There is interest in food gardening again

Photo credit: Tri-City Herald

Young gardeners are making a comeback with vegetable gardening after the hobby saw a decrease in the 1990s.

MIA AIGOTTI — New York Times

Garden Tips: Vegetable gardening seeing comeback

BY MARIANNE OPHARDT

Having been at this job for more than 30 years, I have seen gardening trends come and go. In the 1980s, there were numerous gardeners interested in food gardening, growing vegetables and tree fruit in their backyards. You could always find vegetable transplants available at big box stores, as well as at local nurseries.

In the 1990s, things started to change. Fewer gardeners were interested in growing their own produce. The big box stores changed to offering fewer vegetable transplants, instead focusing on colorful annual flowers. Maybe people realized that gardens and fruit trees were a lot of work, they had easy access to fresh produce from local farmers markets, their busy lives did not allow time for gardening, or a combination of all these.

I am happy to say that we have come full circle, and gardeners, especially people under age 50, are interested in food gardening again. The focus is on veggies and herbs. A survey by Today’s Garden Center shows that these “youngsters” say gardening gives them a sense of accomplishment, allows them to become more self-sufficient and have more control over the safety of their food, and provides a way to get children outside and teach them about nature.

Another point to remember about younger gardeners is their interest in food and cooking. There is a proliferation of TV cooking shows that are enjoyed by young adults and older folks like me. Because the All-America Selections (AAS) organization has noticed that cooking fresh foods is trending, they plan to market their 2016 winning herb and vegetable selections with five videos that demonstrate cooking techniques.

Read the full article: Tri-City Herald

Urban Farms and Gardens Are Feeding Cities Around the World

Photo credit: Food Tank

Around the world, urban farms and gardens are cultivating good food on underutilized land.

Jeff Wright (www.flickr.com/gojeffrey)

28 Inspiring Urban Agriculture Projects

 

 

Around 15 percent of the world’s food is now grown in urban areas. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), urban farms already supplyfood to about 700 million residents of cities, representing about a quarter of the world’s urban population. By 2030, 60 percent of people in developing countries will likely live in cities.

At Food Tank, we are amazed by the efforts of hundreds of urban farms and gardens to grow organic produce, cultivate food justice and equity in their communities, and revitalize urban land. Urban agriculture not only contributes to food security, but also to environmental stewardship and a cultural reconnection with the land through education.

The Urban Food Policy Pact (UFPP), to be signed on World Food Day, will address the potential of cities to contribute to food security through urban agriculture. Atechnical team of 10 members organized physical and virtual workshops with many of the 45 cities participating in the Pact, and drafted a Framework for Action that includes 37 provisions covering the themes of governance, food supply and distribution, sustainable diets and nutrition, poverty alleviation, food production and food and nutrient recovery.

“The 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognize the importance of building sustainable cities,” says Maurizio Baruffi, Chief of Staff of the Mayor of Milan, Italy. “The City of Milan is partnering with urban areas around the world to embark on this journey, starting from food.”

Do you want to discover urban agriculture projects in your own city, or are you interested in visiting farms during your travels to new urban areas? Check out these inspiring projects, and find even more links to urban agriculture projects below.

Abalimi

Abalimi is an urban agriculture and environmental action group located outside of Capetown, South Africa. The organization supports and assists groups and individuals looking to improve their livelihoods through organic farming.

Alternatives’ Feeding Citizenship

A nonprofit that promotes social and environmental justice in Montreal, Canada, Alternatives’ Feeding Citizenship is growing healthy food to fuel healthy communities. The project engages the community through horticultural training programs while supporting school and neighborhood gardens.

Read the full article: Food Tank

Urban Agriculture Projects in Mumbai

Photo credit: Food Tank

Urban agriculture projects in Mumbai, India, make use of balconies and terraces.

Shutterstock

Mumbaikars Innovating with Space: 10 Urban Agriculture Projects in Mumbai

In a city that is hungry for both space and fresh produce, the need for urban agriculture in Mumbai is paramount—but its implementation requires some finesse. According to The New York Times, Mumbai occupies more than 370 square kilometers (230 square miles), but just 18.6 (11.6) are covered by open space, and only 6.3 (3.9) of those are open to most residents. How are Mumbaikars to grow in a city so pressed for space? These 10 organizations prove the city can do it.

City Farming is an organization that inspires students, families, and corporations to grow their own food in Mumbai—on terraces, balconies, and even the sides of buildings. Hosting weekly workshops, City Farming teaches Mumbaikars the growing methods of Dr. R. T. Doshi: with a little sugarcane waste, used polyethylene bags, soil, and seeds, the environmental impacts of pesticides, synthetic fertilizer, and the unnecessary disposal of organic waste are avoidable.

