hydroponics

Schools as Frontline Against Food Deserts

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

These greens are among the hydroponic crops grown by students at Brownsville Collaborative Middle School, in Brooklyn, N.Y. In June, the students started to sell discounted boxes of the fresh produce to community members. Robin Lloyd/for NPR

Thanks again to the Salt for more inspiring stories about communities cultivating more than just smart students.

How Hydroponic School Gardens Can Cultivate Food Justice, Year-Round

After a full day of school a few weeks ago, 12-year-old Rose Quigley donned gloves and quickly picked bunches of fresh lettuce, Swiss chard, kale, mint and oregano. But she didn’t have to leave her school in Brooklyn, N.Y., or even go outdoors to do it.

Quigley is one of dozens of students at Brownsville Collaborative Middle School who in the past year built a high-tech, high-yield farm inside a third-floor classroom. They decided what to grow, then planted seeds and harvested dozens of pounds of produce weekly.

The vegetables never stop coming because the crops are grown hydroponically — indoors, on floor-to-ceiling shelves that hold seedlings and plants sprouting from fiber plugs stuck in trays, each fed by nutrient-enriched water and lit by LED lamps. The students provide weekly produce for their cafeteria’s salad bar and other dishes.

Later that same day, for the first time, Quigley and several of her schoolmates also sold some of their harvest — at a discount from market rates — to community members. It’s part of a new weekly “food box” service set up in the school’s foyer. Each of 34 customers receive an allotment of fresh produce intended to feed two people for a week. Three students, paid as interns, used digital tablets to process orders, while peers handed out free samples of a pasta salad featuring produce from the farm. Continue reading →

Other Farms Of The Future

/ Crist Inman / Leave a comment

170822-mms-a1-hoegaarden-event-brooklyn-08824.jpgYou can click on any of these photos to go to their source, and they are inserted here because the article that brought this farm (?), this company, this phenomenon to my attention did not have any images. It was good to have only the New Yorker words to start with because, like all good writing, it forced me to imagine what this might look like. However, my imagination fell short.

Out of the Ordinary

Farm+One.jpegFarm.One is New York City’s grower of rare herbs, edible flowers and microgreens for some of the best restaurants in the city. Our Edible Bar and Tasting Plates make these fresh, exciting ingredients available for the first time in an event setting. Guests can discover botanical ingredients for the first time, with the expert guidance of our farm team. Taste ingredients on their own, or paired with cocktails and other beverages, for a colorful, flavorful and aromatic experience like no other.

VS_Inspiration_at_Farm.One-9124This short piece by Anna Russell below continues our stream of thought about the farm of the future, and takes it into very unexpected territory. Hydroponics and urban farming have been featured many times in these pages over the years so that is not what has our attention. It is the mixing of art and agriculture that gets us thinking outside the box:

Tribeca’s Hydroponic Underground

Chic stems and tender greens thrive deep below Worth Street on the rolling shelves of Farm.One.

170822-mms-a1-hoegaarden-event-brooklyn-08817.jpgHydroponics are a slippery slope. You might find yourself, one Sunday morning, at a Santa Monica farmers’ market, loitering among the apples, say. You come across a bunch of papalo, a leafy herb native to central Mexico, and toss it in your mouth (your tastes are expansive; a papalo leaf is nothing to you) and wham!: a brand-new flavor. Suddenly, you’re up at all hours, watching vertical-farming videos on YouTube, ordering seed packets from eBay, buying rhizomes—rhizomes!—and worrying about spider mites. You get some fennel crowns and a pouch of parasitic wasps, and you’re on your way. Continue reading →

Big Time Culinary Hydroponics

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
10farm1-jumbo (1)

At Farm.One, a hydroponic garden in TriBeCa, red-veined sorrel is prepared for a delivery. Sarah Blesener for The New York Times

We have posted on urban farming and related topics numerous times since 2011, and hydroponics as its own topic of interest plenty of times as well. Culinary and/or gastronomic topics as related to agriculture are a magnitude of order more represented in these pages. Finally, they are combined for us in one amazing article, thanks to Alyson Krueger. If you only have time to look at the photos, those alone are worth the click:

Herbs From the Underground

Farm.One just opened an indoor rare herb and flower garden in a TriBeCa basement, and many prominent chefs are flocking to it.

10farm2-superJumbo

Katherine Chester, a farm hand at Farm.One, harvests for a morning delivery. Sarah Blesener for The New York Times

In the basement of a loft-style building in TriBeCa that houses a vet, a dog swimming pool, an eye-and-ear infirmary, and a two-Michelin-starred restaurant, there is a working farm.

