All posts by kyrowe@shaw.ca

Root Bags a Better Way

Well after a summer of working and building we had amazing success with root bags.

Earth Bag gardening 037

The results were amazing take a look at the new page on root bags.

In the picture we used Walmart bags I always say it doesn’t hurt to put a little dirt on the corporate model.

There is a You Tube video by Larry Hall.

I used his method and my results were amazing. Enjoy.

 

Seasons Greetings

It has been a long time since I have added to this post.

So here goes.

I hope your holidays are growing better than ever. I am sure looking forward to  improving my last growing seasons results.

My goals revolve around using the 80/ 20 formula. The rule states that you get 80% of your results from 20% of what you do.

Some examples are 80% of the joy of your life comes from 20% of what you do.

When you work it only takes 20% of your effort to get 80% done.

20% of your material things give you 80% of your joy from material things.

Well you get it. Try a few for yourself.

The point is in a world where experience and connection with others and learning and accomplishing and creating give us so much joy how much of the material we consume is actually contributing in a meaningful way in our lives?

I will really be looking closely at what I am doing to enhance my life and the life of others in a meaningful way.

Catch you next time.

Cheers Bob.

Pictures of Our Displays at The Fair

Here are some pictures of some of our participants at the fair

 

Here is Scott Towers giving instruction on healthy soils

 

 

Here I am demonstrating the steps in Earth Box Construction

Anne from Vancouver Island University is in the background setting up a home aquaponics unit.

 

 

Here is Lorne discussing his system.

 

 

 

From Worms to Food so easy.

More pictures later.

Thanks for Stopping by.

 

 

On August 13 and 14 at the Coombs Fair in the big building the activity building we will have two working gardening systems.

You will have to show up to see how they work and how you may be able to be the first people to utilize these systems to feed your self and family healthy produce all year long.

This is Clayton Brenton’s unique system.

Guess what is used to make this happen.

The next system is also unique and also produced locally.

This is Lorne and Cindy’s amazing setup.

 

 

 

 

 

This would be a great addition to any house and grow food at the same time.

Stay tuned for more on these amazing people.

We will be on the Shaw Channel

We had our video shoot for the fair. You will get to see it on August 10 just in time for the fair.

Please notify everyone to have a look. Advertising is great when it is free and benefits both parties.

Adrienne from Qualicum country gardens and Scott Towers from Healthy Soils were there to lend a hand.

We would like to be a central source to connect with other growing groups so if you know anyone that fits the bill please get them to drop their info and how to contact them so I can create a link to their site or mention where they can be contacted.

I had the pleasure of talking to a friend who is using a variation of aquaponics. He has a pond with fish and a bio-filter and uses bull rushes in a smaller pond to filter out the nitrogen he uses the pond water to water his plants and they are growing like crazy. I will get some pictures.

Lets keep the innovations happening for us all to share.

Some of todays pictures to leave you with.

Still growing

New update pictures

Here are some recent pictures of the earth boxes we put in the orchard.

They are squash and two pumpkin plants. It is hard to see the earth boxes because of the size of the plants.

In some cases we have as many as 6 plants. They are all doing well despite the rain cool temperatures and cloud.

 

 

 

 

Try to find the earth boxes.

Guess what we will be having for dinner soon?

 

 

 

 

Guess what we will be having to eat soon?

Yes the earth box is under there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The earth box is under there.

Another view.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still can’t see the earth box.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is our white pumpkin it was so stressed it almost didn’t make it. Now look at it go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is one of our acorn squash it was planted after the other squash.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another view of our acorn squash.

 

 

 

 

 

Hope you enjoyed these.

I can’t believe these are growing so well.

Update on Earthboxes

Here are some pictures of how the well the plants are growing in the earthboxes

If you look back at putting earth boxes together you will see how small the plants started out. Look for the pictures of the squash plants in the orchard they are growing  like gang busters.

 

 

 

Well that is all for now.

Farmers of the Future

This is an interesting article and speaks to the direction things are going.

I like the window gardens, earth boxes and aquaponics as a way for everyone to partcipate.

 

The city of the future will be a farm, according to ecologist David Tracey

BY STEVE WHYSALL, VANCOUVER SUN APRIL 28, 2011

 
 

David Tracey stands near the Eco Pavillion in Strathcona Community Garden. When he is not talking the politics of food production, he puts his money where his mouth is and grows food in the East Vancouver garden.

