Once again, Alaskan gardeners have proven themselves to be above reproach, no matter what their former Governor does. Last weekend, they broke their own record at the Fourth Annual Nursery Pot Recycling event sponsored by The Alaska Botanical Garden and Alaskans for Litter Prevention and Recycling, along with Anchorage waste hauler, Smurfit Stone. Over 4,600 pounds of those flimsy cell packs and seed flats along with those all too familiar, green, red and black plastic pots were collected and sorted. Given how many cell packs it takes to make a pound, nonetheless add up to 2.6 tons, the number is staggering.
What is more, since this is the fourth year for the event, organizers speculate that this year’s haul is probably mostly from plants and seedlings purchased at the beginning of this year’s gardening season. No wonder there are so many flowers and vegetables on view in SouthCentral, Alaska.
The Alaska Botanical Garden is America’s first fully organic botanical garden and ALPAR promotes litter prevention and recycling and arranges for the long shipment down to Seattle. Both organizations are considering holding the event twice next year.

Wheat may be the next crop that is dominated by genetically modified seed. Photo credit: United States Dept. of Agriculture via Wikimedia Commons

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have decoded the genome of wheat – the largest genome to be sequenced to date – to help crop breeders increase the yield of British wheat varieties.
Wheat production world-wide is under threat from climate change and an increase in demand from a growing human population. Liverpool scientists, in collaboration with the University of Bristol and the John Innes Centre, have sequenced the entire wheat genome and will make the DNA data available to crop breeders to help them select key agricultural traits for breeding.

Writer Sam Brand cheerleads the new discovery in this piece in Tonic.com,

There’s a new hope for the 1 billion people who go to sleep hungry every night. On Friday, a team of British scientists announced they had cracked the genome of wheat, the third most-produced cereal in the world after corn and rice, opening the door for the creation of more productive and nutritious varieties.
“The information we have collected will be invaluable in tackling the problem of global food shortage,” University of Liverpool Professor Neil Hall said in a press release.
Five times longer than the human genome, which was fully sequenced 10 years ago, the wheat genome is the latest of the world’s big crops to be cracked. Rice was fully sequenced in 2005, corn in 2009 and soybeans earlier this year.
The particular variety cracked by the British team is one called Chinese Spring. Its sequence, which will be made available to the public at The EMBL Genetic Database, will be used by scientists across the globe to better understand the crop and determine how to improve it.

Click to read the rest of the Wishful Thinking: Frankenwheat To Feed The World story.

To pick their next locales, Trader Joe's employees look at demographics such as education level. In the past they've even looked at who's subscribing to high-end food and cooking magazines as a way of divining where the epicures are. Photo credit: Allan Ferguson's Flickr Photostream

Trader Joe’s is like a smaller Costco in that a grocery shopper goes into the store for one item and comes out with many items, sometimes forgetting to buy the item he or she went into the store to purchase in the first place. It is another example of good old US consumer impulse buying as Money.CNN.com reports,

Apple’s retail stores aren’t the only place where lines form these days. It’s 7:30 on a July morning, and already a crowd has gathered for the opening of Trader Joe’s newest outpost, in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The waiting shoppers chat about their favorite Trader Joe’s foods, and a woman in line launches into a monologue comparing the retailer’s West Coast and East Coast locations. Another customer suggests that the chain will be good for Chelsea, even though the area is already brimming with places to buy groceries, including Whole Foods and several upscale food boutiques.
But Trader Joe’s is no ordinary grocery chain. It’s an offbeat, fun discovery zone that elevates food shopping from a chore to a cultural experience. It stocks its shelves with a winning combination of low-cost, yuppie-friendly staples (cage-free eggs and organic blue agave sweetener) and exotic, affordable luxuries — Belgian butter waffle cookies or Thai lime-and-chili cashews — that you simply can’t find anyplace else.
Employees dress in goofy trademark Hawaiian shirts, hand stickers out to your squirming kids, and cheerfully refund your money if you’re unhappy with a purchase — no questions asked. At the Chelsea store opening, workers greeted customers with high-fives and free cookies. Try getting that kind of love at the Piggly Wiggly.
It’s little wonder that Trader Joe’s is one of the hottest retailers in the U.S. It now boasts 344 stores in 25 states and Washington, D.C., and strip-mall operators and consumers alike aggressively lobby the chain, based in Monrovia, Calif., to come to their towns. A Trader Joe’s brings with it good jobs, and its presence in your community is like an affirmation that you and your neighbors are worldly and smart.
The privately held company’s sales last year were roughly $8 billion, the same size as Whole Foods’ (WFMI, Fortune 500) and bigger than those of Bed Bath & Beyond, No. 314 on the Fortune 500 list. Unlike those massive shopping emporiums, Trader Joe’s has a deliberately scaled-down strategy: It is opening just five more locations this year. The company selects relatively small stores with a carefully curated selection of items. (Typical grocery stores can carry 50,000 stock-keeping units, or SKUs; Trader Joe’s sells about 4,000 SKUs, and about 80% of the stock bears the Trader Joe’s brand.) The result: Its stores sell an estimated $1,750 in merchandise per square foot, more than double Whole Foods’. The company has no debt and funds all growth from its own coffers.