Farm.One is a hydroponic facility, which means that the plants do not grow in soil. Many of these farms are located indoors, in controlled environments, with artificial lighting.

merlin_130952510_55f499d3-d3da-473e-9c9b-329337b217c5-master675

Amazon neon cherry dianthus and neon rose magic dianthus. Sarah Blesener for The New York Times

The new two-room space, which opened in November in a former cycling studio for high-altitude training and an old storage area, is only 1200 square feet. There is no fresh air or natural light; there is not even a window. Yet the venue can grow around 580 varieties of rare herbs and flowers (200 at a time) that supply New York’s top restaurants. Le Turtle, Le Coucou, Mission Chinese Food, and The Pool get regular deliveries from Farm.One, sometimes several times a week. Continue reading →

Health & Hydroponics

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
ask-hydroponic-tmagarticle

Jason Henry for The New York Times

We have been paying more attention to hydroponics since mid-2011 when first introduced to the topic by Milo, who was our in-house agriculturalist for a stretch; we also appreciated at that moment getting to know more about the open source concept. Last year we were happy to see agriculture and open source covered by a thought leader we have been following since his visit to Kerala a few years earlier.  Today the question and the answer provided here by Sophie Egan is worth a moment of your time:

Are vegetables grown hydroponically as nutritious as those grown in soil?

The bottom line is it depends on the nutrient solution the vegetables are grown in, but hydroponically grown vegetables can be just as nutritious as those grown in soil.

“Much as I think that soil is just great for growing plants, hydroponics has come a long way,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “I’ve seen hydroponic producers who have tested their leafy greens for key nutrients, and the amounts fall well within normal limits for their crop and are sometimes even higher.” Continue reading →

Hydroponics at Home

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
mg_6498

A vertical hydroponic system that also serves a artistic window decor by Michael Doherty.
Source: Washington Post

Hydroponics is far from a new subject on our blog (read on Milo’s experimentation with hydroponics), and while the sustainable benefits of this gardening method have been shared before, there is still one aspect we haven’t covered: appearance.

Just to cover the basics once again, hydroponics is a system of growing plants without soil and using mineral nutrient solutions in water. It’s water efficient and can be done easily in tight quarters, which means anyone can create a hydroponic system – in theory.

“If you understand the fundamentals, what the plants need, and you have some practical use of tools, it can be just a kiddie pool filled with water and a floating piece of Styrofoam board with holes cut in it,” believes Gene Giacomelli, a professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at the University of Arizona and director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center.

Continue reading →

Green Rooftops

/ Jocelyn Toll / 1 Comment
rooftop20hydroponic20garden_zpsaz6euobl

Source Pinterest.com

According to the Population Reference Bureau, since 2008 more than half of the total global population lives in urban areas. What does this mean for farmers and the food industry? It means that as cities expand, farmland is receding farther away from the markets that supply the city consumers. In effect, the food has to travel longer distances, which increases their cost and environmental impact. However, there is good news for those with a green thumb (or pinky!) and creative mind (here are some examples we’ve written about previously). Continue reading →

Windowfarms: More on Urban Gardening

/ Milo Inman / 3 Comments

farm_custom-2a86023b839fde19ab5b5cdd1b444eed2eceb533-s1100-c85.jpg
In one of my earlier posts, I discussed some of the basics of hydroponics, one of the less popular but more efficient forms of urban gardening. Today I won’t discuss the technical aspects of hydroponic gardening, but display an example of an entrepreneurial venture taking advantage of the underdeveloped market. Most people with hydroponic gardens are either aficionados or professionals – very few grow soil-less produce casually.

Windowfarms, an American open-source project concerning itself with urban agriculture, not only offers the blueprints for solar window-contained hydroponic gardens, but also the option of purchasing a kit of varying dimensions (for those less comfortable with the technical specifications). In addition to its mission of reducing urbanites’ carboon footprints by enabling them to grow their own produce, Windowfarms are being used to educate schoolchildren on the benefits and ease of urban farming.

On Urban Farming

/ Milo Inman / 4 Comments

Hydroponic gardening isn’t for everyone: the handiwork, plant nutritional knowledge, and electrical setup can be daunting to beginners. When I set out to create my very first hydroponic setup, I had essentially zero knowledge in any of those fields. Nonetheless, with a very small budget, I was able to establish a functioning hydroponic garden within a few days.

Continue reading →