Established in November 2011, Earthoholics hosts urban farming shows, nature bazaars, and workshops on composting and hydroponics. Founder Smita D. Shirodkar teaches Mumbaikars that being green does not require buying expensive organic products, but rather a willingness to change your lifestyle, step out onto the balcony, and dirty your hands.

Fresh & Local is an organization that collaborates with various Mumbai establishments to use urban farming to transform the city. Its pop-up garden project addresses issues of privacy and safety for women, and The Table Farm garden provides food for the Mumbai restaurant The Table. Future plans include opening a series of shops carrying everything an urban farmer could need in Mumbai, “from open-pollinated vegetable seeds to eco-friendly pots to homemade natural fertilizers.”

With gardens at four schools in Mumbai, Green Schools Mumbai is an educational organization that teaches children about drip irrigation, growing medicinal herbs and plants with homemade compost, recycling wastewater, and harvesting rainwater. Using raised beds, children grow beans, garlic, okra, tomatoes, onions, and more at school.

Read the full article: Food Tank

Affinor Grower’s Vertical Farming Technology

 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (ARS) Agrees to Collaborate and Grow Strawberries Using Affinor Grower’s Vertical Farming Technology

Affinor Growers (CSE:AFI)RSSFF 6.21%(FRANKFURT:1AF) (“Affinor” or the “Corporation), a diversified agriculture and biotechnology company with proprietary vertical farming systems, is extremely pleased to have signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with The United States Department of Agriculture’s (“USDA”) Agricultural Research Service (“ARS”).

This landmark agreement will allow the USDA Agricultural Research Service, one of the world’s premier scientific organizations, to work with Affinor’s vertical farming technology.

The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s scientific in-house research agency. ARS conducts research to develop and transfer solutions to agricultural problems of high national priority and will use Affinor’s technology to produce strawberries indoors in the ARS facility in Kearneysville, WV and in the controlled environment at Affinor’s facility in Quebec, Canada.

The ARS is the agency within the mission area of the Research, Education and Economics of the USDA. Congress set the ARS annual budget for fiscal year 2015 at $1.1 billion on the basis of the President’s proposed budget and research priorities. The overall objective of this collaboration with Affinor is to increase productivity and profitability of strawberry production in controlled environments such as vertical indoor farming, plant factories, greenhouses and other harvesting systems.

Read the full article: Benzinga

Living Small in a Big Way : urban farming

Photo credit: Green City Acres

Built a big shelf for microgreens on my deck.

https://www.facebook.com/GreenCityAcres/photos/a.398067716900889.93422.348784481829213/979684942072494/?type=1&theater

Urban Farmer and Instructor in Kelowna

Green City Acres is a farm with a vision.  In 2012, we grew over 50,000 lbs of food on less than an acre of land, using 100% natural, organic methods and only 80 litres of gasoline.  Every year we strive to revolutionize how we farm in order to reshape our local food system to be more environmentally sustainable and socially responsible.  Follow our journey, as we try to change the world one seed at a time.

• http://www.greencityacres.com/ – website
• Green City Acres  – facebook page

Rooftop gardens could grow three quarters of city’s vegetables

Photo credit: Minna Takkala

URBAN FARMING GROWING TREND

by MINNA TAKALA – TREND EXPLORER

According to a recent study by EU rooftop gardens could grow three quarters of city’s vegetables. In recent years urban gardening, agriculture and farming have been growing globally. The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden is a good example of community garden program that has turned into a vibrant resource for the local community.

The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden was originally an overgrown, abandoned piece of railway land used as an unofficial landfill site. It received funding from London Development Agency and was finalised in eight month during 2010. Important aspects of the project was to provide opportunities for volunteers and its design and construction offered apprenticeship schemes for local people. It has won awards like Hackney Design Award 2010, Sustain Magazine 2010 Winner – Public Realm, Commended London Planning Awards 2010 – Community Scale Project.

Read the full article: Minna-Takkala

Un potager bio hyper productif en permaculture

 

FOR OUR FRENCH SPEAKING FRIENDS

POUR NOS AMIS FRANCOPHONES

En 60 jours, il est passé de quelques graines à un potager bio hyper productif en permaculture

Par Mathieu Doutreligne

Dans l’agitation de notre vie quotidienne, l’idée de faire pousser ses propres légumes semble impossible. L’histoire et les photos qui suivent vous prouveront le contraire et vous donneront la motivation nécessaire pour réaliser vos rêves.

