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Grants for Los Angeles Community Beautification Projects

The Community Beautification Grant of the City of Los Angeles, Board of Public Works, Office of Community Beautification has been awarding grants since 1998. The staff has a special knowledge of the people, organizations and neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

Grants for Urban Farming Gardens

Urban Farming has a well-known sponsor interested in paying the costs to develop five (5) 20' x 20' (400 square ft) produce-bearing gardens in Los Angeles that can be secured for at least two years, with a goal toward becoming sustainable through initial and ongoing community members and group involvement.

Find the general criteria at CBGrant.blogspot.com

Suggested Garden Locations: Community center grounds; Parks; City lots; University/College campus; Faith-based organization sites that accept other community member involvement and also those that are non-denominational. (this is for community sites, rather than elementary/middle/high school locations)

Please contact: Meg Glasser for further information.
meg.glasser@gmail.com; 646.726.1563; http://www.urbanfarming.org/


Farmscaping is the management of vegetation on and around the farm, to include plantings on roadways, field margins, waterways, natural areas and generally non-cropped areas. The term "farmscaping" can cover a wide range of practices, such as grassed waterways, buffers, filter strips and cover crops, as well as hedgerows and windbreaks.

Hedgerows are defined as lines or groups of trees, shrubs, perennial forbs, and grasses that are planted along roadways, fences, field edges or other non-cropped areas. The word "hedge," from the Old English word "hegg," referred to an enclosure or boundary formed by closely growing bushes or by dead plant material.

Windbreaks are barriers usually consisting of trees or shrubs that are used to reduce and redirect wind, resulting in microclimate changes in the sheltered zone.

Filter strips are planted areas that use vegetation to control soil erosion, slow water runoff, and capture and prevent sediments and nutrients from entering waterways.

Hedgerows can have multiple functions 
  • They can serve as habitat for beneficial insects, pollinators and other wildlife;
  • provide erosion protection and weed control;
  • serve as windbreaks;
  • stabilize waterways;
  • reduce non-point source water pollution and groundwater pollution;
  • increase surface water infiltration;
  • buffer pesticide drift, noise, odors and dust;
  • act as living fences and boundary lines;
  • increase biodiversity;
  • and provide an aesthetic resource.

Diversity in hedgerow species, especially when using natives, assures a range of attributes, such as multiple kinds of insects and wildlife attracted, positive effects to soil and water resources, and success of individual plants under site-specific climatic and other environmental conditions.


Find more info about farmsacping at the Community Alliance with Family Farmers

Intensive Gardening Methods in Arid Areas

The purpose of an intensively grown garden is to harvest the most produce possible from a given space.

The Arizona Master Gardener Manual on Intensive Gardening methods examines several ways to grow in small areas.

The practice of intensive gardening is not just for those with limited garden space; rather, an intensive garden concentrates work efforts to create an ideal plant environment, giving better yields with less labor.

A good intensive garden requires early, thorough planning to make the best use of time and space in the garden. Interrelationships of plants must be considered before planting, including nutrient needs, shade tolerance, above- and below-ground growth patterns, and preferred growing season.

Using the techniques described in The Arizona Master Gardener Manual on Intensive Gardening , anyone can develop a high-yielding intensive garden.

Urban Food Production & Vertical Farming

For the Greener Good "Vertical Farming" from National Building Museum on Vimeo.

Urban food security is a rising concern with climate change affecting traditional agriculture with droughts, floods and migratory changes for pollinators. Local regional food production is also a solution for access to fresh foods to reduce obesity and childhood onset diabetes. A major overhaul of our food system is bursting from its seeds.

6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World

A study of the magicians of the soil is an endless endeavor! Paul Stamets makes it a bit easier to learn about mushrooms with this TED talk. Mushrooms are both a citizen of the micro world of soil, but they are the manufacturers of the very soil in which they live. What a sentient approach to sustainability.

The advantages of portable sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) can encourage  more PONGs (Portable Outreach Neighborhood Garden (PONG) and personal gardens with no need for the backbreaking and costly work of breaking concrete and blacktop.

Back breaking work is simply not necessary.

SIP gardening also avoids the risk of contaminated soil.

InsideUrbanGreen.com is a helpful DIY site to help you make your own planters and planter boxes instead of going gung ho and tearing up concrete, etc.

Add to these innovative storage box planters a few heirloom seeds...and you have your own victory garden on your patio!

