The American persimmon in particular is heavenly in taste, a tiny fruit bursting with sweetness, possibly the closest thing to a nature-made dessert in existence. Best of all, it’s actually good for you.

This might all sound like some exaggerated infomercial, but it’s all quite true. Persimmons really are that good, and you can find out for yourself by simply growing a tree in your own garden. The only rule is to be sure that the persimmon is ripe enough before you partake, or you may be in for a mouthful of bitterness.

American persimmon trees have a long history and a huge range. They can be found as far North as New England, and as far South as Florida in the Eastern-most half of the continental United States. This plant is extremely hardy, and can survive in all sorts of weather and climate zones. In all likelihood, you will easily be able to find a strain of the plant that will do well where you live.

The Persimmon is a beautiful tree to behold. During the summer, its leaves are a deep green with a touch of blue and, depending on the climate, its leaves can range from various shades of yellow to strong, dramatic reds. The tree has a lazy-looking branch system, that hovers over the ground with a hunched posture. The mature fruit of the tree adds an attractive gold into the color scheme. Long-living persimmons can reach heights of over fifty feet. In its earlier stages of growth in particular, a persimmon tree will shoot up rapidly in height, and it is only once it begins putting energy into bearing fruit that the growth rate begins to naturally slow.

PLANTING AN AMERICAN PERSIMMON

Persimmon trees are very simple plants to take care of, though they are unfortunately a bit rarer to find compared to more common fruit-bearing trees. It might take a bit of looking around through the various nurseries in your area before you might find an appropriate sapling. Worse comes to worse, though, you can always order one online.

Most of all, be sure to find a strain of American persimmon that will tolerate your particular local climate well. Though it may be tempting to find wild Persimmon trees to add to your garden, a transplant of this kind is unlikely to be successful because the critical tap root of the tree is unusually deep and fragile, and any significant damage to it will probably lead to the plant’s death. In addition, domestic persimmons are quite a bit tastier than their wild cousins, anyway.

Since quite a number of varieties of American persimmon tree cannot reproduce asexually like some other fruit trees, you will want to plant both male and female trees if you desire a decent harvest of fruit. However, if space is limited and you can only accommodate one plant, it is possible to graft a male branch onto a female tree, or to simply stick to a variety that can pollinate itself.

These plants are fortunately not too picky about the quality of their soil, though they can suffer if the soil is too moist or simply not moist enough. Keep the soil around the tree somewhat damp and be sure to fertilize it twice a year, during the spring and during the summer. As the tree grows, prune any dead or inconveniently shaped branches to keep it healthy.

PESTS AND PROBLEMS

American persimmon trees are resilient to most diseases. The most troublesome problem you will have with your persimmon tree will be your competition with the local wildlife over your fruit. The wildlife may be able to tolerate the tartness of the fruit before the fruit is ripe enough for you to enjoy, so be on guard.

VARIETIES TO TRY

• ‘Meade’  is the hardiest of all American persimmons, and it can withstand temperatures to -30° F. Its fruits are seedless. The fruit matures early making it a good choice for regions with short growing seasons. It is also self-pollinating.
• ‘Early Golden’ is a popular, easy-to-grow variety. It produces fruit early in the season and is hardy to USDA Zone 5.
• ‘Eureka’ is the type of persimmon you would most likely find in the grocery store. But this is a Japanese variety of persimmon, not an American one.

If you would like more information on the American Persimmon, check these two links:

Edible of the Month: Persimmon – National Gardening Association

Persimmons – Texas A&M Extension

Source: GardeningChannel

In 2011 Biello began looking for a place where he, his now-wife Jamie Lynn and their horses, Bear and Duke could lay roots. “I wanted to have a place of our own that we could start a farm and a family on,” he says, “We wanted the security of ownership.”

