Gotham Greens Local Produce || Gotham Greens || Premium quality locally grown vegetables and herbs Four Simple Do-It-Yourself Soil Tests Learning as much as you can about your soil will help you decide what needs to be done to make it ideal for the plants you want to grow. If you can learn about your soil’s texture, composition, drainage, acidity, and mineral density, you will avoid, up front, the disappointing results that can occur when your soil is unsuitable for your dream garden. Soil Test #1: The Squeeze Test One of the most basic characteristics of soil is its composition. In general, soils are classified as clay soils, sandy soils, or loamy soils. Clay is nutrient rich, but slow draining. To determine your soil type, take a handful of moist (but not wet) soil from your garden, and give it a firm squeeze. It will hold its shape, and when you give it a light poke, it crumbles. Now that you know what type of soil you have, you can work on improving it. Soil Test #2: The Percolation Test It is also important to determine whether you have drainage problems or not. Dig a hole about six inches wide and one foot deep.
What Will Farming Look Like in 2050? As it stands, Big Agriculture companies like Monsanto dominate the farming industry with their patented, genetically-engineered crops. The burgeoning organic movement has slowly shifted the tide, but it's still hard to imagine a day when the small, organic growers hold sway over the multinational corporations that are currently in charge. Protofarm 2050, a project put together by Design Indaba, tries to imagine what such a sustainable farming future might look like--and how we can get there. Protofarm 2050 acknowledges that there is no silver bullet with the problem of sustainable farming, and instead focuses on an array of scenarios that could become viable in the future. So what makes Design Indaba think this will actually happen? Want to see what a sustainable future food system might look like? [Protofarm 2050]
This Tokyo office building doubles as an urban farm (photos) 1/13 10 of 13 Pasona Group might be one of the largest staffing agencies in Japan, but it also has to have the most biodiversity in any corporate headquarters. In the company's 215,000 square foot office building in downtown Tokyo business meetings mix with broccoli fields, seminar rooms double as growing spaces for salad greens, guests are greeted by a rice paddy, and workspaces are separated by fruit trees. The building uses 43,000 square feet for growing space (20 percent of the building) for 200 different species of vegetables, fruits, and rice. But it's not just a novelty concept, all of the plants are maintained by Pasona's employees along with an agricultural specialist. And the food that's harvested is used in the building's cafeteria. Here's a look.
Inside Urban Green About the Urban Homestead project | Urban Homestead ® - Path to Freedom In the mid-1980s, our family set out to do the seemingly impossible: To create a new revolution in sustainable urban living. Finding ourselves owning a run-down circa 1917 craftsman-style house in the metropolis of Pasadena (the 7th largest city in Los Angeles County) and just 15 minutes from downtown Los Angeles with the intersection of 134 and 210 freeways 30 yards from our home, we shelved our dreams of idyllic country living and "five acres and independence" and decided to do what we could, with what we had -- RIGHT NOW. No one thought it was possible. Residents in our low income, mixed race neighborhood thought we were the "crazy white folks." We forged ahead, calling our project the Urban Homestead® model and with no small means of blood, sweat and tears, we worked to transform this ordinary 66' x 132' urban lot [LINK: Comparison Diagram of Property ] into a self-sufficient city homestead with an organic garden that now supplies us with food year-round.
AGRITECTURE MIT City Farm | As part of the City Science Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, ... Caliber Biotherapeutics - Home Pasona O2: Urban Underground Farming Two years ago we first covered Tokyo's underground farm; It is called Pasona O2 and was set up as a means of providing agricultural training to young people who are having trouble finding employment and middle-aged people in search of a second career. Of course, since we first posted the interest in local food has increased dramatically and there has been much more interest in urban farming. We also came upon some new information: The Pasona Group has a traditional farm in Ogata, but they want the "freeters" (Japanese slackers who hop between part time jobs) to get a taste, so to speak. "In the absence of sunlight, the plants are sustained by artificial light from light-emitting diodes, metal halide lamps, and high-pressure sodium vapor lamps. Room 1 Flower field. Room 3 Shelf rice field. Room 4 Fruit/vegetable field. Room 6 Seedling room. from ::Learning and Environment
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