It can be done!  One home at a time!  Low impact family gardening makes a huge difference in our climate change strategy...and the health of our families:

Havana relies on 200 urban farms known as organoponicos

Cuba, on the brink of starvation when the Soviet Union collapsed 20 years
ago, now produces 90% of its fruits and vegetable needs, using organic,
low-tech inputs.  The Cuban diet is healthier and uses 1/3 the energy to
produce versus typical western food production.

Some of the plots are small - just a few rows of lettuces and radishes being grown in an old parking space.

Other plots are much larger - the size of several football pitches. Usually they have a stall next to them to sell the produce at relatively low prices to local people.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8213617.stm
Community development techniques -- both commercial and residential -- have a major impact on fresh water supplies and the surface and underground water system. Pavement is a big contributor to the problem. Now it can provide a solution.

Sustainable Solutions with Low Impact Development

L.I.D. is in. That's Low Impact Development, the standards by which the local ecosystem is minimally impacted by development, and water is preserved as a precious resource.

West coast microclimates are interesting. From rain soaked areas like San Anselmo, to rain starved areas like Bakersfield, each zone presents it own challenges for water issues. With each water challenge comes difficulties that municipalities, developers, and home-owners have to adapt to, and manage.

California Water Conservation Solutions

For example, water conservation is critical in California's central valley where each gallon of runoff can be a precious resource, if properly managed. Other areas of California offer surprising challenges -- such as Marin county, which is more like Portland, Oregon, which receives over 40 inches of rain a year.

LID offers workable solutions that developers and home-owners can implement to manage water issues whatever their situation -- dearth or deluge. Whether the issue is drought conditions or excessive runoff, sustainable water management is important to California.

Permeable Pavement allows water to rapidly pass through the pavement into a cistern or natural underground water supplies.

Modular Pavers Used in Hardscape Applications

permeable pavers for driveway

permeable pavers for sidewalk

permeable pavers for parking lot

permeable pavers for roadways and streets

Permeable pavement is a relatively new concept and product that reduces "impervious" surfaces from driveways, sidewalks and other hardscapes by allowing water to run through the pavement and back into the soil - not follow the hardscape to the street and eventually into our waterways. This solution retains more rainwater for our underground aquafers - but it also allows plants and the soil to filter pollutants out of the water naturally.

Permeable Pavers

One LID product that can provide solutions for water runoff and infiltration issues, large or small, is permeable pavers from Permapave Northwest.

Different from traditional concrete pavers, Permapave NW pavers have an actual flow-through rate of over 1 gallon of water per second. The pavers are manufactured from natural rock, with an acrylic polymer binder similar to the clear coat on your automobile. The finished product is a completely inert paver which returns water directly to the soil, or underground storage, without adding alkalinity, zinc or hydrocarbons to the runoff.

When permeable pavers are installed over properly prepared secondary filtration in the sub-grade, they will capture and filter 100% of gross pollutants and up to 70% phosphorus, 80% of heavy metals and 98% of hydrocarbons from the water that flows through them.

Residential Applications

  • Alleys, Driveways
  • Walkways
  • Patios
  • Camper Parking
  • High Traffic Grass Areas
  • Pools / Hot Tubs
  • Courtyard
  • Rooftops
  • Sidewalks / Pathways
  • Foundation Drainage

Commercial / Industrial Applications

  • Parking Areas
  • Pedestrian Walkway
  • Bike Path
  • Plaza / Entryway
  • Bioretention / Rain Garden
  • Rooftop
  • Tree Grates
  • Rooftops
  • Roadways / Median Strips
  • Large Public Spaces

Modular Permeable Pavers for Sustainable Landscaping

Modular pavers over an advantage over "poured" pervious pavement by allowing edges of permeable pavement to be installed in many locations - under downspouts, along sidewalks, along driveways, around trees, around rain gardens, and on or around patios.

Modular Pavers Used in Landscape Applications

permeable pavers for downspout

permeable pavers for trees

  • Permapave NW pavers are available in a number of colors/aggregates to enhance building and landscaping aesthetics.

  • PermapaveNW's Permeable pavers come in a modular, 12x12x2" standard size, with widths up to 16" and thicknesses up to 4" for heavier vehicle loads.

  • The pavers, while extremely pervious, provide the hard surface needed for normal urban activities.

The surface not only performs well for sidewalks, biking paths, parking lots, and driveways but also handles water efficiently in both drought and flood conditions.

