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Mothers and fathers are becoming aware that food is part of their impact on the world...and their own health. More young adults are getting worried about the politics of food -- how far it travels, how safe it is, how pesticides affect the environment.
On top of these social concerns, the young professionals are beginning to realize how much they are spending on organic produce. Driven by these growing food costs, concerns about global food shortages, and a new environmental consciousness, concerned consumers like are beginning to look at old fashioned 'victory gardens" to produce food on their own plots of land and urban balconies.
Some Tips for first Time Gardeners Find a USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Study it so you will know which plants grow well in your area.
You might like to start with some transplants from a quality local nursery. These are expensive, but they get you started learning how to care for plants, and they start your garden-to-table habit while you are highly enthused! It takes patience, discipline and staying power to plant seeds and wait 60 to 90 days for the harvest!
Start Easy, Start Small There are plants for food and plants that are just for looks. And some easy plants to grow are foods that you just might not like to eat! Some of the easiest "organic", "local", and highly nutritious foods to produce by first time gardeners include:
- Salad fixins: leaf lettuce, radishes, carrots, green onions, cucumbers
- Tomatoes
- Herbs: thyme, sage, mint,
- Squash
- Peppers
Vegetable Container Gardens Just Make Good Cents!
While it makes just makes sense that you can container garden with herbs and flowers, it makes real cents to add a small vegetable container garden as well. Here's a short overview of a very ambitious gardener! You might not want to plant all these plants...but this video shows you what seedlings look like!
Radish, carrots, tomatoes and small vegetables are a perfect choice.
How to Start a Fruit and Vegetable Garden
Container Vegetable Gardens and Vegetable Plants Suitable for Containers
And ... add a few plants for your local, native wildlife. They need food from gardens, too! Wildlife need local, native plants. Check with your local native plant nursery or native plant society for suggestions. You'll enjoy having butterflies, birds and native bees come visit your garden. AND they are pollinators for your plants, helping increase your harvest of many flowering plants.
pamalex effects tree table collection
A completely original category of outdoor furnishing, perfect for both the urban garden or estate setting, and useful everywhere from the tiniest terrace (26” bistro) to the most expansive pool deck (50” x 78” Leaf). The jardin tree table is perfect for areas covered by awnings or in naturally shady spots, as it uses lower growing plant material. bistro tree table Perfect for those small terraces, or just outside a door. The slightly taller profile makes it just right for resting a drink during the cool pool party.
Table overall dimensions: 32" h x 26" dia.
Table shown features a sturdy galvanized steel armature on round ceramic container base. The table top is ground glass, 26" diameter, accommodates 4"-6" caliper tree in 6" round hole Price for table as shown: $720.00 plus tax and delivery
So Innovative!
What a great way to add trees to urban landscapes. Flower to the People in Los Angeles provides a variety of "tree tables" on their website, as well as living roofs and other sustainable outdoor living solutions. Check them out!
Flower to the People
Simply speaking, a green roof is a living roof. While green roof design has its roots in ancient civilizations (think hanging gardens of Babylon), as American cities have become more concerned about managing quantities of stormwater runoff, air quality, and building heat transfer, large modern green roofs have been appearing on commercial properties across the country. Now, FLOWER ot the PEOPLE, Inc. has green roof solutions specifically designed for Southern California private residences. Here the Beverly Hills green roof at Greystone Manor Estate is still growing strong more than two years after its installation. Succulent-covered roofs, like the one at Greystone and the green roofs pictured here, even provide a fire-retarding alternative to traditional shake or stone roofs.
A living roof provides superior energy efficiency for any building (saving on energy costs), extends the life of the roof membrane, is beautiful to look at, provides the local environment with beneficial air-cleaning, cooling and storm water reduction, and promotes greater biodiversity.
Green Roof Section View
1 roof flashing
2 EPDM waterproof membrane
3 root barrier
4 drainage mat
5 "L" sheet metal edge
6 1/2" pea gravel
7 nonwoven separation fabric
8 planting media
9 plants
10 gutter (optional)
It's delightful to discover a thriving treasure-- whether it is a garden or a business! Flower to the People is such a treasure right in my own community! Visit their website for a delightful array of garden designs that bring nature and sustainable gardening solutions to the urban landscape. Their "Exterior Design Portfolio" in particular is expansive and a bloomin' delight!
11409 Charnock Rd., Los Angeles, CA 90066
FLOWER to the PEOPLE is a sustainable exterior design and outdoor lifestyle firm. Their residential and commercial clients rely on them to create unique environmentally-friendly exterior spaces that suit their contemporary lifestyles.
Doug Green highly recommends composting strategies that make great common sense...and he takes it a step further with "compost tea".
