USB Greenhouse

Here's another gadget for the masses. This is the description from Urban Outfitters:

Grow your own, man. The perfect way to get a little green into your workspace, the USB Greenhouse is an all-in-one plant-growing powerhouse. Just plug the molded plastic case into any USB port using the generous 4-foot cable and get growing. Adjustable growth light; computer interface monitors growth status and set watering reminders; software includes calendar. Grow your own herbs, flowers or house plants! Imported. Wipe clean. 

* Includes: USB Greenhouse, Artificial Soil, Marigold Seed pack, Instructions, Installation CD, Online Support Link

* Requires: PC with Intel Pentium 4 or compatible processor that operates at 2.4GHz or faster; 128MB or more RAM; 100MB of available hard drive space; any Windows compatible soundcard using WDM, ASIO or DirectSound drivers; CD-ROM Drive; One available USB 1.1 port on your computer to plug to the stress button; Display adapter capable of 800*600 in 16 bit color; Microsoft Windows XP with Internet connection.

* Not MAC compatible  

* 6.75"w, 9"h, 6.75"d 

* Plastic, electronics

By the way, this makes a great holiday gift. I say this in all seriousness.

Green Roof Economics

Interesting article:

"

- Provide amenity space for building users and can replace a yard or patio
- Reduce the urban heat island effect
- Increase the roof life span
- Filter pollutants and CO2 out of the air
- Filter pollutants and heavy metals out of rainwater
- Increase wildlife habitat in build-up areas
- Retain rainwater, moderate the temperature of the water, and act as a natural filter for any of the water that happens to run off

To initiate a green roof installation, you will need to know the slope and structural building capacity, and nature of any drainage systems, electrical, and water supply. In terms of cost, for an installed, extensive green roof with root repellant/waterproof members, it will cost you anywhere from $10 to $24. However, this also depends on the type of roof you want and factors such as the depth of growing medium, selective plans, size

"

Underneath Sidewalk Grates

In an urban area, the attention in making room for gardens tend to be focused upwards as seen with the trend towards rooftop gardens. However, most often neglect to look underneath ourselves. Surely we must have noticed that plants grow practically anywhere, even in sidewalk cracks. To maximize green space, we could and should start looking towards utilizing any space we can find, even if it means the dingy black holes beneath those sidewalk grates. It's a lovely and feasible concept, I think.

Read more about this finding here. (note comment #14)

Hydroponics Movement

Hydroponics agriculture is one of the research projects being conducted in California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Pros:

"Supporters point to the environmental cost of trucking produce from farms to cities, the loss of wilderness for farmland to feed a growing world population, and the risk of bacteria along extensive, insecure food chains as reasons for establishing urban hydroponic farms."

Cons:

"However, the expense of setting up the high-tech farms on pricey city land and providing enough year-round heat and light could present some insurmountable obstacles."

Read the full article at City Farmer News

Urban Flooding

Urban Flooding is a hazard to many parts of the country causing harm to both the environment and humans. As more and more parts of our plant is being urbanized, these urban areas are paved in concrete in place of plantlife. Instead of lush natural landscapes that soak and thrive in soft rainwater with organic minerals, the excess run off becomes a detriment unable to get past the compacted manmade soils of asphalt and cement that have encrusted the earth. The run off becomes repelled from our earth instead of absorbed in a natural ecosystem, causing dangerous floods. In addition, the layer of urban runoff carries air and ground pollutants on a path of least resistance into natural areas. On an extremely rainy day, groundwater sewage lines become clogged by the trash that the run off carries into the pipes. With more urban green space, this problem can be greatly alleviated Just by simply incorporation green space into preexisting areas like sidewalks, pathways, and parking lots.

For more, see this article: http://www.garden.org/urbangardening/index.php?page=october_flooding

Reduce Clean Water Consumption

Another way to be more sustainable in the garden is to set up a rainwater collection system.