Unfortunately Biello was up against a huge obstacle that is very common for farmers today. There was little access to land where he could begin his farm. A survey of young farmers by the National Young Farmer’s Coalition in 2011 showed that 68% cited the lack of land as their biggest hurdle. “I wasn’t going to qualify with a bank on my farm manager’s income,” says Biello. “I needed to find someone who would work with me.”

Local Farms Fund, a new investment fund put in place to help sustainably minded farmers like Biello gain access to land, was able to help. The fund purchases farmland in the New York City foodshed—covering New York, New Jersey, Conneticut, and Pennsylvania. They work to set up lease-to-own arrangements with matching farmers.

The idea began as conversations were held between Slow Money NYC investors and Working Farms Capital (and organization that manages and develops farmland ventures.) The fund is farmer driven and works with farmers that have a clear plan for a specific plot of land. The land is borrowed from Iroquois Valley Farms, which is a pioneering investment effort in sustainable farming.

The Local Farm Fund cofounders put up the initial money and launched the fund in October 2014. All they needed was a farmer.

In early 2015, Biello was at a conference when he met Kevin Egolf, an investor who manages the Local Farm fund. For Egolf, the conditions were ideal for the fund’s first deal. “Time came to use with great experience in farming, a thorough business plan, and land he identified for his farm,” Egolf says.

In May, the Biellos moved onto a 63-acre farm near Saratoga Sptings with a mix of land, forest and wetlands, and a 1790s farmhouse. The Local Farm Funds purchased the $415,000 property and the Biellos were provided with a 20-year lease. “We’re hoping they can purchase the land from the fund in 5 to 10 years,” says Egolf.

The purchase also included an agricultural easement on the land, which means the farm will forever be restricted from suburban development.

Biello is living a dream. He spent several years finding the perfect land. He even helped setting up the Hudson Valley Farmland Finder, which connects farmers to land in their area with owner looking to sell. Without financial support, land ownership remains a mere dream. “We got a partner in our farm,” he says of the Local Farms Fund. “Yes, this is an investor group, and they have targets. But it’s a relationship.”

In a world where sustainable financing options are hard to come by for food and agriculture ventures, the Local Farm Fund is a welcome addition. This goes for investors as well as farmers. The fund is one of few that is open to ordinary investors. Iroquois Valley Farms is only available to institutional investors and wealthy individuals who qualify as accredited investors.

The Local Farms Fund relies on the Regulation D, Rule 504 securities exemption, which allows for unaccredited investors. The minimum investment is $10,000, a number determined by the board as the lowest amount needed to cover administrative costs.

To date, the Local Farms Fund has raised $250,000—a quarter of the way towards its goal of $1 million by year end. It currently has about fifteen investors, with more conversations underway. The fund’s cofounders anticipate a 3% annual return on the investments— 2% paid in cash annually, and 1% accumulated over the course of the investment to be paid out in full in the end, says Egolf.

Derek Denckla, one of the founders of Slow Money NYC and a Local Farms Fund cofounder, says the group worked hard to create a program that “solves both sides of the problem.” Young farmers need low-interest, flexible capital to buy land, he says, while investors need “some assurance that the financial risk is mitigated.”

By working with skilled farmers who have identified land, Denckla says, “We’re able to support the higher risk investment in a farmer through the low risk investment of land as an stable asset.”

The fund currently has 3 or 4 farmers in the pipeline for future lease-to-own arrangements. In the meantime, the Biellos are settling into their new home. They plan to develop a vegetable CSA first, and over time expand into meat and eggs for local restaurants and grocery outlets. They’re also considering educational programming and tours for the future.

Featured Image: Locavesting

Source: Locavesting

People raise chickens in suburbs and big cities for a number of reasons, and knowing all the benefits it can provide you with is a great place to start on your own quest to bring a bit of the simple life into your city home. If you’re still not sure that you want chickens and wonder about the truth behind the claims that they’re loud and smelly, take some time to understand the benefits as well as the drawbacks.

