Leonora Oppenheim writes in Treehugger.com,
Can you imagine being able to produce enough water in the Sahara to grow crops there? Can you imagine harnessing sufficient quantities of solar power to supply electricity to cities in Africa and cities in Europe? Can you imagine producing a sustainable bio-fuel that doesn’t impact on world food supplies? Charlie Paton, Michael Pawlyn and Bill Watts can and what’s more they can imagine all these happening in the same place at the same time.
This trio of visionaries launched the Sahara Forest Project: their proposal to combine two innovative technologies, Concentrated Solar Power and Seawater Greenhouses, to produce renewable energy, water and food in an area of desert known to be one of the hottest places on earth.
To read the complete article, click HERE. For an update on the project, click HERE.
Graphic credit: Treehugger.com
Thieves stealing expensive plants is a phenomena that is happening all over the country. Some people are waking up to find that loved and well cultivated rare plant or tree in their front yard was dug up by plant thieves overnight. Garden art is also susceptible to thieves who think free is a very good price.
Lindsay Gellman of the Yale Daily News reports,
David Garinger knew something was awry as soon as he arrived at Yale’s Marsh Botanic Garden on the morning of Sept. 24.
The large, humid Greenhouse No. 2, which is part of the complex located near the Yale Divinity School, houses a panoply of different plants, some hanging from the roof, others protruding into the aisles. Immediately upon entering, Garinger — the curator of greenhouse plant collections at the Garden — noticed a large trash can was missing, and the trash inside it had been dumped on the floor. Confused, Garinger looked around and noticed the empty spaces usually occupied by 10 valuable desert cacti.
“They’re my kids,” Garinger said of the stolen plants. He said he felt “violated.”
Click HERE to read the complete story. Photo credit: Sean Fraga/Yale Daily News
The Hunter Park Community GardenHouse, opened in May 2008, is a year-round, state-of-the-art, 96′ X 30′, urban greenhouse serving as a hub for entrepreneurial and educational growing initiatives through community gardening on the Eastside of Lansing, Michigan.
Located in a beautiful, 13 acre park, the GardenHouse features 27 raised beds, where people living in this lively, vibrant neighborhood grow food, flowers, and community. In addition to year-round opportunities for 
gardening, the GardenHouse offers a wide range of workshops, support for yard gardening, and referrals to community gardens located in Hunter Park and other public spaces. Tours by school groups, senior centers, business groups are welcome! This Cool Cities Neighborhood in Progress Award Recipient is operated by Allen Neighborhood Center and the City of Lansing Parks and Recreation Department. Click HERE for the GardenHouse’s newsletter.
Photos credit: All we need is amor
MaineInsights.com reports, “Mother Nature can do as she pleases; the weather won’t stop tomatoes growing and ripening at Backyard Farms in Madison. The state-of-the-art greenhouses modulate the temperature consistently to be between 72 and 76 degrees. The tomatoes ripen in the sun, but if that’s lacking UV lights are used. ‘Computers inside the facility make calculations regarding outdoor temperature and wind speed, desired indoor temperature, humidity, and radiation from the sun to create the ultimate environment for the crop,”’said Tim DeKok, a head grower, originally from Holland.” Click HERE for complete article.
Photo credit” BackYardFarms.com
The CBC news is reporting that researchers at the Ridgetown campus of the University of Guelph in southwestern Ontario are hoping to extend the strawberry growing season by at least another month with a type of berry that’s less sensitive to weather conditions than its traditional counterparts.
The “day-neutral berry,” as it’s called, relies less on daylight to bud than the typical June-bearing strawberry, and produces fruit “as long as the weather conditions are good,” said Prof. John Zandstra, who specializes in fruit and vegetable cropping systems.
The growing process is helped by a high tunnel, a lightweight, solar-heated greenhouse commonly used to extend the growing season of horticultural crops.
To read the whole story, click HERE.
Photo credit: Clairity’s photostream
“To say they merely grow vegetables at Mountainview Gardens is like saying Thomas Edison tinkered with toys. It’s true, but it’s missing the point. In fact, at Mountainview Gardens, they’re creating indoor ecosystems where everything from humidity to ventilation to pollination is carefully regulated. Nearly 7,000 tomato plants, some sprawling 30 feet along a hanging string system, grow side by side with 6,000 heads of lettuce and 1,000 cucumber plants,” reports Myers Reece in the Flathead Beacon.
“At Mountainview Gardens, located north of Kalispell, 10 large greenhouses give year-round shelter to towering rows of tomatoes and other veggies. It could be below zero outside in the dead of winter, but inside the climate-controlled greenhouses it’s humid and warm. The vegetables are safe. This is not your family greenhouse; this is hydroponic gardening on a grand scale.” writes Reece.
For the complete article click HERE.
Photo credit: Lido Vizzutti/Flathead Beacon
I wrote an article on this hydroponic facility over eight years ago in the old and now defunct print version of The Growing Edge. It is a half acre greenhouse outside Ithaca, N.Y. that was developed as a joint venture between Cornell University’s Controlled Environment Agriculture department and the local electric company as a prototype for farmers in the upstate New York area and for research at the University. The facility showed farmers how to raise an alternative crop in the winter to tide over their revenue stream in the slow winter months. At the time it only raised bibb lettuce but has since expanded to other greens and it is also now a private for profit enterprises. It also needs to expand the greenhouse to keep up with the demand for fresh local produce, especially in the winter months.
For the updated article from the Ithaca Journal newspaper click HERE.
Photo credit: ithacajournal.com
I know personally some (many?) of Growing Edge’s readers in the fall travel to Holland for various festivals and herbal competitions. You are busy and had enough coffee at the cafes but you gotta eat, right? It might as well be some of the best Holland has to offer… Try De Kas in Amsterdam. Friends have dined here, raving about the taste and quality of the food. Another excellent one is Supperclub in Amsterdam but that is a whole another story. I went to the Supperclub in San Francisco and it was like going to dinner with Cirque du Soleil happening all around you.
De Kas was started in 2001 when top chef Gert Jan Hageman, who had earned a Michelin star in Dutch haute cuisine, found a new direction for his own career and a new purpose for an old greenhouse that belonged to Amsterdam’s Municipal Nursery. The greenhouse, which dated from 1926, was due to be demolished.
With some luck and, most importantly, with help from the 
municipality and his family and friends, Hageman succeeded in converting the unique 26 foot high glass building into a restaurant and nursery, growing mediterranean vegetables, herbs and edible flowers. The restaurant also operates a farm six miles away, a guarantee that the fresh ingredients are in their menu selections.
Photo credit: De Kas
Hydroponics Dictionary