How it helps you:

-Reduces your water bill

-Your garden thrives better on natural water

-Plants like water that is free of chemicals

How it helps the environment:

-Less demand for clean, reprocessed water

-Less energy used at the water and sewage treatment plant

Tips on how to build your own rain barrel:

Video

Photo guide

Refuse, Reuse, Repurpose

Old headboards can be used as treillises for vines and other creeping plants. Worn tires can be used to hold soil and dirt. Everyday waste items perform perfectly effective as gardening tools, elongating the lifespan of these materials.

These 3 Rs are less known, but are important principles to live by nonetheless. Whether in the home or garden, this ideology it will save time & money. Bonnie Alter of Treehugger writes,

"Recycling was born of necessity. With the changing world that we live in, it looks like it is going to become a necessity again."

AeroGrow AeroGarden

AeroGrow is a company that manufacture a a full line of indoor garden kits. These kits consist of a biodome. The kit also inludes seeds for an gourmet herb garden, salad garden, spring bouquet garden, and what have you. Though it is organic based, the kits do not use any natural sunlight and soil. Instead, the seeds grow in water using aeroponic technology. The claim is made that the plants grow five times faster in the biodome than plants grown in soil, probably due to the nutrient pellets and lightbulbs that emit light at the sunlight spectrum. It's NASA-tested as well, but will you be willing to shell out $150 for this?

AeroGarden also makes the following claims:

The original indoor garden

Everything you need to grow now

Easy, foolproof and 100% guaranteed

No dirt, no mess, no green thumb required

Click here for someone's detailed log of their experience with the AeroGarden

reward - labor matrix

Here's the diagram I drew last week that tries to think about houseplants and gardening through effort and reward. How much work do we put in? And what do we get out? It's not a very nuanced diagram, but it gets at one of the dynamics of taking care of plants -- that people sometimes feel like their work is rewarded, and sometimes not.

Hmong Garden

Hmong residents of Fresno, California are urging the city council to not bulldoze over the preexisting community garden for a new police substation. For these people, it is important for the garden to exist for more than just novelty, recreation, or aesthetics. The residents depend on the vegetables and fruits from this garden to feed their families.

Read the original article here and more information here.

Bookshelf Gardens

I am a self-defined bookshelf gardener. You know, the kind that keeps small potted plants on top of their bookshelf because that's the only place in their apartment where there is room to do so. The kind that explores with different small plants, the exotic and the not so exotic. The kind that proudly displays these installations as thropies. The kind that forgets to water them once in a while.

And so on.

The question is: Where is the line one crosses... 

A) from where plants are the accessories to the furniture

B) to where plants are the feature and the furniture becomes the accessory

This role reversal is an interesting study of the role in which plants play in a given area, examining its significance in an area dedicated to different elements. To what purpose does each element in the area serve and what one gathers from this knowledge or acknowledgement.

Ecospheres

This is for those who enjoy the idea of keeping, growing, maintaining a plant and a pet. Now you can, but without actually doing all of the above. These popular gift items do it themselves.

How Ecospheres Work:

Filtered sea water is enclosed in a glass ornament along with microorganisms and algae. Indirect sunlight is absorbed by the algae, allowing the algae to produce food through photosynthesis. It releases oxygen and becomes a source of food for the microorganisms. The microorganisms produce organic waste that bacteria feeds on. Both the microorganisms and bacteria produce carbon dioxide, which the algae picks up and starts the cycle again.

These closed ecosystems are sealed with everything they need for years and are self-sustaining without the care of any outside element other than sunlight. There is an element of sterilization involved, very much contradictory to traditional gardening where one gets their hands dirty.

-novelty factor (innovative, unusual, miniature, great gift idea)

-responsibility factor (minimal work, minimal effort)

Another item to a collection of indoor plantlife.

DIY indoor plants

Released in 1982, the Chia Pet was introduced to households across the nation. It reached popularity through its easiness to grow and witty marketing. Since then, the company has extended its line to include Chia herb gardens, Chia Trees, and China Cat Grass Planter.

Since then, many companies have followed this idea, bringing our local drug and grocery store shelves a wider variety of do-it-yourself planter kits. Recently, I recieved an indoor daffodil kit as a present, reaffirming the notion that indoor plant projects are popular gifts. As a derivation from traditional gardening, this is formulating to be a popular trend. Already, its novelty has caught the eye of young adult apparel and goods stores like Urban Outfitters.

