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Hydroponics: An interesting new way to grow plants

Forget everything you know about plant growing. It doesn’t necessarily take water, sunlight and soil to make healthy vegetables, fruits and herbs. Lots of people are taking advantage of a new system that only requires the first two: sunlight and water. The result has been bigger plants, juicier vegetables and easier maintenance – something any new gardener can appreciate.

The technique is as old as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, according to Homegrown Hydroponics, Inc. a company that sells hydroponic growing systems.

In natural conditions, soil acts as a nutrient reservoir for plants but is not necessary for plant growth. Plants can absorb nutrients just as well through water and when they are added to the water artificially, soil is no longer required. The system therefore allows indoor gardeners to have greater control over their plants’ nutrition. Not only do hydroponic systems provide a perfectly balanced diet, according to how-tohydroponics.com, but hydroponic plants have food and water delivered directly to their roots. The energy usually used to develop long roots can be redirected into growing more plant.

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See how London is growing

An innovative Islington garden is one of many open to the public this weekend

A great pleasure of London’s Open Garden Squares Weekend, which takes place this coming weekend and includes 176 gardens, is the opportunity to nose around properties, many of which are usually only glimpsed through railings and locked gates. These range from the grand garden squares of Kensington and Chelsea to community plots, schools and hospice gardens.

Some, however, are even more private. One such property is Conisbee Courtyard in Islington, north London, an innovative combination of six residential flats and office space (which belongs to a structural engineering firm) set around three floors of exuberant planting. Although the courtyard and balconies are accessible only to Conisbee employees and guests, the flats’ occupants get the benefit of a view of lush greenery without the chore of having to look after it themselves. That is the job of Marie Clarke, a landscape designer who works with Conisbee on projects and who oversaw the space.

At ground level is a cool courtyard filled with leafy plants that include 100-year-old tree ferns in large galvanised-steel containers. There is also a rectangular pool, carefully positioned to allow room for party gatherings around it, and planted with flag irises and marsh marigolds, through which goldfish swim.

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Salmonella and Tomatoes: Is Buying Local Produce Safer?

After reports of a major salmonella outbreak in nine states, many are wondering where their tomatoes come from and how did salmonella end up tainting them and making folks sick? It has some turning to local produce, but is that really the safer way to go?

“Make it $5.60 and I’ll get you two or three of those small heads out there, how about that?” asked Jerry Wyatt of a customer.

Wyatt of Wyatt Farms sells fresh produce, including tomatoes, in Marshall County. He’s got loyal customers like Shirley Duckett who say they like knowing their food is grown right next door at Heartland Hydroponics.

“Now, with all that salmonella poisoning, I guess I’ll stick with what I know,” said Duckett. “You don’t ever know what you’re getting now.”

There have been 80 cases of salmonella poisoning in nine states, including Illinois. Seventeen of those people ended up in the hospital. Health officials think tainted Roma and red round tomatoes are the culprits. The question is, how did it happen?

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Rotary speaker explains plan for ‘Nuclear Green Farms’

Hydroponic farms, used to grow produce, herbs and plants without soil, would be built around the desalination plants. Surrounding the hydroponic farms are aquatic farms.

The idea is to have the collection of farms circle the nuclear power plant in the middle. The farm would resemble a series of concentric circles.

Sayre said other countries such as Germany, France and England
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use hydroponic farms, and Japan is in the midst of doing developing its own.

“There are about 30,000 acres of hydroponic farms worldwide, but only about 800 acres in California,” he said.

Sayre said the waste from the hydroponic farms could be used to provide feed for the aquatic farms, and the waste from the aquatic farms can be processed to make fertilizer for the hydroponic farms.

“It’s not really waste,” Sayre said. “It’s an asset.”

Sayre estimates that the world’s aquatic farms will one day overtake cattle ranching in food production. He said it requires 7 kilograms of grain to produce 1 kilogram of live weight for cattle, compared to the 2 kilograms to produce the same live weight for fish. Producing a ton of grain requires 1,000 tons of water, Sayre added.

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The urban farmer: One man’s crusade to plough up the inner city

Fritz Haeg isn’t perhaps the obvious representative of a revolution in global farming. As an architecture and design academic and practitioner, the American has had his work exhibited at Tate Modern and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and has taught fine art at several US universities. Yet it is last year’s community-collaborative project on an inner-city council estate in south London that best showcases his current passion: the urban farm. Read more

Positive Sustainability: sustainable sustenance

We all may want our cars, our homes, our computers and our jobs, but there is one thing we can all agree we need: food. Unfortunately, in the world today, food is highly problematic — from a global perspective, it’s expensive, it’s unfairly distributed and its production is an environmental disaster. Statistics detailing the extent of food’s many problems are easy to find, but so far, solutions to this global plight have proven elusive.

