The Urban Permaculture Farm Magazine
For
The Garden Girl
I have had a wonderful break from shooting Growing a Greener World so I took advantage by working in my garden. Over the past two weeks I have completed my new mini orchard addition, planted my main garden with an incredible variety of heirloom variety veggies. I started setting up my roof garden and have my solar panels on my shed providing me with free energy for my garden radio. So I have been busy to say the least. I think this year's video production is going to be some of my best and informative yet. In the farmside of things I have taken a new leap in livestock! This year I added both ducks and a Honey bee hive. The ducks have been great fun, but they destroyed my fish pond and killed all the fish in the pond. It was quite traumatic for me and my family. They ate every plant and put so much poo in the water that it killed every fish I have lovingly raised over the past two years. Well you live and you learn, and unfortunately suffered a set back so to speak (not a failure a set back). The honey bee colony I haven't killed yet, mostly because they haven't got here, but I have been reading everything Fred Dunn has ever written about it, and I am confident I have a shot at some organic honey next year. Plenty more on all of these backyard adventures soon.
This month we bring a wonderful mix of content. My trip to the Greater Boston Kimchi festival. Kimchi is a Korean staple food that is based on fermented veggies. As an urban farmer, food storage is super important, and I wanted to learn all I could about this food that is thousands of years old, our friend and festival organizer Alex Lewin contributed a recap. We also have old friends Mark Highland and William Moss contributing articles on Container Gardening and Tomato Planting, both articles have fantastic video as well. The video with William Moss shows him standing next to my prized Tiffen Menonite tomato plant, which must have been 12 feet tall, it is simply huge, you have to see it! Also in this issue Dana Gordon has interviewed a person that has inspired me from the beginning, Monica Dewart and her raw food lifestyle. Richard Davies has written a great review of Pat Lanza's latest book, My Garden Doctor, which is a bit of a departure for Pat that is setting new trends.
Be sure to check out www.growingagreenerworld.com and make sure it is available in your local area by sending an email to your local public broadcasting channel. And if your new to the magazine don't forget to visit our archive page or our top bar navigation.
From the Sustainable Home Front,
Patti Moreno, the Garden Girl
Kimchi: Sustainable, Traditional, Fermented
What is Kimchi? It is probably Korea's best known food. Koreans serve it at almost every meal, a staple dish that easy to make and deliciously sustainable. The first annual Greater Boston Kimchi Festival was held on March 21, 2010, at the Theodore Parker Unitarian Church in West Roxbury, MA (a neighborhood of Boston). Proceeds benefited the church, which needed money fairly urgently for repairs.
Featured Urban Sustainable Living Video
My Garden Doctor the new book from Pat Lanza
Recently I had a chance to teach school children how make a Lasagna Garden. A chance meeting with a parent, who knew about my no-dig, no-till garden methods, asked if I would teach the children how to make and plant a garden.
During the first meeting with the class Dave and I told them about our project; to make a garden in a place that would let us grow vines up an ugly fence that bordered their playground. The kids taught us something that day; they wanted to plant pumpkins and nothing we said would distract them. We explained that it was fall and we would make the garden but the pumpkin seeds would have to wait until spring. They just wanted to grow pumpkins.
Featured Urban Sustainable Living Video
Planting Tomatoes
Tomatoes are the most popular homegrown fruit in America. Their high yield and easy maintenance have made them a favorite crop worldwide.
Tomatoes have a special feature left over from their wild origins as a perennial South American vine. They can form adventitious roots along their stem. Unlike most other plants, it does not damage tomatoes to have their stems placed underground. In fact, it helps create more roots, which provide more nutrients and better support. Many gardeners use this info when planting tomatoes in spring. Tomato plants grown in flats are typically long and leggy. Standard planting (only the rootball in the soil) leaves them floppy and scraggily looking. Instead pinch off any lower leaves and dig a much deeper hole. Put the rootball and stem down into the hole up until the point where there is bushy growth.
Raw Food, Our own Dana Gordon(Garden Green) sits down with Monica Dewart(MoniDew)
Monica has been an asset on the Urban Sustainable Living website for some time now and I’ve seen some of her articles and where she has been cited in others: Honolulu Weekly’s Raw Meal article and The Raw Vegan Network article Raw Nutrition plus the Natural Health article advocating a no GMO world, to name a few.
The general response to most of my writings is “You’re insane,” and I’ve gotten used to hearing that. But keeping with the natural order and natural design of things has benefits. It’s far more logical than it may at first appear. One of the things that attracted me to Patti Moreno was how she set up her raised beds and her chicken tractor and how she moves things around. Patti realizes that the chickens poop on that area and that it will be good for the plants going into that space in the following season. It is just the natural order of things. She understands how these things work and she is living it! And at first I was humiliated by this because I know this but I don’t live it. So, Patti has been inspirational to me, motivating me to actually do what I know!
Container Gardening Joy
Assembling a group of plants to design a container garden is perhaps one of the most fun gardening activities. The possibilities are only limited by imagination, and perhaps by the local garden center’s diversity of plant material. Containers help transform empty spaces into garden rooms, providing a green respite just outside the back door. The variety of containers available at local garden centers has increased in recent years. Colors, materials, and styles exist to fill every design aesthetic.
Around The Web
More Will Allen from Fresh the Movie: www.FRESHthemovie.com.
6ft 7" former professional basketball player Will Allen is now one of the most influential leaders of the food security & urban farming movement. His farm and not-for-profit, Growing Power, have trained and inspired people in every corner of the US to start growing food sustainably. This man and his organization go beyond growing food. They provide a platform for people to share knowledge and form relationships in order to develop alternatives to the industrial food system.
Americans Wake Up: Car powered on compressed air:
Europe and the rest of the world are developing new technologies that will give them the economic edge in technology and products, as America unthinkingly erodes into a third world nation as our politicians who are beholden to fossil fuel companies, legislate for them to make billions of dollars. A car that runs on compressed air, is a French invention that orchestrates old technologies into a new chassis. Behold this newsworthy clip (that is not ready for U.S. corporate controlled prime time news or even political debate) edited from HD Theater, "The Future Car: Fuel". Just another example of how corporations who control our legislative and executive branches of government are misallocating our resources, treasury and wealth, to insure their short term wealth and global domination, as we deteriorate economically and do nothing to preserve our economic leadership.
Carbon Neutral Homes
Design is also a number one focus. We design a home to fit your needs and budget and also take into consideration all the factors in your home with features if you were to sell your home. We bring into the home all the natural elements like stone, wood etc to create a earthy feel and overall balance. This gives your home the Wow factor and creates a serene atmosphere.
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An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.
Sustainability, in a broad sense, is the capacity to endure. In ecology, the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. For humans it is the potential for long-term maintenance of wellbeing, which in turn depends on the wellbeing of the natural world and the responsible use of natural resources.