Urban gardens: The future of food? - Dream City With penny-farthings, handlebar mustaches and four-pocket vests back in fashion, the rise of urban farming should just about complete our fetish for the late 1800s. Today, you can find chicken coops on rooftops in Brooklyn, N.Y., goats in San Francisco backyards, and rows of crops sprouting across empty lots in Cleveland. That it fits so snugly into the hipster-steampunk throwback trend is what makes urban farming ripe for ridicule. Wilson Solar Grill Stores the Sun's Energy For Nighttime Grilling Many of us will be firing up our grills this weekend for some well-deserved barbecue time. After all, barbecuing is one of America’s greatest pastimes, but it certainly isn’t one of our most environmentally friendly. Whether you prefer charcoal, wood chips or propane, grilling releases emissions and contributes to poor air quality. Up until now, solar powered grilling has required, as you might expect, the sun, which means traditional fuel-fired grills are required after sunset. But new solar technology developed by MIT professor David Wilson could bring a nighttime solar-powered grill to the market very soon; an invention also of great benefit to those in developing nations who rely on wood to cook all their food. Wilson’s technology harnesses the sun and stores latent heat to allow cooking times for up to an amazing twenty five hours at temperatures above 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
No-dig gardening No-dig gardening is a non-cultivation method used by some organic gardeners. The origins of no-dig gardening are unclear, and may be based on pre-industrial or nineteenth-century farming techniques.[1] Masanobu Fukuoka started his pioneering research work in this domain in 1938, and began publishing in the 1970s his Fukuokan philosophy of "Do Nothing Farming", which is now acknowledged by some as the tap root of the Permaculture movement.[2] Two pioneers of the method in the twentieth century included F. C. King, Head Gardener at Levens Hall, South Westmorland, in the Lake District of England, who wrote the book "Is Digging Necessary?" in 1946 and a gardener from Middlecliffe in the UK, A. Guest, who in 1948 published the book "Gardening Without Digging".
High-tech greenhouse planned for downtown Vancouver parkade rooftop VANCOUVER -- The roof of a city-owned downtown parkade will be converted to a high-tech vertical growing space capable of producing 95 tonnes of fresh vegetables a year. Vancouver-based Valcent Products has entered into a memorandum of understanding with EasyPark, the corporate manager of the city’s parkades, to build a 6,000-square-foot greenhouse on underutilized space on the roof of the parkade at 535 Richards Street, in the heart of the downtown core. The inside of the greenhouse will be anything but ordinary. Four-metre-high stacks of growing trays on motorized conveyors will ferry plants up, down and around for watering, to capture the sun’s rays and then move them into position for an easy harvest. The array will produce about the same amount of produce as 6.4 hectares (16 acres) of California fields, according to Christopher Ng, chief operating officer of Valcent.
Milan's Vertical Forest Wednesday, 12 October 2011 GreenMuze Staff Milan’s Vertical Forest from Stefan Boeri Architects. The Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) will be the greenest building in Milan when completed, which is one of Europe’s most polluted cities. Designed by Stefan Boeri Architects, as part of their BioMilano vision to incorporate 60 abandoned farms into a greenbelt surrounding the city. Farmscaping "Farmscaping" is a holistic approach to pest control on farms that focuses on increasing biodiversity in order to maintain healthy populations of beneficial insects, birds, bats, and other wildlife as part of an ecological pest management program. Farmscaping often treats beneficial wildlife as a kind of "minature livestock" that must be managed and provided for for just like cows, sheep, chickens, and other farm animals. Farmscapers use observation and science to plan hedgerows, flower beds, cover crops, and water reservoirs to favor beneficial wildlife over pests.
A Book that aims to bring the farm to the city Carrot City Creating Places for Urban Agriculture By Mark Gorgolewski, June Komisar and Joe Nasr. The Monacelli Press 240 pages How One Startup Sold $6,000 Worth of Charcoal on Kickstarter Name: re:char Big Idea: Utilize organic waste to create carbon-negative charcoal, a substance that pulls CO2 from the air and helps crops grow taller and stronger. Why It's Working: Re:char's mission is about providing farmers — both at home and in developing countries such as Kenya — with conservation-oriented soil-boosting complexes that can double food output compared to traditional farming methods. 5 Secrets to a ‘No-work’ Garden It took over 20 years of gardening to realize that I didn’t have to work so hard to achieve a fruitful harvest. As the limitless energy of my youth gradually gave way to the physical realities of mid-life, the slow accretion of experience eventually led to an awareness that less work can result in greater crop yields. Inspired in part by Masanobu Fukuoka’s book, One Straw Revolution, my family experimented with gardening methods which could increase yields with less effort. Fukuoka spent over three decades perfecting his so-called “do-nothing” technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort. Here are the strategies we used which enabled us to greatly increase our garden yield, while requiring less time and less work.
Smart tips to make life easier Posted on February 24, 2012 in Humor If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Facebook or Twitter . Thanks for visiting! Aquaponics system combining aquaculture with hydroponics in A symbiotic environment A small, portable aquaponics system. The term aquaponics is A portmanteau of the terms aquaculture and hydroponic agriculture. Aquaponic greenhouse in Apaga 4 Simple Steps to Grow a Hundred Pounds of Potatoes in a Barrel Container gardening isn't only for savvy urban gardeners and folks with limited space to grow, it can also be for folks who want to maximize their yields in a controlled environment. Not only does growing potatoes in a barrel reduce the amount of weeding and exposure to pests and fungi, you don't even have to risk shovel-damage to the tender potatoes by digging them out of the ground when they're done, just tip the container over! After extensive research to plan my own potatoes-in-a-barrel, I've boiled all of the recommendations down to 4 simple steps to a winning potato harvest. 1.