh water supplies would be severely stressed. Oceans are also being overfished at present.

The company’s idea to move farms onto the surface of water would address all those issues. Each level of the triple-decker farm would have its own function, and would operate as part of a sustainable loop that feeds into the other decks.

Skylights and solar panels on the top deck would convert sunlight into energy to power the farm. The middle level would consist of tiers of hydroponic organic crops that would maximize the limited space on the barge. Waste water from the crops would filter down to the fish farm level at the bottom as a food source.

Meanwhile, the nitrogen-rich fish poop would be recycled back to fertilize the crops. Unlike livestock animal manure, fish manure is a fast-acting fertilizer that doesn’t take months to break down, and would provide the plants a quick nutrient boost, including the macronutrients phosphorous and potassium. Fish farming combined with hydroponics – a combo known as aquaponics – is a proven system that is growing in popularity, so this part of the concept is perfectly reasonable.

Also added to the barge would be a possible desalination plant (if floating on sea water), a fish-processing house, and a packaging facility. Wind turbines and wave turbines could also be added, to provide extra energy. The entire barge would be protected from the seas and bad weather with inflatable wave protectors. Thus the farm would be self-sufficient and largely self-operating, requiring minimal labor.

Javier Ponce, the CEO of Forward Thinking Architecture, envisions locating the floating farms, which would be scalable, near densely-populated cities which will see the greatest growth in the future. Of the 35 megacities with more than 10 million people, 25 are located near water, such as Shanghai, Jakarta, Lagos, Tokyo and New York. Ponce believes the floating farms could complement existing traditional agriculture systems, helping reduce food risks associated with climate change issues in especially vulnerable parts of the world.

Source: Smart Floating Farms

October 2, 2015October 4, 2015

This London Underground Farm Grows Salad in a WWII Bomb Shelter

This post is originally from http://www.fastcoexist.com

Deep below the streets of London, something is growing in tunnels that once kept people safe from World War II bombs. One hint: It’s leafy.

An old bomb shelter is also pest-free, as well as weather free, and there’s never a frost. That means no pesticides. And because the farm is hydroponic, all the nutrients remain in the tanks, instead of running off into the soil and then into rivers.

Growing Underground is a company that makes “kilometer zero” eating possible in London, by growing salad in LED-lit, underground factories right beneath the customers’ feet.

The Growing Underground farm sits 100 feet under Clapham in South London.

It uses hydroponics and low-energy lighting to grow salad, including mizuna, watercress, Thai basil, radish, pea shoots, mustard leaf, and red vein sorrel.

They grow year-round on racked beds that look like warehouse shelving. Best of all, the process uses 70% less water than regular surface farms.

Being underground has many advantages. One is food miles, or the lack thereof. Transport makes up a significant proportion of the cost of food, both financially and environmentally, so growing in a city center cuts that cost almost to zero.

September 28, 2015September 28, 2015

How to Re-purpose those old jeans into a gardening apron!

Instead of spending money on a new garden apron that’s going to get dirty, Spring Warren, author of The Quarter-Acre Farm, recycles an old pair of jeans instead—making an apron without any sewing.

September 24, 2015September 28, 2015

FRONT & Back-Yard Vegetable Gardeners, Meet “One Yard Revolution”!

How would you quickly describe yourself?

My wife Karen and I live in Chicago and love organic gardening. We started with a small vegetable garden many years ago, but over time it expanded to take over most of the backyard. Now we’re growing in the front yard too. During the summer and early fall, we don’t buy any vegetables from the store and buy very little fruit as well. We also use cold frames and hoop houses to extend the growing season, so we always have some fresh food to harvest, even in the winter.

How did you get started with your One Yard Revolution YouTube channel and Facebook page?

I started my YouTube gardening channel and Facebook page in hopes of promoting a low cost, low effort, sustainable approach to organic gardening that relies minimally on store-bought products. There has been huge a proliferation of organic gardening products in recent years. If you believe the marketing, you could easily get the impression that growing your own food requires a wide array of costly fertilizers and amendments that need to be applied year after year.

Our approach improves soil fertility with compost and mulch from free local resources like autumn leaves, grass clippings, wood chips, and used coffee grounds. We also plant a nitrogen fixing cover crop in late summer. We don’t use any store-bought fertilizers, and we get excellent results. Soil testing has proven that our approach provides more than enough organic matter and nutrients.

I’m passionate about this approach, first of all, because it works very well. But, more importantly, I think all the marketing creates false barriers. It creates financial barriers for those who don’t have the financial resources. It creates access barriers for those who don’t have access to the products. I want to advocate an approach that has few, if any, barriers.

