Urban Organic Gardener: Self-Watering Fire Escape Garden in NYC

You don’t have to have a lot of outdoor space or cash to start an organic garden – in fact, if you’ve got a fire escape and some plastic containers in your recycling bin, you can grow everything from fresh greens and tomatoes to a wide array of herbs. Just ask Mike Lieberman, who built self-watering containers out of recycled materials so he could grow some of his own food at his Manhattan apartment.

Lieberman proves that small space can still provide a big yield with simple materials like soda bottles and buckets. He grows kale, swiss chard, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, peppers, mint, oregano and tarragon, all on his fire escape.

A second small garden in his grandmother’s Brooklyn backyard fits an incredible variety of fresh herbs and veggies into 16 mostly recycled containers, from cauliflower to cucumbers. This garden is a great example of how easy it can be to grow your own food, even if all you have is a porch or a deck to work with.

“This is my first time growing and the goal is get more people to do the same. To show them that it’s simple, they have the space and there’s nothing to be scared of,” said Lieberman.

Check out his blog at UrbanOrganicGardener.com for lots of tips and photos!

Link [Urban Organic Gardener]

Smart Green Design: Indoor Vertical Gardening for Apartment Dwellers

Sometimes, windows just aren’t enough to grow anything but shade-loving plants. Depending on what side of the building your apartment is on – or whether it’s looking out into an alley or courtyard – you might not get anywhere near enough sun to keep plants alive. So, what’s a wannabe gardening urbanite to do?

If a new concept by Ingela Viks + Liina-Kai Raivet takes off, you’ll have a way to grow all kinds of stuff inside your apartment, even if you’re short on space. The ‘Green Indoors’ is a vertical planting system that provides both light and water to growing plants with space for up to 24 plant pots.

From Inhabitat:

We’ve seen other indoor growing lightpots, but they tend to take up precious counter space. The Green Indoors plant stand consists of a flat metal base fitted with a light filled tube with a matte cover to minimize glare. The stand not only provides necessary light, but also automatically waters each plant individually according to its needs. When there is enough natural light, the plant stand shuts off its light, and it also turns off automatically at night.

Since it provides light, it has a double function as a lamp with that daylight tinge that people in rainy regions can really appreciate. This concept was created as part of the Designboom/BÜSSEL design competition – we really hope it goes into production! Cool green design that brings fresh homegrown food to anyone regardless of where they live = awesome.

Link [Inhabitat]

Urban Gardening: You Can Grow Food, No Matter Where You Live

(image via: Flickr user iamterris)

Gardening is regaining popularity as a pastime for all types of people across the world, with gardens popping up in the most unexpected places. While the traditional image of a garden may not exactly fit into the reality of most urban environments, the fact is you can grow your own food whether you live on a rural farm or in a tiny Manhattan apartment. Urban gardening is all about using space wisely to regain a closer connection with your food and beautify your home or neighborhood.

There are a handful of different types of urban gardens, and the ones we’re going to focus on here are indoor gardening, container gardening, community gardening and guerilla gardening.  Perhaps you’ve got a tiny townhouse yard, a balcony, a south-facing window – or perhaps you live in a basement apartment that won’t support anything but mold. You can still grow enough of your own food to save a considerable amount of money and enjoy the freshest, healthiest produce possible.

Container Gardening – Growing Food on a Small Scale

(images via: Technology for the Poor)

Container gardening allows urban residents with small yards, patios or balconies to grow practically any plants in practically any container that will hold soil. One of the most fun parts of growing food in containers is that you can get incredibly creative with coming up with new uses for old junk. Wine barrels, used tires, feed sacks, kiddie pools, buckets, leaky watering cans and even shoes are among the items intrepid container gardeners use – and that’s just the beginning. You can also build your own self-watering containers, as illustrated in the video below.