Photograph by: Arlen Redekop, PNG)

Imagine Vancouver in the not-too-distant future. There are food gardens everywhere. Mini-farms. On rooftops. In parks. Next to gas stations. Filling empty lots.

And there are fruit and vegetable kiosks dotted here and there, selling fresh, organically grown produce that has been picked only a few hours earlier.

And the people are happier and healthier and more connected to the planet and the environment and nature.

What d’you think?

Well, this is Vancouver environmental designer and community-based ecologist David Tracey’s vision of the “green and delicious” city of the future.

He says it will also be “creative and busy and messy and fun and beautiful” but most of all it will be a “farm city.”

Four years ago, he wrote his first book, Guerrilla Gardening, in which he encouraged us to see all the city as a garden.

He urged people to take back public spaces, especially empty unused spaces, and turn them into productive food gardens.

And he pointed out that there were many areas of the city that could be made more useful and beautiful by allowing “the community to turn them into gardens.”

Now, in his latest book, Urban Agriculture: Ideas and Designs for the New Food Revolution, he wants us take what he regards as the next logical step in the local food movement … and see the city as a farm and all of its citizens as participating city farmers.

“The farm of the future might be your neighbour’s suburban lawn, the roof of your uptown condominium or the co-op market garden in the vacant lot down the street,” he says.

In this new reality, food gardening will not simply be a hobby that people do for relaxation.

“No, I see it as much more serious than that. I think it is the way we are going to redesign our cities to make them more livable through the 21st century,” he says.

Basically, Tracey thinks our present system of food supply is ultimately doomed because it is fundamentally unsustainable and counter-productive.

“In the 20th century, we took a major detour from the way we had grown food for the previous 10,000 years and opted for a big, industrial factory-farm system that linked into a global-food network.

“This system has a lot of problems. It can’t sustain itself. Fifty per cent of the world’s population now lives in cities and more and more people are moving into cities every day. We can’t rely any more on rural areas to keep feeding us in such a wasteful way.”

Tracey’s goal is to inspire more people to grow their own “good, healthy, fresh, local food.”

He believes everyone should not only have the opportunity (the right, he would say) to grow food, he is working to break down the barriers that convince people food gardening is difficult and not something they can do successfully.

He deliberately structured the chapters of Urban Agriculture to guide people from starting with a basic project such as growing a few herbs or vegetables on a windowsill to tackling a more complex, substantial food garden.

“When we moved off the farm into the cities, we lost the innate ability to be aware of the natural environment. We start to live less connected lives, more artificial lives in artificially lighted boxes.

“I’m not saying we have to go back to the cave, but I think we can recapture some of the sense of what it means to be alive and connected to the living planet through plants.”

Tracey reckons this is the reason everyone gardens. “It is the one activity in our life that is real time, not virtual reality, not on a screen.”

When we garden and grow food he says something deep and organic happens in our brains.

“It makes us feel a little more alive and more human. At least, it does for me.”

Food gardening will be the driver that re-designs our city, he says.

“The city has to transform itself into a more farm-like community. History is with me on this one. We are on a dangerous course right now and we need to get back on a path that is better for the planet and for all of us.”

Tracey isn’t really this preachy. He just sounds a bit that way when you string one of his passionate statements after another.

He is a gentle, articulate, sincere, schooled landscape architect with a heart for wanting to create better access to fresh food that wasn’t trucked in from other parts of the continent causing pollution and consuming valuable energy in the process.

When he is not talking the politics of food production, he puts his money where his mouth is and gets down to the nitty gritty business of actually growing food as one of the participants at Strathcona Community Garden in East Vancouver.

For inspiration, he looks to Cuba, where he see the locally-grown food revolution succeeding because people learned to “grow their way out of a crisis”.

“They start out much the same as we are doing with a lot of people growing food here and there, in corners and on rooftops, and then they refined their operations.

“Today, there are kiosks all over [Havana] selling fresh food that was picked less than four hours ago.”

Tracey reckons today’s amateur city farmers will eventually evolve into competent, full- or part-time professional food gardeners. “Many are in the process right now of working out the economic model to make it work.”