There are also environmental issues with many organic products. For example, rock dust and rock phosphate are mined resources. Bat habitats are disrupted when bat guano is collected, and harvesting kelp from the ocean disrupts a very fragile ecosystem. Using free local resources, on the other hand, actually improves the environment by building soil fertility with material that otherwise may end up in a landfill.

I hope to advocate an environmentally friendly approach that anyone can use to grow healthy food no matter where you live and no matter how much money you have.

Did you start your YouTube channel when you started your transition to live this life style?

In my case, the lifestyle definitely came first. I’ve had a vegetable garden nearly all my life, but I didn’t start my YouTube channel until the spring of 2013.

Have you always been growing your own food? If not, what sparked your passion?

Both of my parents grew up on dairy farms in Pennsylvania, where they produced most of their own food, including vegetables. Though my father wanted to remain on the farm, my grandfather was all too aware of the economic challenges faced by small family farms and insisted my father learn a new trade and find work elsewhere.

When my parents moved to a small town to start their family, they took a little bit of the farm with them by always planting a vegetable garden. Though my approach is somewhat different than that of my parents, I learned a lot of what I know today from my experiences in our family’s vegetable garden.

My wife Karen also grew up with a garden, so it was almost inevitable that we would start our own when we bought our home 25 years ago.

Have you ever made mistakes or failed doing something? How did you overcome any obstacles?

Sure, I make mistakes all the time, but I just learn from them and move on. One great thing about growing your own food is that it’s a lifelong learning experience. No matter how much you learn, it’s still just the tip of the iceberg. This makes gardening both challenging and endlessly fascinating.

Have you ever dealt with a person who disregards your lifestyle?

Not really. I’m a vegetarian, and sometimes get teased about that, but I don’t take it to heart and it’s usually in good fun. As far as my YouTube channel goes, I’ve found that the overwhelming majority of people who leave comments are very kind, positive, and supportive. I think this says a lot about the online gardening community.

What are some of your greatest rewards with a lifestyle such as the one you live?

To me, gardening is a form of meditation. It helps me relax and keeps me grounded and connected to nature, despite the fact I live in a heavy populated urban area. It’s also something my wife and I enjoy doing together, which is great for our relationship. And because we rely on free local resources and nitrogen fixing cover crops to improve soil fertility, our gardening costs are very low and we save a lot of money on groceries. Of course, the flavor and nutritional value of homegrown produce simply can’t be beat.

What are some of the things you would like to have other people understand about living a healthier and self-sufficient lifestyle?

For someone new to gardening, the idea of growing more of your own food might seem like a daunting task. As I mentioned earlier, there are so many gardening products and practices marketed to consumers that it’s easy to get the impression that starting a new garden is very expensive, time consuming, and complicated. I’d like people to know that, while some products can be helpful, most are not needed and many are of questionable value. You can improve soil fertility with homemade compost and mulch from free local resources. You can fix nitrogen in the soil by growing inexpensive nitrogen fixing cover crops. You can all but eliminate weeding by using mulch. Simply put, my message is that you can grow a lot of food on a little land using sustainable organic practices without spending a lot of money or working very hard. This is the message I try to communicate in my videos, and I share specific strategies on how to make it a reality.

What are your favorite plants to grow in the garden?

That’s a tough one to answer, because we grow a wide variety of crops and love them all. Given our goal of working less and growing more, though, I have to say that I really enjoy growing edible perennials like strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, sorrel, Good King Henry, and sun-chokes. They come back year and year with very little effort on our part. Of course, you have to love annuals too. Our garden wouldn’t be the same without tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, kale, and squash. Like I said; it’s really hard to pick favorites.

September 22, 2015September 22, 2015

This 82 year old man, maintains a garden of 1,000 fruit and vegetable plants in buckets

This post is originally from commercialappeal.com

Some people are happy with a patio tomato on the porch.

Willie Anderson, 82, took container gardening to another level; he planted tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, okra, squash, peppers and eggplants in five-gallon plastic buckets in his yard in Red Banks, Mississippi. He now has plants in more than 1,000 buckets.

Willie Anderson, 82, maintains a garden of 1,000 fruit and vegetable plants in buckets at his home in Red Banks, Miss. The garden requires no special equipment. There's no hoe on the place, he said. And it's totally organic. I use grass clippings, soybean stalks, cotton hulls, he said. — Willie Anderson, 82, maintains a garden of 1,000 fruit and vegetable plants in buckets at his home in Red Banks, Miss. The garden requires no special equipment. There’s no hoe on the place, he said. And it’s totally organic. I use grass clippings, soybean stalks, cotton hulls, he said.

