Bakeries Urge Customers to Plant Wheat
by Tina Antolini

Listen at NPR website NPR Website

Day to Day, April 28, 2008 · "To combat the skyrocketing price of flour, several Massachusetts bakeries have taken on a project that's part Little Red Hen, part World War II Victory Garden. The bakeries are recruiting their customers to till up their lawns and gardens and plant wheat."

On Sunday I visited the Bklyn Designs Show in Dumbo to see what was available for the outdoors. There were lots of beautiful tables--the ipe ones shown here are specifically made for outside; there were some interesting chairs and mobile seating made of lightweight cement, and even some bug lights that could be adapted for outside with some solar lights. The fabrics by Aviva Stanoff are for interiors, but the gorgeous patterns of coral, feathers, nets and florals appeal to nature lovers.

Laidman Fabrication

site specific design

Oso Industries

Produce-Design

Robert Martin Designs

aviva stanoff

This week I installed a vegetable and fruit garden in window boxes for a loft in Soho. This family has a big worm composter, so the kids in the family gather their vegetable wastes and feed the worms, then the worm casings are fertilizer for the garden. They really love the worms and the garden. (The youngest is responsible for picking off the strawberry flowers until the fruit starts.)

Here's where I got the goods.

Strawberries, cucumbers, green beans, and snap peas are from
Crest True Value Hardware on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg.

Fig tree and raspberries are from David Shannon Nursery and Florist. (They have blueberries and a great selection of fruit trees as well.)

Lettuces, nasturtium, heirloom tomatoes including green grape, yellow plum, and red cherry as well as specialty herbs are from the Blew Family Organic Farm at Union Square Farmer's Market.

They ordered their worm composter online, and it really is a Cadillac of worm bins. Here's a similar three level with a spout. (The casings come out in liquid form and you can water your plants with them) Go to Arbico Organics to learn more.

There's a great article, Urban Farmers' Crops Go From Vacant Lot to Market in this week's New York Times, on crops growing in unexpected urban places.

Pull Quote:

This urban agriculture movement has grown even more vigorously elsewhere. Hundreds of farmers are at work in Detroit, Milwaukee, Oakland and other areas that, like East New York, have low-income residents, high rates of obesity and diabetes, limited sources of fresh produce and available, undeveloped land.

A client recently told me that her favorite color was gray. This was in reference to her garden. As first I was a little stumped, but then I remembered that silver is just another word for gray. So we create a palate of pale bluestone, perenial borders with silver and gray foilage like lavender, sea holly, lamb's ears, catmint and blue fescue grass. All the blooms will be purple or blue, and we mulched with gray/white stone. The final touch was an aluminum shed. She had some old teak in her backyard, so we used it for doors on the shed. Full pictures to come when the job is totally finished, but here are a few pics of the gray garden in the meantime.

I love moss and I've been trying to use more and more of it--it has the charm of creeping thyme, sort of an enchanted forest feel about it, and is, according to a recent New York Times article Moss Makes a Lush, No-Care Lawn , moss is very good for growing in bad conditions and takes a fraction of the rainwater that lawns need. Visit Moss Acres

A moss lawn could be a stunning look for a shady backyard, with no mowing and no fertilizer. I've mixed moss with tiny hinoki cypress for window boxes, image a landscape with these colors.

Sky Vegetables
is an interesting Blog/ Website on Urban Rooftop Farming: http://www.skyvegetables.com/

Here are a few stories from them.