The EPA has long noted the benefits of pervious pavers, highlighting them in their Best Management Practices: "depending on the design, pervious pavements (pavers), when used in combination with other techniques such as vegetated swales, or vegetated filter strips, may eliminate or reduce the need for land intensive BMPs, such as dry extended detention or wet retention ponds." (EPA Best Management Practices- porous pavements)

Both residential and commercial developers may find that the use of pervious pavers, which can range up to $8 per square foot, can actually make money for them, by eliminating detention ponds and increasing the amount of land that can be developed.

Home-owners can install the easy-to-use permeable pavers themselves, providing drainage areas for driveway or patios that may be puddling, or as a pervious cover for an underground water storage cistern.

The pavers can also be used as stepping stones, in pet areas, in gardens, along walkways, as parking areas for RVs -- the landscaping possibilities are endless.

Some municipalities are offering rebates for the purchase of LID products like Permapave. Check with your local city or county city and county governments, as well as water providers (ie: Metropolitan Water District) to find incentives and rebates to improve water quality, reduce runoff, or retain stormwater.

Sustainable Solutions to Stormwater Runoff

Retaining rain water for your landscape can be especially helpful during California's prolonged droughts. By protecting your landscape with adequate water supplies from a cistern, and from focusing the available rain into specific rain gardens, your plants will not suffer as much - and your water bill will thank you, too!

permeable pavers samples from Pavers Northwest

Sample permeable pavers by Permapave Northwest

CONTACT:
Permapave Northwest
Distributor for Western US
1-877-694-0141
815 NE 172nd Ave
Vancouver, WA 98684
www.permapavenw.com

"Locovores" eat foods from their local foodshed or a self-determined radius from their home (commonly either 100 or 250 miles, depending on location). By eating locally, most locavores hope to create a greater connection between themselves and their food sources, resist industrialized and processed foods, and support their local economy.

In trying to live a more sustainable, logical lifestyle, many locavores give themselves exceptions to a strict local diet. Commonly excluded items include coffee, chocolate, salt, and/or spices. To keep a local focus, they often try to find local coffee roasters, chocolate producers, and spice importers.

There is a growing interest in regional native foods and ethnic foods such as the Southwest's historic Mexican influence with herbs and peppers.  But there are additional native foods such as dried beans, squash, corn and nuts.

Locovores find tremendous challenge and adventure in discovering what grows in their own neighborhood and nearby communities.  They learn more about their ecosystems and how their use of water, their waste management choices and their choice of housing size, materials and styles all affect the natural food production capability in their region.  Everything is connected ... weather patterns, soil nutrients, drainage, insect infestations...and even those humble gardeners, migrating birds!

Locovores have much to learn from their wild neighbors -- both plants and animals.   What a great challenge to give your family -- trying to eat foods from driving distance from where you live!


"Leslie Allen has always been enthusiastic in her support of northern Nevada's local food lifestyle. As commercial horticulture program coordinator for University of Nevada Cooperative Extension (UNCE), it's part of her job ... yet her passion for this increasingly important field goes far beyond the norm. So much so, in fact, that Allen's love of what she does has found a new description."  She's a "Locavore" ... and proud of it.

A local eating study, known as "Locavore Nation," in which participants attempted to eat 80%  of their food from local, organic and sustainable sources. "Locavore Nation" was sponsored by America Public Media's radio show, "The Splendid Table."

After voluntarily subjecting themselves to eating 80% locally produced foods for a year, the 15 participants in the Splendid Table's "Locavore Nation" have been released from captivity and are free to go back to eating Corn Nuts and powdered mini donuts.

You can retrace their steps on the "Splendid Table" site, where the entire year's worth of blogs are still archived.

Learn more about Locovores at www.Locavore.ws

The Dance of CCD - Disappearing Honey Bees

The situation has been identified as the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The disappearance of these pollinators could have serious repercussions on U.S. agriculture and ultimately the entire food supply. Experts still do not know the exact cause for the vanishing of the honeybees. Among the theories considered are: invasive parasitic mites, new and emerging diseases, pesticide poisoning, poor nutrition and I’ve even read some articles that attribute the situation to

climate change.

Nonetheless, EPA, USDA, universities and the private sector have moved into action. The Agency is addressing the CCD through regulatory and voluntary programs. And it’s actively participating in the Colony Collapse Disorder Steering Committee and Working Group. One of the many collaborative efforts to address the issue has been a partnership between the Agency and the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign.



Iguana Juice Grow

From: Advanced Nutrients

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