Inside Urban Green

We're All Waiting!

It seems like only yesterday that I was standing in a u-pick tomato field in Homestead, FL (south of Miami) talking to a farmer about the drastic change in the quality of his tomatoes. It wasn’t yesterday. It was somewhere around 1973.

Essentially what he said was "We now need to grow to ship rather than for you to pick”.

That was the beginning of thick wall tomatoes that could just as well have a Goodyear Tire brand. Tomatoes as durable as hockey pucks became the order of the day. As a result, how many people under 40 know what a real tomato tastes like?

We can wait for the change promised in this article but a better solution for many of us is to grow our own "real tomatoes" in portable, productive sub-irrigated planters (SIPs).

It’s a really good idea no matter what happens with supermarket tomatoes. There's a lot of satisfaction in growing your own.

via www.sciencedaily.com

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) — There is nothing better than a ripe, red, homegrown tomato, and now researchers reporting online on May 24 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have figured out just what it is that makes some of them so awfully good (and your average supermarket tomato so bland).

"We now know exactly what we need to do to fix the broken tomato," said Harry Klee of the University of Florida.

Tomato flavor depends on sugars, acids, and a host of less well-defined aroma volatiles (so named for the ease with which they vaporize, sending scent molecules into the air). Klee's team set out to define the chemicals that are most important to our fondness for one particular tomato or another. Read more...

Video » Check Out the Rain Gutter SIP System Facebook Page

Larry Hall Facebook page. We have liftoff!

Nashville Update » Sub-irrigated Rain Gutter Garden on a Boat Dock

A sub-irrigated rain gutter garden like this could be growing food in an urban yard, on a rooftop or balcony anywhere in the world. I'm looking forward to getting some hands-on experience with this system before the growing season is over.

via www.youtube.com

TEDx Montreal » Mohamed Hage of Lufa Farms

Mohamed Hage is a founder of Lufa Farms in Montreal. It appears at this time to be one of the North American rooftop hydroponics companies with staying power. I have a high regard for their marketing communications. It will be interesting to see if they not only expand in Montreal but also jump into the big pond here in New York City.

My belief is that the best thing you can have in business is good competition. Think of the expression "all boats rise on the incoming tide". New York has an "incoming tide" of hydroponics growers with BrightFarms and Gotham Greens.

They could all be market makers for hydroponically grown fresh local food. It's going to be fun to watch this market grow and mature not just in New York but also across the U.S. and Canada.

via www.youtube.com

Mohamed Hage, an agriculture and technology enthusiast, is the founding president of Lufa Farms, a company that designs, builds and operates rooftop agricultural greenhouses. It was to provide fresh, local and responsible vegetables to montréalais consumers that he created the first commercial rooftop greenhouse in the world in the winter of 2011. Mohamed Hage supervises all of Lufa Farms' daily activities, but is particularly interested in research, planning, construction and operation of the greenhouse environment.

His present goal is to help this new agricultural model be progressively integrated into rooftops across major cities.

 

Why Doesn't the USDA Teach Consumers About Sub-irrigation?

via www.youtube.com

See the water flowing onto the plant bench (1 minute mark in the video)? See the plant pots sitting in water? This is an environmentally sound form of greenhouse sub-irrigation called ebb and flow. Since the water is recycled, there is no water run-off. Sub-irrigation is used in greenhouse growing all over the world. 

If sub-irrigation is a professional method of watering potted plants, why isn't the USDA teaching it to consumers through the land-grant university Extension Program? All we hear is the steady drone of the drain hole mantra and nothing about modern methods like sub-irrigation.

Antiquated drain-hole based top watering wastes water, time and ultimately the plants. It is clearly an environmentally unsound practice propagandized by the USDA, a taxpayer supported institution.

Why is there no uproar about this? Why do houseplant hobbyists and gardeners seem to behave like sheep?

Obesity » No Easy Answers, But We Need to Find One Soon!

via: ABC News

Obesity. We know the word. We know more than a third of American's are obese. We know that the United States is facing an epidemic. We know more energy out than calories in help us loose weight.

We know.

So, why after almost 30 years of American's weight ticking up the scale has it suddenly called for a national campaign to change?

Today, HBO is debuting their four-part series called "Weight of the Nation." A collaborative effort with the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Institutes of Medicine, the series focuses on different issues surrounding the epidemic: consequences, choices, children in crisis, and challenges. Read more...