Compost is the heart and soul of the garden and the more research that’s done on soil structure and health, the more that compost and composting becomes important for both home and commercial gardening. If you do nothing else this summer, get the compost bin working. And if you have compost working and want to take it one step further for your lawn and garden health, learn to make compost tea. Making tea properly allows you to take the small amount of compost you make and multiply it like loaves and fishes so your entire property gets the benefit. (DougGreensGarden.com)
Compost Tea
By using compost tea to replace chemical-based fertilizers,
pesticides, and fungicides, you can garden safer and be more
protective of the environment. Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection gives an easy pictorial guide to making compost tea:
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Supplies needed:
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And Wikipedia provides more options for selecting different kinds of compost tea and how Europe handles this earth friendly solution for ground nutrition.
Wikipedia: There are several kinds of compost tea, depending on the method and ingredients with which the tea is made. In Europe compost teas are largely distinguished on the basis of whether or not they have manure content, the latter preferred for having more consistent disease suppressive capabilities.
Plumbing conservation is widely accepted and routinely called for in federal, state and local legislation, ordinances for new development and agency rebate programs.
These devices are making a measurable difference. For example, Los Angeles saw a 25 percent decrease in demand in the 1990s with a plumbing retrofit program funded by water agencies.
The major benefit of low-flow plumbing device programs is that they can be implemented without requiring a change in the behavior of end users.
Outdoor Water Conservation
Saving water indoors with low-flow plumbing is easy compared to controlling outdoor water waste. Yet the vast majority of household water flows outside.
A study conducted by the American Water Works Association (AWWA) shows that 58 percent of residential water is applied to landscapes. Gardening, recognized as the number one outdoor leisure activity, is growing in popularity as a national pastime.
According to a report published in the journal Environmental Management, some 40 million acres of the U.S. are covered in lawns, making turf the nation’s most irrigated crop.
And according to the American Water Works Association, most landscapes are overwatered by 30% to 300%, accounting for 80% of all landscape damage...and water waste!
SOLUTION: Remove the TURF and replace it with DROUGHT TOLERANT GARDENS or NATIVE HABITAT, etc. that reduces water use.
SOURCE: WeatherTRAK.com
More than 6,500 nonindigenous species are now established in the United States, posing risks to native species, valued ecosystems, and human and wildlife health.
USGS provides the tools, technology, and information supporting efforts to prevent, contain, control, and manage invasive species nationwide.The current annual environmental, economic, and health-related costs of invasive species exceed those of all other natural disasters combined.
USGS plays an important role in Federal efforts to combat invasive species in natural and semi-natural areas through early detection and assessment of newly established invaders, monitoring of invading populations; improving understanding of the ecology of invaders and factors in the resistance of habitats to invasion; and development and testing of prevention, management, and control methods. USGS invasive species research encompasses all significant groups of invasive organisms in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in all regions of the United States.
Research components of the USGS Invasive Species Program include:
- Prevention
- Early Detection and Rapid Assessment of New Invaders
- Monitoring and Forecasting of Invasive Species
- Effects of Invasive Species
- Control and Management of Invasive Species
- Information Management
INVASIVE SPECIES MANAGEMENT RESOURCES
For a list of the most current Invasives program research projects, visit the USGS Invasive program's Highlighted Projects page.
The Invasive Species Information Node (ISIN) is a data management portal for invasive plants, animals, and pathogens in the United States and a thematic node of the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). I
The Global Invasive Species Database,
now easier to use, grants access to quadruple the number of invasive
species than when the database began.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS; http://www.usgs.gov) is a research arm of DOI, and USGS scientists conduct extensive, worldwide research on invasive species that provide a basis for regulating importation and interstate transport of animals in the U.S.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS; http://www.fws.gov), is responsible for fisheries management, regulations, law enforcement, and education. The mission of the FWS is to work with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, and plants for the continued benefit of the American people.
For More Information, Contact:
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Division of Environmental Quality
Branch of Invasive Species
4401 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 840
Arlington, VA 22203
(703) 358-2148
http://contaminants.fws.gov/Issues/InvasiveSpecies.cfm
U.S. Geological Survey
Florida Integrated Science Center
Gainesville Office
7920 N.W. 71st Street
Gainesville, FL 32653
(352) 378-8181
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
(800) 344-WILD (800-344-9453)
http://www.fws.gov
House 97: The Buck House, original home of the Center.
Campus Center for Appropriate Technology in California is a live-in demonstration home and educational
center for appropriate technology and resource conservation.
This home based center is located on the Humboldt State University Campus in Arcata, California. Motivated by an approach of "education by example," CCAT offers tours, workshops, and opportunities for hands-on involvement to university students and the general public.
CCAT began in 1978 when a group of students, with the support of faculty and community members, renovated a dilapidated house on the university campus and initiated an experiment that continues today. CCAT works with fifteen HSU classes a year to incorporate new appropriate technologies into this living laboratory in sustainability.
The Campus Center for Appropriate Technology uses less than five percent of the energy consumed by the average U.S. house, produces almost no waste, and serves as a national model for appropriate technology.
Just as important as what the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology does, is how it is done. Three students live in the house and direct the program for one-year periods. Eighteen student employees keep operations going. Being directed, staffed, and funded by students makes CCAT a place where young adults become leaders; it nurtures creativity and hones professional and technical skills. CCAT helps to infuse their local university community with a practical idealism and a desire to serve the global community.