1. Fresher Eggs

When you buy eggs from the store, there’s no guarantee as to how fresh they are, but when you get them from your hens, you can sometimes know their age down to the minute. There is no contest when it comes to dishes prepared with fresh backyard eggs verses store-bought ones. The yolks are taller and darker with a richer taste that makes baked goods fluffier and more delicious.

2. Healthier Eggs

Studies done on eggs from cage-raised verses free-range chickens clearly shows that free-range chicken eggs are higher in essential vitamins and minerals and lower in cholesterol. They also have around 5 times as much vitamin D, 7 times the amount of beta-carotene, 2 times as much omega-3 fatty acids, and 3 times the amount of vitamin E, letting you pack way more nutrients into your next omelet.

3. Pest Control

Chickens are omnivorous, and will eat just about anything from grass to grasshoppers. People who have backyard chickens are often surprised as the number of bugs in their backyard begins to steadily decrease with the addition of chickens. Some of the favorite snacks of chickens are mosquitoes, slugs, crickets, spiders, and grubs.

This is especially good news for gardeners who have pest problems as chickens will reduce the number of pests in your yard. The pests not only act as a great supplement for their diet, but the chickens also give back to the garden in the form of nutrient-rich chicken manure.

4. Help Preserve Genetic Diversity

The huge factory farms that produce eggs only use special hybrid breeds that focus on getting the best rate of feed-to-egg exchange. Unfortunately, this has pushed a huge number of heritage breeds of chickens to the brink of extinction and limits the overall genetic diversity of the chicken population. You could join in with other backyard farmers that are helping to bring back heritage breeds.

5. Eat Local Foods

Most of the foods we eat travel around 1,500 miles before they end up on our plates, but raising backyard chickens will allow you to eat locally and support other local small-time farmers which will help improve your own community.

6. Have Purposeful Pets

If your kids are begging your for a pet but you don’t like the idea of animals inside your home, chickens are a great solution. So long as they are handled regularly and gently from a young age, chickens make excellent pets for your children to enjoy. Plus, they’ll provide you with much better understanding of where your food comes from in a world that has mostly lost touch with this concept.

7. Save Money and Avoid Waste

If you do it right, you can actually save a lot of money by raising backyard chickens. Their regular food can be supplemented by food scraps which will actually help boost their egg production. This also helps you reduce the amount of waste you are producing in your kitchen and keep useable food waste from ending up in landfills. You might even consider getting your neighbors in on it and exchange fresh eggs for more food scraps.

8. Free compost

Chicken manure is great for the garden plants. And if your chickens run and chase around your backyard, they will fertilize it, naturally. Say “so long” to lawn-care services!

9. Great chicken soup

When hens get older and their laying slows down, you can butcher them for stew meat, which is so delicious and can’t be found in stores. All grandmothers will consistently tell you that chicken soup is really good for a cold and flu.
The idea that chicken soup, often dubbed as the “Jewish penicillin,” has medicinal effects dates back to ancient times, but modern scientists have never fully deciphered the reasons.

Some doctors believe that the soup’s benefits are mainly psychosomatic, that it is the ultimate comfort food. Others say the steaming hot soup clears congestion and provides the body with necessary hydration to flush out viral bugs. Researchers believe colds are caused by viral infections in the upper respiratory tract. The body responds with inflammation, which triggers white blood cells to migrate to the area.

Yet, the biological basis is still unclear. A researcher tested a family recipe passed down from his wife’s Lithuanian grandmother that contained chicken, onions, sweet potatoes, parsnips, turnips, carrots, celery, parsley, salt and pepper.

The white blood cells migrated less often in the presence of each of the tasty ingredients. His theory is that some ingredient in the chicken soup blocks or slows the amount of cells congregating in the lung area, possibly relieving the development of these cold symptoms. But it remains unclear what chemical compound within the ingredients prevented their motion.

