October Horticultural and Urban Ag conferences

Here were are on the last day of September and just around the corner are some great conferences. For those in or interested in coming to the USA on October 25 there is the Mid-Atlantic Horticultural Therapy conference. Malaysia will be having some fun of their own during their National Symposium on Urban Agriculture on October 17.

Nightshades Unite! A plant which grows tomatoes and potatoes

No genetic engineering is necessary. All you need is a little grafting to create one plant which produces tomatoes and potatoes. In small spaces, particularly in urban environments, could this become the latest trend urban agriculture trend?

Grafting is a big part of agriculture in Japan, 90% of watermelons and other greenhouse veggies (cucumbers, eggplants) are grafted before being transplanted to get larger yields.

What could be a bigger deal than this? How about farming insects? A team from Montreal won a million dollars to commercialize their idea.

This is a fantastic idea , but something about it seemed familiar. And then I recalled seeing someone else a couple of years ago at Nuit Blanche in Toronto talking about the promise of raising insects. I wondered if the two ventures were somehow related. It looks like they very much are...and related litigiously. Word has traveled quickly about the dispute; we'll see how this plays out!

Permaculture sites, 15 years in

A neat video which looks at a few permaculture sites 15 years after they got started...

Big jumps

Everyone realizes a lot of work needs to be done to make vertical farming viable; the industry needs cross-disciplinary help to make it efficient and inexpensive. A researcher in Sweden has published his exploration into using biogas slurry and urine as nutrient sources.

-Check out this tremendous kickstarter campaign. Being able to build colorful, custom raised gardening beds in minutes out of 100% recycled plastic would be a huge leap forward.
If they have the analysis to back up that the plastics are inert, you will be seeing these everywhere.

-One last thing to share today, a fantastic new town near Atlanta. Serenbe redefines sustainability.

Horticutural therapy...in space

I know it seems as if I post an aquaponics story nearly every day; what can I say, the industry is bananas right now! Here's the latest on the Sweet Water Organics saga. A few folks wanted to buy what was left after it closed, but everyone passed, it seems some equipment has gone missing and no utilities are at the site. How did that happen?

-In Denver, Colorado a bicycle powered organization is doing its best to reduce food waste, a problem around the world. In the last 18 months they have rescued and delivered over 250,000 pounds of food to those in need!

-Next year Toronto could be looking at its first large green wall, if officials listen to a community group who prefer it to the normal sound barriers.

-Earlier this week I'd made the resolution to place a greater focus on integrating horticultural therapy practices into all of our projects. This article is a wonderful primer for how I, and you, can do that.

-Looking way down the line, researchers across North America are involved with ways to grow food in space...and use them for horticulturally theraputic measures as well. If dreams of a colony on Mars are one day a reality, people are going to need every type of relaxation technique that they can get their hands on.

Aquaponics conference starts tomorrow September 20!

A quick hit, before I forget.

Daily temperatures are up and down and the leaves are beginning to change. If you'd like to catch a few more rays as fall descends across North America head to Tuscon for the 2013 Aquaponics Association Conference which starts tomorrow. It coincides nicely with the opening of the world's largest aquaponics store and education center in Colorado.

Technical green roof time and then the eye candy

A few technical stories to get us going...

-The UK's first cradle-to-cradle demonstration project is scheduled to begin very soon. By-products from tenants will be turned into, among other things, aggregate material to be used as drainage in green roofs.

-And in Greece scientists are investigating which native plants might work best on a Mediterranean green roof.

And now for the visually stunning...

-Patrick Blanc has done it again! The tallest vertical garden will belong to the industry's godfather with a tremendous project slated to be completed in Australia later this year. If it looks anything like the following, it will raise the bar for us all.







-I had never heard of Dezeen before this week, but will check them out again after they posted pictures of this incredible kindergarten rooftop gardening project in Vietnam.

The biggest aquaponics survey to date

Researchers from three schools– Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland and West Virginia University – are combining forces to conduct the largest survey of the aquaponics field.
 If you're in the field,  help them out!

September songs!

I looked back at the archives and September has gotten short shrift!

Bobby Vinton - Sealed with a Kiss
Peter Gabriel - Biko (September 1977)
Fiona Apple - Pale September
Dinah Washington - September in the Rain
Jerry Orbach - Try to Remember 

Ambitious urban agriculture projects from around the world

It's just one of those incredible weeks where all the cool stuff seems to be profiled at once!

-In Thailand gardeners have taken to rooftops to cultivate edible algae, spirulina, which can be a viable sources of protein. This is the first I’ve heard of the practice, I hope it takes off.

-Want a more high tech way of farming? How about using robotics in urban agriculture? Students in India are experimenting with ways for robots to do the work...and cheaply!

-For the past few years I have covered how folks in North America are utilizing urban agriculture to help newcomers integrate into their new homes. It's nice to see other countries, in this case Israel, is doing the same thing. Master’s thesis, anyone?

-This building in Tokyo, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, is trying several exciting urban agriculture technologies...all at one time. These pictures really make the concepts come alive and make you wonder how long before someone in North America gives this a try.

-Australia definitely wins this week’s “We try hardest award” with their $46.5 million dollar school kitchen garden plan which will fund 800 schools! Congrats!!!

-And lastly the urban agriculture movement in the Netherlands looks like it might get a huge boost. Nearly two dozen developers expressed interest in turning a downtown office building, with two floors available, into an urban agriculture hub.

An 8 story green roof and rooftop garden

We finished a green roof in downtown Toronto in mid-August. It is doing well, here are a few photos of the installation; from the rooftop (the eighth story) you can see Lake Ontario.

At about 2000 square feet, it features planter boxes with 15 inches of medium for the residents to plant in and a conventional green roof filled with native wildflowers, native grasses, a few trusty sedum species and roseroot, a first on a green roof...as far as I can tell!

Using a green roof for biofuels + The changing language of green infrastructure

So I was reading this article about a biomass energy facility in Connecticut that recently installed a green roof. Great idea, it will reduce their winter energy bill and carbon footprint by at least 35%. But then I got to thinking, what if you used green roofs to grow plants like switchgrass for biofuel? Of course, it's not like there's a limit of products to burn for energy...but maybe there's a crop which would yield even more energy? Just spit ballin'...

Here's an early trend watch. This writer believes there's now a tendency to frame green infrastructure projects as "weather proofing", not "sustainability" endeavors. Agree, disagree?

Lastly, I couldn't let tomorrow go by without posting this hit by The Temptations. Enjoy!