What Spring?

According to the calendar there are four clearly defined seasons and the calendar photos show scenes depicting each. If asked, each one of us can recite the distinct feel of each season just as we know the individual behaviors of each of our good friends. But, there is a change taking place that is squeezing Spring onto an ever smaller piece of real estate on our calendars.

It seems that just one week ago our trees here at the five thousand foot altitude of north central Utah were bare and now every tree is in full leaf, and as for those flowering trees, their blooms popped open overnight and are beginning to fall off already. The high temperature is predicted to be in the 80s for the next week after being in the high 60s just a couple of days ago.

Spring used to last far longer than it has the past year or two. For beach goers I suppose the quick onset of summer weather is great news but for those of us who garden, spring has always given us plenty of opportunity to give transplants a chance to adapt to being outside. Moving plants from the protection of our cellars, coldframes and greenhouses right into 80 degree weather is not easy, nor advisable. But what choice do we have without the gentle transition we once looked forward to?

My Forsythia barely had time to show off their golden yellow dress that used to last several weeks, and has become a great ‘alarm clock’ for when to start so many other garden chores, when suddenly the fruit trees and dogwoods had already bloomed and their blossoms are falling to the ground.

My bulbs barely had shown their various colors when the blossoms are shriveling up and will need to be soon pulled and divided. It seems to get earlier every year.

I love summer, but giving up most of Spring is not something I would have chosen.

Soon only one photo of spring will adorn our calendars and maybe two for fall.

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Urban Farming: A Local Food Revolution

Excellent example of how ingenuity and necessity come together to turn unused, wasted space into a healthy money making venture.

From the Urban Farmers’ file: cultivated plots are appearing in the least likely of places, such as a New York City vacant asphalt-covered ball field. A community group called East New York Farms sold fruits and vegetables grown by locals in small plots within their own neighborhoods. Last year the group sold more than $25,000 in goods.

A nonprofit project in Philadelphia grows salad greens in a half-acre plot and sells them locally raising $67,000 last year.

The Milwaukee nonprofit, Growing Power, grossed over $220,000 from a one acre farm selling lettuces, winter greens, sprouts and fish to local restaurants and consumers.

Local nonprofits have been providing land, training and financial encouragement in urban areas of Detroit, Oakland, Milwaukee and other cities and those people who have the courage to exhibit their ‘farmers gene’ are making it work.

This is a great illustration of how locals working through community groups in cooperation with local governments can raise awareness of where our food comes from, how food is grown, develop the entrepreneurial spirit as well as teaching self-sufficiency.

The fact that many of these city-farmers want to raise their produce organically is very encouraging. It shows that our tolerance for chemical fertilizers and pesticides is fading to the point that people who rarely garden are not falling for their false promises. City composting programs are helping too. Trucking home decomposed leaves from the Starrett City development in Brooklyn and ZooDoo from the Bronx Zoo’s manure composting program is helping teach healthy habits for maintaining a healthy environment.

This whole process is cultivating pride in their community which is a priceless commodity.

Attitudes toward urban farming have come a long way. John Ameroso, a Cornell Cooperative Extension agent who has worked with local farmers and gardeners for 32 years, said that when he first suggested urban farm stands in the early 1990s, city environmental officials dismissed the idea. ‘Oh, you could never grow enough stuff with the urban markets,’ he said he was told. ‘That can’t be done. You have to have farmers.’

Holly Leicht, an associate assistant commissioner at the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, helped provide two half-acre parcels of city land last year. One became Hands and Hearts and the other is in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Brooklyn.

With more training and incentive programs like the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, a supplement to the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and senior nutrition programs urban farming is bringing food closer to our tables. It not only tastes better, it saves huge amounts of oil, keeps money in your local economy, and makes us less vulnerable to large-scale food contamination. Eating local is the easiest way to eliminate suspect food from your diet. It's also the easiest way to cut processed foods with added fat and sugar out of your diet, since you'll be buying more fresh fruits and vegetables.

Urban farming, such as these small-scale isolated examples, is a part of the growing phenomena of the local food revolution. But, small-scale isolated examples is exactly what the local food revolution is about.

In the last 10 years, interest in eating local has exploded, whether you count the growth in farmers' markets (roughly 3,800 nationwide, more than twice the number a decade ago); membership in Slow Food U.S.A. (13,000 members and 145 chapters just since 2000), the American arm of an international movement to defend our collective “right to taste” as well as local specialty food producers who bring us distinctive flavors; or the number of schools stocking their cafeterias with fresh food raised by nearby farmers (400 school districts in 22 states, in addition to dozens of colleges and universities).

It’s a winning situation for the environment and inner city dwellers.

For further information:

New York Times article

Urban Farming

City Farms

Urban Jungle

Beyond the Bar Code: The Local Food Revolution

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A Year Full of Blues

My garden is beginning its second year of life. Its pretty barren compared to those of you who have been at this a little longer than I have. Since I started the garden with small transplants, they haven’t yet matured to the point that they toss very many seeds out to start new plants. It is in the creep phase of that ‘first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap’ scheme of things. Therefore, I don’t have high expectations of my garden fully taking off this year.

While I am waiting for the greatly anticipated full-on bloom of next year, I am left with some barren areas that although may be somewhat depressing to view they do present a great deal of potential. I could leave them be, in order to have room for these existing pants to spread out, or I could put in some blue flowering plants.

Searching the internet and garden blogs have resulted in quite a few nice surprises concerning blue flowering plants. If my plan is executed properly I can have blue blooms from March to October.