Takeaways:

• Responsibility - Being able to claim responsibility about bringing a seedling into full fruitation, gain pleasure by watching the progress of plant knowing that results are from one's doing
• Experimentation - Bridge to gardening by beginning at a novice level, being able to try a new activity without risking too much capital or space, being able to grow various plants given restricted conditions
• Knowledge - Not much expertise required, but get to enjoy fruitful results nonetheless
• Novelty - Enjoy the idea of having a green thumb and a do-it-yourself-watch-it-grow project, opportunity to show off to others

Some more do-it-yourself kits:

Green bus shelter at Larkin and McAllister

Planted with beach strawberries. Supposedly temporary? 

Photo from SFist, which thinks they're "inane"

From the Chronicle:

The mayor is expected to release San Francisco's first food policy in the next several months, and one of the cornerstones will be decreased reliance on imported food. The policy will also encourage urban gardens and call for planting fruit-bearing trees and plants in street medians and abandoned lots.

...

The key is to get creative, he said. Look at school playgrounds and empty lots and city-owned lands outside San Francisco.

Even bus shelters can turn into gardens. The city's newest - unveiled Thursday at the corner of Larkin and McAllister streets - is roofed with sod and planted with strawberries.

SF food policy

From the SF Chronicle:

The mayor is expected to release San Francisco's first food policy in the next several months, and one of the cornerstones will be decreased reliance on imported food. The policy will also encourage urban gardens and call for planting fruit-bearing trees and plants in street medians and abandoned lots.
...
San Francisco consumes about 1 million tons of food each year and the Bay Area consumes about 6 million tons, said Jared Blumenfeld, director of the city's Department of the Environment. More than 20 million tons of food - and 80 different types of food - are produced every year within a 200-mile radius of San Francisco.

Urban gleaning and backyard farming

Natasha Boissier did not expect an epiphany while pushing her baby’s stroller exhaustedly around the neighborhood. But eyeing her neighbors’ yards, Ms. Boissier began noticing the abundance of fruit trees — and how much of their succulent bounty wound up on the ground.

“There was all this fruit going to waste,” she said of the apples, pears and plums in her midst. “It seemed like such a natural way to deal with hunger.”

Thus was born North Berkeley Harvest, part of a small but expanding movement of backyard urban gleaners — they might be called fruit philanthropists — who voluntarily harvest surplus fruit and then donate it to food banks, centers for the elderly and other nonprofit organizations.

from the New York Times

Organizations

North Berkeley Harvest
Village Harvest
MyFarm
Your Backyard Farmer

Notes from Tues, Oct 8 brainstorm

Spaces of action

• garden
• home
• street

actors

• gardener-user
• camera
• other gardeners
• outsiders (neighbors, etc)

disjunctions / gaps

• between gardeners in the same plot, who cannot share knowledge about their shared space
• between gardeners in the same garden, who share knowledge serendipitously (and who may or may not see themselves as a "community")
• between garden and outside neighborhood -- fence and locked gate separates spaces

sources of data

• photos of garden
• weather -- sun, rain, wind, temperature
• visualization strategies (timeline, concentric circles

design suggestions

• look for analogues of garden spaces in home: places where time passes, activity amount changes, places of beauty and calm
• can we make something that could be customized to specific gardens? specific homes?
• something that reacts to environmental conditions dynamically and directly - not digitally mediated
• flipping the garden to see its roots
• metaphor of soil for visual array of photos: speckled, textured

emotions / affective states

• ephemerality, time passing
• pleasure

questions to answer

• what can/should a prototype discover in a week?
• if a week is too short, what is the "right" deployment period?
• what do people want to take photos of? why? what would they do with them (gift, souvenir, planning for future)?
• where is the garden in the home? "nature"? where could it be?

proposed activities

• wizard-of-oz study where we act as the photographer and follow around a gardener for a week.
• home visits
  

goal: deployment completed in mid-Dec for paper in Jan