Outdoor vegetable gardens usually get their start in the spring. One of the benefits of living in Southwest Florida is growing vegetables practically year round.
Sixth and seventh graders at Oasis Middle School in Cape Coral started the plants from seeds in early September and transplanted them into soil the past few days.
Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes and peppers were all planted in the new school garden – a total of nine different vegetables. When the vegetables mature and are harvested, both students and staff of the school will enjoy them. Herbs are raised in a hydroponic system and will be given to the culinary arts program at the high school.
Click HERE to read the whole story.
To help hydroponic growers who are thinking of increasing their production area, the National Australia Bank has put together some tips on planning and risk management. These tips would apply to hydro growers anywhere in the world. Click HERE for those tips.
Been putting off that veggie garden you had planned to get to this year? Well here’s yet another reason to venture into growing your own produce.
The UN’s world food program estimates that we will need a 70% increase in food production by the year 2050 in order to feed the projected 9.1 Billion people expected to inhabit the earth (No one talks about over population anymore).
Even after the “green revolution” (and all it’s unintended consequences) we still can’t feed the people around the world. Jump on the link at the bottom for the full story. Tight on space or live in a city? Try your hand at hydroponics. It’s a big water saver (using as little as 1/10th of the water a traditional farmer does) and the optimal health of the plants allows them to placed closer together without increasing the incidence of insects and diseases associated with traditional growing methods.
Click HERE for full story.
Photo credit: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
“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.
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.
Paignton Zoo Environmental Park in Devon, England, has launched Europe’s first commercial vertical farm, and the world’s first vertical farm within a zoo.
The VertiCrop garden, which was developed for use in urban environments where farm land is in short supply, uses hydroponic and aeroponic technologies to sustainably grow crops such as lettuce, herbs, wheat grass and barley without the use of soil or pesticides.
Kevin Frediani, plant curator at the Zoo also noted “we are confident that the VertiCropTM System will produce a variety of vegetables and crops at a great cost savings for the Zoo, with the added value of producing fresh and more nutritious food on a year round basis”.
To begin with, the Zoo will grow a whole range of herbs such as parsley
and oregano, as well as leaf vegetables like lettuce and spinach, plus a
range of fruits such as cherry tomato and strawberry. Reptiles, birds and most of the mammal collection – including primates and big cats – will benefit from the production of year-round fresh food. Paignton Zoo
animals crunch their way through about 800 carrots a day and over $12,000 worth of fruit per month. Herbs are used as enrichment for many species.
For more information on the VertiCrop system click here.
For more photos click here.
The cable television network, The Weather Channel, did a piece on hydroponic growing in Vancouver, B.C., which is known for other herbal products, but in this video they are actually growing vegetables.
The Massachusetts Avenue Project in Buffalo, New York is a half acre urban farm for low income residents to grow their own food and learn farming skills for possible future job opportunities. Many other “green” elements are used at the urban farm.
An old motor home is used as a portable farmers market that travels to low income areas of Buffalo, bringing produce to people who can’t travel to the urban farm. An aquaponics system is going to be added this fall supplying 1,500 tilapia fish available in six to eight months after they start the project.
Instead of bailouts of multi-national corporations, here is something good that a government is funding. An experimental aquaponics (fish and hydroponic vegetables) system at a community garden in Australia.
The Maroochy Community Permaculture Group Inc., based at the Yandina Community Gardens, successfully applied for an Australian Water Grant to demonstrate water harvesting and water recycling to [...]
The Glen Falls, N.Y. Farmers Market rejected Phyllis Underwood, owner of Shushan Valley Hydro Farm, and her hydroponic tomatoes. Even though Underwood sold her tomatoes with no problems at the winter farmers market, and paid her annual dues to the same association that runs the summer market, they rejected her for the summer season because [...]
Outdoor vegetable gardens usually get their start in the spring. One of the benefits of living in Southwest Florida is growing vegetables practically year round.
Been putting off that veggie garden you had planned to get to this year? Well here’s yet another reason to venture into growing your own produce.
Hydroponics Dictionary