10. Free amusement

Chickens are endlessly amusing. They give you the real taste of being somewhere in the country. You can’t watch them running around the yard for more than a few minutes without laughing or being surprised about something they’re doing. Children will burst with excitement when they see a chicken catching a frog for example, or when they see a chicken laying an egg for the first time, or the hatching of a baby chicken!

We hope this was convincing enough for you. And if someone still needs convincing to build their backyard coop ask them this: “Have you heard of chicken math?”

The chicken hobby starts out modestly with few chickens to produce just enough eggs for the family. But, before you know it, you want eggs of every color and different breeds to adorn your landscape and Easter baskets. Suddenly the flock has tripled in size and you have more eggs than anyone (but a bodybuilder) can eat.

However, urban chicken keepers usually can’t produce enough to sell at a farmers’ market, but the coolest solution to backyard overabundance I’ve seen is “the honor box.” Whether sold from a cooler or a fancy, permanent yard stand, the chicken farmer posts a price and current inventory. Then neighbors and friends can help themselves to your extra eggs, and on their honor, they leave the correct amount of cash for your extra goods. That’s, at least, the idea.

You don’t need to dumpster dive before you realize that supermarkets divert a constant flow of uneaten nourishment to landfills.

When it gets dumped, the waste accomplishes more than smell terrible. It likewise adds to environmental change by discharging methane, a greenhouse gas, which is about 30 times stronger than carbon-dioxide. Actually, landfills are pegged the third biggest supply of methane emanations in the U.S., as per the Environmental Protection Agency (a major cause the USDA as of late promised a 50% national decrease in food waste by 2030).

However, after another California state law [PDF] became effective this April, substantial supermarkets in the state are obliged to jettison the landfill and recycle or compost all their wasted food.

For large grocery stores to conform to the imminent law they  require more locations to keep the waste materials —and a Sacramento-based company gives off an impression of being very much situated to react to this issue. California Safe Soil has built up a procedure that changes truckloads of store food waste into ranch prepared compost it refers to as Harvest to Harvest, or H2H.

“This was something that made perfect sense to me,” CEO Dan Morash says, who established the franchise in 2012, in the wake of resigning a career as an investment broker in the energy industry. “There’s this huge stream of waste from the supermarkets that is no longer safe to eat as it gets to the end of its shelf life, but it still has a lot of nutrients.”

Making use of compost, produced using food waste likewise eliminates the requirement for for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, he says. This can reduce the amount of nitrate runoff into local rivers and streams, which often lead to dead zones.

The company claims that ever since its launch in year 2012, it has redirected more than 2.2 million pounds of wasted food from landfills, inhibiting the outflows of about 3.2 million pounds of conservatory gases and averting the requirement for more than 1.1 million pounds nitrogen fertilizers.

In what way is Morash’s product different from standard compost? He worked with soil and  fertilizer expert Mark LeJeune to build up a technique that quickly advances the fertilizing of the soil process (which is energized by high-impact assimilation, or microbes bolstered by oxygen that decomposes natural matter). The procedure transforms food waste to fluid compost within three hours.

To start with, the waste is ground into a fluid, and then treated with chemicals to separate the protein, carbohydrates and fat into the unsaturated fats, amino acids, and basic sugars. At that point, it becomes pasteurized (i.e., warmed at very high temperatures) to destroy any pathogens still available.

“The average particle size is very small—26 microns,,” says Morash. “This [allows it to] blend effectively with water.”

A different stream for natural and conventional food exists in the company, as California Safe Soil offers for sale an all-natural form. Both are introduced to farm crops through drip irrigation system.

In year 2012, Morash and LeJeune established in Sacramento, a pilot plant to improve the innovation. The product was popularized in 2013 and is managed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

“The California Department of Food and Agriculture is concerned about food safety, so we had to prove that [the fertilizer production process] eliminates pathogens,” Morash says. “So we did a research project called a challenge test at the University of California, Davis.”

To show that the product was effective, the company conducted additional experiments with researchers, including one at U.C. Davis and a strawberry expert at U.C. Cooperative Extension.