Plastic Wading Pools + Roof = Successful Vegetable Farm
April 4th, 2008

Dr. Ebenezer proved that growing vegetables on a rooftop using plastic wading pools was feasible. In 1997, Dr. Ebenezer and his team were able to harvest 984 pounds of vegetables from 38 pools in an area measuring 1,625 square feet. One pool alone yielded an average of 22.5 pounds of tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, zucchini and a variety of greens. This is equivalent to about 26,800 pounds per acre. This is a photo of Dr. Ebenezer with his wading pools

By: Geoff Wilson

Gregory Chow has demonstrated already, what can be done in rooftop farming with his award-winning project on the atrium of the 800-bed Changi General Hospital The hydroponic farm on the atrium of the 800-bed Changi General Hospital in Singapore. The bare concrete of the atrium roof was a problem in that it diverted sunlight into nearby wards - to cause objectionable glare and heating. The rooftop hydroponics, growing cherry tomatoes and herbs, solved the problem and created a rooftop farm that now supplies patients with healthy fresh food. Another Singapore hospital is about to go even further in food from the roof.

I was recently in Havana, Cuba to write about urban vegetable farm movement for Saveur Magazine.

The Cuban government estimates the urban-area harvest of vegetables, herbs and spices in 2005 including urban farms, intensive gardens, plots of land and family gardens, totaled 4.1 million tons. Raul Castro, before Fidel got sick, spearheaded the push to increase urban farms. When the Cuban government decides to mobilize, it does so in a big way. Their goal is to have every vacant lot in Havana cultivated.

At the age of 75, Nestor Suarez works seven days a week at an organoponico, or urban vegetable garden in the neighborhood of Vedado. I asked him if this was punishment for a misspent youth, and he laughed, then shrugged and said, "It's my work. I like it."

He gestured to the rows of vegetables--beets, spinach, chives, planted in neat beds. As we made our way through the herb garden, he then started explaining the benefits of the herbs to me: siempre viva is for headaches, chamomile helps with skin problems, anise is to give you a strong stomach. Or, as Nestor put it, "Le da animo." It gives you spirit.

We stopped under the shade of fruit trees, where he showed me a passionfruit, still green on the tree, and then a noni fruit, pale yellow and naturally pocked. He picked a few small ripe bananas for me to try.

"If this wasn't a garden, it would be filled with garbage. Instead, all year long we have food for the people," Nestor said, then added the distinctly Cuban phrase, "Tiene que resolver."

"Resolver" has been Cuban's battle cry, chant, groan since the Special Period. It means to find a way to survive, to make the impossible, possible. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Cuba lost 80 percent of its imports. Known as the "The Special Period," government food rations were cut in half, public buses didn't run, and blackouts rolled through the cities. Hoping to crush the government, the United States tightened the embargo by passing the Cuban Democracy Act (1992) that prevents the docking at a U.S. port of any ship that has docked in Cuba six months prior or that plans to visit Cuba within six months after. This further reduced food and medicine reaching the island.

The scarcity of both imported food and fuel made urban vegetable gardens the most practical solution. Cuba didn't have chemicals to use as insecticides, so they had to use organic methods of pest control.

Corn had been planted around the perimeter of the area. He pulled back a leaf from the plant to show me the blush of aphids gathered. "These keep the aphids off the other vegetables, and then we use ladybugs to control these insects."

I'd love to get this gardening crew up here on a work visa. Senate, Congress? Please

There are all sorts of events planned for Wildflower week that include native plant give-aways, lectures, guided walks and kids activities where they plant seeds and learn about worm composting.

You can find a full schedule here: NYC Wildflower Week

The website touts all sorts of facts, including this one that seems so hard to believe:

New York has a higher percentage of open space than any major city in United States. About 25% or 53,000 acres is city, state and federal parkland--that's more than Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia combined.

(Where is all this open space?)

This fact is easy to believe:

Gotham's spaces serve 8 million people, more than any other urban park system. However, New York City spends only $41 per resident per year on its green acres, with next to none of it going toward management of natural areas. By contrast, Seattle and Chicago annually spend much more per capita - $164 and $108 respectively.

Tonight at the Fairchild Botanic Garden in Miami, you can watch their production of A Midsummer's Night Dream.

Go early and stroll the grounds to see the sculptures of Fernando Botero, the glass art of Dale Chihuly and the installations by Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein shown for the first time ever in a world-class botanic garden.