The Growing Edge Blog

Here’s Mike, our ad guy and illustrious blogger who enjoys musing about the profundities of gardening.

Or: Please Let This Not Be The Depression (2.0)

It goes without saying that the financial crisis has hit us all hard. A generation of hard-working people looking forward to retirement watched in slow horror as their retirement accounts vanished. Most people have seen the fallout up-close in one way or another; job losses, cut-hours, business slowdowns. Even people like me who only have savings accounts and not diversified investments will still pay the price: That $200 billion the Government is planning on printing is going to be a drag on us for decades to come.

We all sat around wringing our hands with each piece of increasingly disastrous news until it all started seeming pretty grim. Are we a nation that has peaked? Have we nothing to look forward to but the slow dissolution of Empire? The election certainly distracted us and gave (some of) us hope for a new direction. But like a parent who buys his child a gift he can’t afford, reality soon struck and the trepidation has begun to creep back in. As a nation, we’re way late on our credit card payment. As more and more companies go into the tank, we’ll see how forthcoming Uncle Sam is with the bailout bucks. And cue the sound of money being printed…hopefully by this time next year we will still be able to purchase basic household staples without wagon-carts full of devalued greenbacks.

All this dismal news got me thinking about the nature of investments. It seems to me that many people don’t take seriously that their investments are often “shares” in a company - literally buying a part of that business. With that comes the weighty realization that your money is supporting an ideology, a philosophy, and the principals of that business. This gets more difficult when you own stakes in many companies you’ve never heard of, as in portfolios and packaged options. I guess what I’m hinting at is that nothing is necessarily a safe bet, and if you’ve got all your money tied up in companies you could care less about because a financial planner advised it might be worth reconsidering.

I would never suggest not investing in stock, or withdrawing all your money from the stock market because you don’t have fuzzy feelings about those companies. But what I am suggesting is investment in something that will pay dividends in ways other than just one dollar in and two dollars out.

Gardening is an aggregate of relatively minor investments. Certainly you have to have some land or space to cultivate. For people like me who have not yet purchased a home and don’t even rent one, community gardens are a viable options. Others may have the option of, for example, cultivating some prime Willamette Valley scrub land into a luxurious and prodigious garden. The thing is, you have to start somewhere!

Here’s a blatant plug for our store - its a great place to get started with some solid information about growing in its many forms. I particuarly recommend “Teaming With Microbes” Once you’ve boned up on the basic you’ll find yourself awash in all sorts of complicated and conflicting information. Remember: gardening is a pretty basic persuit, and plants themselves will overcome tremendous adversity to set seed. There is no way to ever know all of the science and mechanics of growing, but its always fun to learn! The truth of the matter is you’ve got to get yours hands dirty! (or nutrient-y if you decide to go the hydroponics route). Truly, gardening is an addictive and rewarding hobby. Perhaps I like gardening because it gives a feeling of nurture in the absence of a womb - its the only way I can birth little ones that become fully actualized in only a season!

So think about it the next time you find yourself with a little extra money for investing…instead of throwing your money at a company you don’t know, invest in some simple gardening supplies. I’m not promising a financial windfall by any stretch of the imagination, but I relent to that old adage about teaching a man to fish…

And hey, they didn’t call that tomato “Mortgage Lifter” for nothing!

The November/December issue of Growing Edge is out!

This issue we feature the trendy, tiny crop of microgreens grown to meet an increasing demand for these plate-popping and nutritious greens used as garnishes. We focus on a story about an aeroponic farm in Colorado called Grow Anywhere. Check out this youtube video of Grow Anywhere’s operation.

Lynette Morgan also shares tips for growing these greens and gives us a comprehensive guide to producing these greens commercially.

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday season, we feature a section called “Growing with a Conscience” where we feature a handful of gardening operations whose motive is to give back to the community. One is a food bank called Volunteer Way in Port Richey, Florida who created a hydroponic garden right outside their operation. These organizations typically get all kinds of packaged food donations but get less fresh fruits and veggies. In order to provide their community with more nutritious options, they’ve created this hydroponic farm.

We also report on one unusual gardening exhibit in England called “Punk’s Not Dead.” Check out a video of John Tilley’s creation and a report of the RHS Tatton Flower Show in England earlier this summer.

I like this Web site: Kitchen Gardeners International and the youtube video that talks about how past presidents used the White House lawn as garden space and a plan for how the next president might turn the lawn into a garden space. There’s a place on the Web site that lets you vote for which candidate you think will replant the Victory Garden (that Eleanor Roosevelt planted) on the White House lawn. What do you think?? Haven’t presidents got BETTER things to worry about than gardening on that massive greenspace?? Hmmm. What could be more important that empowering Americans by showing them how easy it is to grow their own food? Think of what message that would send to the world if they turned the lawn into a lush edible estate. Love it!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what it truly means to be food independent. I feel good about shopping at the Co-op, bringing groceries home exclusively via bike transit, and having a small garden. But in a way these eco-conscious moves do little more than make me feel less guilty about my still-consumptive lifestyle.