TRANSLATION: In the bustle of daily life, the idea of growing your own vegetables seems impossible. The story and photos below prove the opposite and offer you the motivation to achieve your dreams.

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Si les autorités le permettent – If the authorities accept it.

 

 

Grow edibles on rooftops

Photo credit: Brisbane Times

Dr Sara Wilkinson tends a tomato crop on a rooftop above Broadway at UTS. Photo: Peter Morris

Rooftops offer a viable and sustainable space for growing edible produce

by Robin Powell

What if the greens you need for tonight’s dinner were grown on the roof of the office where you work? From a cook’s perspective this is a dream – fresh produce and no time wasted on shopping. And the advantages of urban farming extend way beyond the wellbeing of the time-poor consumer. Produce farmed on urban rooftops also contributes to reducing the heat island effect of cities, lowering summer temperatures and minimising the carbon footprint of food.

Roof garden – Photo Jardin Inspiracion – 1546347_644306198944314_987979625_n_2 copy.jpg

Rooftop vegetable gardens increase urban biodiversity; decrease stormwater run-off; offer psychological benefits to those involved with the garden and with fellow gardeners; and can even protect and extend the lifetime of the roof.

Interest in green roofs is growing like dandelions in spring: the City of Sydney reports an average of one development application a week for a green roof or wall. Already, 100,000 square metres is given over to green roofs across the city, and Lord Mayor Clover Moore says the City is doing all it can “to introduce more of these features into our urban landscape”.

* Roof garden – Photo Les Urbainculteurs – 1503385_633030990087111_1484373713_n copy.jpg

Yet few are food producing. Sydney’s environmental conditions suggest an urban harvest could contribute significantly to food production. The city of Toronto, for instance, which is under snow for three or four months of the year, estimates that 10 per cent of its fresh food could be grown within the city limits.

Read the full article: Brisbane Times

Containers in the farm-to-table movement

Photo credit: Google

Ethnic restaurant Asian garden

Farm-To-Table Will Change Us [Opinion]

by Carol Miller

Unlike all the trends our industry has seen come and go, the farm-to-table movement has the power to rewrite our future.

A trend is like a wind that disturbs a pond but doesn’t reshape it. Take gazing globes, huge 10 years ago. They made our industry a lot of money, but their popularity faded, and we moved on, unchanged.

Container gardens had a bigger impact. They were a hit with customers who wanted instant gratification and with retailers who liked selling several products at once. They also reflected a changing customer base, who valued getting the visual impact of gardening without the work.

Home grown vegetables – http://perfectgardeningtips.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/container-vegetables.jpg

I want to take the time to unpack that thought. Container gardens’ popularity rose along with the flood of smart phones, big, immersive TVs and games like Candy Crush. People still eat out, go to theaters and, yes, garden. But they spend less time doing so.

So it can be argued that selling container gardens was a necessary adaption to our customers’ lifestyles.

Combo gardens had a bigger impact than gazing globes. But what gazing globes are to container gardens, that’s what combo gardens are to the farm-to-table movement.

Read the full article: Today’s Garden Center

Yes, we can be an urban gardener !

Photo credit: Wisma Kreatif

Being An Urban Gardener, Get Advantages To Container Gardening

By Incog Nito

EXCERPT

Get Advantages To Container Gardening

Whether it’s to save money, an act of preparedness, or simply an incredible pastime, container gardening is a versatile and wonderful method of growing food for you and your household.

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSkRaCYnadqa78sSHBM-_H3ZePuWC3wMqj_rg7Ama3N5YnodYCP

 

Container gardening is a simple method to garden, specifically when you do not have backyard area. With the increasing expenses of food and people having less to invest, increasingly more of people are amusing the concept of growing our own. Not all of us are lucky sufficient to live on a farm or have lots of acreage in the countryside. Numerous people keep an eye out of the window just to see the cement and brickwork jungle of the suburban or city spread.

http://images.thefuntimesguide.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/43/files/vegetable-container-gardening-ideas.jpg

Advantages Container Gardening:

• You conserve a lot of money!
• Its a great, gratifying and enjoyable pastime
• Your food tastes So much better, and is more healthy and nutritious
• You are less depending on grocery stores
• Your home is transformed into a wonderful green Eden
• You understand your food is not laced with pesticides and chemicals
• You’ll get a much healthier and calmer way of living, and be more in-touch with nature
• It’s a wholesome, instructional and exceptional activity for the children
• You acquire important understanding and life-skills
• Growing your very own food significantly lowers your carbon footprint

Read the full article: Wisma Kreatif