In 2007, the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology began rebuilding in a new location, offering another generation of students the opportunity to develop skills that lead to a greener future at the hands-on environmental learning center and demonstration home for sustainability projects.
A variety of university course students spend classroom time at CCAT, where students learn about everything from renewable energy to organic agriculture to green construction and design. Little by little, workers are reshaping the yard into a miniature eco-topia. “We joke that this is our little patch of South America or Southeast Asia,” Hart says, standing in the terraced gardens behind the home. The area used to be a bramble patch of invasive plants and weeds. As well as common fruits and vegetables, the garden includes edible native plants, herbs and wildflowers.The recently installed solar panels should provide all of the home’s electricity, and a solar hot water heating system will not only provide hot tap water but also warm the house in winter by circulating the sun-warmed H2O through radiant concrete floors on the ground level. The concrete floors themselves are a thing of beauty, covered in a swirl of natural pigments made from iron sulfate and coffee topped with a soy-based sealant. The energy efficient home’s walls are filled with blown-in cellulose—made from shredded recycled newspaper—rather than industrial fiberglass.
Future projects include the installation of a rainwater collector to gather and store runoff from the roof, which will be used to quench the gardens.For more information about the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology. Or stop by any Friday, volunteer day, to participate in the ongoing reconstruction effort.
Appropriate Technology (AT) describes a way of providing for human
needs with the least impact on the Earth's finite resources.
When
determining if a technology is appropriate for a specific use, members of the Center for Appropriate Technology
(CCAT) examine a number of issues:
Is the technology built locally or use local materials?
Can it be built, or at least maintained, with a minimum of specialized training?
Is its use sustainable over many generations?
Does it cause suffering in its manufacturing or use, human or otherwise, disproportionate to its benefits?
Can we financially afford it?
With answers to these questions, or at least predictions, we try to balance the benefits and harms of a technology to determine if it is appropriate.
Appropriate technology is not a specific item--it's not solar panels, or a greywater marsh, or anything. It's a way of evaluating a technology, a way of thinking about the social, economic, and environmental impacts of introducing a technology into our lives, and a technology may be appropriate in some situations and not in others. As E.F. Schumacher said when he coined the phrase, "AT is technology with a human face."
If you would like a more thorough description of the history of CCAT and four other demonstration cites at universities accross the United States see the following link [PDF 465.6 KB]. It was written by graduate student Kathy Jack under the advisement of Dan Ihara of HSU and the Center for Economic and Environmental Development.
Center for Appropriate Technology
Humboldt State University
Arcata, CA 95521
http://www.humboldt.edu/~ccat/drupal-5/?q=node/5
So...let's talk containers on a human scale.
Pots on a porch are the simplest form of container gardening. Then come larger potted trees indoors. And porch boxes to decorate Mediterranean windows and railings. And even larger concrete pots that are lavish planters for corporate entryways and shopping centers. And indoor gardens infused with water gardens and even waterfalls.
Containers are practical ways to bring living plants up and close to where we spend our time. And I'm assuming you've already heard that Americans spend as much as 95% of their time indoors...
Customized Container Gardens
A new trend in landscaping is to plant customized containers in their final location. Add professional skills to create professional results -- and reduce the amount of transportation and injury to plants as they are moved from distant growers to retailers to final destination landscapes.
Just plant them in place. What a novel idea!
The novelty is really that local nurseries can grow these pre-designed pots in their well-tended facilities and then move them in one piece, with specialized lifting equipment, of course, to their home without any transplanting, trimming or damage from poor care.
Container Gardening for Scale
A hanging basked just doesn't provide the scale necessary for today's larger buildings. Whether the third story loft apartment or the three story office building...or towering entryway to a MacMansion, larger plantings fit better.
Environmental Impact of Container Gardens
LARGER CONTAINTERS: A potential benefit of larger plantings is that larger, more mature plants also provide more greenhouse gas and clim ate change benefits. Mature trees provide more air filtration than saplings, so the larger the container and the longer-lived the trees and shrubs, the "greener" they can be.
Larger containers also hold moisture better than small containers. Less exposure to air reduces evaporation. Mulching containers with decorative rocks, bark or other natural materials can also reduce water use.
SPECIES SELECTION: Some species of plants provide more air filtation and less water use than others. And desert plants such as cacti also require less water use.
RECYCLED MATERIAL: The containers themselves can be manufactured with recycled content: crushed concrete, rubber tires, recycled glass, etc. can be mixed into the container materials to use some of the landfill materials that cause problems in the wider community.
Waste is the largest contributor to climate change -- be it wasted construction debris (C&D), used tires, wasted green materials that are put into landfills instead of composted back into the soil...or wasted water.
Many green solutions provide multiple benefits in this complex, interwoven world of ours. Recycled content is one of those multi-benefit solutions...and large container gardens are a perfect application to not only use recycled materials in a beautiful way, but use them to grow environmentally hard-working plants!