It’s easier to grow an entire garden if you’re planting everything in buckets, Anderson said. “There’s no hoe on the place,” he said. “We don’t need one.”

“You don’t have to have any equipment,” said his son, Ron Anderson. “You don’t have to have any utensils to farm with as far as hoes and shovels. You don’t have to have a tiller. All you do is plant, water and harvest.”

The garden is totally organic. “I use grass clippings, soybean stalks, cotton hulls — that’s the waste that comes out when they gin the cotton,” Willie said.

Ron came up with the idea of the bucket garden for his dad nine years ago. Willie always was a robust man, he said. He was in farming, raised hogs and cattle and went into the home building business with Ron and his other son, Mark Anderson. “He had a hip that deteriorated and he had to have hip surgery and replacement,” Ron said of his father. “When he had that, he was pretty much home bound and his hopes and dreams were just going down. He had cabin fever. He didn’t have anything to look forward to or to do. He couldn’t get out like he had all his life.”

Willie liked the idea of the bucket garden. “I was just tired of sitting up in the house,” he said.

Ron bought 100 buckets from Lowe’s and some Miracle-Gro potting soil. He said, “Dad, let’s try this and see if we can do this for your hobby.”

Ron punched holes in the bottoms of the buckets for drainage and put them on sheets of black plastic to keep weeds from growing around them. “We raised our own tomato plants from seed,” Ron said. “We planted one tomato to a bucket, one squash seed to a bucket, one corn seed to a bucket.”

Willie didn’t want to stay in the house anymore. “We got him a little four-wheel scooter and he’s out the first thing every morning to check his garden,” Ron said.

“You can garden in the shade,” Willie said. “It needs to get at least five hours of sunshine a day. That’s enough for the plants.”

Their first harvest was better than they expected. “We probably had about 10 cases of tomatoes that weighed 30 pounds apiece,” Ron said. “I sold them to some pizza companies in the Olive Branch area. They froze them and canned them for soups.”

Now they mostly give away the produce they don’t use. “I thought at first there might be a little money to be made in it,” Willie said. “But I don’t think there is. I just give what I grow to whoever wants it.”

They stopped using Miracle-Gro after the first year and went organic. “We don’t use any kind of chemical fertilizer and we use the same dirt year after year,” Ron said. “We plant them in the same pots every year. After people cut their grass and sack the grass cuttings on the side of the curb, my brother and myself go around with a trailer and bring home 20 to 30 sacks. He puts it around the top of the buckets. The grass fertilizes every time you water.”

To irrigate, they attach water hoses to sprinklers atop 10-foot landscape timber posts, which are stuck in the ground. They use one sprinkler per each group of 350 buckets. “All I do is turn the faucet on,” Willie said. “It wets everything down in about an hour and a half. It usually lasts about a week if it’s not too dry.”

They’ve experimented with different vegetables. “We had a cabbage big as our granddaughter,” Willie said. “I got a cantaloupe this year. It’s ripe down there now. It’s the first one we’ve been able to raise in the buckets. We haven’t been able to raise a watermelon. I don’t believe the bucket’s big enough to raise a watermelon.”

They haven’t tried everything. “We haven’t grown any field peas, but they’re so simple to grow,” Willie said. “I don’t see a problem with them.”

Plastic buckets aren’t the only container gardeners can use, Willie said. “These gardens can be grown in a plastic shopping sack like you get at the grocery store if you want to, but they’ll only last one year and you’ll have to redo it every year,” he said. “I have done it. It’ll work. But the plastic will rot out by the end of the year.”

Ron, his mother, Geneva, his wife, Gidget, the grandchildren and a hired man help with the garden. Willie basically oversees the garden.

Willie also gives the plants pep talks. “I say, ‘Now, y’all got to do better than that,’” he said.

“He does go down there and talk to them three times a day,” Ron said.

Garden writer Felder Rushing, a former Extension Service urban horticulture specialist, is a fan of bucket gardening. “I have grown veggies and herbs in five-gallon buckets in my Mississippi garden for years,” he said. “So cool. So easy. Just the right size. Can’t grow a decent tomato or pepper in anything smaller. And no worries about soil diseases.”

Rushing doesn’t stick with drab-colored buckets. “I spray paint mine to make them more cheery.”

As for Willie’s 1,000-plus bucket garden, Rushing said, “I totally agree with the sentiments of Mae West, who once said too much of a good thing is — wonderful.”

Read the full story here: http://www.commercialappeal.com/entertainment/lifestyle/home/bucket-crops-mississippi-man-takes-container-gardening-to-another-level-ep-1211661529-324126561.html