Sure, buying local, avoiding processed foods, and relying on bicycle transit keeps me out of the more glaringly inefficient aspects of the Wal-Mart life. But I’m a coffee geek. And a tea-lover. And I like beer. Where do those come from? In the case of the first two, the answer is from a long way away. And beer is particularly bad - lots of chemical inputs in (growing the barley/hops) out (processing / packaging) and around (brewing / bottling / delivering).

As with many ideologies, a rational person has to draw the line somewhere. You can’t go around feeling guilty about this stuff all of the time. But it got me thinking, what would a self-sufficient life even look like?

First, throw the idea of the daily bread out the window. There’s just no way you’d be able to grow and process enough grain to be eating it frequently. Coffee and tea? Well, you can certainly grow lots of herbs easily enough to be drinking tisane (herbal tea) but unless you live in the deep south and have access to lots of cheap labor tea is gone. Hawaii residents are the only lucky enough to be able to grow coffee in the US. And have you seen a coffee tree? You’d have to have a yard-full to have enough to have a few shots of espresso now and again. For most US residents food true food independence would look a lot more like the middle ages - lots of tubers, root vegetables, preserved fruits & veggies, and less meat. Sure, if you’ve got access to good pasture you’d find some meat in the freezer now and again but nothing like you presumably do now. But how many average Americans have grazing land in the backyard? But if nothing else we would be forced get back in tune with the true bounties of the seasons. Then again, I’m sort of Jeffersonian in the sense that I wish our nation would have stayed more agrarian.

If you had to grow all of your own foods, you’d be busy for sure. I love the locavore movement - eating foods procured within rational distances - but there is something to be said for exotic treats now and again. Avocados don’t grow here. I can’t live without avocados. So I will keep eating them, trucked in from Whereversville. Absolutism is the way to insanity or genius, but 99.9% of the time its the former, not the later.

But this concept of trade-offs for food also got me thinking about the organics movement. Many of my compost-tea geek friends live and die by Alaska humus, alfalfa compost, guano, and earthworm castings. Alaska humus? That doesn’t grow in the backyard of most people. Guano? Wars were fought over it and its scarcity and its environmental impact provide a historical guide for similar tumult with oil. I wish I knew more about the true efficiency of hydroponics and soil-based growing in terms of inputs and outputs. It would be hard to find an unbiased source though, especially with some corporations determined to exert as much force as possible to control commodity foods (most of our diets).

When I hear critics decrying the slow-food movement as elitist and unsustainable in the sense that it can’t feed the world’s hungry, I become incensed. We can’t keep throwing away valuable farmland for commodity crops anymore, we need to be sensible about what really sustains the land and its people. There’s a reason the Green Revolution hasn’t solved the crushing poverty of most of the world, we just need to have a well-informed debate about what can be done to fix it.

I take umbrage to calling the product of Dexter’s asexual reproduction anything other than Dexter. Perhaps I could stand “∞Dexter”, but even that’s a stretch. Indeed. Dexter needs a more androgynous name anyway, Basil being hermaphroditic and all.

To me ∞Dexter represents what’s so great about Hydroponic growing - it keeps plants growing long past their natural lifespan. You see Dexter had taken to looking pretty bad. In fact. most of what was once Dexter had flowered and we had pretty much written him/her off, planning to start some new seeds in our Hydroponic rig. But one spare cutting remained: left nearly abandoned by the window, Dexter was still struggling for survival. We cleaned up our reservoir, took Dexter out of his sad paper-cup shanty and he was off.

Since part of the rooted-cutting version of Dexter had flowered, we figured there was no chance for his continued survival. But wrong we were! After a long weekend we came back to see new growth and signs of vigor. Now Dexter looks better than ever!

Alongside Dexter lives a sprawled out Sivetz variety heirloom tomato. Since we’re only running 150 watts, there’s little chance of true fruit production so we’ll likely yank it out soon. But we pledge to get some photos up before that - the foliage looks great and its amazing to see basil, a tomato, and a snow-pea plant growing in harmony in the same reservoir.

I love soil growing, but Dexter would have been a goner a long time ago if his legs were in dirt. I absolutely adore the fact that you can keep perpetuating the same genetics so easily with hydroponics.

Stay tuned for pics!

Greetings Friends!

I’ve been speaking to a few inspirational people over the last few weeks that have led to lots of brainstorming around the magazine. We’re creeping up on our 20th year anniversary here in Corvallis and the times have certainly changed since our initial printings.

The hydroponics industry has transformed from a niche market to a near-empire almost overnight. It wasn’t long ago that talk of “hydroponics” was whispered and had a negative connotation. Now respectable stores have taken storefronts on Main Street USA and the national media has dubbed our industry one to watch for its green ideas and practices.

