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Urban Gardening / Farming

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High-end consumers taking up urban farming. Coco de Mer co-founder Sam Roddick in her “bee buffet” garden in London’s Hampstead.

High-end consumers taking up urban farming

Photo by James Ostrer. Putting the Chic in Chicken Coop By Jemima Sissons Wall Street Journal Aug 5, 2011 Excerpt: Sam Roddick, co-founder of London boutique Coco de Mer and daughter of Body Shop founder Anita Roddick, is also passionate about the preservation of the honey bee. Her 30-meter garden in Hampstead also provides her with abundant fruit and vegetables, and she is considering keeping chickens.

Read the complete article here. Bee Lovely website here.

The Urban Farming Guys

Growing Power - A Model for Urban Agriculture. Urban farming in Newark. MITSU YASUKAWA/THE STAR-LEDGERJohn Taylor waters plants at Brick City Urban Farms' garden near Lincoln Park in Newark.

Urban farming in Newark

The Urban Experiment. Urban Aquaculture: Fish Farming in the City. Urban Agriculture Blooms. Urban and City Vegetable Gardening. Urban Agriculture: A Guide to Container Gardens. A Guide to Container Gardens With inexpensive containers and suitable soil mix,you can create an urban garden virtually anywhere - on roof tops,vacant city lots, borwn fields, and unused portion of parking lots Job S.

Urban Agriculture: A Guide to Container Gardens

Ebenezer, Ph.D.President, Technology for the Poor, 877 PELHAM COURT, WESTERVILLE, OHIO - 43081technologyforthepoor@yahoo.com It is estimated that by 2030 AD nearly 50% of the world’s population may live in urban areas. As a consequence of this many millions of acres of productive farmland are expected to be lost to housing and other usage. Due to the recent terrorist attacks, food security and safety are seriously compromised. Migration from rural areas also brings into the urban areas many persons with very little formal education. Urban agriculture has the potential for creating micro-enterprises that can be owned and operated by the community members without too much of initial capital. Urban farming is not new. Wading pools should be set on a level ground. Examples of Container Gardening, Raised Bed Garden, Vertical Tower Garden at the Great Park. Urban Gardens Web. Urban Garden Magazine. Square Foot Gardening Foundation. The Urban Cultivator Blog.

Urban Organic Gardener. 20-foot URBAN FARMS. Urban Farms? TreeHugger. Images: Youtube screen grabs Food Doesn't Get More Local Than That A family living in Mesa, Arizona, has decided to convert an old unused backyard swimming pool into a very productive DIY urban greenhouse, which they named Garden Pool.

TreeHugger

Within a small, mostly enclosed space, they grow all kinds of vegetables and herbs, as well as raise chickens and tilapia fish. They started this project in 2009 and expected to be "self-sufficient" by 2012, but they've reached that goal this year, getting "8 fresh eggs a day, unlimited tilapia fish, organic fruit, veggies, and herbs 365 days a year" (though I'm not sure if by self-sufficient they mean that they could theoretically live off the amount of food the Garden Pool produces, or if they actually do it). Check out the video tour of the Garden Pool below. An Oasis in the Desert There's a more detailed list of things they grow and facts about the Garden Pool here. Photo: GardenPool.org The Garden Pool is also off-grid thanks to solar PV! Via Gardenpool. Urban Farm in Cleveland. Urban farming in Newark. The Rise of Urban Farming. My newest buzzword for 2011 is CSA.

The Rise of Urban Farming

I'd never heard the term until recently, but now it seems to be popping up all over, as is interest in sustainable agriculture and urban farming. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture -- the practice of signing up with a local farm for weekly produce and, in some cases, meat and dairy. I first read about CSA in Kristin Kimball's recent memoir, "The Dirty Life," which is justly attracting rave reviews on Amazon. A Manhattan writer who gave up the city for love, she has been farming an organic spread, Essex Farm, in upstate New York since 2003, with her husband, Mark.

Essex Farm provides a complete sustainable diet for its 150 members. Kimball's book is an engrossing depiction of the back-breaking work and edible rewards of CSA. Urban farming is also on the rise. The Future of Urban Agriculture. Adventures in Urban Sustainability. Can Urban Farming Go Corporate? Farms have sprouted in cities across the country over the past several years as activists and idealists pour their sweat into gritty soil. Now Paul Lightfoot wants to take urban agriculture beyond the dirt-under-your-nails labor of love.

He wants to take it corporate. In June, Lightfoot's company, BrightFarms, announced a deal with The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., or A&P, to provide New York City-grown vegetables to the local chain's supermarkets year-round. The goods will grow in what the company says will be the country's largest rooftop greenhouse farm, a high-tech hydroponic operation that will boost yields, allowing the company to face-off with organic vegetables trucked from California, cutting thousands of miles from the supply chain while aiming to provide a fresher product at a competitive price.

With similar deals announced for St. "We're not trying to change the fringes of the supply chain," he said. If that sounds too good to be true, it may be. Small Urban Space Rain Gardens. Rain gardens aren’t just for homeowners with large tracts of land.

Small Urban Space Rain Gardens

A rain garden planted in a small urban area can make a big difference in the water quality and environment of its surrounding area. When it rains in densely populated urban areas, impervious surfaces such as roads, sidewalks, and roofs not planted with gardens, trees, or turf, produce runoff that goes straight into storm sewers. Some storm drains carry water to treatment plants, while water from other storm drains washes directly into lakes, rivers, and oceans. Any time a large influx of water pours into an aquatic ecosystem, the balance of oxygen and nutrients is disturbed, causing death to aquatic life, and other disruptions of the ecosystem. New Stories From 'Urban Agriculture Notes'.

Urban gardens: The future of food? With penny-farthings, handlebar mustaches and four-pocket vests back in fashion, the rise of urban farming should just about complete our fetish for the late 1800s.

Urban gardens: The future of food?

Today, you can find chicken coops on rooftops in Brooklyn, N.Y., goats in San Francisco backyards, and rows of crops sprouting across empty lots in Cleveland. That it fits so snugly into the hipster-steampunk throwback trend is what makes urban farming ripe for ridicule. (“Portlandia” has taken a crack or two at it.) But could city-based agriculture ever make the leap from precious pastime to serious player in our cities’ food systems — not just for novelty seekers and committed locavores, but for the Safeway-shopping masses? Urban Homestead ® - Path to Freedom.