Morash claims that use of his fertilizer on tomatoes has upped the rate of food production by between 10 to 15 percent.

California Safe Soil’s target market is mainly large farms that grow crops like strawberries, tomatoes, leafy greens, almonds, and wine grapes. Several of the berry growers that he works with supply for Driscoll’s, Morash says.

But orchard crops like fruit and nuts are especially well suited for this liquid fertilizer. Traditionally, orchard-based farmers “need to till the soil to get organic matter in without cutting up the roots,” he says. “So the ability to deliver organic matter to the soil in liquid form is a big positive.”

At the moment, the company processes food waste from 15 stores across five supermarket chains (Grocery Outlet, Nugget, Safeway, SaveMart, and Whole Foods) in Sacramento. Six days a week, the plant processes about 3,750 pounds of food from between seven to eight markets a day (each brings in an average of about 500 pounds daily).

The Sacramento facility is operating at capacity, but he hopes to build others in the coming years. The idea is to locate plants, like the one Sacramento, near grocery distribution centers. This way, after delivering goods to the stores, the centers’ trucks can fill up with food waste for the trip home, Morash says.

There are additional economic and environmental benefits to locating California Safe Soil plants near distribution centers, he adds. Turning food waste into fertilizer not only saves grocery stores the fees associated with sending it to a landfill, but it also prevents the greenhouse gas emissions and extra transportation costs often needed to deliver it there.

“This has a very positive environmental impact across the board,” Morash says. “It’s going to increase the sustainability of agriculture starting right here in California.”

California Safe Soil’s H2H Fertilizers

Source: CivilEats.com

All five photos in this article: All courtesy of California Safe Soil

I may not look like your average farmer, and honestly, it surprises a lot of people to hear that I am one. But, I’m not your average farmer, so I’m okay with that.

Although some have guessed that I inherited farming from my family, the truth is that I was raised in Michigan suburbs and my farming experience was limited to helping my grandpa and dad in the yard, a couple of cherry-picking excursions, and keeping some herbs alive.

In 2009, I got my business degree from the College of Charleston. Until then, my plan had been to continue on with my master’s in financial analysis which would eventually lead to owning my own business. But, in 2008 as I was picking out my program and planning for my future, the recession hit.

I was already pretty deeply in debt at that point, and realized that I no longer wanted to pursue business, and I wanted to do something that wasn’t going to bury me that much deeper in debt. Throughout college, I had worked in a couple different restaurants and had frequently visited Charleston’s local farmers’ markets. These combined with the report I did during my senior year on Whole Foods got me seriously thinking about our food’s origins as well as those who grow it.

There was only one problem: I had no idea how you go about becoming a farmer. So I did some Googling, and that’s when I stumbled upon an apprenticeship program in Chatthoochie Hills, Georgia. It seemed perfect. The 25-acre farm is part of a community called Serenbe that really emphasizes preserving green space for its residents. It’s always run itself off of young farmers who are learning how to farm and want to continue in the profession when they leave; so I’d basically be paid to be trained for nine months. It would give me time to learn the ins and outs of farming—but also to see if I was crazy to be seriously considering it as a career. (Plenty of people I knew were skeptical—including my mom, who was like, “This is just a phase, right?”)

So, I applied for an internship which required both an interview and a whole day of being in the field before I was accepted. There were two things I distinctly remember from that first season: my back hurt a lot during the first month, and I absolutely loved every single moment. Every day was a new learning experience and a new chance to grow something different. I got to grow vegetables I’d never eaten or even heard of before, like Swiss chard and kohlrabi.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to love it so much. I was just as surprised as my family when I realized that this is what I wanted to do with my life within the first three months of the internship. As soon as I knew it was what I wanted to do, I started planning on exactly how I could pursue my dream of organic farming following the internship.

I ended up getting a job starting the vegetable-growing program at a farm in South Georgia, and then, when the farming managers I had worked for at Serenbe left, I came back to take over that job in early 2014.