(images via: PathtoFreedom.com)

Raised beds make a great alternative to containers and allow you to grow a lot more. Like containers, they can be placed on hard surfaces like concrete slabs or rooftops and are great for smallish spaces or yards where the soil quality isn’t so great. Raised beds are freestanding structures typically made from wood, stone or concrete that are filled with soil and compost. Most often, they’re constructed of planks of wood screwed or nailed together in sizes typically ranging from 3’ x 8’ to 5’ x 20’ and are between 8” to 3 feet in height. They keep soil warmer, provide better drainage and require less maintenance than traditional gardens.

For amazing eye candy, inspiration, tips and info about growing food in raised beds on a small lot, check out the journal at PathtoFreedom.com. ‘Path to Freedom’ is the urban homestead of the Dervaes family, who grow almost all of their own food – plus enough to sell to local restaurants – on just 1/10th of an acre. They also raise goats, chickens and ducks, keep bees, brew their own biodiesel and basically live as self-sufficiently as possible on their tiny parcel of land in Pasadena, California.

Beginners and experienced urban gardeners alike will also enjoy FreedomGardens.org, an online social community of gardening enthusiasts “digging their way to a free and secure food future”.

Indoor Gardening – Apartment Dwellers Can Grow Food, Too!

(image via: Flickr user ramsey everydaypants)

Okay, so growing pumpkins, corn or zucchini indoors probably isn’t all that feasible. But, any window that gets at least 6 to 8 hours of sunlight a day can support leaf crops like lettuce, endive and arugula as well as small-crop tomatoes, peppers, root crops and even bush beans.

Growing vegetables indoors requires different soil requirements, watering, pollination, and pest control techniques than doing so outdoors. You must also consider things like air circulation and ambient temperature. You may need supplemental lighting – cheap shop lights from the hardware store work just as well as expensive grow lights.

If you’re a total novice and growing veggies in your kitchen window seems intimidating, try herbs first. Chives, basil, parsley, oregano, cilantro, peppermint and rosemary are among the herbs that do well indoors and they’ll add lots of fresh, pesticide-free flavor to your meals.

For tips on indoor gardening, including planting requirements, potting media, how to hand-pollinate with artist brushes and which varieties will be most successful, check out GardenGal.net and this article by the Virginia Cooperative Extension.

Community Gardening – Rent a Plot in Your Neighborhood

(image via: Flickr user jeffschuler)

If you don’t have any space at all to grow plants, community gardening may be your best bet. Most cities have some kind of community garden program, where residents can rent a plot of land for a nominal fee (it’s even free in some places). There are an estimated 10,000 community gardens in the U.S. alone, allowing people who don’t have land of their own or who simply want the community experience to grow food, relieve stress, connect with the environment and interact with other members of the community.

In community gardens, residents share the responsibility of maintaining and managing the garden. Some community gardens are communal instead of divvying up land between members, so everyone shares in each others’ efforts.

To find out if your city has a community garden or to start one, check out the American Community Gardening Association.

Guerilla Gardening – Who Cares if it’s Someone Else’s Land?

(images via: Flickr user ubrayj02)

For those with no access to land at all, or people who would just prefer to put their efforts into beautifying forgotten public spaces, guerilla gardening will satisfy your impulse to dig in the dirt. Guerilla gardening is planting vegetables, fruit, herbs or any other plants in land that’s not yours – whether it’s a vacant lot, a park, a median, the side of the highway or those sad little strips of dirt between streets and parking lots.

Also called ‘pirate gardening’, the essential goal of guerilla gardening is to improve public spaces and make sure perfectly good land doesn’t go to waste. Some guerilla gardeners surreptitiously sow and tend patches of vegetables or flower gardens under the cloak of night, ready to run for it if cops or the property owners appear. Others get permission from landowners or the city and openly garden in spaces that aren’t technically theirs.

There are lots of different ways to guerilla garden. Some people secretly plant food – like strawberries, melons, zucchini or tomatoes – among ornamental plants in city-tended gardens. Some take over vacant lots altogether, or simply throw ‘seed bombs’ anywhere that plants could potentially take hold. Seed bombs are little balls of soil, clay and seeds – check out our video below to learn how to make them yourself.