There does not yet exist a simple, out-of-the-box solution to the food crisis. For the future, however, both a class at Columbia University and a small non-profit in Kansas are working on two fundamentally divergent solutions that could change the face of cultivation forever: vertical farming and Natural Systems Agriculture.

By the end of this year, more than half of the world’s population will live in cities. Advocates of vertical farming propose that food production should follow this demographic transition into the urban environment, with the food of the future grown not in fields, but in skyscrapers. While the idea might sound at first a tad ludicrous, Dr. Dickson Despommier and his students in Columbia’s Medical Ecology class are convinced of its potential.

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This side up: living walls come to Chelsea

Vertical gardening is one of the latest trends in gardening, and this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, which opens on Tuesday, is set to introduce it to a new audience. Victoria Summerley reports

The world tends to divide into two when it comes to vertical gardening. On one side are those to whom the sight of a wall covered with greenery is something of beauty. On the other side are those who consider any climbing plant a nuisance, something that will damage the masonry or pull down the fencing or, at the very least, make them reach for the secateurs.

Yet, in an age when gardens are getting smaller, especially in towns and on new estates, surely it makes sense to use vertical surfaces as well as horizontal? And what if we discovered that using plants to clothe walls and roofs could actually protect the environment, and save us money, by reducing heat demand?

These are themes being explored in several gardens at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, which opens on Tuesday. Designers are using vertical planting techniques as a way of increasing the space available for greenery, to provide a habitat for wildlife, and to screen urban gardens from intrusion and noise.

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Fertiliser prices put bite on fruit, veg growers

Prices for fresh produce will need to rise to cover a jump in fertiliser prices that has added to fuel and labour costs, WA fruit and vegetable growers warn.

Prices for fertiliser have more than doubled since December, with distributors warning of further rises as international supplies become increasingly difficult to source.

WA Vegetable Growers Association president David Anderson said the increase in fertiliser prices, which accounted for 10 to 20 per cent of running costs, was the latest of many rising expenses which were not being matched by farm gate prices.

He said higher prices were ultimately needed to cover the increasing costs, but conceded the end retail price ultimately depended on supply and consumer demand for each crop.

Julian Baker, owner of fertiliser and chemical supplier Growers Rural, said wholesale prices for standard nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium compound fertiliser had doubled to about $1400 a tonne in five months while prices for other top-grade fertilisers, common to hydroponics, had trebled.

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B.C., Woodland rate a ‘local’ for their hydroponic tomatoes

Hydroponically grown “on-the-vine” tomatoes were first imported in the early 1990s from the Netherlands, letting us enjoy a bite of summer all year long. Soon, a half-dozen growers here in Oregon were using the system, which grows tomatoes in a wood-based greenhouse medium that’s saturated with water enriched with nutrients.

Today, most hydroponic production is in British Columbia, although there are some growers in our metro area, including: Ron Goldman’s Home Grown Hydro-Farms in Woodland, Wash. Goldman, whose operation is certified organic, sells his tomatoes at the Vancouver Farmers Market, Caffe Mingo, Food Front Cooperative Grocery, Pastaworks, Raw Raw Raw Produce in City Market, and Whole Foods in Mill Plain and Laurelhurst. And right now, the longer days give a boost to hydroponic production, without competition from soil-based crops.

I like to support local growers, and I’d certainly give a nod to close-in farmers such as Goldman, whose sweet touch with vine tomatoes makes him an artist. But that doesn’t mean that I dismiss product from British Columbia, because it still fits my definition of “local”: the area within a day’s travel and within the major watersheds of the Columbia, Klamath and Fraser river basins. Other folks may disagree, but I put a premium on freshness, and in my experience B.C.’s growers deliver.

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Students Eat It Up

VALRICO - A recent lesson in extreme cuisine gave agricultural students at Mulrennan Middle School a chance to kick their knowledge of Florida fruits and vegetables up a notch.

They had some knowledge of where food comes from. Agriculture teacher Susan Carpenter has been working with them on a number of projects throughout the semester, including caring for farm animals and growing vegetables and flowers traditionally and hydroponically.

Carpenter recently was named one of three agriculture teachers of the year in Florida by Florida Agriculture in the Classroom, a nonprofit organization that promotes the importance of agriculture in the state’s curriculum.

The Florida Excellence in Teaching about Agriculture Award recognizes teachers’ efforts to educate students about where food, fiber and landscape material come from.

On a recent field trip, Carpenter took 25 students to the Hillsborough County Farm Bureau offices on Mulrennan Road, where they were treated to cooking and nutrition lessons using fresh Florida produce.

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