It’s not all blue skies and sunflowers (a little farming humor for you there). My hours are pretty crazy. I probably do 60 to 70 hours a week on the farm and another 25 to 30 hours in the office, whether that’s writing a newsletter promoting our community-supported agriculture program, handling the money that goes along with that, or managing our restaurant farmer’s market businesses.

As you might expect, my love life hasn’t exactly benefitted from the long hours. When I tell most people I’m a farmer, at first they think it’s cool—but the further I get into relationships, the more they inevitably struggle with the fact that farming is my lifestyle.

It’s not just a job that you do every day. It’s a culture, it’s a way of life. You have to embody farming—so it’s hard to find someone who’s not a farmer who understands and can embrace that.

I also find wearing so many hats really empowering—I’m using all of the skills I’ve learned to grow produce and running my own business, just like I always wanted to.

I really want to encourage young farmers and women in particular to start farming (I actually think women have an inherent attention to detail that really lends itself to the job). While it may be a stereotypically male world, it doesn’t have to be. Like I said before, I’m not your typical farmer—and I couldn’t be prouder of that.

Source Womehn’sHealth

Source Pictures: Women’sHealth

Executive Chef Jason McClain was thrilled. This should be no surprise. His father is a retired landscape architect and flew in from Alabama to build the garden. They installed rows of galvanized horse troughs in which vegetables and herbs now grow.

Members in the club enjoy walking on the artificial turf track near tubs filled with citrus and fruit trees. The menu lists “our home-grown items”: broccolini, baby carrots, yuzu, blueberries, figs, snap peas, and heirloom tomatoes.

Jason McClain, executive chef and Jonathan Club, discusses the rooftop garden with urban planners and other expert visitors on November 11th.

“I mean, you cut a tomato and it’s like a real tomato. The juice runs down your arm. It’s never been refrigerated,” stated McClain dressed in his chef’s whites. The busload of visitors took a daylong tour of the urban agriculture and local food systems.

“It’s just magical. You’re in the middle of downtown Los Angeles. It’s really great at 5 o’clock, when the traffic’s going and you hear the obscenities, and I’m up here snipping arugula.”

The visitors included growers, urban policymakers, consultants, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit representatives. They explored the vegetable beds and asked questions, as they tasted the fresh produce in the garden.

Waiters served a drink called Autumn Escape. It features garden-grown rosemary, fresh pressed pineapple, cinnamon, lime and club soda and offered spoon-size tastes of lemon verbena crème caramel and small Warren pear financiers, decorated with leaves of freshly picked arugula.

The visitors were serious and took noted about all the practical advantages and disadvantages. The garden produces up to $150,000 worth of produce annually. It costs around $40,000 to build. It provides work for a local urban farming venture called Farmscape Gardens. This organization plants the Jonathan Club’s seeds compost the beds and rotate the crops.

The tour was organized by Seedstock, a Los Angeles-based company that offers consulting services and disseminates information about sustainable food projects. It hosts an annual conference on sustainable agriculture, which begins Wednesday at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. This year’s theme is “Reintegrating Agriculture: Local Food Systems and the Future of Cities.”

As they left the 120-year-old private club and headed back to the bus, tour members talked about what they had seen. Didn’t the galvanized tubs burn up in summer? Did that tree really produce edible olives?

Niki Mazaroli, program officer at the Leichtag Foundation in Encinitas, said one of her foundation’s aims is to help struggling people reach self-sufficiency. She said she hoped Jonathan Club members with means might look at the garden there and get inspired to invest in the sort of urban agriculture projects that create livable-wage jobs.

That was the kind of effort underway at the next stop — a farm on the grounds of Pasadena’s Muir High School that was as wild and lush and loud as the Jonathan Club garden was tidy, crisp and quiet.

At Muir Ranch, roses bloomed and sunflowers blared and squashes bigger than bowling balls grew under enormous leaves.