The publishing industry, unfortunately, has not followed a similar trajectory. People aren’t reading print journalism like they used to. Many printing enterprises have disappeared entirely. The future will clearly be internet-based, but how important is it to you to have a magazine in your hands? Perhaps I’m old-school but I need the physical artifact. How can we make a website that stands on its own but also strengthens the magazine?

Alas, much of this talk has been inspired and catalyzed by a new competitor coming to the market, the UK-based “The Urban Gardener”. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen competition enter the ring: Over the last few years we’ve seen “Maximum Yield” come to the scene and become quite popular. It is now very common to see the two publications side-by-side at Hydroponics stores throughout the country. Certainly the Growing Edge has built a formula that has become wildly successful, and the many faces now in the industry have helped build status and solidarity in the marketplace.

The one thing I can’t help but notice about early UK versions of the Urban Gardener is that it emphasizes style over substance. It is a gorgeous magazine to look at - if you enjoy Maxim, FHM, stuff, et al. It also goes for a more “edgy” feel. But will it do anything for the hard-core grower? Will it be the most trusted voice amongst the three?

So what would a perfect Growing Edge look like to you?

We pledge to continue our mission as the premier magazine in hydroponics and progressive gardening. We cannot ignore some of the changing dynamics of the business either, such as the excessive costs of print journalism. We want to anticipate trends and focus our interest on issues that face the end user. We are also not blind to the sea-change of organics in the marketplace. We are rolling out more articles designed for the compost-tea user, for example.

We want to stay the voice of the industry. Please let us know things we can do to continue that distinction well past our twentieth birthday.

Well since we got this thing back up and working, I figured it was time to give y’all an update about some changes around the office.

Nick Failing - sales coordinator and pioneer of this blog - has since moved on. He has moved out of the magazine world for something a little more related to his degree, plant propagation. He is currently working on the USDA research farm here in Corvallis. He still pops his head in the office now and again.

Now, about yours truly…I’m Mike Cunningham, and I have taken over Nick’s post here at Growing Edge. I moved to Corvallis, OR, where Growing Edge is based last August (following my wife’s acceptance to OSU’s Ph’D program in applied anthropology). I had spent the majority of a decade plotting and planning a way to become web-footed so I could be an official resident of the Willamette Valley. When we finally got the chance we moved here from Findlay, Ohio. The things I miss about said locale: 1) an old-school record store and 2) an amazing Midwestern haute-cuisine restaurant called Revolver. Unfortunately the record store got flooded a few months after we left and is no longer.

I had known about Growing Edge because I was an avid organic gardener who frequented garden shops where the publication was distributed. I never really thought too much about it until the second night I was in town here in Corvallis and saw that the publication was indeed based here! From that day on I had decided that I wanted to part of the team! In a happy accident I got to know Nick and learned more about the position so I knew what the publisher was looking for when the job finally came available. I’d like to think it was my sparkling personality and impressive resume that got me the gig, though…

I have really enjoyed the gig so far and I love the fact that I have a job that I can perform many different tasks throughout the day and learn something new everyday. My main role here is advertising coordinator; I contact current advertisers and try my hardest to lure in potential advertisers. I am also likely the voice you hear when you dial our number, ready to assist you with subscriptions, books, or any general questions you may have. Some other tasks I enjoy here are preparing the magazines to be sent out, speaking to store owners and updating the retail registry, and enjoying the unique office culture of Growing Edge.

As far as interests go, I am of course really into organic gardening, progressive farming techniques like hydroponics, and the soil-food-web. I am also rather obsessed with fermentation in its many forms - I love farmhouse saisons, wild ales, belgian beers, and IPAs when it comes to tipple. I also am a home-baker with a sourdough fetish, pumping out at least four boules and San Francisco sour loaves each week. Kombucha, salumi, and kefir are also some ways I enjoy lactobacillus and brettanomyces in all of its forms. I am also a hard-core music and film geek, but this is supposed to be a brief hello, not an essay on my art preferences.

Another big change has happened here at the ‘Edge - we have welcomed a new editor to the fold, Jenie Skoy. She comes to us after affiliating with a number of respected publications including Sunset magazine, USA today and Business Utah. She is a foodie like myself so expect some good stuff in upcoming magazines about issues relating to food like sustainability, locavores, and the slow food movement! I will let her tell you more about herself in upcoming posts.

As mentioned, Dexter is indeed alive and thriving! We have perpetuated him via clones and I’ll get some photos up very soon.

Our blog is back - and so is Dexter Junior and his little sister Dixie- the two robust basil plants growing in the window of our Growing Edge office.

Sorry our blog hasn’t been up and running for several months, but we plan to update these blog posts regularly.

We’d love to hear from you about what you’d like to hear about in the world of hydroponic growing.

- The editor, The Growing Edge