The earliest would naturally be bulbs, and there are many to choose from. Iris reticulata “Harmony”, Glory of the Snow (Chionodoxa), and Siberian Squill (Scilla sibrica) are considered minor bulbs in comparison with the tulips and daffodils. Planted in generous clusters of several dozen or more they should put on quite a display.

One of my favorite flowers is Iris so I can’t think of a better way to wake up the early garden than with Iris reticulata, the earliest of all Iris. It only stands just under 6” tall and according to Dave’s Garden will grow here in North central Utah’s zone 5-6. It blooms in March to early April.

Glory of the Snow often blooms while there is still snow on the ground. Talk about your early riser. The colder the weather, the longer they last. Like the Iris reticulata, these grow to about 6” tall with grasslike leaves. They are found in zones 4 to 8 and are very easy to care for.

The bright blue flowers of Siberian Squill are one of the first spring-flowering bulbs to brighten up the landscape. These grow in zones 2 to 8 and stand just 6”.

There are other blue flowering bulbs, the popular Grape Hyacinths, sometimes called Muscari, are found just about everywhere from late March through April if the weather stays cool enough. Wild Hyacinth (Camassia) or Quamash is considered a native bulb and blooms a little later and grows to two feet tall. Bluebells: English and Spanish (Hyacinthoides) naturalize easily in partial shade of trees and the flower garden. Then there is the traditional Hyacinth, providing fragrance and a larger flower head these bulbs range in color from mid blue to dark purple.

English Bluebells are fragrant and very easy to naturalize and last up to 4 weeks beginning in March in zones 5-8. These are members of the Scilla family and can grow up to 18” tall.

True blue is a relatively rare color among flowers, but the following flowers come close.

From late April in May there is the False Indigo (Baptisia australis) zone 3-9.

Larkspur (Consolida ambigua) zone late April thru mid to late June.

Heartleaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata) zone 4-8 May and June.

Lilyleaf ladybells (Adenophora confusa) zone 3-8 May into July.

Aka False Campanula, grows up to 24” tall and 24” wide. They prefer light shade and may be invasive if given the right environment.

American bellflower (Campanula Americana) zone 4-8 late June into August.

This plant can be an annual or biennial growing up to 6’ tall. It prefers light shade to partial sun, moist conditions. The flowers attract bees, butterflies, and skippers.

Great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) zone 4-9 August into October.

Growing to 36” it brings color late in the season when mostly we see the reds, yellows and oranges of fall.

I think these plants should satisfy my thirst for blue. Can you think of any others to add?

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A Garden is You

You can tell a lot about a person’s outlook on life by looking at the company they keep, in their garden. I have always had this notion that a perennial garden, with its extreme diversity of color, size, shape and texture is an open window into the gardeners soul. Much like a painting or a sculpture affords the artist the opportunity to express to the world 'I am here and this is what I make of life'.

Some gardens are orderly and formal, others are, well, less formal and less organized. An overcrowded garden may indicate the designer wants to experience a little bit of everything that life has to offer and refuses to be limited by available space or existing boundaries.

Without trying to be judgmental or jumping to conclusions, here’s my view on how a garden can reflect the designers personality:

Vegetable garden – frugal and demands better quality food;

Herb garden – health conscious and mindful of our interaction with nature;

mono color – uncluttered and simple;

theme garden – playful, doesn’t take life too seriously;

small, low lying garden – uncertain and reserved;

bold colors and free-flowing plants – flamboyant, expressive;

mixed colors, shapes and sizes – non committal and unwilling to follow rules;

trimmed and formal – organized and perhaps a bit rigid;

Some gardens have lots of hardscape incorporated into them, such as benches, gazing balls, sundials, sculptures and other items that don’t actually go to support the growth of the garden flora but adds another dimension that further defines the designers character.

Then, of course there is signage that, in case you missed the point, just outright tells you what they think.

Gardening is something that, I think, should be experienced by everyone. Partly for selfish reasons and partly for an altruistic reason. If more of my neighbors had gardens it makes sense that there would be a greater opportunity to exchange seeds for plants I haven’t tried yet. :) Also, more people raising more gardens means more people in tune with nature, which could possibly help slow down our destruction of it.

I would like to say that gardening is becoming more popular, there is much discussion and no hard facts to prove one way or the other. The explosion in the number of garden blogs and websites might show that our population of gardeners is booming but I suspect this only reflects the proliferation of the internet to already existing gardeners. Sure, there are a few new gardeners coming onto the scene and maybe increasing food prices just might push more homeowners into the yard to grow their own food, but the jury is still out on that.

Expressing yourself through your garden is very therapeutic and personal. It becomes a place where we can escape the nine-to-five world where expectations of ourselves are not always our own. Some of us are more willing to share with the world what we have created. Some of us may not want to subject ourselves to anticipated criticism. Personally, I have found garden bloggers to be very supportive and if they do have a harsh opinion are willing to at least not acknowledge it in a blog.

If this post reaches someone who is not yet a gardener and is maybe thinking of starting your own plot, my advice is to just go for it. The satisfaction I get from pushing a shovel into the ground for the first time, knowing that I am about to create a fresh palette for my latest expression of myself, is priceless. Seeing plants ‘wake-up’ after a long winter of freezing temperatures brings a level of joy I haven’t found anywhere else. And the thrill of bringing wildlife to my yard knowing I am helping in their survival is beyond words.

The expression ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ comes to mind when I view a garden and I may not see it in the same way the designer intended. To me it may be more beautiful because I am seeing it from a less interactive way than they do for they have invested time, effort and money in getting their garden to look the way it does. Whereas, I am merely a passive observer and therefore have nothing invested in the interpretation of the design. Which reminds me, the true beauty of gardening is that you do it for yourself.

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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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