Anti-Obesity » Just What We Need, More Drugs

NEW YORK, NY, May 14, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Biotech companies are looking to cash in on the anti-obesity drug market. The race to bring the first weight-loss pill to the market is heating up as Arena Pharmaceuticals weight-loss pill (Lorcaserin) recently gained the backing of an FDA advisory panel. The Paragon Report examines investing opportunities in the Biotech Industry and provides equity research on VIVUS, Inc. 

via www.marketwatch.com

RainSaucer » An Efficient Way to Harvest Rainwater

They were collecting rainwater at the Ramat Rahel gardens 2,500 years ago. You can too.

Connect your rain barrel to a Larry Hall rain gutter sub-irrigation system and you'll have a super efficient and productive vegetable garden that will rival the ancients.

via www.youtube.com

Introduces the 59" RainSaucer™ and shows you how into install it on a Rain Barrel. Collect 10 gallons per inch of rain. 5 minute install with no tools required. Food safe surface means water is caught in a clean way.

More info at: RainSaucers.com 

Rainwater Harvesting and Sub-irrigation 2,500 Years Ago

An aerial view of the Ramat Rahel site, where the gardens were discovered.
CREDIT: Boaz Gross, Tel Aviv University

Finding Professor Green's sub-irrigated planter bench in the Cyclopedia of Horticulture established the fact that SIPs have been around for a long time. He made his planter in the 1890-91 period.

Compared to the 2500-year-old gardens at Ramat Rahel, that was just yesterday. Why then is our consumer horticultural education system still fixated on drain holes, sprinklers and other overhead irrigation systems that waste water when compared to sub-irrigation?

Add the fact that sub-irrigation increases yields and produces healthier plants and we have a mystery of the modern age of climate change, conservation and sustainability.

The garden relied on an advanced irrigation system, which collected rainwater and distributed it using artsy water installations, including pools, underground channels, tunnels and gutters.

These water installations ended up being the key to the team's new discovery; the researchers found grains of pollen that likely got trapped in plaster when the installations were renovated and the plaster still wet. The result was preserved pollen grains.

via www.livescience.com

An ancient royal garden has come back into bloom in a way, as scientists have reconstructed what it would've looked like some 2,500 years ago in the kingdom of the biblical Judah.

Their reconstruction, which relied on analyses of excavated pollen, reveals a paradise of exotic plants.

The luxurious garden had been discovered at Ramat Rahel, an archaeological site located high above the modern city of Jerusalem, about midway between the Old City of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. This site was inhabited since the last century of the Kingdom of Judah (seventh century B.C.) until the early Muslim reign in Palestine (10th century), a period that saw many wars and exchanges of power, with the garden evolving under each civilization.

Since excavators discovered the garden, they could only imagine its leafy, flowery inhabitants. That is until now. Read more...

BrightFarms and Homeland Stores Form a New Partnership

Agreements like this BrightFarms and Homeland stores partnership are to me even more significant than the announcement of the BrightFarms rooftop farm here in Brooklyn.

This announcement along with the hiring of Martin Weijters as VP of Agriculture are signs that their unique business plan has growing power in every sense of the words. This business looks like it has legs.

via brightfarms.com

On April 30, 2012 BrightFarms and Homeland announced a partnership to build a greenhouse for the 76-store Oklahoma supermarket retailer. BrightFarms will finance, build, and operate a greenhouse at a Homeland Stores location, supplying them with fresh, local produce year-round. Homeland Stores has committed to buy BrightFarms’ produce by signing the grocery industry’s second long-term Produce Purchase Agreement (PPA).

Darryl Fitzgerald, CEO of Homeland Stores, said, “We’re excited to partner with BrightFarms and offer our consumers a year-round supply of fresh local produce. This partnership supports our commitments to sell the absolute freshest produce and our commitment to the community.”

Paul Lightfoot, BrightFarms CEO, said “I can’t think of a more fitting partner to deliver local produce to than Homeland Stores, which has deep roots in the local community. Homeland is committed to purchasing more local produce and I’m looking forward to providing their customers with produce grown by Oklahomans for Oklahomans.”

The greenhouse, which will grow lettuces, tomatoes, and herbs, will open in 2013.