GuerillaGardening.org is a great resource for anyone interested in greening up their neighborhood on the sly. Get tips, see photos of guerilla gardens around the world and meet fellow guerilla gardening enthusiasts in your area.

The Need to Fundamentally Rethink Food

A sustainable global food system is absolutely essential to a healthy future for humans and the environment, according to expert Tim Lang of the UK government’s newly formed Food Council. Lang warns that the current system is showing “structural failures” and is taking an “astronomic toll” on the environment.

From BBC News:

Professor Lang lists a series of “new fundamentals”, which he outlined during a speech he made as the president-elect of charity Garden Organic, which will shape future food production, including:

Oil and energy: “We have an entirely oil-based food economy, and yet oil is running out. The impact of that on agriculture is one of the drivers of the volatility in the world food commodity markets.”
Water scarcity: “One of the key things that I have been pushing is to get the UK government to start auditing food by water,” Professor Lang said, adding that 50% of the UK’s vegetables are imported, many from water-stressed nations.
Biodiversity: “Biodiversity must not just be protected, it must be replaced and enhanced; but that is going to require a very different way growing food and using the land.”
Urbanisation: “Probably the most important thing within the social sphere. More people now live in towns than in the countryside. In which case, where do they get their food?”

Professor Lang said that in order to feed a projected nine billion people by 2050, policymakers and scientists face a fundamental challenge: how can food systems work with the planet and biodiversity, rather than raiding and pillaging it?

Lang is suggesting that we get biodiversity into gardens and fields as soon as possible. Chef and food campaigner Raymond Blanc agrees, saying people must reconnect with their food by growing their own gardens and becoming more mindful of food waste.

Higher food prices have pushed an additional 40 million people into hunger in 2008, bringing the overall figure of undernourished people in the world to 963 million. The ongoing economic crisis could add millions more to that figure in 2009.

It’s absolutely essential that we all begin thinking of food in a new way, asking ourselves where it came from, how it was grown, how many resources were required to grow and transport it. Reconnecting with food will improve our health and help redistribute agriculture to ensure that large groups of people don’t depend upon food from a single region. We must use land more wisely so that we can feed more people with a larger variety of food.

Urban farming is becoming more popular for those who don’t have yard space to start a garden, and buying food from local farmer’s markets is also a good choice.

Link [BBC News]
Photo credit: Steve Patterson

Urban Farming in Cuba: Adapting to Survive

So, America is in a state of financial breakdown that is trickling down to the everyday consumer.  A lot of people are nervously asking themselves, what would we do if the worst happened? What if the credit system broke down entirely, and businesses – including grocery stores – couldn’t afford to operate?  It’s a fair question to ask, since all of this turmoil is making us realize how much we depend upon the current system to get by, even for the most basic of necessities.

We could actually turn to Cuba to learn a valuable lesson about getting by in such a scenario.  From Green Daily:

Cuba has dealt with worse. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, “[Cuba] lost 85 percent of its foreign trade, including food, agricultural imports and petroleum. Already crippled by the U.S. embargo, the country was financially devastated with its food supply hit hardest.” This, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle from the year 2000.

Fast forward to 2008. An Associated Press article printed in June talked about how, faced with food crisis, Cubans started farming in empty lots in urban centers (with support from the Cuban government). This agricultural shift prompted a cultural shift. Instead of eating rice and beans supplied by Eastern Europe, Cubans started eating tons of fresh greens. The farms also currently provide about 350,000 jobs nationwide.

The smart thing to do, really, would be to start doing this in America right now, regardless of how big of an impact this financial crisis ultimately has upon the everyday life of most Americans.  Reflecting on and preparing for worst-case scenarios shouldn’t solely be the territory of fringe conspiracy theorists – there are plenty of things that could happen that would necessitate being inventive about things like where our food comes from.

As we’ve mentioned here on EarthFirst many times before, we’re too far removed from the sources of our food, and it makes us very vulnerable.  We’d love to see urban farming take off all over America.  It’s a matter of taking not just your health but your potential survival in a crisis into your own hands.

Link [Green Daily]
Photo credit: City Dirt