Mud Baron, the goateed project director, wore flip-flops, sunglasses and a brown cap that said “GROW!” in big green letters. On the belt of his jeans was a leather holster keeping his pruners at the ready.

He spoke of the farm’s community-supported agriculture program, in which people subscribe to get weekly flowers or boxes of fresh produce. How much of what’s in the selection comes from the farm, but he also buys from other local farmers, thus helping support them. How, contrary to its reputation, Pasadena has many people in need, including many Muir families. How getting young people interested in the garden was one way to push them toward better futures.

Source Latimes

Images Source: L.A.UrbanFarms

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”4″ gal_title=”Urban Farms in L.A.”]

Jackson, Wyoming is a very unlikely place for urban farming. It has an altitude over a mile high and has snow that can last for most of the year. The growing season lasts only a few months. It is expensive to plant a garden since the average vacant lot can be well over $1 million.

The town is on its way to become one of the only in the world with a vertical farm. On a thin slice of vacant land next to a parking lot is a startup called Vertical Harvest. It broke ground on a new three-story stack of greenhouses that will be filled with crops such as micro greens and tomatoes.

“We’re replacing food that was being grown in Mexico or California and shipped in,” explains Penny McBride, one of the co-founders. “We feel like the community’s really ready for a project like this. Everybody’s so much more aware of the need to reduce transportation, and people like to know their farmer and where food’s coming from.”

The town owns the small plot of land as well as the building that houses the farm. It is part of a partnership. The founders spent five working with the city to implement the idea from a business model and showing how the building can support itself efficiently.

“One of the things the town of Jackson was concerned with was if we using more energy than if a tomatoes was trucked in here,” says Nona Yehia, the architect of the vertical farm and one of the company’s co-founders. Greenhouses generally use a lot of energy in a cold climate. This has to be included in the farm’s design.

Inside, the plants move throughout each greenhouse floor on a conveyor belt that the founders compare to a moving rack at a dry cleaner. As they rotate, each plant gets an equal amount of time in natural light on the south side of the building, saving energy in artificial lighting. On the top level, the system also pulls plants up to the ceiling, effectively creating an extra floor. The conveyor also brings each plant to workers who can transplant or harvest the crops.

The startup plans to employ workers with developmental disabilities who have few local options for a job. “We have a certain number of hours of work and divide it up based on ability, desire, and skill,” Yehia explains. “The job is developed based on how many hours someone wants to work and can work.”

In a year, the greenhouse should be able to crank out over 37,000 pounds of greens, 4,400 pounds of herbs, and 44,000 pounds of tomatoes [Note: this sentence originally listed all these measurements as tons, which is too many tomatoes. We regret the error]. The yields are high compared to traditional farming, because of the efficiencies of the farm’s hydroponic system. But it still will be only a fraction of the produce needed for the town, which has fewer than 10,000 residents but many more tourists.

“The demand is far greater than what we’ll be able to supply,” says McBride. The farm has already pre-sold its future crops to local restaurants, grocery stores, and a hospital. It’s a reminder of the fact that vertical farming, despite some advantages, would be a challenging way to try to feed many people in a larger city.

But on a small scale, it’s a way to add both local food and jobs. McBride and Yehia hope it will serve as a model for other communities, and may eventually expand themselves. It’s a business model that they’re convinced will work.

“It’s a feel-good story, which is why so many people were partnering with us from the beginning,” says Yehia. The team plans to open the farm early next year and will harvest the first crops a few months later.

Source Fastcoexist

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[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”1″ gal_title=”Wyoming”]

With the help of family and friends and Internet research, Garden Pool was created. What was a cement hole was changed into a closed-loop ecosystem. It grows everything from broccoli and sweet potatoes to sorghum and wheat, with chickens tilapia, algae, and duckweed all interacting together to provide enough to feed a family of five.

