Puttering Around the Garden

Picked some peas this morning but all in all it is turning out to be a very disappointing harvest. They taste sweet enough it's just that we have had too much rain and they haven't grown as well as they usually do. Plus, they are just tiny.

Trimmed the Aster ‘Snowdrift’ to allow one of the petunia's more room. When I planted these two Asters in 2008 this space was going to be just the right size, according to the description I was given when I ordered it. Little did I know it would get almost twice as large. Nowadays, every plant I buy I allow for an additional 20% growth in width.

My Acorn Squash has sprouted. One out of three seeds isn't too bad considering these seeds were saved from a squash were purchased at a local farmer's market last year.

You may be wondering why I started it in a pot instead of just straight in the ground, well, I have to confess I had no idea how things were going to work out this year as far as what was going to go where and I didn't want to wait any longer in case it got too late. What with the terrible gardening weather we have been having lately it would not have been too late to wait until next week. So I decided to start a bunch of plants in containers and counted on the weather co-operating by they time they got big enough to plant.

Radicchio ‘Variagata di Chioggia’ has sprouted. About a dozen plants have broken ground and boy are they small. I can just barely see them but in no time at all they'll be big enough to eat. This is the second batch this year. The first batch was in a raised bed that was planned for the squash and pumpkins. Again the weather slowed things down.

The Butternut Squash has gotten large enough to go into a bed so I put it at the foot of a ladder trellis I built for this purpose. In all the years I have grown squash this is the first time I've tried it on a trellis. Normally I just let it spread out but I'm testing the 'vertical' theory this year. Hope I didn't get it too close to the pepper plants.

 Same story with the Pumpkin Orange Smoothie. Each pumpkin will only weigh around eight pounds so a vertical trellis should hold them just fine. They are not sitting on little hills but they will do just fine.

Gotta go check on my stem cuttings. This is the first time I ever took cuttings so I'm pretty anxious over how its going to turn out.

 

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Going Vertical

Bean teepee

I built this teepee type trellis back 2007 for an 'extra' cherry tomato plant I had at the time and have since used it for green beans. Works much better for beans than tomatoes.

It's just over six feet tall and fits perfectly inside the garden over -winter.

It's made of redwood and cedar which are supposed to be able to take the elements but since I have room in the shed for it and it's rather light weight I decided to bring it indoors each year.

I just recently got the urge to build a couple other type trellises and today I finally got around to it.

Tomato cage made of redwood and pine

Here's a tomato cage for the Cherokee Purple. It looks pretty big but the tomato plant will fill this in pretty quickly once it gets going. Normally I only use redwood or cedar but I had some extra pine furring strips so they got the call. They can replaced in a couple of years with more resilient cedar or redwood.

Squash Ladder

I know this isn't a very good photo of this but you can get the general idea. It stands six feet tall. I've never tried one of these but have read some pretty good reviews. There are a couple of pepper plants in this bed two and I'm a little worried they might get trampled over because squash is pretty aggressive and doesn't play well with others.I have a back up plan though if the peppers need to be moved. I rather like the idea of squeezing as much as possible into the space I have but this may be a bit too much. Only time will tell.

This three panel trellis 'fence' was install in 2009 to cover up a chain link fence that was installed to hide the compost pile. The panels are tied to the chain link by wire, the right side is attached to a chain link fence and the left side is tied to a metal pole I anchored in the ground with cement. Well, the wind pretty much has its way with this whole thing because I did not do a very good job of anchoring that pole.

So, I got to thinking that instead of digging up the pole and anchoring it properly I'll just add another pole. This time a 4x4 redwood post was used and I did a much better job of anchoring it. I placed it just far enough from the metal pole to insert another more narrow lattice piece between the two and it is holding that whole fence through some very strong winds we have had of late.

Adding hardscape items sure changes the complexion of the garden. Next, I'm thinking about adding a water feature of some sort. We have bunches of birds visit us everyday and I want a better means of getting fresh water to them other than me hauling it out to them every morning.

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Gardening in the city and the sky

Green roofs are nothing new, but they are beginning to make a come back. With a greater realization of the need for sustainable living, the novelty of vertical farming is quickly becoming a necessity.

Many of us may have visions of goats grazing on a green roof such as on this roof in Wisconsin, but green roofing is coming into its own as a more environmentally friendly alternative to asphalt and tile shingles.

While at first it may seem counterintuitive to place farms in the city it is but a small leap from green roofing to garden roofing. New York magazine asked four architects to dream up proposals for a vacant lot at Canal and Varick Streets near the Holland Tunnel entrance requiring only that the design include a residential component and meet zoning requirements. One of the architectural firms, Work Architecture Company, known for their Public Farm 1 project, which you really should check out for their unique design ideas in city farming, came up with this interesting concept. The design creates an urban farming center that would lessen the amount of time food crops languish between harvest and market thereby providing shoppers with fresher food as well as decreasing the amount of fuel used and pollution generated to bring food to our tables. Four large water tanks would collect rainwater for irrigation and a farmers market could be established at ground level.

This second design comes from Mithun Architects of Seattle Washington. The concept won "Best of Show" in the Cascadia Region Green Building Council's Living Building Challenge and is being hailed as a "Center for Urban Agriculture." The building, located on a .72-acre site, includes fields for growing vegetables and grains, greenhouses, rooftop gardens and even a chicken farm." According to CEO Washington, the building also would run completely independent of city water, providing its own drinking water partly by collecting rain via the structure's 31,000-square-foot rooftop rainwater collection area. The water would be treated and recycled on site. Photovoltaic cells would produce nearly 100 percent of the building's electricity for the sites 318 small studio, one- and two-bedroom affordable apartments. No doubt the rural feel, along with related smells, would emote a sense of living in the country.

This third example is Toronto based architect Gordon Graff’s Sky Farm. A concept proposed for downtown Toronto's theatre district, it is 58 floors tall, provides 2.7 million square feet of floor area and 8 million square feet of growing area. It can produce as much as a thousand acre farm, feeding 35 thousand people per year. A service core at the back of the tower would include irrigation and electrical systems, and an isolated lower area could house chickens bred for both eggs and meat.

It is predicted that 80% of the earth’s population will reside in urban centers by the year 2050. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed us using traditional farming practices. Currently, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices.

Where is this new land going to come from? Vertical farming is the obvious answer. Creating farm land in towers near and within our living spaces to provide fresher food with less pollution is a concept whose time has come. Vertical farming offers efficient use of space, promises urban renewal, creates year-round sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply, and allows the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming.

These examples illustrate intensive farming on a grand scale that could potentially feed more people in less space. Other advantages of vertical farming are:

cuts down on weather-related crop failures

eliminates diseases spread by livestock

reduces pollution to water sources from runoff by recycling

returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions

dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping)

creates sustainable environments for urban centers

adds energy back to the grid through composting

provides fresher food crops to groceries and restaurants

Here’s a teaser on future farming concepts. Robots tend crops that grow on floating platforms around a sea city of the future. Water from the ocean would evaporate, rise to the base of the platforms (leaving the salt behind), and feed the crops.

Find more intriguing future farm concept in the links below.

For more futuristic farming see:

Sea City 2000 (1979)

Robot Farms (1982)

Farm of the Future (1984)

Futurama Farming in New York

From Green Roofing to Vertical Farming

I also write a blog covering environmental issues called Are We Green Yet. Check it out for more information on green roofing, sustainability issues, advances in alternative energy, conservation techniques, and what people are doing at the local level to become less of a burden on our over-crowded planet and our rapidly depleting natural resources.

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