Click to read the rest of the Inside The Secret World Of Traders Joe’s story.

The urban chicken craze/trend is in full swing all across the U.S
Almost all areas of the country have Garden Tours of private gardens as fundraisers for non-profit organizations. But on Bainbridge Island, across Puget Sound from Seattle, the second-annual Bainbridge Island “Tour de Coop” is scheduled for Saturday, July 17, from 11-4pm. The vision and creation of islander JoAnn Trick, the Tour de Coop offers a self-guided tour of Bainbridge Island chicken coops, with 100% of the proceeds going to Helpline House. Due to the overwhelming popularity of the Tour last year, the number of available tickets has been doubled to accommodate the first 400 purchasers.
Click here for more information on Tour de Coop.

Lawn sofas need maintenance every few weeks. Photo credit: NationalTrust.org.uk

The British National Trust organization found that families spend up to 43 hours A WEEK on sofas. The ‘living’ rooms are made entirely out of natural materials – grass and turf – offering families the chance to experience the British countryside and picturesque gardens from the familiar comfort of a sofa.
The outdoor living rooms – which took just over a month to grow – are made from a base of straw, which has been watered and trimmed to size, and covered in a green grass blanket. Each living room contains a natural coffee table and sofa – the biggest reaching a giant eight metres in diameter.

Click to read the rest of the Grass Covered Sofas story. Find out more about the making of the sofas, with a look behind the scenes.

Photo credit: Franck Allais/Guardian.co.uk

The bad boy chef wants his young daughter to see fast food as the enemy. And in his eyes no tactic is too dirty in his fight against McDonald’s. Bourdain says his reason for going to war on fast food is, ‘The stakes are high. As I see it, nothing less than the heart, mind, soul and physical health of my adored only child.’
McDonald’s has been very shrewd about kids. Say what you will about Ronald and friends, they know their market – and who drives it. They haven’t shrunk from targeting young minds – in fact, their entire gazillion-dollar promotional budget seems aimed squarely at toddlers. They know that one small child, crying in the back seat of the car of two overworked, overstressed parents, will more often than not determine the choice of restaurants. They know exactly when and how to start building brand identification and loyalty with brightly coloured clowns and smoothly tied-in toys. From funding impoverished school districts to the instalment of playgrounds, McDonald’s has not shrunk from fucking with young minds in any way it can.
But I want my little girl to see fast-food culture as I do. As the enemy.

Click to read the rest of the Anthony Bourdain: My War On Fast Food story.

This site is getting a lot of new traffic from people who have never heard of The Growing Edge now that I have increased my Twitter activities. The Growing Edge, when it was published on paper from 1989-2009, reported on aquaponics, hydroponics and greenhouses exclusively. When I stopped publishing it on paper in early 2009 and went to the web only, I decided to report on all things in farming and gardening that were sustainable and organic. Hence, you will read things that are all over the map. Some days exclusively farming, some days exclusively gardening and many days a mix of both.
You can search the site with the Google toolbar in the left hand column and find stories both in the blog and in the 20 years of back issues of The Growing Edge. And you can still buy books on hydroponics and greenhouses, The Best of Growing Edge books and back issues of the magazine by clicking the STORE BUTTON at the top of the page. You can get a RSS feed on Twitter by following me on Twitter ( @thegrowingedge ) and get the latest postings from this site as they also go up on Twitter.

Photo credit: joeschwartz.net

Click to view many more Carved Watermelon Art photos.

In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin is promoting community gardens on unused city owned land,

Photo credit: clairity's Flickr photostream

W.C. Fields would be proud of this… I keep getting email spam for “Grow Strawberries All Year Long. You’ll have delicious strawberries in just 60 days. You can pot in soil or any other potting medium.”
“For only $9.98 plus $6.95 S&H, you can grow your own delicious, juicy Tri-Star All Season Strawberries. Each package includes an 8 1/2 inch hanging basket, 3 Tri-Star Strawberry Plants & our easy care instructions! And as special BONUS OFFER we’ll send you a second package absolutely FREE, just pay $6.95 S&H. Now growing your own fruits have never been easier!”
For almost $17.00 you get six strawberry plants and a hanging basket. Who knows what shape the six plants will be in after being shipped. Your local garden center sells 25 bare root, day neutral plants for between $5.95 and $7.95.
I hope no new gardeners fall for this scam… but that is wishful thinking.