Garden Pool has slashed three-quarters within a year of the McClungs monthly grocery bill. They continue to purchase items like cooking oil and coffee because one cannot eat tilapia every day. In a five-year span, the community of the Garden Pool grew. Advocates spread word about the Garden Pool across the nation.

This began as a family experiment and blog but is now a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a small staff. Garden Pool has been voted the Best Backyard Farm in Phoenix and has gained press from National Geographic TV. It formed a Phoenix-area Meetup group that has almost a thousand members. It has attracted hundreds of local volunteers, students, and gardeners who have helped build Garden Pool systems all around the Phoenix area.

Scientists and engineers from Cornell University, Arizona State University, and even the space industry have all visited Garden Pool. This spring volunteers from Garden Pool paired with Naturopaths Without Borders to travel to Haiti and build a Garden Pool there. Dennis stated that they helped approximately three-dozen being built across the country through email and phone consultations. They span from Florida to Toledo to Palm Springs.

The Garden Pool was originally constructed because McClung had a desire for his family to live more sustainably. Now that he has seen all the attention these ideas are getting and how productive it can be, he believes everyone will want to build similar systems.

These systems are great! The Garden pool grows on clay pellets or coconut coir as opposed to soil. The whole thing only required a small fraction of water in a conventional garden. This is because the excess moisture drips into the pond below and a rain catching system. This is especially true in a place like Mesa, which gets very little rain over the year.

Instead of commercial fertilizer, chicken droppings fall through wire mesh strung across the pool’s deep end, nourishing the algae and duckweed in the pond below. The tilapia eat the pond plants, release their own nitrogen-rich excrement, and the fish water then gets funneled (using a solar-powered electric pump) into the hydroponics system that grows the family produce.

The McClungs have added pygmy goats and a bunch of fruit and nut trees to the backyard mix, so their mini farm is starting to look a lot like a very hopeful — and very delicious — urban future.

Dennis says building your own Garden Pool is not as labor-intensive and complex as it sounds. In addition to free online tutorials like “Getting Started in Barrelponics” and “Growing Duckweed,” McClung teaches GP certification courses; so far, he’s certified about 20 “GP” enthusiasts in Arizona and about 12 more during the trip to Haiti this spring. He plans to help a few recent grads start their own Meetup groups in Los Angeles and New York.

He also just released the second edition of Garden Pool’s extensive how-to book, featuring 117 pages of detailed instructions, illustrations, photos, and QR codes that link to video tutorials. His goal is to encourage aspiring Garden Poolers to build and maintain their own aquaponics greenhouses, whether or not they’ve done anything remotely like it before, and whether or not they even have a pool. (One of Garden Pool’s main taglines is “use an old pool or just dig a pond!”)

Thanks to endless experimentation with new crops and filters and catchment systems, McClung claims his backyard is now “basically a Frankenstein laboratory” and not quite as pretty as the sparkling Garden Pool replicas and spinoffs he’s helped build around town. Various experiments have met with varying degrees of success (blueberries and amaranth didn’t do as well as eggplant and asparagus, for instance), but the list of things that grow like weeds in Garden Pool is long (McClung advises you to check out page 96 of his book).

He manages pest control by doing things like adding ladybugs for the aphids and selecting plants like marigolds and garlic, which repel whiteflies and spider mites, respectively. Since the system is closed and controlled, it’s a pretty fantastic way to experiment with organic gardening methods.

As far as they’ve come in the past five years, though, Dennis says they’re just rolling up their sleeves. Now that all the nonprofit paperwork is settled, Garden Pool staff can apply for grants, and, he hopes, “hop from place to place and make stuff happen.” He’d like to help build more Garden Pools in Haiti, Africa, South America, and across the globe, and eventually become something of an international hub for closed-loop system research.

Although Garden Pool is Dennis’s full-time occupation and has been for some years now, “it’s not a job yet,” he insists. “I love it. I dream about it. What inspires me is watching families’ lives being changed, watching communities change, observing the change.”

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