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Flower Hospital will grow veggies for cafeteria

Flower Hospital yesterday unveiled a hydroponic garden on its campus in Sylvania as ProMedica Health System officials started promoting the soilless method as a way to grow vegetables in urban settings and improve nutrition.

Vegetables from the garden’s more than 2,000 plants will be used in the hospital cafeteria and donated to Sylvania Area Family Services.

The garden, which will be a point of interest for educational tours and nutrition classes, was showcased as ProMedica announced a partnership with the Center for Innovative Food Technology during a news conference with U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo).

The garden’s pots, which are mounted on poles, are filled with a coconut potting medium designed to hold moisture.

Hydroponic gardens can be installed in nontraditional locations, including parking lots and vacant urban areas, according to the center.

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Neptune Receives Letter of Intent to Purchase Ento-Protein

Neptune Industries, Inc., a world leader in the development of sustainable solutions for aquaculture, headquartered here, said today it has received a Letter of Intent to purchase over 40 tons per month of its Ento-Protein(TM), an insect-based alternative to fishmeal, from Zeigler Bros, Inc. of Gardners, PA.

Ento-Protein(TM) is a high quality sustainable protein derived from insects, which is intended to be a replacement for the rapidly depleting fishmeal made from wild caught feedstock species, for which there is currently a $7 billion worldwide market. Founded in 1935, privately held Ziegler Bros is a leading manufacturer of high quality animal feeds. Ziegler was the first to manufacture feeds for aquaculture in 1955, the first to commercialize a stable form of vitamin C in 1988, and most recently the first developer of aquatic diets for use in biomedical research. Read more

Program aims to curb hunger

Steinbeck Vineyards and Winery of Paso Robles has partnered with Kathy Kelly of the Winery Music Awards and the nonprofit organization Urban Farming to combat the growing issue of hunger in San Luis Obispo County by growing a little something of their own — produce.

The effort is part of Urban Farm’s new initiative, Vineyards Growing Veggies. Urban Farming, headquartered in Detroit, Mich., is an international nonprofit organization that plants food on unused land and space to feed the hungry. According to its Web site, www.urbanfarming.org, the organization plants produce gardens on rooftops, on walls, in planters in malls, and sidewalks cafes and has Green Science Gardens on school campuses in an effort to combat hunger on a large scale. Read more

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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